Travel day today…Tom’s tiger video…New booking in UK…”Baaaath, England…here we come on May 2nd!…

We have always heard that Bath is a fabulous historic town. We’re looking forward to exploring.

When we realized we had six months until our cruise from Lisbon to Cape Town sailing on November 10, 2020, from the time we arrived in Greenwich, England (near London) on May 2, 2020, it made sense to stay in the UK or at least four months to comply with the Schengen visa restrictions.
The UK isn’t a part of the strict policy of the Schengen visa, and we can stay anywhere in the UK for up to six months. Ideally, we’d have been able to tour Europe during those six months, but the restrictions only allow us to stay in other countries in Europe for a maximum of 90 days during any 180 days. That’s too limiting for our lifestyle.

The modern kitchen in the holiday home in Bath. Everything we need to begin cooking again after over a three-month hiatus from cooking as we traveled India and cruised.

Subsequently, we’ll stay in England and Scotland for approximately four months and Spain and Portugal for one month each. Although we’ve already been to both of these countries, we’ll be delighted to stay during these periods.

The living room is small but has adequate seating for the two of us.

As a result, we’ve started booking holiday homes beginning with England. Yesterday, we wrapped up a little house in Bath (pronounced Baaaaaath by the British) on HomeAway for a 30 night period. Very soon, we’ll book another place in the Cotswolds for another 30 days beginning on  June 1. 

We were surprised to find easy availability for houses in these particular areas, but we believe Conoravirus has resulted in less travel throughout the world. Since we can’t stay “home” to avoid the risks, we continue in our world travels, avoiding areas of most concern. In other words, we won’t be heading to China at any time soon.

Another view of the cozy living room.

The house in Bath is small, but it’s an expensive area, and we do fine in small spaces. Plus, we need to “lick our wounds” after this expensive India tour, including the Maharajas Express train and the two upcoming pricey cruises, especially the upcoming Viking Sun ocean cruise. Previously, Viking was known for their river cruises and have now built ocean-going ships, but they are more expensive than most cruises.

The bed is only a double, but we’ve managed this scenario many times in our travels.

Next month’s Viking cruise is 29 days, a long time to be at sea, obviously adding to the cost. Still, it does include unlimited internet, beverages, excursions, and meals in specialty restaurants. We’ll bear the only added expenses of US $30, IDR 2192.34 a day, in tips for the 29 days. We’ll have a $600, IDR 43853, cabin credit we can use toward the ends.

The total number of passengers is 930, with a crew of 465. Surely that number of staff will result in excellent service, which we expect from experience with Viking when we cruised the Mekong River with them in July 2016. There were only 54 passengers on the river cruise, but we had an exceptional experience visiting Vietnam and Cambodia.

The guest room where we’ll store our luggage.

Today is yet another travel day, but this is the second to last time we’ll have to fly to India. Road trips seem so much less exhausting and with waiting time (except for the traffic). We left the hotel at 1:00 pm and won’t arrive at our hotel in Chennai until 10:00 pm tonight. Long day…

May your day and evening be pleasant and rewarding.

Photo from one year ago today, March 5, 2019:

Little stopped by this morning to check out the pellet situation.  As always, it was good. For more photos, please click here.