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| The living room is always a crucial area for us for relaxing and enjoying the view. There’s no shortage of either in this wonderful location. |
This week, we’ve managed to book two properties for well into the future:
- June 11, 2015 – September 8, 2015 – Trinity Beach, Australia – which we’ll share here today with photos
- September 8, 2015 – December 6, 2015 – Savusavu, Vanua Levu, Fiji- which we shared yesterday with photos
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| Another angle of the main living area. |
We’re excited as we enter these two firmed up locations to our ever-growing itinerary which, by the way, we’ll be posting in its entirety once we firm up a place in New Zealand.
Once we settle the details of a new booking there are many steps to enter it into our Excel spreadsheet with many tabs. One worksheet in our spreadsheet is the “Itinerary and Costs” tab whereby we enter information into columns; the dates, location, rental amount, car rental, transportation, entertainment, dining out, groceries, tips, and fees. and miscellaneous.
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| Although the ocean views are at a distance, we’re looking forward to amazing sunsets. With a pool on the 3-acre property, we’ll be content this far from the ocean. Rental cars are affordable in this area and we can easily drive to a nearby beach to walk along the shore. |
Another worksheet in the spreadsheet is “Deposits and Balances” which include: dates, location, total rent, hotel or cruise rate, the deposit paid, date paid, balance due, date(s) balance due (at times, payable in one or more installments).
For cruises, there is an additional worksheet with details of the cruise including dates, name of the ship, total cost including tips and taxes (usually paid at the time of booking the cruise), cabin number and class, balance due, date due, credits, and extras.
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| We can hardly wait to lounge by this pool in the backyard. |
Once these numbers are entered, we make a folder with all documents relative to a particular property, hotel, or cruise and save it on our cloud and external hard drive. Without a doubt, there are numerous steps to logging future travels but we’ve found that this works well.
Of course, I do all of this data entry and oddly, enjoy doing it. Each time I make changes to the workbook, I send a copy to Tom to “save over” his last copy for easy reference for him. This prevents me from having to look up info anytime he has questions. Each of us references this form frequently, especially these past few weeks as we figure out new dates and locations
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| Well equipped kitchen with all we’ll need. |
When a new reader pops into our site, their immediate perception maybe, “Cool. These old-timers are having an easy life.” Little do they realize until reading further that the planning, recording, and preparation for our travels is a complex undertaking requiring painstaking effort and diligence.
For us, it’s simply a part of the experience and we make every effort to enjoy it along with everything else
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| The bedroom with queen bed and doors to patio. |
Now, let’s get into Trinity Beach, Australia new booking. I must admit, this was one of the most difficult countries/continents in which we’ve searched thus far. Prices were high, especially with ocean views. It was impossible to find something affordable located directly on the beach that was nice enough for our liking.
We aren’t willing to live in a dumpy little house, even for a view. In the end, we compromised in a few ways; one, the ocean view is at a distance but a beach is nearby; two, we’re renting a full windowed/glass door home with private access on the ground level “situated on 3-acres of a tropical rain forest with 180˚ views of the Coral Sea and Cairns beautiful northern beaches.”
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| This hot tub will be used frequently. |
How could we resist? Certainly, it’s more private than a condo or apartment and with full access to the grounds and pool, we’ll be totally at ease. The owners although younger than us, live in a separate property on the grounds and are still working and gone most of the day. They are well-traveled, outgoing, warm, and friendly. Most likely, we’ll all become friends!
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| Roomy shower compared to many smaller showers we’d had in the past. |
We couldn’t be more thrilled to have this wrapped up. Now, between this property and Fiji following, we are currently booked out until December 6, 2015. Over the next few months, we’ll continue booking out another six months in order to have bookings through June 2016, almost two years. Then, we can relax (so to speak) for a year, living in the moment.
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| The rain forest setting should bring us some visitors! |
I must admit, it’s hard to believe that we’ll be in Paris in 32 days. How did this come up so quickly? For now, we continue to stay in tune with our remaining time and surroundings here on the beautiful island of Madeira, Portugal.
Have a warm and sunny weekend!
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Photo from one year ago today, June 29, 2013:
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| This was the veranda where we hung laundry in Boveglo, Italy. This was the second country in which there was no clothes dryer available to us, the first being the United Arab Emirates where we stayed in Dubai for 13 nights the prior month. Now here in Madeira, we use such a drying rack which frequently tips over in the strong winds. For details from that date, please click here. |