On our way

Nothing about the Auckland weather did anything to discourage us from leaving!! ( as if!!). 
Our plane, an Emirates A380 left from gate 16 .. This is a new one .. Apparently 8 minutes walk from the main departure lounge area where we celebrated with a glass of wine.

The A380 is quite comfortable for a shorty like me. Plenty of leg room and we were in the front cabin which was quite small so very quiet . 
We had our first of several meals and a small bottle of Californian merlot and a movie helped the first 3 hours to Sydney pass quickly. 
I watched The Second Exotic Marigold Hotel .. Not as good as the first but entertaining none the less.
The second leg from Sydney to Dubai was the killer.. 15 hours .I didn't sleep as per usual.  Screaming babies didn't help .
Dubai Airport is huge but our connecting flight is in the same terminal so we some get to see much of it

Our final leg to Barcelona is all daytime flying so different from the last 18 hours of night!!

A few notes on what I'm planning to do

Firstly as I said in yesterdays post, I will be posting from my tablet/phone.
My mobile plan is with Vodafone NZ and since my last trip overseas they have bought out some new roaming rates. Now, for countries that are included you can use your regular plan ( calling texts and most importantly data) for the cost of just $5 per day for each day you use it. Luckily for us most of the countries we are visiting are included in the $5 a day deal . ( Obviously not included while at sea, and not included in Turkey or in Dubai where old fashioned quite expensive roaming rates apply. 
So, I plan to type up drafts of my blog posts in the evening and then when we disembark I can tether my tablet to my phone and post using mobile broadband.  Well thats the plan in any case- how effective that is remains to be seen.

Additionally, I also purchased a bluetooth keyboard and case for my tablet because I am not a very good typist when using my finger on the keyboard . I will also link the keyboard to my phone so I can post directly to the phone if necessary.

I have downloaded a few apps to try to post from - For this post  Im using the Blogger App - I have a few others to try as Im not sure this one is very good for adding images- at least right now after starting to type I cant see how to add an image to my text. I think any images wont be inserted into the text but will be separate.

The other tool I bought was a Power Hub that is also an SD card reader and a wifi hub. I can insert my SD card and transfer my photos from the card to my phone and /or my tablet and more importantly back them up to a portable hard drive that I can attach to the hub. I bought this device from Amazon

It seems to work quite well so fingers crossed! Luckily my camera also has wifi ability so I can transfer from camera to phone on the fly. I find this function so useful and that along with the much lighter body and lenses mean that I almost never use my Nikon DSLR any more. Tjhough I do miss my 18-200 lens. I have not purchased one of those for my Sony yet as they are pretty expensive so I have to make do with swapping lenses - having said that my wider angle lens goes down to 16mm so gives extra perspective in landscapes which I really appreciate.
It does chew through the battery though with the Electronic View Finder so I have purchased an extra spare - so now I have 2  spares - hopefully that will suffice!!!
I decided and hope I dont regret it but I'm going to shoot in jpg. I just don't seem to have the time these days to edit photos . I still haven't finished all the photos from our trip to the US 2 years ago, so jpg it will have to be this time!!

5 More Sleeps

In 5 days our journey begins.
As a child and young adult it was my dream to visit  the places of ancient history I had read about and read about again.
We thought about visiting the Mediterranean for our honeymoon but January was not the best time of year to go and so it got put off.
Years and years went by and for the last few years I joked that we would finally get there for our silver wedding anniversary.
And here we finally are making it a reality.

On Sunday we fly with Emirates to Barcelona via Sydney and Dubai ( a massive 28 hour journey) .
After a few days in Barcelona we will embark the Island Princess and set sail for the following ports:
Toulon, Livorno, Civitaveccia, Naples, Mykonos, Istanbul, Kusadasi, Athens and Venice.
From Venice we will take a train to Florence, and then after a few days another train to Reggio Emilia where we will be hosted by Smeg.
After travelling to Milan we will fly out to meet up with an online friend from my  Digital Scrapbooking days , in Dubai.

I have never been to any of these destinations, and it still seems like a bit of a dream that we are finally going.

Internet willing I will make postings here as reguarly as I can throughout the journey.