Well, the time has come

But let's face it, it had to happen eventually.

We've been wondering what to do for the six weeks or so between July 7th when our month long car rental ends in Scotland, and August 19th when we fly back to Canada. We had pretty much decided that we were going to go to the Baltic countries... Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

But we hadn't booked it yet because I was waiting for the airfare price to drop. So we hadn't made any commitments and we could still look at other options.

We ended up booking a cruise!

We will be on the Emerald Princess.

"Huh?" you might say. "You don't seem like cruise type of people..."

And you might be right. We've never done a cruise because it just didn't seem like our type of thing. We normally like to spend time getting to know a country, rather than skipping from port to port for a quick look for a couple of hours. I've always thought it might be fun to do a "repositioning" cruise where you actually get to a destination by boat instead of flying, but nothing has ever come up that's been convenient to where we want to go.

So anyhow, I noticed two cruise deals the other day that piqued my interest. One was a Mediterranean cruise that really only came up because it ended up in Barcelona a day or two before our flight leaves from Barcelona to Halifax. And it departed from Rome, and we've never been to Rome before.

The other was called a "Northern Europe" cruise, but its stops were in Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland.

Greenland was the big attraction here. We've been to Ireland and Iceland, but Greenland isn't an easy or cheap place to get to. 

This is the cruise... https://www.princess.com/cruise-search/details/?voyageCode=E517

The only thing making us hesitate was the price. We had pretty much decided that we would do the Greenland one over the Mediterranean one, but we still weren't sure about the price. It was a decent price, but not what you would call a screaming deal.

Our friends Glen and Steve have done a LOT of cruises, and she checked prices on sites that she uses. It turns out that booking through a UK site is generally cheaper than booking through an American site.

I was watching the price on the Vacations to Go website, and they were showing $1,450 USD. But there were a couple of UK sites that were about £950 which is only $1,286 USD... a significant savings.

We decided to sleep on it. 

The next morning when we woke up, the price on Vacations to Go was showing at $1,088 USD... a great deal! But you can only book by calling their office... and the office is located in Texas so it wasn't open yet. Still the middle of the night there! Sure enough, a couple of hours later, the price had increased... now at $1,514 USD. 

Our friend Glen sent me the email address of someone who works at Vacations to Go. (Thank you Glen!). I sent the woman a note saying that I had seen the price of $1,088 USD overnight, and that I was prepared to book it, but that it had now increased and I asked if there was anything she could do.

To our surprise, I received an email a couple of hours later saying that they would honor the $1,088 USD price! Fantastic! The downside to this is that the $CAD is in the dumpster, so it still comes to about $1,500 CAD per person, but that's still pretty darn good for a 16 day cruise to Greenland.

So, we're booked. We depart Southampton, England on July 31st.

Oh, I almost forgot... even at that price, it includes a promotional $210 USD cabin credit that can be used for just about anything on board the ship... including WiFi access or drinks!

It will be interesting to see what our opinion of cruising will be when we are finished.

So now... what to do between July 7th and July 31st...?

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Good deal on CUSHIONAIRE Women's Sandals.

And in Canada...

Check out the deals at Amazon.ca.