Six days, six hours and forty five minutes to go...

...until we fly out. Not that I'm counting down or anything.

We'll start in Hawaii, with a few days just chillin' in Oahu, then on to see the family in Boise, Idaho, and off to New York a few days after that.

Then we board the ship for "The Ultimate Panama Canal Cruise". "Ultimate" may be a bit of an overclaim - I'd expect an "ultimate" to involve live shows from David Bowie or the Rolling Stones, if not both - but it does look pretty damn good.

Let's start with the ship, the 50,000 ton Crystal Symphony:

Real purty.

Crystal Cruises proudly notes that "readers of Condé Nast Traveler consistently vote Crystal Serenity the number one cruise ship in the world", with the Crystal Symphony number two. So we're not exactly slumming . If it wasn't for the GFC decimating the tourism industry. We wouldn't be able to afford it. Thank you, greedy Wall Street banker-scum

Given it's a bit posh, will Emma and my pleb-like personalities be out of place?

I worked out that as the ship carries up to 922 guests, even if the ship is only 2/3rds full (615 guests) and there's a 99% probability of them being snobs, there's only a 0.21% chance that we'll be the only non-snobs on board. So I'm confident that we'll find someone as unsophisticated and gauche as we are to make friends with.

As for the itinerary, after leaving New York we hit Philadelphia, then Charleston, Miami, Grand Cayman -

Oh, let me just post the map and you can see for yourself.
We've heard glowing reports about the Panama Canal parts, which is why we picked this cruise, but the rest of the trip has plenty going for it.

The cruise takes 19 days, with 9 sea days, which is a good balance for us. In between cool stuff like riding an airboat through the Florida Everglades, snorkling with stingrays in Grand Cayman, or watching lunatics dive 130ft/40 m from the La Quebrada cliffs in Acapulco we'll have plenty of free time on board.

For Emma this mainly be finding her "Deck Seven" where she can catch up on three years worth of reading and relax.

For me this will mean being indulging my finest ADHD qualities, including reading (I may well burn out my Kindle e-reader), plus attending on-board lectures (I'm particularly interested in Ambassador Edward Peck, a career diplomat for 32 years, and British foreign correspondent Ken Rees), check out the onboard Spanish lessons with a Berlitz Language instructor, play a bit of chess, see if there's any Hold'em poker, do some writing, and probably far too many other things, before we overdo it with the food and drink.

It might be wise to hit the gym a few times as well.

It's looking good. If it's anywhere near as good as the last trip (http://greatpacificadventure.blogspot.com/ - we remember it well) it'll be worth it.