A small map of the itinerary ...

This is a small map of our itinerary ... looks like a nice trip

We have a cabin assignment!!!

When we booked this cruise we decided to save some money and book what is called a "cabin guarantee" ... which in essence means ... Princess doesn't know the cabin number you will be assigned at booking BUT you are guaranteed the class of cabin you are paying for "or better" ... it's that "or better" that we were hoping for when we booked the "cheapest" class of balcony cabin on the ship ... referred to as "BF" category ... well we just got our cabin assignment .. Lido deck cabin #L219 ... which is a "BA" category cabin .. the top of the line balcony class cabin ... so we got essentially a $500/per person cabin upgrade by taking a chance on the "cabin guarantee" ... IF (unlikely) they decide to upgrade us again ... it would be to a mini-suite ... which is what we had on our previous Caribbean cruise on the Grand and what we have on the Alaska cruise ... they are very nice ... but kinda spendy and we are TRYING to do this cruise on a bit of a budget due to the horrendous airfare costs ...

Ahhhhhhhh ... to be UPGRADED .... it's all good ...

Airline tickets secured ... OUCH!

Well I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the roundtrip airline tickets for this trip ... we decided that buying them now vs waiting and hoping airfares would decrease closer to the actual trip was probably foolish in this time of astronomical fuel prices ... hope we didn't screw that up!

A few things about airfare prices nowdays ...

• #1 ... they ain't cheap
• #2 ... Using American Airline frequent flyer miles is apparently virtually impossible now. I had HOPED I could get at least one roundtrip ticket with 40k-50k airmiles ... not so much ... in fact ... unless I was willing to go 100k airmiles (which is way more than I have) ... I could not get a flight that accommodated or even almost accommodated our travel dates ... I am beginning to suspect that they ask for your travel dates and then specifically block those out of available frequent flyer mile seats. It's odd though because I was able to book two round trip first class tickects to Vancouver for the Alaska trip with out any hassle.
• #3 ... Using American Airline frequent flyer miles to UPGRADE a purchased ticket is also a joke ... see a trend here? I thought I'd BUY the tickets and then upgrade to 1st class with miles ... no problem ... 50k miles per ticket .... NOT!!!!!!!!

We are flying Continental Airlines ... Leave San Antonio Friday November 7 and return Sunday November 23 .... we will overnight in Rome 11/8 and 11/9 to see some sights there before we depart on the ship and then we will overnight in Rome again 11/22 before the flight back home.