It's Never Too Early To Make Plans Or Reservations

In September of 2012, Veronica and I will be going on another adventure.

We will be on the Norwegian Cruise Line(NCL) Sun for a 14-Day Norway, Iceland & Faroe Islands Round-trip from/to Copenhagen cruise.

Hard to believe that our cruise will begin in 11 months and 15 days. When I really think about it, it does seem like a long ways off still but it is not too early to book certain aspects of the adventure.

Although we still are a couple of weeks out from starting to shop for a reasonable flight to Copenhagen...if such a thing actually exist, it isn't too early to book a pre-cruise hotel room at the Copenhagen Marriott or one of the many ports of call excursions that are already being offered for this cruise.

Upon landing in Copenhagen and a full day before our cruise sets sail, Veronica and I will have to find our way to the Copenhagen Marriott. Hopefully we will be somewhat well rested from our long flight especially since we will be trying to sleep during most of the flight.

we definitely do not want to have the same jet lag problems that we had after our very first international flight to Heathrow. After landing in Heathrow, those heading for the cruise terminal had to board a bus for about an 1 1/2 hour bus ride. Then we had to go through the check in process and get aboard the ship. We were on the NCL Sun for that cruise too....a 12 day Baltic Capitals cruise.

Without realizing it jet lag had kicked in and we ended up sleeping for the first 23 hours or so of our cruise. Luckily that first day was a day at sea, with no ports of call scheduled.

We don't want to do that again because we want to go out and about once we get checked into the hotel.

We have plans to go visit Tivoli Gardens during the late afternoon and throughout the evening. I have read that it really looks different and nice at night when they have all of the lights on.

Another thing that I have done is make reservations for one of the shore excursions being offered for Reykjavik, Iceland.

Veronica and I have decided to do our own thing in all of the other ports of call. We have done this many times before and have always enjoyed ourselves and found many beautiful and interesting things to see wherever we have gone and had a port of call.

Because there are so many different things to see in Iceland, we could have chose one shore excursion and spent our day mainly seeing one site in depth or we could walk around the city on our own and utilize their public transportation to get wherever we wanted to go or we could do what we ended up choosing for our shore excursion.

We chose to do the excursion called "Iceland Through The Photo Lens". This excursion will take us to many of the known sites and other sites that most people would not normally be able to see, much less photograph.

Here is the shore excursion description as it is written on NCL web site:

Iceland Through The Photo Lens

Discover one of the best kept secrets in the world of photography – Iceland! Whether you consider yourself a keen amateur or a dedicated professional, there is no doubt that Iceland's fascinating photographic terrain will set your pulse racing. If you are an enthusiastic nature and landscape photographer, you know that there are precious few places left in the world that offer a dramatic and accessible landscape that has not been over exposed. Iceland is a visually exciting place for those photographers seeking inspiration for a new and challenging location to explore. You'll be able to take in some of the best photographic locations in the region. Through your photo lens, discover wonderful panoramic views over vast lava fields, hot springs, mountain ranges, lakes, unspoiled nature, bird life and picturesque fishing villages. Enjoy a buffet lunch at the famous Blue Lagoon complex. Note: Participants must be 16 years of age and be in good health. Most venues are not wheelchair accessible. Guests must be able to step in and out of the vehicle rather quickly to take advantage of the photographic opportunities. This is a special interest tour for photography enthusiasts - no equipment is provided.

This excursion will give me an excellent opportunity to put that new camera through it's paces. I should be able to get some remarkable photos, movies and even some panoramic photos during this day full of seeing what Iceland has to offer.

I booked this excursion earlier than I normally would book one because I wanted to make sure that we would not is out on signing up for this one.

It will be one of the many highlights of our cruise I am sure.

Now if only I can find that "reasonable" airfare from the States to Copenhagen.

These Darn Mosquitoes

Ever since Hurricane Irene deposited copious amounts of water throughout the local landscape, we have been inundated with mosquitoes.

Lately it has really become worse.

You can't even walk outside without them just waiting to pounce on whatever exposed portion of skin that they think you are offering up to them. And heaven forbid if they think that you might go inside just to get away from them. They will just hang onto whatever you are wearing and take a free ride on you just to get inside your house. They are not dumb insects...they aren't about to let go of that gravy train....which is you. And this is when the fun really begins because they have plenty areas in your home to visit and keep them occupied while waiting for you to get tired and go to sleep. Then it's time for them to all belly up to the human buffet table and gorge themselves on the likes of you.

They are worse than a flock of Lilliputians from Gulliver's travels.

They are just downright unmerciful. And they don't give a hoot whether you are wearing light colored clothes, dark colored clothes, sweating or not sweating, hot or cold, wearing floral scented perfume or have a garlic clove necklace around your neck. It just does not matter to these little critters. Actually I think that they did their own Google search about themselves, so that they would have the same information that we have about them.

Let me tell you....the proper knowledge in the hands of the wrong mosquito can be really scary and worrisome. Give me a dumb mosquito anytime over book wise and street wise mosquito.

There isn't any amount of Deet that seems to persuade them to go elsewhere for their tasty red snack.

Every day it seems that the insect sprayer man in his truck, drives through our neighborhood and does his nightly attack on the pesky little blood suckers with wings.

None of the spraying seems to make a dent in this mosquito population.

I could swear that I saw a couple of them the other day flying around wearing some sort of custom made gas masks to protect them from the insect spray....and I think they were pointing and giggling at the man in the truck doing the spraying.

Nothing worse than a disrespectful mosquito.

I can hardly wait for the first real frost of the season to occur and totally eliminate the mosquito population.

Then we will see who is doing all of the pointing and giggling.

Show Us The Money

On Saturday evening Veronica and I stopped by the drive through ATM machine at our local Bank Of America.

We wanted to deposit $450 cash into our checking account.

Veronica put her bank card into the ATM machine and pressed the appropriate buttons to make our deposit.

Veronica then placed the paper currency into the appropriate receptacle.

The ATM machine could be heard going through and counting the paper currency.

All of a sudden the machine started to make a beeping sound and the screen said that it could not complete the entire transaction and it spit out some of the cash.

We tried to straighten out the money and figured that the ATM would not accept the bills because the money was crinkled.

Because the machine was still beeping at us, Veronica tried to put some more of the cash into the machine while I was still trying to straighten out a few more of the bills.

While I was straightening out the last of our cash, the machine all of a sudden stopped beeping and the ATM screen was now telling us that this machine could no longer accept deposits and that our transaction had been canceled.

This was all fine and dandy with us except for the fact that the machine still had $320 of our money inside of it and we had no receipt nor anything else to show that we had that amount of money in the machine.

We left the bank with $130 in our hands and wondering if we would ever see the rest of our money again.

As soon as I got home I tried to call customer service at Bank of America. Unfortunately all of their offices were closed until the next day.

First thing in the morning the next day I was able to contact the Bank of America customer service personnel and was told that they would have the people that are responsible for taking care of the machines and all of the transactions that go through the machines, look into my problem.

So as of now Bank of America is doing an investigation into our lost money.

I was told that our account would be credited with the $320 on Tuesday and that this money would be available for us to use on Tuesday, which is tomorrow.

I did learn something interesting through this whole adventure...the people that work in the actual bank where this outside ATM is located, have nothing to do with the ATM machine.

Bank of America has someone else or another group of people that go around and make sure the machines are working properly and make sure that all transactions done through the machine and money that is collected and dispersed balance out.

This is where our money comes in. That ATM machine should have an overage of $320 when these people balance the machine out.

I was told that the whole process could take up to 45 days before we know that this issue has been rectified.

At least we have access to our $320 that will be credited to our account tomorrow.