I’ve lost my flags!

I have a flag counter here and I wanted to make it a bit different. Well, I sure did that! And in the process lost all the count of how many different people from what country had looked at my blog. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the count that gaznjo has: 12,259 from Oz, 2,330 from the US, through 63 from Bahrain, down to 22 from France, but I had quite a few and I’m desolate that the list has vanished. That will teach me to tinker with my blog! 

Although time seems to be moving at a glacial pace, our trip IS getting closer. Everytime I watch the videos from this year’s World Cruise I get alternately energized and depressed. Watching gaznjos blog and vimeo posts I am energized by the wonderful videos of the ports they went to—and, for the most part, we will also be going to next year. I think he does the videos and she picks the music; they each do a fabulous job! At the same time I get depressed because I don’t think I can ever do as well.

But I tell myself that I don’t have to do as well, I’m just doing this blog for my family and friends and they will be very happy (won’t you?) just to see and read about what we’re doing. So I’ll try some videos to add a bit of interest to my blog.

However, taking videos of Kathy’s horse show made me realize just how difficult it is to do GOOD videos! Anybody can point a camera at a thing and take a picture of it; not just anybody can make that picture or video into an interesting one. If it were easy all of us would be making movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade all the time. I mention that movie because we will be going to the area where at least part of it was filmed, Petra in Jordan. Naturally, we’re going to have to watch it again!

I’m going to google the ports we’re going to and see what movies—if any—were filmed at those ports. For example, Athens was the setting for, among others, For the Love of Benji and The Day the Fish Came Out (I never heard of that one either) and several dozen others filmed in Greece, mostly in Santorini rather than Athens, but how far wrong can I go watching a movie set in Greece? For movies shot in Mykonos, I hit a double: The Kings of Mykonos, an Australian movie shot in Mykonos. Really it’s a hat trick as it’s a comedy, too.

OK, I really HAVE to get cracking on some tours. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s still—let me look at the cute little counter on my blog—179 (5 months and 3 weeks) days until the cruise leaves. But it’s only 2 weeks until our second payment is due. Ouch. Then there is the third payment due about 6 weeks after that. Then we’ll REALLY know we’re going!

Anyway, I’ve put a request on the Cruise Critic Roll Call for the Sun Princess about a tour of Mumbai by a company (used by others on Cruise Critic) called Mumbai Magic. I wish I had discovered Cruise Critic long ago, before our first cruise! They have everything you could possibly want to know about cruising. And I expect we’ll have a much better time on our cruise because of the connections I’ve made on the Roll Call.