ANOTHER GLOBAL JOURNEY WITH A STOP FOR THE DUBAI EXPO

If you follow this blog site, you know that our global cruise on the Island Princess scheduled to depart Los Angeles in January on a 111-day global journey was cancelled by the company.  They were unable to confirm a sufficient number of port arrival sites, so just gave up.  We were disappointed.  We means my travel partner and I.  Our last three trips were exciting and monumental:  wine-tour of France, on the Diamond Princess just before the COVID-19 outbreak and Thailand when this country was #2 to China in total cases.

But life goes on, and I got enterprising, for I still want to somehow experience the Dubai World Expo, which opened yesterday, and will be available until the end of March.  Thus, my challenge is to find my way there and back to Honolulu.  However, it seems a shame to just go there and return home.

But using Kayak.com I checked anyway and was astonished to find this itinerary, all on Star Alliance:

• Honolulu to San Francisco (5h 5m) to Frankfurt (10h 50m) to Dubai (6h 50m).
• Dubai to Zurich (6h 50m) to San Francisco (11h 45m) to Honolulu (5h 28m).
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  Further, the return would depart at 2:20AM and arrive in Honolulu at 9:58PM on the SAME DAY.  What I thought was incredible was that the roundtrip cost in BUSINESS CLASS was ONLY $3,880, including taxes and fees.

Of course, I wouldn't want to suffer getting there and back, so what about just spending a couple of days in connecting cities, with a week in Dubai?  However, Star Alliance could not put together an itinerary with those same cities.  Using a lot of Alaska Air and Lufthansa, an itinerary could be arranged for a business class fare of $9,544.  Not bad, for a Star Alliance business class ticket for this mileage would probably run around $12,000.  Of course, this type of ticket will not allow you to backtrack, so would not work anyway.

Simplifying to include only Honolulu to San Francisco to Frankfurt to Dubai to Frankfurt to San Francisco to Honolulu, Kayak could not complete a Star Alliance itinerary.  However, by insisting that I had to travel only on Star Alliance, a price was found:  $43,720!!!

So I went back to my traditional around the global system using Star Alliance with a must stop in Dubai around mid March.  However, this time tossing in a couple of short cruises.  I did that a few years ago by including a Tauck European river cruise.   The flight portion allows for 15 stops and would probably cost around $12,000 or so.  I contacted my travel agent, who is a specialist with Crystal Cruises. 

She found a Crystal Serenity trip that could be boarded in Barcelona on March 26 with a Mediterranean itinerary, stopping in Cannes, Genoa, Naples, Santorini, Athens, Kusadasi, Mykonos, Bethlehem/Galillee, Jerusalem, Limassol, Rhodes, Istanbul, Odessa, Taormina, Sorrento, Rome and Florence, arriving in Monte Carlo on April 28   A month on any Crystal cruise gotta be expensive, and I have a review in progress by this agent.   I expect this to come in at around $500/night.

An interesting facet of Serenity's total itinerary (which begins in Miami or Los Angeles) is that on February 28, the ship was supposed to arrive in Las Palmas, which has long been on my short list as a place to stop.  Why?  You need to read my posting of September 21, for there is now a volcano erupting on that island, and I've kept a close watch on that site because it has been mentioned as a potential source of a mega tsunami capable of wiping out Florida.

So back to my adventure, I thought heck, since we would be in Europe, what about a Crystal cruise on the continent because my partner has never done that?  The travel agent found three options:

• Crystal Mahler, April 30, 7-night tulips and windmills for $7,149.
• Crystal Bach, April 30, on the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, $5299.
• Crystal Debussy, May 2, on the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam, $5,549.

Kind of expensive, and maybe too much so, for the cheapest is $757/day.  We'll need to later decide whether it will be worth that cost.  If we skip, we can instead visit a few European cities.  

Interestingly enough, I found a Cunard cruise from Southhampton to New York on the Queen Mary 2, leaving on April  15, arriving in New York a week later.  And a balcony room lists for only $1899/person, or $271/night.  A typical hotel room in Europe or just about anywhere these days costs this much.

So at this early stage of thinking, here is what our next around the world fantasy trip looks like.  The number counts up the Star Alliance stops (15 flights max, and any open leg also counts as one).  I would hope that the pandemic will be mostly be under control by late February.

Mon    Feb   28       Depart Honolulu (1)

Tue      Mar   1        Arrive Tokyo

Thu               3        Depart on one week Japan Rail Pass

Thu             10         Return to Tokyo

Sat              12        Depart Tokyo to Seoul (2)

Tue             15        Depart Seoul to Singapore (3)

Fri               18       Depart Singapore to Mauritius (4)

Mon            21        Depart Mauritius to Dubai (5)

Three days in Dubai for the World Expo and other sights.  Might want to increase this by leaving earlier from Honolulu.

Fri   Mar      25        Depart Dubai for Barcelona (6)

Sat               26        Board Crystal Serenity

Thu    Apr    28        Arrive in Monte Carlo

Fri                29        Depart from Nice on Star Alliance to Basel (8)

Mon   May     2        Depart Basel on Crystal Debussy

Sun                8        Arrive Amsterdam

Mon               9       Day in Amsterdam on the ship

Thu              12       Depart Amsterdam (10) to London

Sun              15       Board Queen Mary from Southhampton 

                                   to Brooklyn, New York (balcony starts at $1899)

Sun              22       Arrive New York

Wed             25       Depart New York (12) to Las Vegas

Sun              29       Depart Las Vegas (13) to Vancouver

Thu    June     2       Depart Vancouver (14) to San Francisco

Mon                6       Depart San Francisco (15) to Honolulu

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