Here we are starting another long cruise, this one to several places that we have not been before and some we have visited in the past.  This cruise is 62 days starting from Cape Town, South Africa and ending in Beijing, China.
We left our winter home in Las Vegas with a rental car and drove to Southern California where we spent the night.  We dropped our rental at LAX and boarded our long flight to Dubai.  We were on a new Emirates Airlines AB380 in business class, a wonderful experience despite a 16 hour flight time!  We had an 8 hour layover (from 8pm to 4am) and spent our time in the huge Emirates business class lounge where they had a very nice selection of food and drinks and we were also able to take showers and change our clothes.  Our next flight was almost nine hours to reach Cape Town, South Africa.  We were taken to a hotel for one night, needless to say we did not feel up to sightseeing and just stayed in the hotel.  We boarded the Seven Seas Voyager on December 21 and were nicely surprised to immediately run into two couples that had been on our previous long cruise around South America on the Seven Seas Mariner in 2012.  We also recognized several crew members from this same cruise that are now on the Voyager crew.