The ship arrived in Fakarava, an atoll in the Tuamotou Archipelago at 7am.

We had booked a snorkeling tour in the early afternoon, but all instances of that tour (there were morning tours as well) were canceled because of high winds.

Fakarava is a rectangular atoll with a way to get in on the north side. We anchored inside and tendered into the town of Rotoava. The atoll is a fairly narrow rim less than one mile wide that about 800 people live on.

Our backup plan is to walk around town. We got off around 8:30 and started walking north along the inside towards the lighthouse 3 km away which was visible from the ship.

Today is a sea day, we’ll arrive in Fakarava around 7am tomorrow morning. The ship is rolling and pitching some in the 4-6 ft waves. Our cabin is near the front of the boat, so we feel both motions. Cabins more in the middle of the ship don’t feel the pitching motion as much.

Our day starts at 2am as we get up for our 3am car to the airport. We have uneventful flights to Denver, then San Francisco and to Pape’ete, Tahiti.

The ship was still sailing towards Vukovar, Croatia in the morning arriving in Vukovar around 10 am. Vukovar was the site of a fierce battle in the breakup of Yugoslavia with the Serbs shelling the town for three months.

The morning starts with an optional tour to the Budapest Jewish quarter. We took a tour of the Synagogue when we were here last year. We opted instead to do some more shopping. Donna’s bag is in Budapest, but may not be delivered before we leave. Mine is in Frankfurt, and will not make it before we leave this afternoon.

Our Prague to Budapest tour last Fall ended in Budapest, so we’ve seen some of the city.

Today we travel to Budapest to get on the ship in the afternoon. When we arrived in Heathrow in the morning, the baggage handling system was not working. They asked us to put our checked luggage in an area that had quite a number of bags already.

When we got on the airplane, the baggage handling system had been repaired, but only about 50% of the bags made it on the flight. In retrospect, we should have brought our checked luggage to the gate and gate checked it, since it was small enough to carry on, we just had too many bags. Our luggage was in the 50% that didn’t make it on the flight.

Yesterday we went to the Seaford area to see the Seven Sisters cliffs.

In the morning we did an easy two-mile run and then did some laundry. In the afternoon, we walked down to the Royal Pavilion.

We see St. Augustine’s Abby, St. Martin’s church and the Roman Museum then head back to Brighton.