My email records show that between that first e-mail and our embarkation in late-July 2019, Colin and I had over 130 exchanges. That in itself should be a testament to how confusing it was for us, and how patient Colin was in helping us sort it all out.
I won't describe each and every e-mail; rather, I'll summarize the major points that we were able to sort out:
Cost/Benefit
The price of a one-way airline ticket was about $1,300 when we started looking. That would have been about $2,600 for two tickets, and at least $100 (and almost certainly more) for all the additional luggage we intended to bring back.
The cost of the cargo ship was approximately the same (although the required health insurance bumped it up a bit). But we also got two weeks room and board thrown in, which would have cost us an additional $1,500 or so in Paris.
So on balance we realized that from a purely financial point of view the cargo ship was a bit better.
Choosing an itinerary
When we started we had a vague notion that all we had to do was tell Colin that we wanted to leave from an East Coast port and land somewhere in Europe, and that he would provide us with a menu of options from which to choose. Nope. We had to neck it down to specific embarkation and disembarkation ports. And we did that after a few back-and-forths. Baltimore, Maryland to Hamburg, Germany ended up being the itinerary that made the most sense.
Health Insurance
This was complex, and it was one of those issues where Colin really earned his money. He was not allowed to recommend companies, but he gave us the name of a company that he said others had used. So far, so good. But it turned out to have required 4 - 5 applications and cancellations until we finally got all the details right. Once we had that down, Colin advised us to wait until close to the last minute to actually purchase it in case there were further changes. (More details on the health insurance thing in the next post.)
Rescheduling
We had originally booked passage on the Atlantic Sail, scheduled to depart Baltimore on 13 July and arrive in Hamburg on 28 July. As spring advanced and we started looking with more granularity at the various things we needed to be doing in the U.S., we realized that 13 July was probably going to be too tight. Once again, Colin came through. He was able to get us rebooked on the Atlantic Sky, which was scheduled to depart Baltimore on 27 July.
Atlantic Container Lines (ACL) interactive web site
Colin introduced us to the ACL interactive vessel schedules website. Although this turned out to be not entirely accurate as we got close to departure, it gave us a warm and fuzzy to at least think we were on top of the schedule. And up until the last week it was accurate enough.
And so 130 emails and 9 months later, we had tickets in hand and were ready to go...
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