Ready or not, my world is about to start turning again after two-and-a half + years, as I land in New York City to begin a 46-day cruise adventure. Planning this journey for over a year has been almost make believe, yet here I am. Astonishingly, my flights, luggage, and hotel transports all occur flawlessly,…
Continue reading →I love living in the bow of the ship. It has its drawbacks for sure. Every seasoned cruiser will advise against choosing a cabin in the bow, arguing that low and center is preferable for optimal stability. And to prove that theory, our first four days of this journey were spent relentlessly rocking and rolling…
Continue reading →You’ve heard of the affliction called “homesickness”, impassively defined as “a longing for one’s home during a period of absence from it.” Well, I’m feeling that now, but for another kind of home…my sea home. Knowing that we have spent much time on the cruise ship Insignia, our friend and Oceania butler, Priyan, sent a…
Continue reading →On embarkation day, we checked into Insignia, dropped our bags in our suite, and called our friends, Andy and Tammy Heath. They were our Cruise Director and Assistant Cruise Director respectively for our 2015 Around the World voyage on Insignia, and live in our home town, so we have become friends on sea and land….
Continue reading →“Let’s meet in Cape Town!”, we promised, with a wink, when we saw Andy and Tammy before this cruise began. We live in the same hometown, and met when they were the Cruise Director and Assistant Cruise Director on our long Insignia voyage. While we’ve been on Marina, they were back on Insignia, and our…
Continue reading →We were passengers on Oceania Insignia’s inaugural Miami to Miami “Around the World in 180 Days” voyage. Except, it turned out to be 109 days, thwarted at the final hour by a tragic accident on the ship. We were given the option to cancel or join the itinerary 71 days later in Singapore, when the…
Continue reading →“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust I am deeply grateful to Francis, Jelena, Desi, Samuel, Isabella, Augustina, Bojan, Doina, Julia, Paolo, Fabio, Cristian, Volha, Marco, Milena, Janice, Lector, Mishra, Sergei, Claudiu, Milan, Nicoletta, Gusti, Sasha, Vitali, Levante, Subhamoy,…
Continue reading →When we met with very rough seas leaving Columbia, the Captain announced that we would be forced to skip our last port of Key West and, to avoid the impending storm, take a longer route farther to the east around Cuba. So, the last days of our long voyage would be spent captive at sea,…
Continue reading →One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal, was begun by the French in 1881, to cut a 48-mile ship passage across the Isthmus of Panama and create one of the most significant waterways on earth, connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea). The conditions…
Continue reading →Traveling with friends can be the perfect storm either way, a disaster or a triumph. With Tom, Charmaine, Jack, Linda, Dean, and I, it has been the best of times. We’ve shared day trips ashore, had parties, dinners, celebrations, toasts, and even formed our own “Flatlanders” trivia team to test our collective knowledge of useless…
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