Cruise Log…Plus interesting comparison…A fun night dancing…

Lovely Laura, a recent Covid and cancer survivor with an injured knee was such a great sport, dancing with her cane and her doctor daughter, lovely Ciara, at the silent disco. We had such fun with their family!

A few days ago, we mentioned that on our way to Fort Lauderdale from Apollo Beach, we began compiling a list of all of our past cruise sailings, including this Celebrity Silhouette cruise and the upcoming cruise on the Queen Mary 2 upcoming a few days after the end of this cruise.

Me and Tom wearing silent disco headsets listening to two different songs, smiling and laughing all the while. Such fun!

Once we started, we felt compelled to keep going. It proved to be a daunting task with the slow WiFi on the ship. The outrageously slow WiFi and my problems with the letter “L” on the keyboard made the process difficult and time-consuming. Tom knew the bulk of the information off the top of his head, but we couldn’t recall the number of nights of each sailing and searched online for answers.

Marilyn’s beaming face bespoke the fun we were all having!

(I won’t be able to wait to get a new computer until we get the shop card from Costco for this sailing. We’ll be back in South Africa, and it’s too costly and risky to have it shipped from the US to SA). It takes six weeks until we receive the shop card after this sailing.

In any case, somehow, we managed to look up all the information. Here is the list below:

 Cruises since the onset of our world travels, October 31, 2012, to May 1, 2022:

  1. January 2013 – Celebrity Century, San Diego to Florida – 15 nights
  2. January 2013 – Celebrity Equinox, Florida to Belize – off, mid-cruise – 8 nights
  3. April 2013 – Carnival Liberty, Belize to Florida – 5 nights
  4. April 2013 – Carnival Liberty, Florida to Florida – 7 nights
  5. April 2013 – Norwegian Epic, Florida to Barcelona – 11 nights
  6. May 2013 – Norwegian Epic, Barcelona to Barcelona – 4 nights
  7. May 2013 – RC Mariner of the Seas, Barcelona to Dubai – 15 nights
  8. June 2013 – Norwegian Spirit, Barcelona to Venice – 12 nights
  9. August 2014 – RC Brilliance of the Seas, Harwich to Boston – 14 nights
  10. September 2014 – Celebrity Solstice, Vancouver to Honolulu – 13 nights
  11. May 2015 – RC Legend of the Seas, Honolulu to Sydney – 18 nights
  12. January 2016 – Celebrity Solstice, Sydney to Auckland – 14 nights
  13. April 2016 – RC Voyager of the Seas, Sydney to Singapore – 14 nights
  14. July 2016 – Viking Magnificent Mekong, Hanoi to Saigon – 11 nights 
  15. October 2016 – RC Radiance of the Seas, Sydney to Perth – 16 nights
  16. November 2016 – RC Radiance of the Seas, Perth to Sydney – 17 nights
  17. March 2017 – Celebrity Solstice, Sydney to Sydney – 12 nights
  18. April 2017 – RC Explorer of the Seas, Sydney to Seattle – 22 nights
  19. May 2017 – Celebrity Solstice, Vancouver to Seattle – 9 nights
  20. November 2017 – Celebrity Infinity, Florida to Chile – 14 nights
  21. December 2017 – Celebrity Infinity, Chile to Buenos Aires – 14 nights
  22. January 2018 – Ponant Le Boreal, Ushuaia to Ushuaia Antarctica – 16 nights
  23. August 2019 – RC Brilliance of the Seas, Amsterdam to Amsterdam – 12 nights
  24. October 2019 – Celebrity Silhouette, Southampton to Fort Lauderdale –  13 nights
  25. April 2022 – Celebrity Silhouette, Fort Lauderdale to Southampton – 13 nights
  26. April 2022 – Cunard Queen Mary 2, Southampton to New York – 7 nights
  • Total number of nights since the onset of our word travels: 3469
  • Total nights spent aboard ships – 326
  • Percentage of time spent on cruise ships: 9.4%
  • Comparison: Total nights in lockdown in India: 290
  • Percentage of total travel: 8.3%

It’s interesting to us to see our statistics. We were surprised by some of the above information. As we move forward to more booked cruises in the future, we will continue to update the cruise list factoring in new numbers of days and pertinent facts as indicated here.

Tom pretended to be playing a keyboard while rocking to the music.

On another note, last night, we had a blast! It was “silent disco” night where we wore headsets with three channels, each playing changing songs with lights indicating which channel we had set: red, blue, and green. Passengers wore headsets,  dancing to the songs they were playing at the time, and yet the room was silent. It’s hysterical and such fun. We met many people and had so much fun! Today’s photos indicate some treasured moments of the night.

Passengers of all ages participated in the event.

We didn’t fall into bed until almost 1:00 am. We’re docked in Bermuda, but the weather is horrible, and we don’t have proper clothing to stay warm enough out there. The wind is comparable to a monsoon. We’ve been to Bermuda in the past and are content to stay aboard, with many of the passengers doing the same. Today, we’re chipper as we can be and are looking forward to another fantastic day on the ship.

We’ll be back with more tomorrow.

Be well.

Photo from one year ago today, April 11, 2021:

We were happy to see bushbuck Torn Ear return to the garden. For more photos, please click here.

Ship damage repaired…New York Harbor sail away…

This photo illustrates how the gangway was jammed into the ship.

In six days, we’ll arrive in Fort Lauderdale. This has been a fantastic cruise for us. We’ve met many interesting people, enjoyed hours-long lively conversations, dined on excellent food, and as always, have had a fun and playful time together, often staying up well past midnight.

Not used to such late nights, every four nights or so, we try to get to bed a little earlier and “catch up” on sleep. “They,” say you can’t make up for lost sleep, but we both find ourselves rejuvenated and refreshed after a long night’s rest.

A crane was used to hook a cable to relieve tension on the jammed gangway to
extricate it from the ship.

Need I say, we’re having such a good time! I am feeling well, able to walk up and downstairs when the elevators are slow or packed, and each day I’m accumulating plenty of steps on my fitness device from frequently walking down the long hallways and walkways on the ship.

Today, we’re in Boston for a shorter layover than initially planned due to yesterday’s late departure from New York with the damage incurred to the ship from the jammed gangway, as illustrated in the photos.  

Finally, the ship was freed, and we were on our way, waving to the workers who assisted in the process.

Again, without warm clothing with us and the overly long walks required, neither of us had any interest in visiting the big city. We aren’t “city people,” and although we appreciate the many good aspects of big cities, we can’t push ourselves to tour them from the ship.

Besides, we don’t generally cruise to see big cities. We cruise for the convenience of getting from one location to another to avoid flying and for social interaction. 

“The Colgate Clock is an octagonal clock facing the Hudson River near Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey. It has a diameter of 50 feet. It is currently situated 400 meters south of where the headquarters of consumer products conglomerate Colgate-Palmolive used to be sited before it left the area in 1985.”

We prefer to visit other countries on our own time and in our way, primarily by living in an area, among the locals and experiencing the full “flavor” of the location, its natural environment, its culture, and its people.

This particular cruise has fulfilled our expectations, and now with only six nights remaining until we arrive in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, we look forward to the next leg of our journey, spending two months in the US visiting our family and friends.

Ellis Island…Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor, within New York and New Jersey, containing a museum and former immigration inspection station of the same name. As the nation’s busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 to 1954, it processed approximately 12 million immigrants to the United States through the Port of New York and New Jersey. Today, the island is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, a U.S. national monument. The north side of the island hosts a museum of immigration, accessible only by ferry. The island’s south side, including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is abandoned but accessible to the public through guided tours. In the 19th century, Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson, a component of the fortifications of New York Harbor. It later became a naval magazine for storing artillery. The first inspection station opened in 1892 and was destroyed by fire in 1897. The second station opened in 1900 and housed facilities for medical quarantines as well as processing immigrants. After 1924, Ellis Island was used primarily as a detention center; during World War I and World War II, its facilities were also used by the United States military. Following the immigration station’s closure, the buildings languished for several years until they partially reopened in 1976. The main building and adjacent structures were completely renovated in 1990.”
We have a lot to do while we’re in the US, including arranging for new passports, acquiring visas for India, replacing our driver’s licenses in Nevada, purchasing new laptops and phones, purchasing and replacing some of our clothing and supplies.
In addition, we’ll both have our teeth cleaned in Nevada, and I am planning to book an appointment for a heart check-up while in Minnesota or Nevada. We’ll see how that all rolls out.
As we sailed past the Statue of Liberty…The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The Statue of Liberty is a figure of Libertas, a robed Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left-hand carries, a tabula was inscribed in Roman numerals with “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken shackle and chain lie at her feet as she walks forward, commemorating the recent national abolition of slavery.”

All of these tasks will occur amid spending quality time with our kids and grandkids, siblings, and friends. On top of that, right now, we are perusing options for the two months we’ll spend in India after the Maharajah Express train tour in early February. It will be a busy time.  

How the time flies! We can only pray for good health to continue our journey with the joy, freedom, and excitement we are feeling today.

May your life be filled with joy!

Photo from one year ago today, November 2, 2018:
A lioness and her kudu kill on the bank of the Crocodile River. For more photos, please click here.

An evening to remember…Our seventh world travel anniversary…Dinner and dancing…

View of the Intrepid Museum from the ship.

We’re thrilled to be able to upload photos finally. As it turns out, we’re still at the Port of New York when high winds prevented us from sailing away last night as planned.

As a result of the high winds, while we’ve been stuck at the port overnight, one of the pier gangway ramps severely jammed inside the ship and is being repaired/removed. We definitely won’t be able to sail away for several more hours.

Clouds over the skyline.

We aren’t sure how this will impact the few remaining ports of call on this cruise’s itinerary. The captain will let us know once we’re on our way again sometime this afternoon.

As long as we arrive in Fort Lauderdale in time for our flight to Minnesota on November 8th, we don’t worry about the world. We’re continuing to spend time engaging in lively conversations with other cruise passengers and, of course, with one another.

The New York skyline on a cloudy day.

Last night, the celebration of our seventh world travel anniversary was very special. First, we had happy hour in the Sky Lounge on deck 14 with the same group of about ten people with whom we’ve mingled each evening.  

At about 7:00 pm, we wandered down to the Emsemble Bar, chatting with another lovely couple. At 8:00 pm, we made our way to Murano, the specialty restaurant where we had a fantastic meal with impeccable service. We have several photos yet to share from the meal, including finally, one of each of us.

An old Concord supersonic plane is on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, as seen from our ships in port.

After dinner, we returned to the Sky Lounge for the 10:00 pm “silent disco.” I can’t dance as long or as enthusiastically as I had in days past, but I do not doubt that my stamina will improve in time.  

We had a fabulous evening reminiscing over the past seven years, particularly regarding cruises since our first in January 2013 when we experienced our first foray through the Panama Canal. At this point, we’ve been through the canal twice, but who knows what the future holds?

Other aircraft on display at the Intrepid Museum include a Blackbird spy plane.

This cruise is our third transatlantic, and the crossing has been seamless with only a few short spurts of rough seas during the first six days at sea. 

The itinerary from here in New York to Boston, to Bermuda to Fort Lauderdale, should be relatively easy, providing we don’t encounter any unexpected storms along the way.

A peek of the Empire State Building.

Tomorrow, we’ll report what has transpired with the ship’s repairs and our ability to continue on the planned itinerary and hopefully upload more photos.

Thanks to Louise and Pamela for filling us in on this architecturally unique building in New York: VIA 57 West (marketed as VIΛ 57WEST) is the name of a residential building designed by the Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). The pyramid-shaped tower block or “tetrahedron” rises 467 ft (142 m) and is 35 stories tall and is located on West 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City. According to The New York Times, the name was chosen “because the southbound West Side Highway slopes down as drivers enter the city, right at the spot where the building is situated,” serving as an entrance to Manhattan “via 57th”.

Enjoy your Friday and weekend to come! 

Photo from one year ago today, November 1, 2018:
Lilies growing in the Crocodile River as seen in Kruger National Park. For more photos, please click here.

Our 7 year travel anniversary is today!…It seems s long ago…

Due to WiFi issues while in port today, we are unable to upload any photos.  We will be back out to sea tomorrow and should have a better signal at that time. Thanks for your patience.

Seven years. It went quickly, more quickly than we ever imagined. When we started in 2012, we had no idea we’d still be traveling all these years later. After selling everything we owned, which was a huge commitment to stay on this path for the long haul, this in itself presented a huge degree of dedication.

It would have been ridiculous only to stay gone a year or two and then try to rebuild an entirely new life living in a condo somewhere in or outside of the US. The thought of having to buy furniture and household goods made us cringe then and still does today. 

Is it inevitable that we’ll eventually have to stop traveling? Sure. At some point, we’ll no longer have the health or stamina to continue. At this point, we prefer not to have to think about that.

We realize now that in the worst of circumstances, short of one of us eventually losing our “leasehold” on life, we won’t be able to haul one more heavy piece of luggage, sail on one more cruise ship, or fly on one more plane in a cramped seat. Those days will come.

But, now, after our big scare in February, we’re all the more determined than ever to continue. There is so much more we’ve yet to explore. In reality, we haven’t even put a dent in it with so much more ahead of us.

Today, we revel in this particular day, our seventh anniversary of total freedom to live life on our terms, where, when, and how we’d like based on the hopefulness of maintaining good health, a sense of well-being, and ongoing financial security.

Each of these conditions requires a degree of mindfulness and effort, but we do so with the utmost enthusiasm and zest for life. We each easily possess these qualities as we make our way through every day.

And today, we’ll celebrate this seventh anniversary in style…spending a leisurely day on the ship, preferring not to get off the ship in New York when it’s pouring rain, cold and cloudy.

Had we made plans, they may have been dashed due to the unexpected hours-long US immigration process. With happy-hour and tonight’s specialty dining reservation to celebrate our anniversary, we’d have had little time in the traffic-congested city to do much of anything.

Easily we avoid disembarking when we know full well that eventually, we’ll travel the US when most certainly New York will be included in that itinerary. Also, I’ve visited New York many times over the years and am not chomping at the bit to get out on this cloudy, rainy day, nor am I enthusiastic about tackling a tremendous amount of walking at this point.

Tomorrow, we’ll share photos from tonight’s activities and a memorable dinner. 

Happy day!

Photo from one year ago today, October 31, 2018:

An orange-breasted roller. For more photos, please click here.

Less than 24 hours until we’re on US soil as we celebrate life after 7 years of world travel….

Bartenders were performing tricks at the Ice Bar.

It’s hard for us to fathom the idea that tomorrow on Halloween, October 31st, we’ll be stepping foot on US soil for the first time in 2 years, three months, which coincidentally, will be the seventh anniversary of the day we left Minnesota to begin our world travels.

For us, it’s a momentous day for many reasons, including the harsh reality of the struggles we experienced in the past year with the necessity of my having the triple coronary bypass surgery in February and the subsequent slow recovery.

Many often ask us, “What will you do if something bad happens?”  

Passengers were learning dance steps in the Centrum.

We have no home, no place to land, no belongings to settle into should such a situation arise. At the times of such questions, we’ve always replied, “We’ll figure it out.”

And…we did. We figured it out and, here we are 8½ months later, with me feeling well, albeit a little terrified at times when thinking about what transpired after being in the operating room four times in six weeks.

But, we must continue to face another harsh reality…that there’s no guaranty that I will be OK in the long run. Then again, no one has such a guaranty. Life doesn’t come with warranties and return policies.  

We “get what we get,” and none of us are exempt from those unpredictable situations whereby our lives are turned upside down by a single event. For now, we survived, and for this, we are more grateful than words can express here in a post written with the utmost candor and vulnerability.

Dancers are training passengers to perform dance steps.

We often surprise ourselves by how well we survived this trauma, how well we, as a couple, came out on the other side. Here we are on a cruise ship on its way back to the USA to see family and friends and to be reminded so close to this anniversary of how peaceful life can be.

Playfully, we’re enjoying every moment of this cruise, often finding ourselves laughing, dancing, and reminiscing over how much we’ve gained, how much we’ve learned, and how we’ve survived these fascinating, exciting and dangerous past seven years.

The future? Who knows? None of us knows. None of us can state emphatically that we’ll continue on any path we’ve chosen for the past years, months, or even days. Life will always be uncertain.

Tomorrow, our ship arrives in New York City. At this point, we may or may not get off the boat. Halloween festivities will create more traffic, more tourists, more hustle and bustle that, at this point, neither of us are much interesting in exploring.

The participants are having a great time learning dance steps.

The calm and peacefulness we’re experiencing during this highly pleasurable cruise could turn on its head if we threw ourselves into that tumultuous environment right now.  

Plus, I’ve only been able to walk well for the past six weeks. I don’t know if I’m ready to tackle as long a walk as required if we get off the ship. Our other option is a taxi to be potentially stuck in Manhattan traffic, a situation unappealing to either of us at this point.

We’ll see how it goes and what we feel like tomorrow. We have no one to please but ourselves, and as we’ve discovered during the past seven years, we aren’t “required” to do anything that doesn’t appeal to us at any given time.

Please check back tomorrow for our anniversary celebrations as we share highlights of this exquisite journey that we hope we’ll be blessed to carry on.

Have a safe and festive Halloween!

Photo from one year ago today, October 30, 2018:
Our friend Lois was feeding a large number of kudus who stopped by. She puts the pellets on the veranda’s edge to keep the helmeted guineafowl from taking them all. For more photos, please click here.