National Poinsettia Day

Wikipedia says that December 12 is National Poinsettia Day in the United States. Since the poinsettia is one of my favorite symbols of the holiday season, I decided to mark the occasion with an off topic post . Two years ago I received a poinsettia plant as a gift and when the holidays had passed, we found a place in our garden on the side of the house. Last year I took this photo and used it for our holiday cards.

When we lived in upstate New York, I often kept holiday poinsettia plants for more than one season. We had the perfect spot for growing them indoors, a living room full of natural daylight. We so seldom used the room that the darkness of winter nights was not disturbed by artificial lighting. The darkness told the poinsettias it was time to bloom again and they did spectacularly.

It was much easier in Florida with Mother Nature doing the watering and providing just the right amount of sunlight and darkness for the plants to thrive.

You can see that we do not cruise to get away from the winter weather.

New friends/Old friends

One of the most rewarding aspects of a long voyage like a world cruise is the people you can meet both in ports and on board your ship. On board the ship it is possible to really form relationships with both passengers and crew. Thanks to email it is also possible to maintain a connection to those cruising friends living continents away. I count myself as truly blessed to be in touch with people on 5 continents who we met on cruises over the years. (So far, not Asia or Antarctica.)

Some tips for those international contacts

1. Go prepared to give people your information and to keep theirs where you can find it after you return home. We have inexpensive business cards printed at an online company, of which you can find many by googling "free business cards." They are not really free, of course, but you pay only shipping. You do not need any online skills to order these cards. The sites themselves are very user friendly and anyone with a computer and a credit card can do it. This time we did step it up a bit and uploaded a photo of us taken on a formal night which is included on the card. An alternative to or supplement to the business cards would be address labels that you can stick on cards or notes.

2. Take some little note paper or cards for leaving messages or invitations for fellow passengers.

3. Use the contact information right away before you can lose it.

4. Keep in touch the way you do with your other friends so you can be part of each others' lives.

5. Send them your cruise plans. Maybe they will join you on the cruise or be able to meet you in a port in their country.

And that is something we are looking forward to on our next voyage! No, more than look forward to. Eagerly anticipate is closer to our real feelings. We have plans to meet quite a few cruise ship friends in ports the Tahitian Princess will visit.

Time to sail again

Who would have thought that we would be doing another world cruise this soon? We both wanted to do one again because the first one was so fabulous, but we thought a year or two at least would pass. But, life intervened and here we are booked to leave in just a few weeks.

This time we are sailing on the Tahitian Princess with our most traveled cruise line. We do get many nice perks for being in their Elite status and we have always enjoyed our cruises with Princess. At about 30,000 tons and carrying 670 passengers, TP is the smallest cruise ship we have sailed on. In fact, about half the tonnage of the QE2.

The itinerary includes about 50% ports that will be new to us. Of the remaining 50%, there are very few, maybe only one, we do not look forward to revisiting. And that one would be- Ho Chi Minh City. We just might stay on the ship for that one. If you want to know why, check this post.

In addition to the full world cruise, we are staying onboard for the extension that includes Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Tallinn and St. Petersburg. We have long wanted to visit St. Petersburg, so the extension is a wonderful bonus for us. We have been only to Amsterdam and Copenhagen on that segment of the cruise and look forward to returning to those great cities.

Before we booked, we sent our passports off the State Department for renewal. Luckily for us, the State Department is operating efficiently and our passport package arrived about 3 weeks from the date we mailed it. And, our contacts with the customer service people at State were incredible. In a time when every customer service contact is a nightmare, the State Dept. people were friendly, cheerful, pleasant, spoke clearly and gave us good news.

Now we are tracking the progress of our visas at the visa service. We need to acquire passports through the service for only China and India. Australia is an electronic document easily acquired online by self-service and the remaining visas will be acquired by Princess and charged to our onboard account.

Although no shots are required this time, we did just return to the County Public Health Clinic Travel unit for the last shot in our Hepatitis A series. We are now fully immunized for the standard travel package.

Next task will be planning the packing. New challenges this time include the need to fly back from Stockholm bringing airline baggage restrictions into play. Last time, we traveled round trip Fort Lauderdale and the QE2 had a baggage room and baggage master. We were able to take 9 suitcases between us with no problem or additional fees. This time we can take without additional fees 4 checked bags weighing no more than 50 pounds each and the usual carryons. The good news is that there are not anywhere near as many formal nights eliminating at least one suitcase.

The end

It has been over a month now since we arrived back in Port Everglades and it has taken me all of this time to sort out the voyage in my mind. At first I was very sad. People would say, “Aren’t you glad to be home?” or “ There’s no place like home.” Most of the people are just being nice and don’t really want to know the complexity of all of my feelings about the ending of this unbelievable experience. I just said, “Yes, there is no place like home” because that is certainly the truth. Truth or not, it isn’t always the place I want to be. Where I want to be is back on board the QE2 going to exciting ports, experiencing more days at sea just feeling the ocean under the ship and watching the waves and occasional whales pass by. I learned why people go on annual world cruises.

I think I am in mourning for the loss of my new friends. There is something special about friends made onboard ships. Perhaps it is because you think you will never see each other again, and so you open up and really connect. I continue to think of them often and miss seeing their happy faces, playing games with them, having long discussions about economics, the state of the world, longevity and aging, women’s role in the world, what’s for dinner and taking more cruises.

A couple of people back in my real life recognized right away that we would be missing the daily adrenaline rush from the new ports, new people, and constant entertainment. I miss the cruise director, not the person, although he was a nice man who performed his duties well. I miss each night having his list of hourly activities slipped under my door to keep me busy, challenged, informed, entertained.

I miss not having to take care of the daily chores of living. I liked having my bed made with clean sheets and showering with clean towels that I dropped on the floor. I liked not having to plan menus and grocery shop. I liked getting up from meals and walking away from the table to rush off to the next fun thing. I liked having so many people to talk to about shared interests and differences. I liked visiting exotic places around the world and I liked living at sea. But I don’t like the economics of how that happens on the backs of so many other people from poor countries. My comment that it would be more fair if we switched roles every two weeks with the crew was ignored as too preposterous to even be acknowledged .

Planning this trip I knew we would see interesting ports, but I did not really know what it would be like to be away from home with the two of us living in a space about the size of our bathroom at home. We took a leap of faith that it would be enjoyable and rewarding and it was.

I also planned to do some inner exploration and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life, to find some answers to the big questions. I did the inner exploration and the thinking and what I found were more questions.

I have a renewed appreciation for the many good things about life in the United States. I was so surprised at the interest around the world in who will be our next president. Nearly every person we spoke with about the election wants Barack Obama in the belief that he will make the promise of America closer to a reality. They believe that the US president still impacts the quality of their lives and they want peace and economic stability and believe that Obama is the person who can make it happen.

I have returned home changed and still the same. I have a better sense of the size of the planet and the locations of continents and cities. I saw the differences between people and the ways we are all exactly the same all over the globe.

I want to do it again – and we will, someday…

180 degreees

We have been home for a couple of weeks or so and I will write more about that later. For now, I was reviewing the blogs I wrote and discovered at least this one that was not posted.


We just had a three day weekend, two Saturdays and today, Easter Sunday. On the westbound voyage in February, we crossed the International Dateline and lost a day. On our first Saturday, March 22, we crossed the Dateline eastbound and gained a day which meant that we had Saturday, March 22 again. All of the onboard paperwork, like the Daily Programme and invitations to cocktail parties, had a notation beside the date whether it was for the first or second March 22.

For our young readers: the International Dateline is the point opposite the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England (0 degrees longitude) at which adding 12 hours and subtracting 12 hours meet, thus creating a 24 hour change with the date east of the line being a day earlier than the date west of the line. The time is moved forward one hour for every 15 degrees of longitude, so traveling eastward roundtrip to Greenwich, you would finish a full day ahead on the calendar. So the International Dateline was created to correct the situation.

The dateline problem was first identified on Magellan’s expedition during the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522). During the voyage the crew had kept meticulous records to track the hours and days that had passed and arrived on land in Europe certain of the date. To their surprise, their date was different from the date on land. Now we know to change the days as we pass by.

Some people on board had a problem with this since the Sunday happened to be Easter Sunday. It troubled them that there were more than 3 days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The rest of us just had a good time having 2 Saturdays this week and one more day at sea.


It being Easter Sunday, we received a visit from the Easter bunny.

We have been taking bridge lessons each sea day from an excellent teacher who just happens to live in Fort Lauderdale. After her lesson, we play bridge for about an hour with two of our friends. Our game is really improving. In addition, several afternoons we have played games of bridge with one of the couples at our dinner table. The teacher assured us at the beginning that if we attended all of her lectures, we would be good bridge players by the end of the voyage. We will see.

We had hoped to spend time out on the open decks during the afternoon, but the clouds came in and it has been raining. Another sea day tomorrow and then Honolulu on Tuesday. The dinner on shore for the passengers on the full world cruise will be held at the Honolulu Convention Center. There will be over 800 people at the dinner, which is supposed to be quite elegant. I saved the black and white formal dress I bought at Barbara Katz for this special event. My formal wear has been getting a real workout and some of it will be quite worn out by the end of this trip.

We arrive in Maui on Wednesday and then head back out to sea on the way to Los Angeles.

The day before Panama Canal

This morning the air is warm and humid, the seas are calm and the sunshine is bright. It is our second day at sea since Acapulco and tomorrow we are scheduled for our Panama Canal transit. I am sitting in the Boardroom, the space reserved for passengers on the full world cruise, watching dolphins and flying fish pass by. There have been a few birds as well, but too small and far away for me to identify. After my morning oatmeal and baked apple, I walked on the deck for a while. Well, I started to walk and then I met Veronica, then Judy, then Grace, so we did more talking than walking. Jerry stayed in bed longer this morning and we will meet again at the bridge lesson.

I am happy to say that the QE2 once again has soy cheese. We ran out a long time ago and it was a staple of our diet. We must have eaten their entire supply by ourselves. At any rate, I had not expected they would have any again before our disembarkation, so it was a pleasant surprise on top of our Greek salad when it was placed before us at dinner last night.

There was a woman injured during the boarding of the tenders in Acapulco in fairly calm seas. A swell appeared, catching everyone off guard, and the woman’s leg was trapped between the tender and the boarding pontoon. There was a lot of blood and people thought she had broken her leg. Today the story is that her leg was not broken, only cut. It just underscores the wisdom of canceling those tender ports when there were 50 foot waves.

Richard Dreyfuss has been onboard for a few days as a guest celebrity and lecturer. He has been walking around the decks like any other passenger, except that more people know who he is. “Jaws” was shown in the theater yesterday and then Mr. Dreyfuss talked about making the movie, his career and his plans for the future. Last night Jerry and I ran into him outside the Yacht Club. Jerry started a conversation with him and he was most gracious speaking to us for several minutes.

We expect to have a busy day at sea with two cocktails parties to attend at the same time tonight. And it is Cruise Critics’ cobalt blue gown parade.

Maui

second of two today

Exhausted! By the time we woke up after our big evening in Honolulu, breakfast in the dining room was over, so we ate in the Lido. We were in no hurry anyway and were just looking forward to the relaxing day in Maui because “Maui no ka oi” or Maui is the best.

Before we even left the ship, we were enthralled by a whale and her calf swimming right near the ship throughout the day. We watched the two swim slowly together blowing spouts of water and a couple of times flipping a tail. The Captain said he had never seen so many whales in a port in all his years at sea. It is always exciting to have even a glimpse of these giant mammals of the ocean and to have one nearby for so long was wonderful.

Taking our time we had a pleasant 15-minute tender ride to the pier where we headed off for a stroll through Lahaina, the former whaling port on the island, now a tourist spot. We wandered through some shops, stopped at the post office, made some phone calls, and boarded a bus to Kaanapali Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We rode the bus to Whalers’ Village, a shopping mall adjacent to the beach. Jerry headed right to the large towel on the sand and I headed to the restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we spent our time swimming and sunbathing. The water was clear and cooler than I expected but welcome in the 90 degree temperature of the air.

Since the ship was to sail at 6 p.m. and all aboard was at 5:30 and we were more than 30 minutes away and the bus left once an hour, we reluctantly left the beach at 3 p.m. to board the bus back to Lahaina and the tender back to the ship. After showering and getting dressed for dinner, we returned to the top deck to wave good-bye to the whales and Lahaina. Sitting at the dinner table, I had a perfect view of the sunset and one more green flash. A show in the Grand Lounge featuring two young men singing Beatles music was a perfect ending to our stay in the Hawaiian islands.