Montevideo is one of my favorite ports, but I just couldn’t go out again. I was tired and there was plenty of office work to catch up on. The World Stage entertainment was outstanding: May Roman & Williams Malpezzi, a couple of dancers, their training rooted in ballet, but creative modern dance, their specialty. They took us through a lot of genres and were just wonderful to watch.
Sunday, January 25, 2026 – At Sea
No one came to the desk. I started catching up
On logging and blogging and Pat and I played Bridge and cane 2nd N-S again. Lifford Shillingford was on the World Stage singing jazz and blues, and I like that.
Monday, January 26, 2026 – At Sea
Toya stopped by the desk while I was transferring photos with my USB cable and was happy to learn how to do that. It was quite a busy day at the desk. We went to the preview Antarctica presentation on the World stage and met the HAL presenters, Ian and Vonda. We also got the captain’s take on the weather we would face in Antarctica and Joanne was a tad rattled by his predictions.
Dee was at a President’s Club Dinner and so Joanne got to eat in the Lido with her younger friends and Pat and I went to the Lido for a delicious stir-fry and a chicken pot pie. We just chatted away right through the entertainment.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 – Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
It was a bright, sunshiny day in the Falkland Island, unlike the rest of the times I have been here. A lot of people went off on penguin viewing tours and were mostly disappointed. Dee, with her experience, chose wisely and was on one of the last Bluff Point, penguin tours. It’s a private operation and the owners are getting too old to want to keep it going. Me, I just went into town to be able to say I had set foot in the Falklands. I met up with Barbara Zion and Toya and we offed in search of a good British Pub lunch. The place is pretty bleak, as to architecture, and the signage such that’s even hard to tell the pubs. We ended up in the Victory Bar, which didn’t have much identification, but this sign gave us a bit of a clue:
Husbands, shmusbands, this is our kind of place. We three girls went in and had the best fish and chips ever. I guess they have no trouble getting fresh fish. The local beer was good, too. I counted seven DV people in the place. I also made the acquaintance of a bubbly fellow passenger, who is giving away fairy threads as blessings. I’ll be her next blessed recipient.
Back on board, there was a production show, called “Songbirds” a tribute to the female songwriters of our time. Good, as usual.
Wednesday, January 28, At Sea
This is our last regular sea day before the Antarctic Experience, and it’s rough weather. Joanne spent the day in bed, with green apples and peanut butter, as the ship made headway through the waves. We rolled for a few hours and then the captain was proud to announce that that was over, but we would be pitching for another five hours or so. Joanne was not much comforted. Pat, Dee and I had no trouble at all. Pat and I continue to do well at Bridge. We are consistently coming second-N-S. Sometimes it’s a 2-3 tie. I don’t think we’ll ever catch the two guys who come first. They are about 20 percentage points in front of us.
The World Stage entertainer, Doc Dixon, had to compete with “A night of Music” and the music won. We loved the ad for it at the entrance to the dining room:
When we started out at 9:30pm, all the venues were done, except the Ocean Bar. Tells you a bit about the ship’s population, that. There wasn’t a seat in the Ocean Bar, so I gave up and went to bed. Tells you a bit about me, too, I guess.
Thursday, January 29, 2026 – Antarctic Experience
Everyone got into position for some Antarctic wildlife viewing, even though it was raining and still pretty rough. Joanne stayed in bed, I manned the desk and no one came. Then I went to meet Gina in the Crow’s Nest and got my fairy threads, while watching for anything. Gina is a very sweet, interesting person, a sailor, at one point, but she prefers power boats. She is spreading joy in her part of the world, which happens to be this ship for now. I, for one, am very joyful.
The weather kept improving as to wind and water, but you still couldn’t see anything. I spent most of the day in the Crow’s Nest, working on my logs and blogs and ready to view. There was no view. The captain got on the blower to tell us there were penguins swimming off the starboard side but it was so foggy you could barely see them – or anything else. That lasted all day. I got a lot of work done.
Linda McMillan and Bob Eckert joined me for Happy Hour and had dinner at the table with us. They are good company. We need to plan some adventures. Lifford Shillingford was on the World Stage again but we didn’t get up from the table in time.
Friday, January 30, 2026 – Antarctic Experience
And this is the big wildlife viewing day, and I am writing this from the Crow’s Nest, all caught up. And what a day it is. The weather is bright and sunny and the wildlife is out playing. We are seeing spritzes from whales and penguins, a tail of a whale and a sea lion lolling on an ice floe. At least I am told we are seeing all that stuff.
Cougarville Island – finally saw penguins, lots and lots of them. I couldn’t believe how close to shore this big ship got. It doubtless has to do with the fact that it’s a perfectly calm day, so the underwater cameras can keep us safe. We got so close you could see the penguins with the naked eye. Our onboard naturalist says they come back here every year looking for their mates, they call and call and if that doesn’t work after a few days, they just waddle off and find another mate. Sort of like us. The Dance Duo of May Roman and Williams Malpezzi were on the World Stage and they are true eye candy in many genres. We are trying to figure out if they are an actual couple. They keep the mystery.
Saturday, January 31, 2026 – Antarctic Experience
Nobody came to the desk. I haven’t figured out whether these days are Sea Days or not, as they are titled “Antarctic Experience” and everyone is going around in toques and puffer jackets. Pat and I played Bridge and didn’t do as well.
We had a wonderful time at dinner with May and Roman. We have new friends now and we still don’t know if they will ever get married, but they sure are having fun. We learned a lot more about the training regimen of professional dancers and I have new found respect for my late lovely friend, Pat Finot.
I decided to skip Recife and try to get caught up. I have been there at least three times before. I really need some new clothes, but they will have to wait a bit. Dee went to the prison market, where I scored last year and she came back with at least one nice dress.
I worked on my own client stuff, including our tour of Iguazu Falls, coming up, and went to sailaway from Recife around 4:30PM. It was a beautiful sailaway and we took some lovely pictures. Then I went to dinner and enjoyed Isabel Commandeur on the World Stage again.
Friday, January 16 – at sea
We were back at the desk and a few people came. Two of them were old computer programmers, like me, but smarter. They taught me how to use a cable to transfer photos to my phone, since that game had changed on me. A German Canadian stopped to chat. He finds the other Canadians he meets to be standoffish. I disagreed but his theory is that’s because I’m from Quebec. I wonder.
Oi Brazil had a huge pool party this night, which I hear was a great success.
Saturday, January 17 At Sea
Larry Sutton gave his talk and book reading. He had given us the story of how he became a deep sea diver for the Navy, at a Distinctive Speakers talk on the 2023 World. That reinforced what his teachers had told him 60 years ago, and he wrote a book. Larry is a very funny storyteller and amused us with a chapter called “The Condom Conundrum”, just before our venue was to host Saturday evening mass. Fourteen people came to dinner afterward. There was a production show on the World Stage and we made the early show for once.
Sunday, January 18 – Rio de Janiero
I didn’t go out in Rio as I had some client work to do, before we left on our trip to Iguazu Falls. It was a bucket list item and would be fun to compare with Niagara Falls, which I had had occasion to visit last June. I worked and I packed, had dinner and went to Oi Brazil’s fabulous show on the World Stage. Pure eye candy.
Monday, January 19 – Rio de Janiero
I left Joanne to mind the store on the ship. It’s wonderful to have a competent co-host, so I could go play with my friends at Iguazu Falls.
The trouble with all overland trips is the air travel. We weren’t flying out until 1:35 pm, but that meant meeting up around 10 am on board. Our group consisted of two little groups, who had bought our tours from SITA, an Indian Tour company that I had used and liked before in South America. Go figger. We processed through the terminal and found ourselves a couple of taxis, one for Dee, Pat and Helen and one for Toya and Bob. Three out of five of us had booked wheelchairs, which was enough that the other two, Toya and Helen, got to enjoy the perks, like quick security processing and early boarding. We also got to huff and puff a very long run through a couple of terminals. It’s still hurry up and wait, because the plane goes when it goes. We got airport food to eat, which, in Brazil, were pasteles. They are empanadas in Argentina. No difference. Not great quality.
The plane was on time. It was a three-hour flight and Roberto was at the airport to meet us with a van. We stayed at the Doubletree in Foz do Iguazu, a very nice hotel, with a beautiful pool, and good food. Roberto picked us up at 7:45 for a dinner and Dance show at Rafrain. This we could have done without. It was a buffet for about a thousand people, with a dance show. The food was decent, but buffets for a thousand aren’t my cup or tea, or anything else. After Oi! Brazil, the dance show wasn’t much either. It was a disappointing evening but at least Roberto got us out of there before people started running for the twenty tour buses.
Tuesday, January 20 – Iguassu Falls – Argentinian side
We gave ourselves a late start. There were two hikes out to the falls to do, at over a kilometer each way. We figured we wouldn’t do more than one of them, anyway. Toya and Bob met Meri around 8:00am. Dee, Pat and Helen set out at the crack of 9:30 am. There was a long line at the border crossing into Argentina, so we probably didn’t actually start our trek to the falls until about 11:30am. I never looked at my watch until hours later. It was an interesting walk because much of it was over water on aluminum bridges. About a third of the way in, we met Bob coming out. Toya was still at the falls, mesmerized. It was a very long walk, and took all we had, but it was worth it.
We then had a buffet lunch by weight in the park cafeteria and it was back across the border and home to the Doubletree. The five of us met for dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, not wanting to take another step.
I was also delighted to have Joanne back on the ship. When I got an email that told me we had two new cabins, I just forwarded it to her and asked her to do the necessary to try to get them on to the shore excursion, which was now in just a couple of days. Hopefully HAL was already on side.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026 – Iguazu Falls – Brazil side
We had a plane to catch this afternoon and the Brazil side of the falls to see first, so we mustered for 8:00am. The Brazil side was a lot easier on our old bods. We could use our van, a little choo choo train, a Jeep, an elevator and a golf cart to get us from one viewing platform to the next and lunch. All good. The pictures were good, some are Robertos, some are Dee’s.
Dee took one look at the zodiacs and decided she didn’t want any part of them. She didn’t want to get soaked. She just wanted to take pictures. So, she and Roberto took the “dry boat”, which, he promised, would deliver and it did. Pat and Helen went for the adventure, suitably clad in the HAL provided poncho. It looked very professional:
And it let in buckets of water. The water came straight at us, taking our breath away and running down our chins and necks, straight through the valley between our titties to pool under our butts. It was nice warm water on an even warmer day, so no great discomfort, just a bit of terror. Everyone on the boat screamed at the top of their lungs, when the boat banked sharply and the rail went into the water. Everyone but Pat, that is. She was laughing her head off. Sometimes I think Pat’s laugh is like a cat’s purr – all purpose. She sure sounded like she was having fun, though.
We came out of that soaked to the skin, and we had a plane to catch after lunch. So we ate outside at the weigh-it cafeteria in this park, and kept presenting our wettest part to the sun. Miraculously, by the time it was time to set out for the airport, we were dry enough.
The border was easier in the afternoon, and we made it with plenty of time. Dinner was another empanada affair, and this one wasn’t as good as Rio’s. Oh well. Another bucket list item checked off.
By the time we checked in to the Alvear Palace Hotel, it was past our bed time but we had lovely, luxurious beds to get into.
Thursday, January 22, 2026 – Buenos Aires
While I caught up with my emails, Pat and Dee had the $65 breakfast in the Orangerie of the Alvear Palace. I was informed it looked better than it tasted but the surroundings were worth the price of admission. The Orangerie is a natural atrium and the morning sun was pouring into it. I collected them there at 9:45 am to meet Soledad at 10. Solé had been our tour guide in 2018. She’s a friend if Eilat’s, and now, of mine. Dee passed on the tour in favor of a massage at the hotel.
Solé’s sister Inez was our driver and we were just going for a very relaxed tour. Pat and Toya were all destroyed from yesterday’s boat ride, aching in every joint. I am trying to figure out why it didn’t happen to me, too, and I am crediting Miranda Esmond-White’s Essentrics exercise program. We drove around a bunch, poked around an antiques market, and had a typical Argentine pastry and a submarino in a café. That’s a bar of chocolate that you melt in a cup of hot milk, DIY hot chocolate.
When we got back to the hotel around two, Pat went to rest her achy body. Dee and I went to Rambla, a bar about a block from the hotel, tucked away on a side street. We ate on the street, because the weather was perfect. The food was good and generous and the large beer I ordered, sure was.
I am used to a small beer being a 10 oz glass, and a large beer being a pint. This puppy was a litre. I thought I’d never finish it, but Dee and I got talking and by and by, the beer was gone. When I got back to the room, Pat had gone off exploring. I lay down for a few minutes and woke up an hour and a half later. Pat was beginning to worry about me. I don’t usually do that sort of thing. Then I told her about the beer.
We had a wonderful dinner with Eilat at Elena, the grill in the Four Seasons Hotel. Toya and Bob got there early and had the best time in the Pony Bar, where the waiters wear livery and everything has a horsey theme. The food was excellent and the price wasn’t over the top. I would highly recommend it to you, if you are looking for a place to eat in Buenos Aires. Eilat is good company, too. It’s always great to see her.
Friday, January 23, 2026 – Buenos Aires
We were up at the crack of dawn, because we had a bus to meet, not to mention a ship, later. The bus was for our DV Shore Excursion, and we really could not miss it. It had become two buses, with the addition of the four new people, and that was very fine with me and all the participants. They love the luxury of spreading out in a bus.
It was a nice, though unexceptional city tour. Only the last two stops in la Boca, were actually worth stopping at. A walk through a park to see an unexceptional rose garden doesn’t cut it. We all have roses in our gardens at home. I didn’t make that up. I heard it from a guest. The Opera House stop was boring, too. It would have been great if we could have got in. Evita’s grave would have been nice, too. People are still talking about that. Lunch was good but there were serious logistics problems. There weren’t enough waiters and they didn’t speak English. Neither did the menu. The tour guides acted as interpreters, but when you have 43 people arriving at once and the menu is in Spanish only, you have a serious bottleneck. A few people figured out how to do it with Google translate on their phones, and I was glad of the lesson for the future, but I would have preferred our tour to go more smoothly. The last stop in La Boca, was the best:
It was interesting to walk around and had a nice shop, where we felt safe. We got back to the terminal, went through customs & immigration and were glad to be back home aboard the Volendam.
Sunday, January 11, 2026 At Sea – Crossing the Equator
The day you cross the equator for the first time is an experience and this was Joanne’s first time. The ship used the comedian, Paul Adams, as King Neptune and he was a hoot. They made the usual mess of the crew first timers, dubbed “polliwogs” and then pronounced them “shellbacks”. They left the passengers alone, which pleased Joanne. She took this picture:
At Office hour, we got a nice offer from a couple, who had sailed around the world on a Cal 35 from 1988 to 1997, and had a bunch of pictures and stories to tell. We’ll do it.
We dealt with a HAL problem and took a few sign ups, got the tipping list for our Cocktail Party, made up the envelopes and gave them to the sommelier, who was delighted. I had put them in Chinese red and gold LaiSee packets and they looked swell.
Pat and I played Bridge again and this time we came in the top 3 N-S and earned a third of a master point. Imagine that.
A couple of our people came to our table for dinner, and we saw Isabel Commandeur on the world stage. We waited, after the show, and invited her and her boyfriend to dinner, shamelessly dropping Nancy Gustafson’s name as our Opera Singer connection.
Monday, January 12, Icoaraci (Belem), Brazil
I was getting behind in my correspondence, paperwork, logging and blogging , so I took the morning to work. Around 12:30pm, Dee and I went out in Icoaraci. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this old boat, still in the water:
We didn’t think we’d have time to go to Belem, but the onshore shorex staff were sure we could do it and seemed to really want us to go. Maybe it wasn’t safe to walk around Icoaraci.
We drove past the saddest real estate I had ever seen, and I have seen a lot of third world countries. This was really bad. But when we got to Belem, they had a few nice modern buildings to browse, and some entertainment. As usual, I just wanted some good local food and thoroughly enjoyed the Pasteles with Guarana, a soft drink found only in Brazil and a favorite of Dee’s.:
There was a local market to go to, but we didn’t have time and it turned out to be a good thing. When we got back, Pat told us she had seen a lady in front of her pushed to the ground, and her HAL tote bag ripped from her. Pat turned right around and went back to the bus. So much for that shopping day.
Joanne went on a shore excursion up the Amazon and had a wonderful day. This is the real estate she saw:
And sailaway was very nice. Paul Adams was on the World Stage after dinner, and we all enjoyed him.
Tuesday, January 13, 2026 At Sea
We met with our contact from Shorex to give her an updated count and discuss how Pat, Dee and I were going to rejoin our tour in Buenos Aires, after Iguassu Falls. We weren’t going to be able to board a ship that docks at 8:00am for an 8:00am meeting. Ships let all the tours off the ship before they let anyone come on. We will have full coordinates for our bus so we will be on board before our group even leaves the ship.
Pat and I managed to squeeze another game of Duplicate Bridge in and won another quarter of a master point. We had dinner on the balcony of Dee’s Neptune Suite, to discuss our tour to Iguassu Falls, just the four of us. We felt very special and Joanne talked us through the whole thing so we know what we are doing. It looks great.
Wednesday, January 14 – At Sea
I did some work for one of my DV people, greeted a few more at the Desk, and did some work for a travel client. Pat and I played Bridge again and did not finish with any master points. Oh dear. I had a cruise to sell to keep me busy until dinnertime, and what a dinner.
We had such a wonderful dinner with Isabel Commandeur and her boyfriend, Ralph, that we talked right through the show. They are Dutch and I’m now Facebook friends with Isabel. If she’s in Amsterdam, when I go in the fall of 2027, we’ll get together. That’ll be a Rhine River Cruise. Watch for it to appear in my signature.
The guy in the Vista Suite woke up liking it just fine. So Joanne and I will be staying in our Ocean View Host Cabin. We started unpacking. We got a call from a travel agent in the group, saying she would come to all the shore excursions, except Papeete because she would be off the ship from February 10 to 28 and would we please take care to call her client, also in the group, during that time, whenever we needed him to be somewhere, because he doesn’t read English.
We went to our desk at 10am. A few people stopped by to accept our excursions. Toya and Bob Howard came to schmooze a bit and volunteer to help. They are old cruise buddies and she is now a DV Host. I worked on my cocktail party speech.
At 2:00pm, we met with Shore Excursions and worked out how we would proceed. Our cocktail party was at 5:00pm, which conflicts with early dining. Only one cabin did not come. Joanne and Toya got their pictures for us to learn names and make birthday cards, when necessary. After I spoke, I passed the microphone around and identified a couple of Distinctive Speakers, while everyone was enjoying learning about everyone else. Nice group. We finished off having drinks and dinner with the Suttons. Larry was a Distinctive Speaker with Dee in 2023, so we were old friends. Chloe Lowry was on the World Stage.
Tuesday, January 6, 2026 At Sea
Busy day at the desk. We saw a lot of our nice people. I updated the manifest with all those who were coming to our shore excursions, and there were many. I sent it in for printing and for Shore Excursions to have. Joanne picked it up and delivered to Shorex while The next order of business was to write and deliver Newsletter No 1, which follows this day. I write, Joanne delivers, works well, happy of the help.
Chloe Lowry stood us up for dinner. Then we went to the show on the World Stage, which was the MidAtlantic Men, again.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026 At Sea
We got a lot of bookings for our speaker and dinner tonight. I made a booking for Madama Butterfly at the Sydney Opera House on March 7. I got him a nice seat as he is a single. He used to be a pretty important Music Director and he came to the Sydney Opera House with me in 2023.
We had serious technical problems getting Dee’s presentation underway. It was a slide show called “What you See under the Sea” and she didn’t have a HDMi port on the computer she brought. It was different from the one she had used in 2023, and an Apple. HAL supplied us with a tech, but he moved on to the next job before we solved it. I brought in a computer with a HDMi port, but it was a PC, not a MACOne of sour guests stepped up to the plate. He had a USB drive formatted for Apple. My computer wasn’t too happy with that but our tech found the conversion software, and eventually we were up and running. By this time HAL’s tech was long gone and no one could find the controls for the house lights. I eventually found the Pinnacle Grill manager across the way, and he got the lights off for us. Luckily Dee knows her subject matter so well, she can present in the dark. We’ll need a podium light for the next time we have slides.
18 people came for dinner. I poured wine from my wine cellar package to compensate for the technical difficulties. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Chloe Lowry was back on stage and we went.
Thursday, January 8, 2026 Bridgetown, Barbados
I made and delivered a birthday card to Nita Starr. It’s a good thing her TA wrote
me about it, because Kumar has yet to get back to me on my request for all birthdays that fall on the cruise. Dee and I went out in Bridgetown looking for markets and food. We got going too late but it was fine. We got a taxi for an hour for $20 each and had it take us for some good local food. I do have a stipulation. I want it fresh cooked, not sitting over maybe hot water waiting to be sold. The first place was just that, so we had him move us to Pelican Island, which the official desk in the terminal had recommended. I got a super grilled marlin steak lunch, with grilled potatoes, cooked to order, piping hot. You can’t get sick that way, no matter how grungy the place is. This one had only locals in it, but they looked like business people. Perfect.
Our hour was almost up by the time I had eaten, and Dee hadn’t liked the looks of the shops in town, so we had our driver take us quickly back to the terminal. He wasn’t happy that we didn’t extend, but we weren’t happy he took us to the wrong kind of
lunch first. The comedian, Paul Adams, was on the World Stage, and, as always, he was a hoot. He’s slimmer and has a girlfriend, too.
Friday, January 9, 2026 At Sea
At sea again, at the desk, again. Saw a few clients, met with Shore Excursions, the usual. One wanted help rounding up the Jewish people to support the rabbi, who she likes a lot. Best Rabbi since Arthur Starr.
We got Newsletter #2 printed and Joanne delivered it, while I played Bridge with Pat. It’s Duplicate, and Pat is very conflict averse. We had the Director called on us. Two hands later the opponents made a mistake and I let them know I could have called the director on them, but that I didn’t do that sort of thing. Fast forward a few days and these guys are sweet as pie.
The Production Company was on the World Stage – love that.
Saturday, January 10, 2026 Devil’s Island, French Guiana
We just sailed past Devil’s Island. They are doing renovations on some system or other and the hotel( probably not a Ritz) that the pilot would have stayed in is closed. So, no pilot, no stop. We couldn’t come within three miles of the place. Our captain, Rens von Eerten, is not happy. He has the expertise to bring the ship in but no pilot, no Devil’s Island. C’est la merde, mais c’est la vie.
We had office hours. Pat and I played Bridge again, with a better result than the first time. She’s liking it.
The Gold Strings Duo, a couple of gorgeous gals with violins, were on the World Stage. All good.
We got to the hotel without a hitch and met up with Dee and Aileen at Kelly’s landing for some of the best fried calamari and lobster roll I have ever had. Good price, too, and best to be sharing with good friends.
Saturday, January 3, 2026 – Fort Lauderdale
It was still dark when I first woke up in the Hilton Marina Fort Lauderdale. There was a strange looking building across from our window. It had two columns of cobalt blue lights, probably ten stories high. I noted it and rolled over. When we got up I asked Joanne if she knew what it was. She said she thought it was likely the Princess building. She knew they had one somewhere around here. I took a closer look and sure enough, there was the Princess logo – on a smokestack. It was no building but the Star Princess, itself, the third Star Princess. Launched in October, 2025, she carries 4300 passengers and 1500 crew. And from the rear, our balcony view, she looks like this:
We got up, got our FedEx delivery, had our welcome letters printed, collated them with the six shore excursion flyers and put them into their packets. So nice to have help. I called a couple of friends in the area and made our dinner plans. Then we went out to load up on lotions, potions and sundries that don’t fit and are not permitted in carry-on, anyway. On the way back to our hotel from the drug store, we passed the real Princess building, and got back to our room just in time to see the Star Princess sail away
.
She IS the size of a building. The thing to her right definitely IS one.
Pat Gustafson’s plane got in to Fort Lauderdale pretty much on time, but no Pat arrived. She wasn’t communicating by text, as she was keeping her phone open for an UBER driver who never showed up and then cancelled. Maybe he went to the wrong place or whatever. She did get the odd email through, so we weren’t quite panicked. When a new UBER finally delivered her to us, she was exhausted and starving. We met her at the door of the Hilton, she checked in, Joanne whisked her luggage to her room, near ours in the second building, and we were off to the Boatyard in the Quay shopping centre, pretty much next door, but we took a taxi. We weren’t going to walk Pat another step.
Dinner at the Boatyard, outdoors by the water, was just what we all needed. We just had a whole bunch of appetizers and a glass of wine and went to bed happy.
Sunday, January 4, 2026 – Fort Lauderdale
We got up, got our acts, and our luggage together, found a shared “third-party shuttle” and were on the Volendam and settled in our rooms by 1PM. Ordering Pat a wheelchair helped. I have sailed with Captain Rens before. He’s great.
Joanne and I made our meeting with Kumar, the Group Events Coordinator by 2:00PM, but he was still working in the terminal and we had to wait until 3:00PM to meet him. When we did there were a lot of discrepancies between our manifests, and we would have to meet again at 6:00pm, but there were also a lot of packets that were OK and could be delivered. We delivered them together, Joanne doing a good ¾ of them and me starting the phone calls as soon as I had a few people that I could call. That went well and we got about 80% of the people called or seen before it was time for dinner at 7:30pm. The delivering took a lot longer because we knocked on every door and chatted up anybody who was there. It saves the phone call and is actually fun. I landed a repeater from 2023, who almost traded cabins with us to get our walk-in shower. His was a suite, though, and after sleeping in it one night, he came to his senses and kept it, with its balcony and jacuzzi.
We have a good few repeaters. The Taiwanese were jumping up and down to see us. They don’t speak English, so in 2023, I had been sending the newsletters to their son, in Vancouver, who would then talk to them and make sure they got to all the events. They still don’t speak English but are downright delightful and we’re chatting on Google translate. We have a total of eight repeaters.
We had dinner with Dee Wescott, and Pat, who get on famously. We have a table for 8 and will be inviting people. The Mid-Atlantic Boys were on the Main Stage and were pretty good.
For those of you who might cross paths with us in some port or other, or just for the curious, Here’s our itinerary:
With less than three weeks between cruises, including Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve been busy, and more than a little stressed. When everything came together, and it was still 2025, I started sleeping well again. This morning I got up, had a leisurely Jacuzzi, spent a half hour stretching with Miranda Esmonde-White, made my last call to a supplier, called a taxi and went to the airport. Everything is easy when you have a partner, and mine was meeting me there. Meet Joanne Sidorchuk
Joanne is my cousin by marriage, one of those nice people I spend my holidays with, and whatever summer days I can. She and her husband John, who was my dentist before he retired this year, live just west of Cornwall, on Moulinette Island, with boats and water toys, like a SeaDoo, at their dock. Joanne used to be in charge of personnel, at the hospital in Brockville, so she knows how to herd cats, a key requirement for this job. We’ve been working together for a couple of months now, and it’s going great. Now we’re going away together on our first hosting job. Nothing like diving right in. It’s going to be 135 days.
And, yes, what you see there is ALL of our luggage.
While everyone else was out on tour, I made all the phone calls, unsurprisingly leaving a lot of messages, but it was the best I could do as the cocktail party was tomorrow and the guests needed to know.
It was Thanksgiving and Nona has brought little plastic turkeys for everyone at the table. The ones the ship served were more delicious, but it’s fun getting gifts. The Production Cast did a very good show called “On Broadway”.
Friday, November 28, at sea
Quite a few people came to the desk, mostly to bring in their waivers to attend our shore excursion. I was still fighting with trying to get photos on to my computer. Irish tried to help and ended up selling me too much Internet to do the job with when all I wanted was to be able to put a wire into phone at one end and computer at the other. (I’m back at home now and it works fine.)
Our DV Cocktail Party went off without a hitch. The ten of us were at the table for dinner and the entertainment was Duo Mystery, a circus performing couple. Excellent.
Saturday, November 29, Cochin, India
Cochin is a shopping port for me. Patrick, Rose and I grabbed a taxi and went to Jew Town, where we bought some nice, and inexpensive, quality clothing. Joan had got separated from her bus and we were glad we were there to get her back safely on to it.
We celebrated Nona’s birthday at the table and the entertainment was a singer named Leslie Mc? (oops, forgot) whose show, “Women of Rock” honored about 15 women including four names I recognized and only one song, Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. I must be older than I think I am.
Sunday, November 30, 2025, Colombo, Sri Lanka
We were still at sea in the morning. The ship was overnighting in Colombo. We docked at three and got right off. I was taking my Ten Little Indians to Galle Face, a fabulous Grande Dame of a Hotel, with a nice Tea Buffet on a Sunday. It did not disappoint. It never has and, of course, that tea served as dinner.
We got back to the ship in time for the show, I even managed a quick nap. I smelled smoke in the corridor on the way to the show and got my steward to check. He involved some officers and was last seen knocking on doors to do a room check. It turned out to be nothing, but this veteran of the 2017 wine country fires will never be too careful. I tipped my steward nicely for his response.
It was a local show called SriLanka Rhythm and it was excellent.
Monday, December 1, Colombo Sri Lanka
Those who had not been to Colombo before got out and explored, which I highly recommend. It’s a nice port and there’s lots of jewelry to buy. Sri Lanka is famous for it. I stayed aboard and started work on a newsletter. There was another good another good Production Show that night, Hollywood cabaret.
Tuesday, December 2, Hambantota, Sri Lanka
I had an afternoon tour. It was a safari. It was supposed to be Yala National Park but there was flooding there, so we had been rescheduled to Bandala National Park. I found it pretty disappointing, but it was a nice rest. The show was Johnny Balance, an ordinary magic show, until he balanced a deck of cards, a chair, a table, and a ladder on his chin. It was no puny little stepladder, either. It probably went up 340 feet. How he do dat?
Wednesday, December 3, at sea
All of my office time, and then some, was consumed with Thailand arrival cards, mostly for my own clients. I am not enjoying this new trend one bit, but it is another opportunity to serve our clients. I found out the name of our restaurant in Penang, so I’ll be able to share that. I had plenty of work to keep me busy all day, then enjoyed dinner at our big table, and The Other Guys, doing Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons.
Thursday, December 4, at sea
I did Thai Arrival cards for most of my own clients, and walked a good few of them through our Singapore tour sketch, which they were finally starting to focus on. Towards the end of the day, I had all the Thai Arrival Cards printed and distributed them, most of them at dinner, which was easy. Duo Mystery were on stage again, with a sketch called “The honeymoon” and it was delightful.
Friday, December 5, Phuket
Phuket is another port that I like a lot, but I never got off the ship. It’s a tender port, which involves too much time to just pop out for a bit. I had lots of work to do, for clients here and on shore. I leave again on January 2, and will have 3 cabins, plus my own, on the Holland America 2026 world Cruise. The on board work was a newsletter about the shorex in Penang, which was now tomorrow. So I wrote and delivered that and made it to dinner and the very nice Production show, Elysium.
Saturday, December 6, Penang
Our Shore excursion got off to a chaotic start. The meeting room Celebrity gave us was the same as the one we had on the host retreat, down the hall from the Connect space, behind the midship elevator. I had had a cancellation the day before of the four people in the suites, who doubtless preferred something more private. 40 good DV people gathered on time in the meeting room, were counted, name tagged and ready to move out on time. But the ship had docked late and we weren’t free to go. After about a half hour, the announcement came and we started to move out. We were so orderly and had just all made it out of the room and into the corridor, when the ship sent us a mob. Some ship’s excursion was filing into the dead end we had just came out of. It was starting to get dangerous. I tried to tell them all it was a dead end, but they kept coming. I am not very big. Then, two of my people, spread their arms across the whole corridor and refused to let any more through. Finally, ship’s staff managed to guide them down the stateroom corridor, which led to the stairs, but not before at least 50 had joined us and had to be sorted out. I finally got my 40 counted and we could move again. Luckily I had Rose and Patrick, a couple of retired schoolteachers, to bring up the rear and see that we never lost anyone.
Our tour took us to Chew Jetty, Yeng Peng Café, which was delicious, the Burmese Temple and a lovely Perankan mansion. There was another fun dinner for 10 at our table and The Other Guys were on stage again, with “other legends”. They were better as the Four Seasons.
Sunday, December 7, Port Klang for Kuala Lumpur
This is a port that’s not quite ready for the big cruise ships. We were docked in the container port and shuttled to the cruise port to meet the tour buses, taxis and anyone else who might be picking us up. In my case, that was a young MBA student named Bo E, whom my friend from HK days, Linda Chew, had found, and paid, to come get me. Bo E’s communications were perfect. She sent me a picture of her car and exactly where it was parked. But first I had to get there. There was a traffic jam getting into the cruise port on the shuttle bus. When I arrived, I found the car right away but it was empty. She had got out to go to the bathroom and decided to stay out and meet the buses. Luckily, I was able to call her and we were soon together and on our way. Or rather, we would have been on our way, if we could have got out of the cruise port. That traffic jam took almost an hour to get through, doubling the time it would take to get to Linda’s house in KL. It will be my last visit to that nice big house that has been home her entire life. Linda has a bunch of health challenges, a nerve disease that started as a drop foot and now has her in a wheel chair, dialysis twice a week, heart stents and God knows what else. But she has good help in the form of her housekeeper, Maria, whom I have met at least twice before, and her care giver, Niki, from the Philippines, who is new, and delightful. They’ll all be moving to an apartment together next year. The house has to be sold. It’s all alone in a cluster of high rises. KL has grown up around it.
Linda’s friend, Dolly, whom I have met in KL, and in Hong Kong, came over for lunch and would be driving Linda to a wedding banquet that night. It’s good to see her keeping active. Linda is still my wonderful, happy, positive friend and I love her for it.
I had Bo E pick me up much earlier than intended, because of the traffic around the port, and that either worked, or there was less of it, but I was back in the ship in time to deliver my farewell letter.
By that time I was beat so I had dinner in Buffet. Where I met our nice Sri Lankan folk. I missed Wanda’s birthday and Sunny Chen, the magician.
Monday, December 8, at sea
I love my last day at the desk, when the nicest of my nice people take the time to stop by to thank me and tell me how much they appreciated having the DV. My own people just wanted to know more about what we would be doing in Singapore. It was plenty, but this tale ends here.
It was a long layover in Dubai. When I booked it, it was an hour and a half. About a month ago, they changed it to four and a half hours because they are repaving the runways in Mumbai today. And now it’s five and a half hours. That’s brutal, after a more than 12 hour flight to get this far.
The saga with Indian customs is not over, either. Now they have sent me another form to fill out and upload to the portal with the impossible CAPTCHA. This one is entitled “Individual-Importing-at-Company-for-personal-use”. Presuming the company is the Oberoi, I am going to leave it for the hotel concierge to deal with, for a nice big tip. He’ll love me for the rest of my 5-day stay.
Emirates economy class was just fine. I probably slept as much on the short flight as I did on the very long one. Of course, that was likely because it was the middle of the night somewhere and I had been up for a very long time.
You won’t get any accuracy from me on this stuff as I try not to care what time it is until I get to my destination and sleep until a reasonable getting up time. Then I get up and get on with it and don’t know what jet lag is all about, because I don’t believe in it. That works pretty well.
Friday, November 21
The Oberoi Mumbai is lovely, with wonderful caring staff, who cannot do enough for you. They also have a good business centre. I spent most of my time there.
I got up at 10:30am and was at work by noon. My first order of business was to try to lay my hands on the FedEx shipment from Distinctive Voyages. It’s just a box of letterhead, folders, comment cards, etc. Absolutely no commercial value, as I had already managed to tell their obstinate web site, after multiple attempts. I got Sachin, the Duty Manager and Chief concierge, involved right from the start. His business centre person, Prathamesh, was my main buddy, assigned to the task, but there were two or three other caring people in that business centre. They did their best to contact FedEx but none of the numbers we were given in the multiple emails actually got through to live people. No live people at all for the first day, only persistent, likely AI generated emails, asking for information they already had, sometimes in different formats, sometimes in another version of “to whom it may concern”, always preferred to the KYC (know your customer) web site, whose CAPTCHA wasn’t letting them in either.
I had a nice snack at 3pm, in Fenix, with Edwin, who became my pet server, worked the emails some more, and decided to check out the RBYC, who had never answered my emails requesting a booking for the 25th.
The Royal Bombay Yacht Club is right downtown, around the corner from the Taj Mumbai and the Gate of India. It’s an old, old club from the mid-nineteenth century. I showed my credentials and paid my fee to get in (<$3). I talked to the doorman about booking 10 people for dinner on the 25th and he gave me the email and phone number of Mr Gotam, who was in charge of such matters and suggested the next day after 10am, email first, then phone.
I poked my nose into the library, of which I had fond memories from the days when I needed to find internet on shore.
It’s old and cosy and look what it has peeking out of one of the shelves.
I had a Margarita in the snug bar on the second floor, having got there in a manned cage of an elevator. It takes you back.
Back at the Oberoi, Carolyn, Shelley and I had a very nice dinner in the Italian restaurant. Mine was Osso Bucco on Polenta, yum.
Saturday, November 22
Shelley and Carolyn were off on a reconnoitering tour of Mumbai. I got up earlier and was probably in the Business Centre by 10:00am. My email was full of requests from KYC, as if it was all my fault that they had not even taken my package to Indian customs yet. I decided to involve Truly India, our tour supplier in the process. Saransh gave the job to Pradeep and Sachin at the Oberoi got copied in to it. Ten or twelve emails went back and forth, numerous futile attempts were made, from many computers, to get the documents into the recalcitrant web site. I wrote another letter describing the contents of the package, as per directions from the emails. It wasn’t letting up.
RBYC was the opposite problem. No answer to my email and when I got Mr Gotham on the phone, he just told me to wait for his reply to the email.
Carolyn and Shelley went to Shabbat and made a friend, who is going to take them to the Cricket Club. So posh, us.
Sunday, November 23
I moved into my twin-bedded room on the 19th floor yesterday, because Nona was due to arrive in the wee hours of this morning, like around four. She did, and she didn’t even wake me up, I just found her there around eight when I woke up.
I got a phone call from Pradeep at Truly India, who had got through to a live person at FedEx, so it looked like there was hope. Nona and I went to see the Holy Name Cathedral, so she could apologize to God for not getting up in time for mass and we could see it. We were treated to some very good hymns, by a small but mighty choir, and it passed for devotions. Then, we went shopping on Colaba Causeway, the shopping street.
It was crowded and junky, but where else can you buy a pair of sandals, that they size to measure in a half hour, for $24? I also got a light pink salwar kameez, that looks classy and will be good for hot touring, too. $6.50. Then the Oberoi charged $6 to press it, but that’s another story.
Next on the agenda was the usual Nona and Helen thing, a beer in a special place. We were within walking distance of the Taj Hotel, so that’s where we had our beer:
Just outside that window is the Gate of India. It doesn’t get much more interesting in Mumbai.
We used the Taj’s Sikh to get our taxi. A little tip insures that you get an honest cab. The Sikhs know. While we were waiting, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this sign. I offer it sans commentaire:
The four of us had dinner at the Oberoi again. It’s good, and it’s easy. Not cheap, but easy.
Monday, November 24
Wanda arrived from England, in the early morning, and went for a nap. Truly India had managed to get her an early room, so she didn’t have to use one of ours. Nona and Carolyn and Shelley went on tour. I went to the Business Centre. The demanding emails continued to make ridiculous demands. The best one wanted a copy of my India visa (which they had had for a week) with the number in the body of the email it would be attached to. No one can read the attachments, it seems. I needed to spoon-feed the artificial intelligence, which is real stupidity. I do not like the way the world is going on that front, and when it meets Indian bureaucracy, it’s a perfect storm.
There are wonderful things that happen in India, too. It turned out that our tour guide, Anahita Tarapore, is a member of the RBYC and had dinner there last night. My people told her how much trouble I was having getting my group in there for dinner and, next thing you knew, it was done. BTW, everyone loves Anahita as a tour guide, too. Ask me for her coordinates if you are going to Mumbai. She understands us. She lived in Ottawa for a few years.
I had my snack at 3:00pm and took myself upstairs to get ready to meet the Montreal contingent of Patrick, Rose, Joan, Andrea and Maureen. Maureen is a docent at the Montreal Museum of Fine arts, which Montrealers know by its French acronym, MBAM. We didn’t know her from before, but she has been following my blog. She’s Steve Harrold’s sister, so we do have quite a connection. A week or two before, Maureen took the rest of us through the Kent Monkman exhibit at MBAM. There we met Miss Chief Eagle Testicle, his alter-ego. I came out of my room on the 19th floor of the Oberoi, and became Miss Chief Blue Booby. The hall overlooks the atrium. I saw my five people get off the elevator and make for the front desk. I got excited, picked up my pace and my rubber-soled Mephisto sandal caught in the thick carpet. I went down so fast I never put out an arm to break my fall, which could have broken the arm, so was probably just as well.
Quick as a wink, there were three hotel people around me, wanting to help me up. I asked for time and to bring myself up unaided, please. There was nothing broken. I went down to the lobby, greeted my folks, saw that their rooms were correct, and went back to rest with some ice before dinner. Everyone was glad of three hours to rest, including me, who did it with the hotel provided ice packs. They were just hard lumps of blue ice wrapped in towels. I should have insisted on real crushed ice that melts, soaks the towel, and is a pain, but works so much better.
Tuesday, November 25
In the morning, my right breast was a very dark blue, the whole thing, and it was sore. I had awoken in the night every time I rolled over. I shamelessly showed the whole group the blue booby photo. I don’t think I want to publish it on the Internet, though. It might be seen as the world’s ugliest porn. Patrick, the one guy in the group had the best idea. I needed to wear my bra to bed.
I checked my email, with high hopes that my shipment had cleared customs, but the message from KYC was just happy to report that it had got past them and they would now put it through Indian customs, which might take up to 48 hours. I didn’t have that kind of time left and the hotel told me there was a stationery store across the street and to the left. Nona and I set out.
Office Depot, it was not. It was a shop where they did passport photos and sold stationery. You couldn’t browse the shelves. You had to describe what you wanted and some minion would go search in the back. We weren’t doing too well, even after I got a piece of paper and folded it to what I want. The closest we came were opaque dark blue plastic folders and they were ugly as sin. But, backs against the deadline, we sent the minion off. While he was gone, we looked up and hanging there were a bunch of bags, white with gold Indian designs, in assorted sizes. I started thinking, why not those, at least they were nice looking, and the design was sort of like the old DV logo, which I like better than the new one. So we got bags, big enough to hold the letters and flyers, and then we got a bunch of little gold binder clips to Hold the papers to the sides of the bags. Binder clips are a useful item on a cruise.
Back in the Business Centre, I crafted letterhead, using the DV logo, and altered the welcome letter to explain why the bags, while Nona collated the whole thing. Then the Business Centre printed the letter for us and Nona put it all together. She was a great help and said she was happy to do it. We just needed some time together. It didn’t matter what we did. You know, she’s right. It’s like that with good friends. These were the Welcome Packets we would be delivering:
That night we went to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, no small thanks to Anahita, because their misogyny sure hadn’t done me any good. We explored the library
had a drink at the bar
And an amazingly good dinner for $15 each. The special of the night was Steak and Kidney Pie, and mine was delicious.
Wednesday, November 26
All good things come to an end but this one had a great new beginning waiting, so something to look forward to. The ten of us gathered, with our bags at the appointed hour, checked out, and were met by Richard of Truly India. About ten Oberoi staff were there to wish us well on our journey, but not one of them made everyone check that their bags were boarding the van. I should have done it my good self. I always eyeball my own, saw some of the pax doing it, made an announcement in the bus and left it at that. One person trusted another to have done it and that one, who shall be nameless, thought she saw her red bag in the luggage compartment of the van and presumed that the bags belonging to her and the one who tasked her with looking, were in there. Let this be a lesson, people. Eyeballing the bags means every bag you brought and don’t trust anyone else to do it for you. When we got to the ship, we were missing four bags. Luckily, it wasn’t sailing for about five hours, so there was plenty of time for Truly India to go back to the Oberoi and fetch them. No harm done this time, but a good lesson.
Then we dealt with getting through the terminal and ran into the useful combination of Indian bureaucracy and technology again. A lot of the phones, including mine, would not work from the door of the terminal but were OK, once farther in. it created a pretty bad bottleneck at the door, and it was hot and humid and nasty outside. When my phone finally pulled up the Celebrity App, I found out that no good deed goes unpunished. I had had that lesson before. While teaching Joan how to get her boarding pass on her phone, I had managed to get hers on to mine, too, and it was in pride of place, such that I couldn’t get to my own. That eventually got sorted out, but I am going back to my rule of carrying paper copies of everything and not trusting the electronics.
Once on board, I met with Irish, the Concierge assigned to our group. Our manifests matched perfectly, which was great, because there was much about the Internet that wasn’t. I immediately upgraded it to premium and eventually to two-device premium, so I could move photos from my phone to my Computer and even that never worked, but cost about $500.
I delivered the Welcome Packets and managed to make dinner with my own group of 10 at seven. We convinced the dining room to let us squeeze 10 people around a table for eight and were happy there, celebrating Joanie’s birthday, with our stewards, Roy and Rose. The entertainment was an Australian couple, piano, violin, vocals and they were very easy to listen to.
This trip has been a year in the plannning. It was assigned to me as a DV in June 2024, and it just sat in my signature, until Black Friday, when my old napa friend Carolyn asked me to price it in Celebrity’s Black Friday sale. The next thing I knew, there were 10 of us, and we were planning a veree, veree nice trip, but it wasn’t easy.
Indian bureaucracy is second to none. I have a good 30 hours invested in it to attest to that. Including my good self, we are a group of 10, who will join the Distinctive Voyages group of 47, on board Celebrity Millennium. 48, including my good self, but I digress.
My ten, range in age from 72 to 91 and Joan will turn 92 the day we board Celebrity Millennium. You can see where this is going with the visas, can’t you? I ended up doing 8 of them. Nona had a couple of months left on a 2016 ten-year Indian visa. Mine expired a month ago. I needed some of Nona’s luck. Wanda has a brilliant daughter and between the two of them, they managed to get an Indian visa in seven hours. It’s not just that they ask personal questions, like your parents’ nationalities, they even want to know their previous nationalities. My father was Canadian, previously Canadian, and that goes back 7 generations for him, 8 for me, but is it any of their business? Then there are the drop downs, listing every country in the world and you have to click all the ones you have visited in the last TEN years! I ended up doing eight of these $%^&*(*&^%^&* things. Joanie, bless her heart, made an attempt, at least, for which she gets a diamond-studded gold star, but the damn site crashes every ten or fifteen minutes and sometimes doesn’t come back for hours. I figure I averaged 3 hours per visa, and I am pretty sure that’s a low estimate.
So, I wasn’t overly surprised when I got email from FedEx that Indian customs wanted more information about the box of DV supplies that I had requested be shipped to the Oberoi in Mumbai. I went to their site, jumped through its CAPTCHA hoops, made it through on about the third try, and gave them my best guess as to what would be in the box. I asked DV to do the same on their end but FedEx told them not to worry. I would be able to bring it in when I get to Mumbai.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Indian Customs had other ideas, and apparently wasn’t happy with my best guess. Now they had a form for me to fill out on my letterhead, if you don’t mind. They wanted one from DV, too AND they wanted me to upload it to the FedEx web site. I did my best and sent it off, but the FedEx web site CAPTCHA, didn’t let me in after about 8 tries. They give you the thing in all capital letters, with one bigger than the others. I tried everything I could think of and finally gave up. I did have a lot to do. As it was, I got off the computer and began packing at 7:15pm. Thanks, Indian bureaucracy.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
I was up at six, out at seven, and at the airport by 7:30am. There’s construction in the airport, like everywhere else in this city, but I had to give a nod to the mural hiding it. Locals will recognize the construction cone hugging the Stanley Cup. Hockey is the principal religion here, and the cones, well, they are everywhere.
This section is iconic, too. It has poutine, a disgusting combination of French fries, gravy and cheese curds that somehow became our most famous food, when it really needs to be a Montreal smoked meat sandwich. That’s there, too, supported by the obligatory pickle.
I was in the Maple Leaf Lounge at YUL before eight. That much was good. I had bought a cheap upgrade to business a few days ago and was told it was just a seat, no lounges, no chauffeur drives to the airport. But… nothing ventured. The Air Canada people at the lounge, which also serves Emirates, took one look at my Business Class boarding pass and I was in.
A cup of tea later, I was checking my email, and what did I get, but an email from Indian customs, thanking me for my submission and reminding me to add it to the web site. I told them what I thought of that, politely, of course, I still need my shipment.
And now I am on the plane and they are just setting the tables for lunch. I wanted to get this written before I have my first glass of wine.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Here I am in Dubai airport, after a long uneventful flight, and not much sleep. I was underwhelmed by Emirates famed Business Class. The quality of the wine was up a coupla notches, but the food wasn’t any better than Air Canada’s and that’s not saying much. The entertainment selection was great, which was a good thing, because I didn’t find anything wonderful about the flat bed. It was flat all right, but so narrow that I couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep. It wasn’t even worth the $1600 that I paid for it, never mind full price. I’m in economy DXB-BOM, so I’ll report on that in the next installment. For now, love from Dubai. I’m brain dead.
Welllll….. I didn’t get the Holland America’s 2026 World, it was gone before I got there. But it’s OK. I am going anyway, at least as far as Sydney, and maybe all the way around. Pat Gustafson and Joanne Sidorchuk are coming with me, and the Wescotts and Lynann Barnes, of course. Any of you are more than welcome. This is the link to the full world cruise: 133-DAY GRAND WORLD VOYAGE, and the link to FLL to Sydney is https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/ca/find-a-cruise/w6w61a/v610b. I have to decide between adding a week or two in Australia and going on around the world. I can be swayed.
The actual cruise that I will be hosting for Distinctive Voyages is just an easy little getaway: Montreal to New York City – September 26, 2026 to October 8. https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/ca/find-a-cruise/n6a12a/v652 I’ll be planning a few days of Broadway shows on the end of that one and what we do in Montreal, depends on who comes. Pat Gustafson has first dibs on my guest room and whatever we do will be very low key.
The cruise is very inexpensive and it’s a nice itinerary:
Who’s coming with me? Three people have signed up already. So we are five and counting. It’s a party.
Helen Megan 