It's hard to believe that eight months have passed since we returned home from spending last winter on the Emerald Princess. In fact, life flying by with increasing rapidity is getting pretty scary these days, and I'm told it will get even faster with each passing year. Yikes! Because I don't blog while I'm home, the months since February have blurred considerably in my mind. I recall, overall, that it was a good year, but, apart from our 14 nights in Alaska, I can't cite the details that made it that way. So it is with an even greater determination to have a record of what we do, and, frankly, to slow down the hands of time that I am beginning the next segment of my cruise blog.
After my first attempt at blogging last winter, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed going back and reading about our 100 days after we returned home. It's definitely a case where we get twice the value out of our cruises: living them and then re-living them. The only things better than cruising are planning a cruise and reading about cruising, and our current lifestyle seems to bring us joy 12 months a year.
We're leaving next week, flying to Fort Lauderdale a day before the Emerald's first Caribbean cruise of the Winter season. As I type this, the ship is making her way south from Quebec City to Fort Lauderdale, a 12-night cruise that, were it not for having to squeeze bulky, cold weather clothing into our already full suitcases, we might have been on. As it turned out, this would have placed us cruising into superstorm Sandy; in fact, three of the ports I most wanted to visit on that cruise (Bar Harbor, Maine; Boston; and Newport, Rhode Island) were cancelled at the last minute due to the storm, and the ship is staying safely up in Canada until tonight, when it will begin to make its way south along the east coast of the US. Someday, I promise myself, I will see the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island (maybe for our 30th anniversary next year...) This year, we're going directly to what we do best: Fort Lauderdale, thirteen beautiful Caribbean islands and countless miles of walking to endless white sand beaches.
I hope you'll come along for the ride!
After my first attempt at blogging last winter, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed going back and reading about our 100 days after we returned home. It's definitely a case where we get twice the value out of our cruises: living them and then re-living them. The only things better than cruising are planning a cruise and reading about cruising, and our current lifestyle seems to bring us joy 12 months a year.
We're leaving next week, flying to Fort Lauderdale a day before the Emerald's first Caribbean cruise of the Winter season. As I type this, the ship is making her way south from Quebec City to Fort Lauderdale, a 12-night cruise that, were it not for having to squeeze bulky, cold weather clothing into our already full suitcases, we might have been on. As it turned out, this would have placed us cruising into superstorm Sandy; in fact, three of the ports I most wanted to visit on that cruise (Bar Harbor, Maine; Boston; and Newport, Rhode Island) were cancelled at the last minute due to the storm, and the ship is staying safely up in Canada until tonight, when it will begin to make its way south along the east coast of the US. Someday, I promise myself, I will see the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island (maybe for our 30th anniversary next year...) This year, we're going directly to what we do best: Fort Lauderdale, thirteen beautiful Caribbean islands and countless miles of walking to endless white sand beaches.
I hope you'll come along for the ride!
