The Cruise

Our cruise was with Norwegian Cruise Lines (Norwegian Star), left Sunday, January 22 and returned Sunday, January 29. There were 54 of us from our park and I haven't heard from one who would ever cruise with Norwegian again.

The experience wasn't horrible but there were various problems that caused me to make that decision...one was the fact that the bathroom in our room was smaller than the one in my little trailer here in Florida. Then, with 3 senior ladies in our room, one had to climb up a ladder onto a bunkbed (on Carnival cruises we had 3 separate beds on the floor). Another problem was the layout of the main diningroom where the servers working area was inbetween table groupings which caused more noise and upheaval than we ever had with Carnival. Last, for me, was how curt and unfriendly many of the staff were. The friendliest ones were the cleaning staff.

That said, we did have a wonderful time because we chose to do so. We visited Roatan, Honduras and learned something of it's friendly people. I believe this is a newer stop for the cruise lines because it's still relatively unspoiled.

We visited Costa Maya (never heard of it before) and saw the beauty there amongst the poverty. We took a taxi into the nearby village (beach and vendors!!) and our tour guide from the park, Debbie, traded her used Reboks for a very nice necklace and bracelet that I'd paid $25 for. The vendor wasn't interested in my slip on sandals, I guess. Debbie went back to the ship in bare feet.

We visited Belize and fought our way through terribly aggressive vendors. I'd always thought Belize was sort of a luxury city but discovered it was mainly a very poor one. The city of Belize is built on landfill which is below sea level and it has to be completely evacuated during a severe storm.

Our last stop was Cozumel where we again fought our way through unbearably aggressive vendors until we found a nice tour guide to take us around the island. One of our stops was at a tequila factory where we enjoyed many, many samples of excellent tequila. I'd never tasted it before and was surprised how good the good stuff ($80 per bottle) was. We didn't buy any but we sure did enjoy the tasting.

We had one sea day at the beginning of the cruise and one sea day at the end so we got together with a group of friends and played "65" on those afternoons.

My Cindy wrote that my generation might be the last to enjoy retirement pleasures like this and she could well be right about that. My generation benefited from the unions that we or our spouses belonged to but the present generation might not have it as good. Unions used to be very powerful and influential but, like so many instances of abuse of power, the unions have sort of made a mess of the economy in some cases so they've lost strength.

None of us here in my little Florida park are millionaires but we are comfortable. We enjoy ourselves as long as our health allows and that's the main thing. Life is often what you chose to make of it and it doesn't take riches to make it good. It usually takes attitude...good relatives and friends are a bonus!

Anyway, I sadly said goodbye to Mary today when Don came to pick her up. I love her dearly and completely enjoy her company so it's been a fun 2 weeks having her with me. Our other roommate on the cruise, Sylvia, is another treasure of a friend but she'll be here in the park until April just like me. We were fairly crowded in our stateroom but never had even the tiniest dispute. We laughed at inconveniences and just carried on enjoying every moment we could and that's a sign of a darned good friendship. The two of them even took turns sleeping on that awful bunkbed because my knees couldn't have handled the crawl across it.

Now here I am, alone in my quiet little trailer and honestly enjoying the solitude...until tomorrow when the social whirl begins again. Thank you, Dennis.