I guess it’s time I wrote about our Christmas cruise.
Tomorrow evening it will be a week since we returned from Miami after spending nine hours in my least favorite airport this side of Elko, Nevada.
Just kidding there. I did have a flight in 1989 from Reno to Salt Lake City that made a stop in Elko, but I never got off the plane. It might have been one of the strangest flights I ever took. All the other passengers disembarked in Elko, so the trip to Utah was just me and the crew.
But I digress.
Again. Do you ever not digress?
Our ship was Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, which used to be the world’s largest cruise ship but now is supposedly third. It was filled to slightly less than capacity, with about 6,700 passengers on board. If there was one pleasant surprise about that, it’s that most of the lines weren’t as long as I expected.
It was wonderful to spend time with our daughter and her family, who we hadn’t seen for more than 2 1/2 years. The cruise took us to three foreign countries, although the first one was one we had visited twice before. In fact, our youngest grandchild, lovely Albanie, was born in Jamaica and is the only person I know who is a citizen of three different countries.
We visited Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas, but the great majority of our time was spent on the ship. We had wonderful meals, including a Christmas Eve dinner in which something happened I never expected in my life.
We spent a huge amount of money for a fixed rate dinner. IU had a large Maine lobster, nearly 1 1/2 pounds. When I finished it, our waiter asked me a question I never expected to hear.
“Would you like another one?”
Another lobster? Another large, delicious lobster?
I let him talk me into it.
Actually, I was very conscious of how much I was eating. I left for the cruise weighing significantly more than I wanted and I did not want to do the eat, eat and eat again routine too many people follow. My goal was at worst to return home weighing no more than when I left, and between reasonable eating and a lot of walking, I thought I had a chance.
We got home late Friday night and when I weighed myself Saturday morning, I weighed three pounds less than I had when we left for Florida.
Bet you’re proud of yourself.
Well, yeah.
You’re still fat.
Working on it.
All in all, the experience was better than I expected. I had made it into my dotage without ever wanting to take a cruise, but spending a little more than a week with nine people I love made it special.
Originally I thought this was the first time I was ever on a ship traveling in salt water, but I realized that more than 60 years ago, I rode on the Staten Island ferry. Except for that, my only times on any sort of water were on lakes and rivers.
I was pleased to add Haiti and the Bahamas to the list of countries I have visited. I’m up to 16 now, including my native land, which I think it above average for an American. Heck, several of my closest friends have never been outside North America.
But when I was discussing it with my son-in-law, Johnathan told me he wasn’t sure what his total was, but it was something more than 40.
Oh well.
Maybe in my next lifetime.