After a bunch of sea days, we’re trying to get back into being an active participant in our vacation. But not too active. St. Thomas is known for having the best shopping in the Caribbean. So naturally, after we took the cable car to the top of the hill and visited the pirate museum (Argh, matey), we went back to the ship for a more sanely paced afternoon.

I call this last shot “The color of money”. The prominent yacht is worth $350 million.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The “B” in ABC stands for Bon Aire. You already know Bon Aire decided they had enough cruise ships, and didn’t need one more. The “C” is for Curacao. We did a self guided walking tour of Curacao. It’s a very attractive town, as Danita demonstrates.

Curacao has a unique and interesting bridge arrangement, including the Queen Emma pontoon bridge. It appears to block all ships, making the cute draw bridges useless. But it actually has a hidden and clever secret. I’ll put a photo-story on the website for those who are interested.

The first pic is of one of the clever draw bridges, the second is the Queen Emma bridge. Emma has no draw bridge capability, but ships have no trouble getting by. That third photo is not a “oops — bridge to nowhere”. The entire bridge disconnected from the road. The blue boxes have outboard motors that swing the bride up against the other shore. The fourth pic shows the bridge reconnecting with the road. The last pic reveals Emma’s secret. On the opposite side, one corner of the bridge is connected to a hinge. The other is on a wheel that allows the bridge to swing along the side of the river.

We did A for Aruba last of all. We took a tour to the other side of the island. Instead of seeing endless white sand beaches, we saw cave paintings circa 1500 and a very impressive cove.

Tomorrow we visit Half Moon Cay. This is a private island owned by the cruise line. It features miles of white sand beaches, chairs, and hamburgers on the grill. There’s a pretty good chance we won’t bother getting off the boat.

We aren’t really taking a 21 day cruise. We are taking a 10 day cruise followed by an 11 day cruise. We don’t have to pack up and change rooms, but there is a down side. Taken in turn, our schedule starting today is sea day, Half Moon Cay, Ft. Lauderdale, Half Moon Cay, and sea day. That’s 5 days in a row on the ship, with nothing more than live entertainment, movies, and a pool. We will have good food that we don’t have to cook and don’t have to clean up after. Life is hard.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’re still on the boat. The food is excellent, as is the entertainment. Yesterday we were at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic. We visited the Woman’s Chocolate Exchange, where we planted Coca trees, sorted beans, and ate chocolate. It was a lot of fun. Today, we were supposed to go to Bon Aire. Unfortunately, Bon Aire decided they don’t particularly like having cruise ships visit, so we visited San Juan instead. This upset a lot of passengers because they had already visited San Juan and they were looking forward to going to someplace new. The rumor was that Holland America did not know our ship wouldn’t fit at the Bon Aire dock. There were so many disgruntled passengers the captain decided to go on the intercom and explain the true situation.

Now here’s what’s funny. Danita and I weren’t able to hear the announcements over our in-room speaker. I asked the steward. He said that was true all over the ship. In-room speakers were used only in emergencies, such as when the boat was sinking. He mentioned “boat sinking” at least a half dozen times. Imagine my surprise when just a few hours later, I heard the captain on our in-room speaker. “Ladies and gentleman, this is the captain speaking” … (long pause). Fortunately, the boat wasn’t sinking. It was only that Bon Air changed their minds about letting us visit. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The Rotterdam is the newest ship in the fleet. It’s a big ship. The auditorium is very modern with impressive capabilities. We saw a dance troop performance that was visually stunning. Yesterday was a sea day, so we had a gala dinner. Danita and I both chose escargot and filet mignon steak. The food has been wonderful.

Today we visited Grand Turk Island. The water is relatively shallow until is reaches an under-water cliff, where the depth increases from about 100 to 7,000 feet. You can see a well-defined line of dark blue water where the depth increases. We really enjoyed our tour guide. He is genuine, knowledgeable, and kind.

The most fun thing we did (other than mini golf) was an air boat ride in the Everglades. Our guide was amazing at spotting wildlife. There’s no pics. On the up side, there was no risk of me dropping my phone in the water. Fact I did not know: Alligators aren’t ever the apex predictor. A 5 foot alligator would seem to qualify. But they are prayed on by 10 foot alligators. It seems there isn’t anything an alligator won’t eat.

Everywhere we went there were draw bridges, and usually they were up. We would sit in line waiting a very long time only to see a rather small boat pass through. We thought draw bridges were only for sail boats. But it turns out there is almost no clearance under the drawbridge. Even a row boat would have to have the bridge open to get through.

We also visited the Dauer car museum. It was a great collection of GM and Ford cars, with an emphasis on Cadillac. We found Danita’s dream car (not): a green woody station wagon.

There were a dozen restaurants within an easy walk of our hotel. Mostly they stayed away from fast food (although that was also available). Our best find was TooJay’s, a NY deli run by actual NY Jews. Danita ordered French Onion soup. It was as good as anything one can find in Paris. Our other great pick was another NY Jewish deli called the Mayor’s Deli. I ordered a club sandwich, which was a big mistake (as in, the sandwich was too big to eat at one sitting).

The nerds also provided some amusement. Here’s what happens when engineers do graffiti.

It’s time to board the big boat. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale yesterday. Our car was one of the last to be unloaded from the car train, but we still had plenty of time for one quick stop. There is a glitch with our hotel room. The room and the hotel are fine, but when I made the reservation, they advertised free parking while on the cruise. When we arrived, they said the free parking was no longer available. I’ll be talking to the manager tomorrow (since today is a holiday).

We’ll be goofing off in Ft. Lauderdale for the next few days. We don’t board the ship until Jan 4.

A dozen Christmas pics.

We were moving stuff to the car, preparing for a trip to Good Will, when Danita missed a step. She fell on the garage floor which was both cold and hard. She bruised her hip and pulled a muscle. She had difficult mobility for the rest of the day, but she’s recovering well. She still has some discomfort.

We were planning to spend this afternoon at Ed & Lynne’s. We were going to stay overnight, go to 10:00 mass at their church, then head up to Mark’s. Unfortunately, Ed & Lynne were exposed to Covid. They are testing negative, but the recommendation is to stay isolated a few more days. We cancelled the time at Ed’s. Instead, we’ll watch the broadcast of our Church’s 4:00 service today, then drive to Ed’s Christmas morning. We’ll exchange packages on the porch, then go on up to Mark’s. Fortunately, everybody who will be at Mark’s has not been exposed and is testing negative. We’ll stay overnight and return Monday. We’re looking forward to meeting Jiajia’s parents. Jiajia informs us that westerners have great difficulty pronouncing her parents’ names. She suggest we call them “Jiajia mama” and “Jiajia baba”. It should be an interesting day.

We’re doing well at getting everything together for our vacation. We have our lists of what to pack. We have all the medications we are going to need. As usual we found a couple of small items that would be helpful that we didn’t have. Fortunately, Amazon offered to deliver both on Tuesday, so we don’t have to face the maddening crowd of seasonal shoppers.

As everybody knows, it’s really cold outside. Our high today is in the teens, but the wind makes it feel like single digits. Weather that invigorating is nothing less than an invitation for a bike ride. So that’s exactly what I did today — on the stationary bike in our clubhouse gym. ;-)

I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas.

We had a nice holiday week. We had a couple of dinners with friends. We took Mom to a concert at Charlestown. We heard a group called “The Suspicious Cheese Lords”. They are an acapella group of men that sing Christmas and seasonal oldies. How old? It varies but you won’t go wrong if you think 16th century. Songs were sung in their original language. The program provided English translations. Songs covered the gamut. The oldest tune dates back to pre-Christian times. A couple of more recent tunes were used for sing-alongs.

Charlestown is Erickson’s original community. It was built around a Catholic seminary. When the church sold the property to Erickson, they restored the chapel to it’s original condition. They made a first-class job of it, as you can see here. As you might imagine, the acoustics was perfect for Christian music from the 1500s.

Poor Mom has had a lot of doctor appointments recently, including four between last and next Friday. Today we visited her audiologist. Since the audiologist is near us in Columbia, we went to a couple of stores and got a few things Mom needs.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita had quite a successful week with Mira. They played together for two days. Then it was time to try to put Mira back in daycare while Danita was at Mark’s home on standby. It was quite successful. I drove up Friday and took Danita home Saturday. I was granted the privilege of reading some books to Mira Friday evening. This week Jiajia has a lot of flexibility, due to the holiday slowdown. The big news is — Jiajia’s folks are coming from China to visit. It’s going to be a long term visit. The preliminary plan is to stay 5 months. We plan to meet them before we go on vacation.

We just got home from a delightful performance at the Meyerhof Symphony Hall. The BSO played favorites while a cirque group did apparently impossible things with ropes, hoops, and bodies. It was a festive atmosphere. They even had a small music group in the lobby playing some pre-concert music.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.