BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor in Chief/Investigative Reporter
The one constant about planning a trip that anyone who has taken a vacation can attest to, is that you spend months, in some cases years, getting it all together and then it is here and gone in the blink of an eye. This is what happened with this cruise. We started planning this in September 2025 and now it’s done and gone.
I am going to summarize the cruise here in this final part of the story.
The final day was on the ship on the way home to Miami. The day was relaxing and I took the time to write Part 6 of the story and to sit around the pool enjoying the final day of heat and sunshine before coming back to NY and the extreme cold.
The entire cruise was fantastic. The crew was very attentive to all of our needs and wants. If you were sitting in one of the many lounge areas, at the pool or even in the Encore Theater, some one came over to you top ask if you wanted something to drink. They also took the time to talk with people just because. The food was delicious.
The only difference between this cruise and the one I went on in 2020 (before COVID) was that on the first cruise, the food was unlimited at dinner.
The chess tournament took a few days to complete but in the end there were two winners… Kaden Kassim won the under 2000 section and Glenn Buyo was the overall winner.
It is an amazing thing to sit in a room and watch the sea go by as you traverse it. You really get to see the beauty of the planet. Looking out at the arc of the unbroken horizon lets you know that the world is round and you are not going to fall over the edge into a pit of sea monsters. It can actually relax you.
As I was finishing up Part 6 of this saga, I looked at the time. I couldn’t believe that 4 hours has passed since I sat down to work. I called Jose to ask him what they were doing for lunch. This was after I tried Bill and Guillermo and they didn’t answer. He said that they had already eaten but they had a great selection at the lunch buffet. I said ok. He told me they were out at the pool and to meet them there after I ate. I hung p, packed up my stuff, put it back in our cabin and went to the 16th deck to eat.
As I perused the buffet, I saw that Jose was right. There was a fantastic selection of different foods. IF YOU WERE NOT ALLERGIC TO BELL PEPPERS!! Which I happen to be. I was not going near the burgers and hot dogs. I made that mistake once and was not about to repeat it. As I walked around the various buffet areas, I was able to find some minor things to Eat. I finally went to the Asian area and asked the chef there if he could make me some of the Hunan Pork with no bell peppers. He was quick to oblige. I reminded him about my food allergy, and he even cleaned the wok he was going to use to make it for me.
Got my food and proceeded to go for a diet coke to wash it down. The bar tender did not make my last lunch experience any better when he announced to me that they were out of diet coke. I growled a bit and went over to the water “cooler” and got a glass of ice and that.
I found a seat and began having my lunch while reading the latest Star Trek book I was in the middle of. As it was a table for four, and the room was very crowded because every one of the nearly 4000 passengers was on the ship, (not all of them were at the buffet) a lady asked me if she could sit at one of the seats. I said no problem. She began asking me about myself and I shut off my phone (my books are n my Kindle app) and began to talk. It turned out she was from Brooklyn near where I lived until I was 10. We talked about places we went to and people we knew. She was only a couple of years my senior, but we did frequent some of the same places.
When I finished my lunch, I told her it was nice meeting her and wished her a good rest of the trip back to Miami and back to her home. She now lived in Florida. I then proceeded to the pool area to meet up with the guys.
The day was gorgeous. Warm, but not too hot. I made sure that I had a short-sleeved shirt on because the day before, I had gotten a slight sunburn on my shoulders and upper body. It didn’t hurt but I wanted to make sure it didn’t get any worse. It took me about 10 minutes to find them among the multitudes of people there. There was a ban playing a there was in many areas of the ship. We took a seat in a covered area (primarily because there were none in the outer area around the pool) drinks were ordered and we sat and enjoyed the band and watching the people dancing and singing along with the songs.
After about three Amaretto sours, I decided I had to go and finish Part 6 of this saga and get it out to you my readers.
I got back to the lounge on deck 15 near our cabin only to find that the table I usually sit at near the outlet was being used by people playing cards. I had a problem. This was the only table of that type with an outlet near it. There were other outlets, but none that I would not have to have been leaning over to do my work. I found a table in the main lounge/bar area and went to work. Luckily, I had a full charge on the laptop. A waiter came around and asked if I wanted a drink. I ordered another sour and began. He brought my drink over and placed it on a napkin on the table. I thanked him and continued my work. About 3 minutes into it, my Dexcom alert goes off telling mt that my sugars were high. I looked and boy were they high 314. THAT IS WAY HIGH. I put some extra insulin in from my Omnipod, pushed the drink aside and gave it back to the waiter when he came by again, and got back to it.
We had agreed to meet back at the room at about 5:30 to get ready for dinner. Jose had been all up about seeing the Beatles Invasion over band all week, but we kept missing the opportunities to go into the small bar room they were playing in. But we got lucky that night. They were playing in the Encore Theatre which holds I would estimate about 1000 people. We got seats near the front on the right-hand side of the stage.
I had recently seen two cover bands at home and wrote reviews after interviewing them. My review of this band would be excellent. I have a friend who is into the Beatles like I am into Star Trek. He can tell you every fact and figure involving the Fab Four. He would have had trouble discerning them from the real thing. The costumes were great and the videos they showed behind them really gave a good look at the 1960’s.
Revolution:
The Beatles, throughout their careers, even after the break up and their all going solo, talked generally about peace and love during the time of the protests against the Vietnam War here in the USA. One of people’s favorite songs in the vein is All you need is Love.
They did a number of other songs that had the crowd up and dancing at their seats. Their final song had the whole place up and ended in a standing ovation.
We left the theater and headed back to our cabin to put out stuff out for the crew to take for us to pick up in the morning. I felt like I had seen the Beatles. I was only two when they began and barely 8 when they ended, so I never got to see the originals. I did go to Broadway to see Beatlemania with a school trip. These guys could rival that show. Earlier in the day, Bill and I went to the guest relations to find out why we had not received tags to put on our luggage for claiming the next day. We were told that we had to get them off the shelf across the room because we got to decide what time we were going to disembark.
I did feel a bit melancholy. This was only my second cruise ever and it was over as fast as it began. We put our stuff out that we wanted them to take and went back out to walk around and see any other entertainment we could. About midnight, I decided to call it and went back to the cabin. We had to be up early, and I still had a 90-minute ride back to my cousin’s and then a four-hour ride to Brett’s house.
We woke up the next morning and were told we needed to be out of the cabin by 8 am so they could get them ready for the next cruise. We went to breakfast and then sat in the lounge until my wife and cousin arrived at the port and I went to meet them. The guys were disembarking about a half an hour later because they had to get to the airport but didn’t want to have to sit there for extra time.
I said my good byes and left. It was a nice long walk to the disembarking area. I was able to get what at a hotel we would call a bellhop to help me find and get my stuff to my cousin’s car. I was taking two bags for Bill so he would not have to pay for them on the plane. We got them and found my wife and cousin. Loaded up the car, tipped the bellhop and left.
Overall, I would have to say the experience was a good one. There were some glitches, like my garment bag disappearance, losing the back of my magnetic communicator on the first day and getting a bit seasick when the seas got rough on the was home from Cozumel. I met a lot of interesting people on the ship from various places in the world, India, Philippines, Canada, Australia, as well as many parts of the USA. The people in the ports we went to were nice as anything. They would talk with you about their homeland and were curious about mine. As a former social studies teacher, I knew a lot about this part of the world. I learned a number of things that I did not know about these places.
We started the final leg of this little adventure two days after getting back to port. After leaving Brett’s, we stopped in Florence SC at the same hotel we stayed at on the way down. Saw Spencer and Tammy again. The next day stopped in NC to see my friend Marty and his wife for a bit and then made our way home. With stopping for gas and other things, we backed into our driveway at 2:00 am. This gave us just enough time to get hopefully 8 hours of sleep to get ready for our granddaughter’s Baptism 12 hours later. Then for me to go cover a campaign event our State Senator Bill Weber was having with Bruce Blakeman who is running to unseat Kathy Hochul as governor.
One thing I can say about my life is that it is a not stop adventure…