Tablemates

Tablemates
Francis and Ilene: Francis is a retired military man and Ilene retired from Wells Fargo Bank. They live in Rapid City, South Dakota and have 2 sons and 1 daughter. Francis turned 70 on this cruise and it was a difficult day for him, but he truly doesn’t look or act 70 years old. He’s very jolly; talks with his hands, laughs a lot, and always has a story. He and Ilene participated for four months in the sports program onboard where passengers earn “Dam Dollars” which they can redeem for merchandise. He always had a tale to tell about that. Francis is also an avid bridge player and he played many days for 4 to 5 hours. He hates getting dressed up and many formal night dinners were spent without Francis and Ilene.
Ilene is 65 and is a sweetheart. She always has a smile on her face. She loves the arts and crafts classes and many nights came to dinner wearing the jewelry she made that day. She’s a 15-year breast cancer survivor and enjoys life to the fullest.

Charles and Cynthia: Charles is also a retired military man. Cynthia worked for an insurance company. They live in Tampa, Florida and raised two daughters. They met in England where Charles was stationed. Cynthia was born and raised in Oxford, England and still has a charming accent. She’s the talker in the family; Charles just kind of tags along. This was their very first cruise of this type and it was fun to watch them acclimate to shipboard life. Cynthia had a heart attack recently but she could run circles around all of us. She is interested in everything and has an infectious laugh. Charles can be a bit negative but she just laughs it off. They have some very interesting stories about their travels.

Velma and Cathy: Velma is 75 years old and also lives in Rapid City, South Dakota. She and her sister, Cathy, who lives in Pueblo, Colorado, were traveling together. They requested our table because they wanted to sit with Francis and Ilene, who are also from “Rapid”, as they call it. Velma just completed her 14th World Cruise. She was married to a dermatologist who, before he passed away and left her lots of money, told her to spend it on travel. She’s a little stocky lady with a white Buster Brown haircut. She was very quiet, but with Ed, Francis and Cynthia it was never easy to get a word in anyway. I think Velma developed quite a crush on Ed. He could make her laugh and when she did it was a wonderful thing to see. She reminded me quite a lot of my Aunt Jet, who passed away in 1990, and by the end of the cruise I was quite fond of her. She and Cathy left the ship in New York to spend a few days there.
Cathy is 80 years old and is also very quiet. She’s a widow with one son who lives Fiji and he and his wife flew to Sydney to see her and Velma and had dinner at our table. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet him as we were off the ship that night but Cathy’s face lit up when she talked about him. Cathy loved going to afternoon tea and she usually left the dinner table right after finishing her entrée, saying she had had dessert at tea that afternoon. I think she really left early because she wanted to be able to get the first row in the balcony for the show every night. She was a lover of beautiful music and many times she was the only person in the Explorers Lounge listening to the piano player and violinist play into the night.
The Final Blog Entry
This is it! Our last day. I have very mixed emotions today. On Thursday in New York, 400 people left the ship and went home, including our friends Pete and Sharon, Debra, and Bill and Debbie. Four hundred people took their places and since then nothing has been the same. Thursday evening I was feeling a lot of resentment toward these new people; they were excited about starting their 3 week cruise to Vancouver and we were depressed about our cruise being almost over. Soon “my” ship would be theirs and I was feeling very possessive. In talking to others on Friday I was relieved to discover that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. But as the day progressed I felt more even keeled and we had a very nice evening; a gathering of people to share our leftover wine and champagne and our very last “Name that Tune” with Buddy in the Rembrandt Lounge. So tonight we’ll have some more goodbyes, probably some more tears, but we’ll set our sights on Cincinnati and the joy of seeing our family and friends again. The Dream is over, its time to wake up!!

Bill and Debbie Marra

Early in the cruise I saw a beautifully dressed blonde woman walking around and I said to Ed, “that woman has the prettiest clothes.” The same day I went to an arts and crafts class and who should come to my table and ask if she could sit with me, but the well-dressed woman. Her name is Debbie and she and her husband, Bill, live in Pittsburgh. At our first Virtuoso cocktail party, where all the Virtuoso guests were invited to meet each other, there were Debbie and Bill. We’ve been good friends and touring mates ever since. We’ve explored Tahiti, Auckland, Mumbai, Lisbon, Istanbul, and Bali together.
This is the second marriage for each of them. Debbie has never had children but Bill has 3 from his first marriage. Bill is a builder/developer in Pittsburgh and Debbie is a former voiceover announcer and flight attendant. They go to Naples, Florida every year for the winter and we hope to see them the next time we’re in Naples, too.

Chuck ans Sandy Bowman

One day in aerobics class I was wearing a tee shirt that said Cincinnati on it and Chuck came up to me and asked if I am from Cincy. It turns out that he and Sandy are from the Eastgate area. Chuck was assistant principal at Glen Este High School until a few years ago when he retired. Sandy worked for NIOSH until retirement when they moved to The Villages, a retirement community outside of Orlando. They have one son who still lives in Cincinnati. No grandchildren yet. They are both 60 years old.
In further conversations with Chuck I learned that he had taught in the Forest Hills School District and we know a few of the same people. What a small world. Sandy is a big trivia nut and we’ve started joining them for the bi-weekly trivia or “name that tune” games onboard. We hope to see them when we go through Florida. They absolutely love The Villages and are great advertisers for the community.

New York City

This was a day of many emotions. We were scheduled to pick up our pilot at 4:30AM, sail under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at 5:30, pass the Statue of Liberty at 6 and dock at 7AM. We hadn’t gotten to bed until almost midnight last night because we were bidding a fond farewell to Debra, Pete and Sharon. We just didn’t want to let “life as we know it on the ship” end. We cried and laughed and hugged and promised to keep in touch until we were exhausted. Then we were up again at 4:30 to watch the sail in. And without a doubt it was well worth the loss of sleep. As we passed the Statue of Liberty the sun was just rising but dawn had broken so we could see her in all her glory. I’ve been all the way around the world and seen many, many statues, but this is the most beautiful statue in the world.
We had a big surprise after we docked at the cruise ship terminal in Mid-Town Manhattan. Holland America had arranged for a plane to fly over the ship trailing a banner that read “Welcome Home Amsterdam Voyagers”. It truly is good to be home again.
We were “passengers in transit” so we were the last to be allowed off the ship and didn’t get off until about 10:30. We had to be back on the ship at 3:30 so we decided to walk as many miles as we possibly could in that amount of time and also eat at a New York Deli. We both wanted to walk in Central Park so we made a beeline there and went at a good pace through the park, taking in all the sights and quietly reflecting on the last four months and the feeling of being back on American soil. We didn’t talk much on that walk through the park but the experiences we’ve shared, the friends we’ve met, this dream we’ve lived together for 114 days doesn’t need words anyway.
Back on the city streets we saw about 12 people we knew from the ship. Bill and Debbie were the only ones we stopped to talk with but it says a lot about what a close knit family we’ve become on this cruise. We meet more people we know on the streets of Manhattan than we do in our own hometowns.
We ate a huge lunch at a downtown deli and walked back to the ship, a total for the day of 9.8 miles. We have 2 sea days until we end this odyssey in Ft. Lauderdale and fly home to Cincinnati, two people who are still the same and yet changed in ways that we have yet to discover.

Hamilton, Bermuda

This port seemed to be just a pit stop along the way because we had such a short time there. We anchored out in the water about 30 minutes from the town of Hamilton and we had to take local tenders, which meant we were at their mercy. Each one of their boats held 750 passengers, so they had 3 shifts. We selected the latest one just to avoid big crowds. So we didn’t get to town until a little after 11AM and the last tender to the ship was at 2:45.
We went with Pete and Sharon for the day and climbed up to the top of the boat and marveled at the “life styles of the rich and famous” mansions along the shore, each one more beautiful than the last. All day Bermuda reminded me of Disney World with million dollar homes, perfect little streets of multi-colored pastel buildings and shops asking the king’s ransom for the same stuff we could have gotten for a song in Vietnam or Hong Kong. But we were happy just to be together on a gorgeous day and appreciated the parks and flowers on the island.
We did a little bit of shopping and then stopped in an Irish pub for a coffee. At 2:30 we returned to the pier to get on the tender boat. The line was several blocks long but we knew many of the people and had a fine time talking about our abbreviated day in Bermuda, our final port of call before New York City.
We didn’t have very many good pictures of Bermuda so I’m posting some pictures of a farewell dinner we had with our friends, and the Black and Gold Ball where I won $50 in a balloon contest.

Austin and Brenna

We met Austin and Brenna early in the cruise. We were in the Crow’s Nest Bar with Dick and Deb having a nightcap. Brenna came up to us and said “Thank Heavens, young people!”. They had been in despair thinking that there were no people their age on the cruise. Right away Brenna, who loves to organize get-togethers, asked if we wanted to have dinner together at the Pinnacle Grill along with Kris and Ray, the only other younger couple they had met. We said we’d love to. The next day a note came from Brenna saying she had organized the dinner. We all met a few days later and had a wonderful time.
Austin is a retired attorney and Brenna a retired investment banker. They live in Minneapolis and have no children. Austin turned 70 on April 1st and Brenna turned 59 on March 29th. We had a joint birthday party for them and had a lot of fun. By then we had met Pete and Sharon and Bill and Donna so we had a lively party of 12.
We don’t see as much of them as we’d like because they have late seating dinner so our schedules are quite different. We have been on a couple of excursions with them and have had several happy hours together. Brenna is trying to organize a going-away dinner for those leaving in New York.

Pete and Sharon Krause

Pete and Sharon were introduced to us by Dick and Deb. They had all been on an overland trip to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Pete is 65 and Sharon is 61. They’ve been married 41 years and have 3 grown sons and 7 grandchildren. Pete is the retired CFO of Carhartt Company and Sharon was a homemaker. They live in Plymouth, Michigan which is near Detroit. Pete is a graduate of Michigan State University.
Sharon is a lover of white wine and drinks a glass every night. Pete doesn’t drink at all but you can count on seeing them around the ship, especially in the evenings, Pete carrying the wine glass with Sharon beside him. He absolutely adores her and they are so much fun to be with. Pete has a dry sense of humor and makes us laugh with his antics. Sharon is bubbly and very expressive and cute as a button. She’s 4’11” tall. She loves to say that her sons didn’t realize she was short until recently; that’s how much of a presence she has.
We’ve been on a few excursions with them and we always have a great time. We’re planning to take a river cruise with them in 2010 and I believe we’ll be lifelong friends.
PS: The picture of Sharon and me with the white-haired man was taken last night. He’s Merrill Osmond, one of the 3 Osmond Brothers (sans Donny) who performed for us Friday night and put on a very good show. He’s a grandfather as you can see. He and his wife are traveling together and are a very nice couple.