davidgarvin

It appears the final 4 blog sessions got "stuck" somehow in their system, so theyall 4 are being published again - please forgive if this is a duplicate notice for you. Today we have landed in the “new world” but Columbus was probably more enthusiastic when he got here than we were (well he didn't actually get to Florida). The ship arrived in Port Everglades about 6:00 AM. It was a couple of hours before we were cleared to start debarking, so everyone had time to go for a final breakfast at the buffet. Since it was so much earlier than usual, David really wasn’t very hungry and only ate one plate full of food. Getting off the ship was delayed about 45 minutes later than scheduled, but we had plenty of time in our plan ... read more

It appears the final 4 blog sessions got "stuck" somehow in their system, so theyall 4 are being published again - please forgive if this is a duplicate notice for you. This morning we awakened to more cloud cover than in the past, and the forecast is for that to continue intermittently through tomorrow afternoon. The captain announced today that the course has been adjusted a little more northerly so we can avoid some of the consequences of tropical storm Tomas. Later tomorrow we will turn back south down the gulf stream current and then there may be a little more motion, but today the ride was still pretty smooth. Janet, Kathy, and David attended a cake decorating demonstration this morning. While the pastry cook, the cruise director, and a volunteer from the audience each decorated ... read more

Today is the day when all of you come to the end of all those dreadful political advertisements, and an evening of interrupting TV shows with “up to date” vote counts. I can’t tell you how happy we are that all that ended for us 2 weeks ago. We did our absentee voting before we left and can wait until we come back to see how it turned out. So none of that stuff for us today! Today we are approximately in the middle of no where. Looking at the plot of the cruise on the map, it appears we are pretty much equal distance from Africa, America, and South America. There are probably some islands somewhere, but for the most part we are a long way from the nearest store. To that end, it was ... read more

Today is another 25-hour day, with the clocks being reset at 3:00 PM. This gives everyone an opportunity to take a one hour siesta without missing any of the scheduled activities. On the other hand, if you want a little snack at 2:30, your can have another an hour later when it gets to be 2:30 again. Our group all seems to have slept in late this morning. The first planned activity was not until 11:00 this morning when all but one of our tour group met for a short service by Father Mike in the Skylight Chapel. Then it was off to a lunch. Afterwards we all went our merry ways for basically a day of rest (good plan for a Sunday - according to the elevators). David spent a couple of hours at the ... read more

Welcome to the Canary Islands. First of all, the name is not related to canary birds but instead it was derived from the dogs (canines) which were on the islands when the island was first explored. We were very impressed with Tenerife Island (at least the part we saw). The population of the whole archipelago is 4 million people, with half of them on Tenerife Island (the largest of the seven islands). They are much closer to Africa than to Spain, but are actually a province of Spain and the official language is Spanish. However, the primary industry here is tourism so a lot of the people speak English and some other languages. The temperature even in the winter is supposed to be warm enough to go to the beach during the middle of the day, ... read more