Cruising at Sea - Saturday – March 10th Hello from somewhere southeast of Florida, cruising gently on our way back to Ft Lauderdale. This is our last full day and is a bit disappointing because we know we will soon have to leave the ship. We have had a great time, despite some of the actions to prevent anyone from catching the norovirus. First, let me mention that yesterday there were problems getting the photos posted to the Blog, so those have been corrected and you should be able to see the Grand Turk photos. We slept in this morning, partially because they made the Daylight Savings adjustment last night, so this morning came an hour earlier, therefore the clock said it was later than expected when we woke up. We went up to ... read more

US Virgin Islands - Thursday – March 8th This morning we docked in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. This is a protectorate of the US and uses US dollars. By contrast, Sait Maartens used Dutch Gilders, and Saint Martins used Euros (actually they both accepted US dollars too). Anyway, the cruise last night was not too long, so we went slowly and smoothly and the ship was docked by 7:00 AM. The Virgin Islands were also named by Christopher Columbus in 1493 for Saint Ursula and her virgin followers. Up to and including the 17th century, these islands were captured and controlled by many European powers, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. By the middle of the 19th century the abolition of slavery took hold and "free labor" was hard ... read more

Tuesday, March 6th Today we are cruising at sea all day, so there is nothing specific that we had to do at particular times. We went to the sit-down breakfast in the Michelangelo Dining Room and had a very good and leisurely meal (not practical when we need to zip off to a morning excursion). But today it was nice and restful. Each time we meet new people, and frequently compare travels stories. Then Janet went to a Trivia session. There were 3 teams who needed another person and she said the bidding started at $10 for her to join them. Unfortunately her team did not win the prize, so they did not pay her the fee. Meanwhile David went to a lecture on Duplicate Bridge. They are supposed to play bridge games this ... read more

Sunday, March 4th Today is “Boarding Day” for the cruise. We stayed in the Fairfield Suites last night and it was nice. This seems to be the high-priced season for Florida hotels since it cost quite a bit more than last May. But Janet found some discounts on the internet, and it is only for a little while, so we can overlook the price. Two especially good things about the hotel is that we can park the car here for free while we are on the cruise. They also have a shuttle (reasonably priced) which takes us to the ship today and will bring us back at the end of the cruise. So that solves a couple of problems. They also have a simple (but warm) breakfast, so we started the day with full ... read more

Welcome to this episode of “As the Garvin's World Turns”, or maybe it should be “Where in the World are Janet & David?” This is the fifth of our cruise travel blogs and once again we are going somewhere new and exciting (for us) - the Eastern Caribbean. Planning for this trip began last summer, when we thought back about the very cold and snowy previous winter. We felt it would be a good idea to take a short winter trip somewhere warm, so we could act like traditional “snowbirds” (retirees who go to Florida or Arizona in the cold part of the year). It turns out that this winter had been much milder, but we are going ahead with the vacation anyway. This was initially supposed to be a brief “bridge trip” between our lengthy ... read more