The 2025 Highlights from Stateroom 6080
After 60 days and 21,181 miles through 15 countries and two never-visited continents, the latest Saga of Bop 'n Bon came to a good-to-be-home ending. Seeing the photos and videos and our collection of fridge magnets allows us to focus and remember treasured moments. Here are the best ones as determi...
The Oldest Synagogue in The Western Hemisphere
You will never ever guess where this synagogue is: Bridgetown, Barbados Due to the Portuguese inquisition in Brazil, the Jews fled from Brazil to the British colony of Barbados and built the synagogue in Barbados in 1654. I don’t know why, but I felt more connected to my Jewish heritage, when i was...
Observations from the Captain's Bridge: Literally!!!
The view from the eighth of 11 decks on the Journey is panoramic. The dark sparking blue of the sea just off the coast of the Dominican Republic blends at the horizon with the light blue Caribbean sky with beams of yellow burning through high light white clouds. On the deck, watching numerous screen...
Why we cruise
For the last 27 months, Bonnie and I have been on the move. We've made three long trips of 60 days or longer and two short trips of 14 days to, collectively, 50 countries. You must at some time have wondered why we do it; why we seem to enjoy taking a cruise so much when for our first 65 years neith...
Sleuthing for a Sloth
Because our last morning on land in Brazil and events didn't line up with expectations, the title of this journey has been I've edited the name of our trip by deleting Piranha and adding Sloth. We didn't see piranhas in the wild. No anacondas, monkeys, macaws and other jungle creatures either. Altho...
Observations from the Captain's Bridge: Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires isn't what it seems like. We saw the face of the city, with lots of lipstick and mascara, on excursions during our three-day stay. Here's some of the things we saw or were told about: It is the birthplace of tango. It is the home of the largest and most active port in South America. The...
Lessons from the Dining Room: Proper English Etiquette
I'm eating a slice of striploin at dinner. I'm not halfway through when David, seated to my left, already finished his plaice fish with lots of shrimp piled on top and vegetables rimming the plate. How, I foolishly utter out loud, did you finish so fast? David's answer was he learned by competing wi...
Observations from the Captain's Bridge: Rio de Janiero
=Rio de Janiero is the best and worst city we've ever visited. +From it's heights -- the Corvado Mountain, where the Christ the Redeemer statue towers, and Sugarloaf Mountain -- Rio de Janiero has the most striking city views we've seen. It leaves our previous two best-vista cities, Capetown and Lis...
Penguin Zen
Our last visit with penguins is behind us now as we approach Montevideo, Uruguay. But walking among thousands of them during the last three weeks has left numerous impressions of how special they are. So with apologies to Shea and the late, great Carlos, penguins are now our favorite animals. They a...
Diddle Dee and berries to you
There's not much living on the Falkland Islands. Penguins easily out-populate the 3,400 inhabitants. Almost 1,000 humans perished here during the UK-Argentina Falklands War 43 years ago. Three were civilians. The Islands are two large rocks about 300 miles east of Argentina covered with low-lying sh...
Warm & Fuzzy in Antarctica
Our expectations for Antarctica included: 1) rocky voyage through Drake Passage; 2) a rockier, windier voyage through Southern Ocean; 3) getting within a quarter-mile of land or ice on rock 'n rollin' ship; 4) seeing beautiful glaciers from afar but not close or fortunate enough to see or photograph...
Week 1 Summary
Monday: After a typically challenging airplane trip of 8.5 hours, it was splendid to start with a sea day. I went Ahead to the Past as I learned and relearned lessons from my college freshman geology class with lots of oceanography thrown in. (More on this in a future post.) Tuesday: the first Chile...
Semi-Smooth Sailing
Hello Followers! We've been aboard Azamara Journey for about 18 hours after a 40+ hour exhausting trip from our starting Saturday in Orlando. W e are in a time zone two hours earlier than Eastern Standard and looking at the TravelMap map, I can't understand why but we are. The Pacific Ocean, with th...