January 4th, 2025 through May 9th, 2024. Well we started on the adventure of a lifetime yesterday.  128 day cruise around the world on Holland America Cruise line sailing on the Zuiderdam.

I will try to blog our trip at our different stops so that our grandchildren (and anyone else that is interested) can follow us on our amazing cruise. You won’t get a blog everyday but I will try to combine different days to make it interesting. I gave our grandchildren a poster map of our cruise for Christmas so they can follow us at home and hopefully give us suggestions as to what to see and what to look for. This an amazing cruise that Suzanna and I are thankful to God for giving us the chance to take it.

We arrived into Fort Lauderdale, FL to board our ship yesterday.  A very easy process I could not believe the welcome all the guests received.  The captain greeted us, all of his staff were around to help and plentiful sparkling wine on the Lido deck after we arrived.

Suzanna attended Mass as she will do everyday that she can. 

We had scoped out our table for dinner.  We requested a table of 6 and Suzanna found out that our table was not by any windows.  So she worked with reservations and they found us one of the tables on the stern overlooking the water.  We had 4 other people at our table.  One couple that we found out were on their 5th world cruise.  Two ladies, one a 5 year veteran for the world cruise with the other lady on her 10th world cruise.  Lots of stories about adventures on world cruises.

We splurged this trip and upgraded to a larger suite, the Neptune suite.  One of the perks of this type of room is access to the Neptune lounge.  Last night was a greet and meet with drinks for all (adult beverages Wolfgang).  This is were we met Wolfgang and Laura on a previous cruise.  Today met Ron and Elaina, and had some great conversations.  They are only on the ship to Singapore and this their longest cruise they have ever taken.  So we went from being the newbies at our dinner table to giving out advice later on.

We got the thermal suite for the duration of our cruise and retired to the hot tub/thermal pool for a little relaxing soak.

We went to Mass this morning, Suzanna sang and I did the readings.  We also met Ron and Elaina at Mass, so we all had breakfast together in the Pinnacle grill, another perk of the Netpune suite.  We were happy to find they offer English Back Bacon, a staple that Bishop Bob showed us on our last cruise.  Suzanna was even able to talk them into getting raspberries for her.

We then went to the exercise room and lifted weights…….. don’t worry, you won’t have to hear this over and over again but this will be our routine for the next 4 months so I am getting the nitty gritty details out but just once.

Suzanna is on a mission to have an Orange Bowl (next Notre Dame football game) shown on the big screen. I have worn my Notre Dame shirts around the ship and we are getting a lot of comments on a good game and go ND !

We attended a presentation this morning on what is happening on the World Cruise.  We had no idea there was so much going on.  Suzanna and I wonder if we will the stamina to fit everything in….. and I am not talking about the excursion but all of the shipboard actives.  Here is our current list of activities.

This afternoon we tried our hand at duplicate bridge and then we headed back to our room for the “block party”.  We were told to open up our doors at 4:00 with a glass from our room and food and drinks will be flowing for the next 45 minutes.  We met our neighbors and had some interesting discussions.  Probably the most we have ever talked with our neighbors in all the cruises we took. The block party is a great idea !

Suzanna loaded up on protein waters for the trip to keep Michael well hydrated and healthy

Next stop the Cayman Islands