Cruising - One of my passions!

amended daily for a week!
I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

We are looking forward to hosting the HPT tournament and having Maria Ho sail with us.

Jan Fisher and I are traveling this week on what is called a “FAM” trip. This stands for familiarization trip. When you take as many customers as are typical for a Card Player Cruises trip, there is a lot of preparation that must be worked out in advance, thus someone needs to go a week early. On the FAM trips, I spend a lot of time going to shows, sampling restaurants, and checking out the ports and activities since I will be staying in the poker room most of the time during the poker cruise next week.

I will add more to this during the week to give everyone who has never been on a cruise an idea of how awesome it can be!

Day 2: I slept in and got out of bed about noon to go to the gym. Jan is a good inspiration in this regard! After a quick lunch in the Windjammer, Jan and I played trivia in the Schooner Bar and went to the ice skating show in Studio B. The show was SRO since it only plays 4 times during the week. All popular rock and roll music (from the 70s) we enjoyed it a lot! The day goes fast when you don’t get up til noon!

We had received an invite for cocktails and dinner with either the hotel manager or captain and so decided to accept for this first at sea night, which also was formal. They only send invites to the most senior cruisers, those with more than 340 frequent cruiser points. Only 16 people on this sailing qualified, including us, and so we dined at a huge table with other seasoned travelers. Dinner was amazing and the hotel manager was charming. He was engaging and fun, even goofy, like we like. He made a point to include everyone in the conversation and we were each given, gratis, a copy of the lovely photo they took of the group before we began dinner. This “souvenir” included a menu, place card, and list of all of those in attendance. We were seated next to a poker player who thought the idea of a poker cruise was pretty cool. Obviously we gave him our business cards and hope he’ll travel with us in the near future.

We just got back from the show, featuring the Royal Singers and Dancers. The talent can vary from ship to ship: this was one of the best casts we’ve seen. We are heading off now to the midnight adult comedy show. We saw this same comedian last night at the family show. While last night’s show was enjoyable, we are hoping that she’ll be edgier and a bit funnier due to the adult audience.

Check back daily for more!
Our next poker cruise begins this Sunday and I will try to blog during it, if possible.

Linda Johnson
Card Player Cruises

amended below – ………………….

Ahhhhh – the easy life onboard a luxury cruise ship!

Day 3: Labadee, Haiti

Note: This week’s itinerary of Labadee, Haita; Falmouth, Jamaica; Georgetown, Grand Cayman; and Cozumel, Mexico is different from next week’s ports which are St. Maarten, St. Thomas and CocoCay.

We slept late and then decided to have lunch on the beautiful island of Labadee. After lunch, we walked around the island and found a great shady spot to relax by the beach.. I stopped in the craft market and was happy to see that the merchants weren’t aggressive like they were the last time I was there. I think the ship may have threatened them with banishment if they didn’t change their ways. I actually had fun shopping and bought a few bathing suit coverups.

After returning to the ship, we swam in the pool for a while.then went to trivia, The questions seem to be very tough this week…not good for the ego.

I had dinner in the dining room and chose shrimp cocktail, salad, and rack of lamb for the entree. The service was terrific. We finished in time to attend the evening show, which featured a wonderful magician named Drew Thomas. I am not usually a magic fan, but his act was impressive. We went to the movie which shows on the big screen by the pool, but left early because it was hard to hear the voices clearly.

Tomorrow we will be in Jamaica.

Today’s tip: Bring sunscreen and water shoes. The sun is very strong here and you don’t want to ruin your vacation!

more to come ……