Random thoughts from the sea
Day 26, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026; Nice and Monaco, France. Now the serious sightseeing of our seven-day port marathon begins. Breaking a preference for half-day tours, today and tomorrow feature nine-hour Holland America excursions, totally different in nature. I’ll probably finish exhausted, with still three more
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Days 24-25, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 19-20, 2026; Cartageña and Barcelona, Spain. “Just imagine what living here would be like.” As a child, I imagined growing up somewhere totally different than my mostly suburban life. Books took me to childhoods in New York City or on
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Days 19-22, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Wednesday to Saturday, Oct. 14-17, 2026; Ponta Delgada, Azores, and Lisbon, Portugal. There are cruisers who like sea days and those who don’t. If you prefer long cruises, you generally fall into the first category. You can’t cross an ocean in a day or
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Day 13, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026; New York City. Chills ran down my spine as the Volendam sailed into New York Harbor today. Yes, there was a windy bite to the air as I joined perhaps 100 of my fellow passengers on the ship’s bow at
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Days 11-12, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 6-7, 2026; Boston and Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard. If the last few days were about feasting on the food of the Canadian Maritimes, these two days are about visiting friends – some of the past couple of years and others
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Days 7-10, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Friday to Monday, Oct. 2-5, 2026; Charlottetown, PEI; Sydney and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Leaving behind the new-to-me ports in French-speaking Quebec, I now am in familiar territory and on a quest for mussels and lobster in the Canadian maritime provinces. Prince Edward Island
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Days 2-5, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Sunday-Wednesday, Sept. 27-30, 2026; Quebec City, Saguanay and Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Canada. Bonjour! Merci! It took only a word or two of my high school French for shopkeepers here in Canada’s province of Quebec to immediately answer me in English. Yet in our smaller ports
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Day 1, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026; Montreal, Canada. We started our two sightseeing days in Montreal on the hunt for a shoe store. My sister Elaine discovered that creating a packing list doesn’t work if you forget to actually put something in the suitcase. She left
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Day -2, 2026 Fall Atlantic Sampler Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026; Montreal, Canada. I struggled on Wednesday to turn my loaded luggage cart through the serpentine taxi line at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport. My sisters Eloise and Elaine managed their own luggage without the aid of a free cart. They are
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Days 12-15, 2026 Alaska Explorer Thursday to Saturday, Sept. 3-6, 2026; Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. The theme of this Alaska cruise is turning out to be friendship. I just wrote about meeting two new friends in Juneau. Earlier we were disappointed to miss seeing friends in Anchorage
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