Welcome … pour yourself a cup of coffee; perhaps, hot chocolate or a cup of my new favorite, chai tea. There are a few pastries for you to enjoy too.

Do sit in a comfy chair and let’s chat.

A little music might be nice … hope you like my selection.

 

My last blog post was on December 22, 2019.

Yes, it does seem like a long time. I’ve missed writing and reading all of your posts. It was due to health issues which I’ll unveil in this post. It may require a few days of  posting.

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Everyone is in the midst of this horrific virus COVID 19. I don’t want to talk about preventions or the illness as I’m not an expert. I’ll be discussing my personal experience with this virus.

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The holidays were in full swing, as was I, when I posted ‘A Christmas Wish for You’. Christmas is the time of year to catch up with family and friends we haven’t seen.            Hubby and I were getting ready for a New Year’s Eve cruise too. It would be our 20th cruise. Quite fitting, that we’d be celebrating the ‘New Year’ of 2020 on our 20th cruise.

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We’ve travel on various cruise lines. Our travel agent is aware that we enjoy cruising as our main form of travel. From time to time, she texts or e mails cruises she believes we might enjoy. They’re a bit difficult to resist when I see them in my in-box. 

A special deal arrived in one of those e mails for an 8 day cruise beginning the 28th of December on the Costa Luminosa. It would be our 1st time on this cruise line. The agent hadn’t traveled on this line either. She couldn’t give me too many details or logistics but we felt confident that it would be a good choice and it could be a bit of an adventure to try this new ship line. Since hubby’s favorite food is Italian food, I felt he’d savor the food.                We booked.

We boarded at 3:00 p.m. on the 28 of December at Port Everglades from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The ship would be leaving port at 11:00 p.m. It was a bit later then other cruise lines we’d traveled with but each one sets their own departure time.

It’s always exciting when you first board a ship. The bright lights, the different decor from one cruise ship line to another, the colors, the crew and the prospect of what your room will be like.  We’d booked a suite for the first time. After all, it was our 20th cruise and our Christmas gifts to each other; so, we thought we’d go big. 

Because the rooms weren’t ready yet the crew directed everyone to enjoy browsing the ship for locations of the pool, spa, theater, dining room, night spots, etc. and encourage everyone to have a bite to eat at the buffet.

Eventually, we made our way to our room when we heard a couple say, “The rooms were ready.”

We were very disappointed with the room. It was the same size as a balcony. There was supposed to be a small table for in the room for dining in the room. Nope, there wasn’t one. We thought we’d check with the front desk the following day. We knew we wouldn’t be able to change our room due to a fully booked ship but we were curious as to whether or not it was a suite.

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Since we were docking at the Dominican Republic the next day, an island we enjoy visiting since the people are very friendly plus we’d missed a few places on prior visits, and since we’d been on-the-go from 6:00 a.m., we decided to go back to the room and skip our normal after dinner theater show the first night.

The following day, we took a historic tour of the DR. We had a nice covered buggy bike ride with our happy bicyclist named Mario. The turquoise blue Caribbean water with the sun glowing on it was magical.

I’ve added a only few photos in this slide show

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One of the gallery shop we toured had wonderful handmade items from local artists. I couldn’t resist the colorful tote below.

After a long day, we were back on-board with enough time for a shower, cocktails before dinner, our dinner and a show. It was a full day of activity.

Our days continued like this everyday except for two islands we decided to skip because we’d visited them before. We were beginning to feel a bit tired too. We assumed we’d been doing too much. Our bodies were in need of rest, so the pool, leisure lunches, spa treatments, rest on our balcony with a good book and naps replaced those touring days.

The saga with COVID 19 and Me will continue … come on back for the next chapter …

Isadora 😎