Blue Planet Journey

Playing our ukuleles on the intact Renaissance-era city wall surrounding Lucca, Italy.   Ci ty wall surrounding Lucca , Italy. One of the joys in playing the ukulele is that, because of its size, you can take it with you when you travel. So far, airlines have been good about allowing us to bring our ukuleles on board, placing them in the overhead compartments. We use soft cases, so the space used is a bit more flexible than when using a hard case, although we have to be careful that they don't get smashed when a heavy roll-away is thrown in the same compartment. Caroline started playing the ukulele soon after the Covid-19 pandemic shut everything down in 2020.  I started playing the guitar again, to accompany her, but a few months later I picked up her uke and I was hooked. Wesley started soon after, followed by Mignon. Caroline begins to play the uke, March 2020. Initially, I accompanied Caroline on the rhythm guitar. By December, Caroline, Wesley, and I were all playing. In ...

Caroline and I sailed on the world's largest cruise ship, the Wonder of the Seas ( WOTS ), April 20 through May 12, 2022. The WOTS is operated by Royal Caribbean, and has  18 decks. When full, the ship has 2,300 crew members and accommodates up to 6,988 guests across its 2,867 staterooms. We were on this ship for 4 consecutive cruises (more on this later). For the first cruise, from Fort Lauderdale (FL) to Barcelona (Spain), there were "only" 3,648 passengers, which was 52% of capacity. We were on one of the last cruises in January, 2020, before the industry shut down. That was on the  Royal Caribbean's  Allure of the Seas . Two weeks later, the  crew and guests on the cruise ship  Diamond Princess  were quarantined in a Japanese port. For us, it was a lucky miss.  Now, we were on the WOTS . On February 15, 2022, Royal Caribbean lifted their mask mandate, and no masks were required for vaccinated passengers, although all crew used KN95 masks at al...