Saturday Dec 6, 2025
Hi Gang! Happy December! Yep, the Wandering Italian and his co-pilot Kathy are off on another adventure! This time it’s a quick 7 day trip to the Caribbean to get away from the cold. We got a little snow/ice in the Carolinas yesterday and my friends and family in Pittsburgh have already gotten a bunch of snow. So Hello Winter!
Since my last update, I’ve had some fun experiences. My son and I went on a cruise together and that was a blast! Then last weekend Kathy and I hosted all my kids, grandkids and grand dogs at my place to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and my oldest daughter’s birthday. It was so much fun! We do the combined celebration since everyone’s all spread out. I included a pic of the whole crew!
This cruise is two fold… like I said, to get away from the cold but also to get a base tan and get our skin prepared for our 154 day around the world cruise in January! We stay fairly close to the equator on that one so it will be warm all of the cruise. Still pinching myself about what an awesome experience that will be!
This cruise we’re back on Holland America on the Zuiderdam, which is the ship we took last summer on our 21 day Voyage of the Vikings cruise. We like the ship and all the great live music they have (and the food ain’t bad either!).
We risked it and flew in today, the day of the cruise, and we’ll fly back the following Sat 12/13. We had no problem with our flight to Miami and they had one seat upgrade to First Class and the amazing Kathy gave it to me! (But I think I gave her the last upgrade to Europe!).
We then grabbed an Uber to the ship and got there about 1:30 PM. That’s when the craziness started! The ship had just finished a dry dock (maintenance) and they weren’t letting anyone on until all the maintenance workers were off. So we waited for 2 hours and finally boarded at 3:30. As I always say, this ain’t no Regent Seven Seas! But hey, it’s 84 degrees and sunny so who’s to complain! And a bonus is the ship is decorated for Christmas and all the crew were wearing Santa hats! Ho Ho Ho!!
After boarding, we had lunch, took a tour of the ship to get re-acclimated, and got to our room and started unpacking and getting settled. One of the other cool things about this trip is we got a room with a rear facing balcony. We had one on our first Antarctica cruise and really enjoy the wide open views off the back looking over the ship’s wake. Can’t beat it!
I’ll post another update tonight after dinner. Happy Saturday to all!
The Wandering Italian 