Adjustments ...

As all of you know, Mrs. F and I are avid cruisers. In July, I alerted you to a trip we booked for next October, transatlantic from Rome to NYC. Well, sometimes things go awry. It seems Holland America changed the itinerary after we booked (not a rare occurrence in the cruise industry), enough to give us second thoughts (they changed a few ports, dropped others, including ending up in NY, switching to Ft. Lauderdale). We canceled it and began shopping for something else.

What we found was a Med cruise (Amsterdam to Rome) aboard Holland America's Prinsendam. Though we're still flying to and from Europe, the ports and ship (Prinsendam is tiny and intimate) make it worth the hassle.



During that search, we came across another we already booked for March. It runs 13 days from New York to the Panama Canal and back, aboard Cunard's Queen Mary 2, an old friend from our London/Transatlantic trip in '04.



If you feel like joining us on either, email me and I'll give you booking details and hook you up with our travel agent (who's just opened her own office).

Disclaimer: As always, I point out these cruises and invite you along because they are different from the run-of-the mill Caribbean, Mexico, or Alaska fare and I feel the itineraries and ships reflect the true spirit and tradition of cruising. They are refined elegance. If you want a party boat, call Carnival or NCL. Also, I'm not a cruise director or tour guide. I'll be on vacation too and I'm not into babysitting or hand holding, though I am always more than happy to meet a reader over a drink or two (which I've done more than once in the past) and share my experience with the ships and ports. Click pics to embiggen.