Back from Vacation

I've been out of the store for the past two weeks, leaving daughter Sarah to run it by herself while her Mother and I were out cruising in the Caribbean on the Celebrity Edge (nicest ship I have ever been on). It was WARM, which was the first requirement for our trip! It felt so good to wear a t-shirt and shorts for 12 days straight....then back into 12 degree cold when we returned. Ugh. Well, at least we are not in Boston.

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I picked up a bad cold along the way (no surprise on a cruise ship) so I was unable to go in to the store today, but will be there on Tuesday. I took THREE Covid tests - all negative - as my wife was convinced I had more than a cold.

Poor Sarah, we had several pieces of new furniture arrive the past week and all 112 lbs of her can't push that around, especially the dual recliner sofa (ship weight 525lb) but our commercial truckers helped her out and put it in the warehouse for her. This is a very physical business, most don't realize that. But she did an admirable job of taking care of things while I was out.

Welcome back. Glad to hear you enjoyed Edge; the company I work for does video work for Celebrity and Royal. What did you think of Eden? We had a good time but was certainly not for everyone.

In the past 18 years we have done 7 cruises total, two on Royal Caribbean with our kids, three on Celebrity, one on Carnival (mistake) and our very first one on Disney. The Edge was the nicest cruise ship we have ever been on and actually had decent bedding (surprise!) which is always the disappointment of most vacations. We had the Retreat, and a Sky Suite, which was well worth the extra cost.

The ship is geared towards the Assisted Living crowd, although we are in our 60’s, I think most the people on Board were in the 70 to 90 age groups. At times it was pretty sleepy and the evening entertainment a bit too mundane and loungie.

But we mainly took it just to warm up. Probably our last cruise, I think we prefer to just land in one place and strike out on our own.

I do like cruises for first or second time visitors to Europe, where you get a taste of many places you otherwise might not see. For the Caribbean, all the stops look the same, so it doesn’t really matter to go to different ports of call.

The beggars and street vendors in Cartagena Colombia were the most aggressive I have ever seen anywhere in the World. I would never return to that cesspool of a city.