En Route To Southampton, UK

Today is our last day at sea before we arrive at our final destination, Southampton, United Kingdom. We hope that through this Blog you have enjoyed living through our 109 day World Cruise adventure.

As we have mentioned, the World Cruise has exceeded our expectations in everyway possible. The on-board cruise experience has been outstanding from the food, to the on board activities, such as the lectures, to the outstanding service, to the terrific entertainment, to the World Games and to the various special events that have been held throughout the cruise.

We have visited so many interesting places in such a short period of time. Some of these places we will remember for the rest of our lives. This includes sailing through the Panama Canal and the magical days of sailing around Antarctica and experiencing all of the beauty of this truly unique area of the world. We will remember the magical evening we had at the Tango Show in Buenos Aires and the warmth and friendliness of the people. We will remember the unspoiled character and charm of St. Helena and the priceless expressions on each of the children’s faces when they sang for us on board the ship. We will remember the poverty that we saw in certain nations, including Kenya, which makes us even more appreciative of the opportunities that we have enjoyed over the years. We hope that over time similar opportunities will expand to those in need around the world. We will remember how touched and moved we were when visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Israel along with the timing of our visit to the Middle East. We will remember visiting important historical sites such as Ephesus and Pompeii in the evening and other sites such as Petra. And, in the end, we will remember how friendly most of the people were whom we had the chance to talk with in the countries we visited. Like us, the majority of the people take great pride in their respective nations.

We will also remember the enormous sense of community that we experienced throughout this adventure between passengers and crew. We can best compare this to living in a small community at home where everyone knows one another. Each day we would talk with certain passengers at breakfast, which would be similar to meeting at a small town coffee shop. On a typical day we would see the Rabbi and his wife and the Minster and his wife and talk with them often, which is something that one might experience in a small community. Each day, we would talk with one or two passengers during our morning workout and we would sit with the same four to six passengers at most of the receptions that occurred throughout the cruise. We would learn about the interests and backgrounds of many of the crew and given many of their ages it was similar to learning about the children of friends that we might know in a small town community. There would be other passengers we would see on a daily basis and we would look forward to our talks with them. And, the good news is that we didn’t depend on television as our source of information or entertainment. Rather much of our enjoyment came from seeing and talking with our fellow passengers and crew throughout each day. In the end, it has been the people that have made this World Cruise so unique and very special to us.

We are posting this earlier than normal today as we have some last minute things to get done this evening. We wanted to share with you what we did on our final day on-board the Crystal Serenity.

We awoke early and had a nice breakfast on the Lido Café. We spoke with one other couple that we had the pleasure of talking with almost every morning at the Lido Café. We went to the Fitness Center for our last workout of the cruise and we chatted with the wife of the Computer University instructor who we have come to know very well and whom we have seen and spoken with each morning of the World Cruise. After our workout, we went to the British Immigration Inspection. We received our passports back and met with the inspectors to have them inspected. The good news is that by getting this out of the way today it will speed up the clearance of the ship tomorrow morning, which will allow us to get off the ship at an early hour and avoid having to deal with this item in the morning.

Later in the morning, we went to the final presentation given by former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater. The topic of his presentation was “Presidential Election 2008”. He gave an overview of the major candidates in each party who are seeking the Presidency along with his thoughts on their chances. He also provided some additional comments about the upcoming election and then provided an opportunity for questions and answers from the audience.

After this presentation we went to a special showing of the 2007 World Cruise Video. There was hardly a dry eye in the audience. This video clearly captured so many of the magical moments from our World Cruise Adventure and brought back wonderful memories of this trip. Each of us will receive a copy of this DVD as a keepsake from this adventure and we look forward to showing it to friends and family.

Afterwards, we went to the Main Dining Room for lunch and ate with the Computer University Instructor and his lovely wife. We had a wonderful lunch and conversation.

We spend the remainder of the afternoon packing and weighing all of our luggage as we get ready to disembark the ship tomorrow morning.

This evening we will have dinner in the Silk Road Specialty Restaurant.

Keith & Anne Marie