While planning the 2022 World Cruise, we came to know several people via ZOOM, who helped by putting together some presentations of the various ports.  When the 2022 World Cruise was canceled, Jon and Deborah changed plans and substituted several other Grand Voyages in lieu of doing the 2023 World.  Well, one of their cruises will be Grand South America on the Volendam, which is leaving Port Everglades at the same time as the Zuiderdam on 3 January.  

We met Jon and Deborah for lunch at the Foxy Brown restaurant (see photo above), where we had a wonderful lunch.  They have some exciting adventures ahead, which include doing The Camino de Santiago (a 500-mile hike across northern Spain)  Wow!….

Sheep Thrills is a fantastic local yarn shop in nearby Lauderhill.  Of course, we had to stop by and replenish our dwindling yarn supply.  

Kathi, aka Scrapnana, had to cancel the world cruise at the last second.  She was going to be one of our tablemates for the cruise.  We stopped by to see her in the Broward County Hospital, where she is undergoing tests but remains in great spirits.  We will miss her very much on this cruise.  

Remember the DOC DANCE?  You know – back in the day when you received that THICK ENVELOPE from your travel agent full of luggage tags, tickets, and fun brochures.   That’s been replaced by the email notification “bell” dance – not quite the same.  

The evening highlight was our successful COVID test, followed by the new COVID dance when we received the READY TO SAIL email from VeriFly.  We celebrated our results with some Tempura Ice Cream we picked up from a local Chinese restaurant.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get it home fast enough, and it turned into a Tempura milkshake – It was still good!  

Tomorrow will be our first sea day as our Grand World Voyage begins.  

Here is our YouTube Short for today – 1 minute – enjoy!