Last day on the Jade

We’ve been on the Jade for 20 days …tomorrow we disembark and head back for the real world. Some folks might say that heading back to retirement is not the real world either, but that’s as real as my world gets. For the last 20 days we’ve had sketchy news, so please don’t ask me about the stimulus plan or the state of the economy. I don’t know what the market has been doing, nor do I know how Mr. Obama is doing in the polls. We do get news on the ship, but we get BBC or Fox, but “news” does not seem to be their main agenda. And at 40 cents or more per minute on a painfully slow “high speed network,” neither of us have spent time surfing the web to find out what is going on. Living in this type of oblivion is interesting at first, yet after a while, there’s a hankering for some news about my little corner of the world.

Did I forget to mention that life on the Jade is easy? As with any cruise, the hardest part is getting to the ship and finding your stateroom/cabin. After that, it’s easy. Go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, get some exercise, do some reading, take a shore excursion, see the evening show, enjoy the sunshine, attend a port talk or lecture, listen to music, sip a cool drink, dance, relax at the spa, swim in the pools and soak in the hot-tubs, and in your spare time you can rest and unwind. Cruising is nice if you like those things.

This trip we had relatively nice weather. There were a few days when it was too cold to enjoy the outdoors and one day was downright nasty, even for someone like me who has taken 16 cruises in 2 years. The seas were rough and the safest place to be was low and mid-ships. The poor folks in the fancy-dancy owner’s suites on the 14th deck were getting more than they bargained for as the ship rocked, rolled, swayed and creaked for 20+ hours.

It’s always hard to recall all the highlights of a cruise, but I’ll try. In Athens, we met our taxi driver from our last trip there, and he took us on a tour of some special places which was fun. Ephesus was incredible. While we had a rainy day with some spitting snow no less, the ruins were wonderful and the history is mesmerizing. The 3 islands of Malta, Grand Canary and Madeira were wonderful, as I wrote about before. Lastly, Malaga, Spain with the Alcazaba and Gibralfaro Castile, the fortresses that overlook the ancient Moorish city on the Costa del Sol, were fascinating. We will return to Malaga in November to find out more.

The packing is done. We will have 2 more meals on the ship before we disembark tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning. It will take us 2 days to get home as we will overnight in Munich. We’re both ready for the long flights back to our world.