Welcome, Donna and Pat
My wife, Donna, and I went on our first cruise, to the Caribbean, on MS Maasdam, a Holland America ship rated to carry 1,258 passengers.
On the first night, when we went to the La Fontaine dining room to have supper, we were warmly greeted at the entrance by a member of the crew who told us his name and asked us our names.
The next night when we went to dinner – and every night for the rest of the week-long cruise — he greeted us and hundreds of other passengers, by name.
What was his name?
I don’t know. He told me his name but it went in one ear and out the other.
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Do Not Leave Your Luggage Unattended
When we went on a cruise to Alaska, leaving from and returning to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, we encountered a problem.
The round trip plane tickets to Vancouver from Raleigh were expensive and, for about the same money, we could take the scenic route, literally. We could buy round-trip plane tickets to Seattle, spend the night there, take a train up the coast to Vancouver and spend the night there before boarding the ship. So that’s what we did.
On this nine-day holiday we took five suitcases, the heaviest of which weighed almost 50 pounds.
Why?
Truth be told, five suitcases was mostly my wife’s doing. Donna knew some days would be hot and some days would be cold and she planned on dressing comfortably either way.
Herding five suitcases through a busy, big city airport you’ve never laid eyes on before is not all that easy. So after we claimed our luggage we piled it up in the middle of an enormous concourse and Donna stood guard while I went looking for ground transportation. A few minutes later we were in a cab headed for our hotel. I did not discover my problem until we arrived, got out, and collected our four suitcases.
No, wait! Didn’t we have five suitcases?
Oh, yes, we did. But not now, now we had four. I had left one suitcase at the airport. I asked the cab driver to wait while I carried the four bags inside and then I asked him to take me back to the airport — and step on it, please.
When I arrived I rushed back to the last place I remembered seeing the missing suitcase. And there it was, right where I had left it an hour or so earlier, sitting unattended in the middle of that busy concourse.
Coming Friday: Unforgettable Quotes