We have now been home for almost six days from our World Cruise Adventure. We are all settled in at home having unpacked, gone through the mail and taken care of a variety of items that we needed to get done our first week back from this adventure.
We began our World Cruise Adventure in Los Angeles, California and concluded our journey in Southampton, England. We visited a total of 45 ports of call, in 22 different countries, over a span of 108 days. Amazingly, we traveled almost 31,000 nautical miles or the equivalent of almost 36,000 land miles.
The diversity of what we saw of this beautiful world we all live in is hard to put into words. Our adventure took us to sparesly populated areas as well as to large cities. We visited places where the local economies are flourishing as well as ports of call that have major economic issues to contend with. We saw people living in luxury and also saw people living in poverty. We spoke with highly educated people and we also met people who had little to no education to speak of. We visited some very prestine locations whose land was covered with beautiful greenery and magnificent flowers of all different colors and shapes, while we also visited places whose land was baron. We visited places that are essentially ruled by dictatorships and likewise we visited places where the government had little control on the daily lives of its people. We visited places where the United States dollar still seems to have strong buying power and we visited other places where the dollar is quite weak. We visited places with a very long history and with many historical sites still in place, and we also visited places that have very little history to speak of but are the new modern cities of this century.
There is so much to see in the world. For us, taking a cruise allows us to see lots of places in a relatively short amount of time while traveling in a floating resort. We could not imagine seeing all of the places we did by land/air. While we do not always have a lot of time to spend in any given port and by and large the areas of a particular area we see are close to the water vs. being inland, a cruise does give us a high level overview of so many places. If we want depth, then we can either book an overland excursion through the cruise line, or we can come back another time either as part of a pre or post cruise or on a land vacation.
We also know that there is so much to learn about and see in our world. While we have to be careful not to draw too many conclusions about a particular port, city or country in the world based on seeing it for such a short amount of time, our visits do provide us with a nice initial overview and a nice foundation to build from.
Throughout this adventure we have had the opportunity to see first hand so many different places around the world in which we live on, and to make memories that will last a lifetime. At the same time, we have lived this journey with both passengers and crew alike and built some very strong relationships with others. Seeing all we have over during both this years and last years world cruise has certainly made us more well rounded and has also made us appreciate even more the opportunities that each of us had throughout our lifetime.
The Crystal Serenity has truly been our home over the past several months. Many times when we came back to the ship from a long day in port, we like many of our other world cruise travelers would say we're home. Clearly, the ship was our home (or atleast our temporary home) for these 108 days. We look forward to visiting our home away from home (both the Crystal Serentity and the Crystal Symphony) in the future and are very appeciative for the opportunity that we have to see the world by sea.
Keith & Anne Marie
