L.C.T. (Luxury Cruise Talk) are doing the "MINT" cruise on the Mariner in November. Would like to invite you to join us. Ngaire is escorting the cruise.

11/12/04 "Mint" cruise Mariner
02/22/04 Norwegian Dream
02/15/03 Paul Gauguin
03/22/80 MS Caribe

Welcome Betty! Glad to see that your introduction finally made it! :)

And I second Jim's invitation to join us on MINT!

Masaki

And I third it Betty!

I'm playing catch-up on all the introductions that have been posted in the last few weeks.

I just wanted to say welcome to those who have recently joined LCT and introduced themselves. I've really enjoyed reading about all of you!

Betty, we are on your cruise on the second half. We board in Antiqua on April 8th and end in Barbados as well. Look forward to meeting you. My wifes name is Diana. We are boarding with our neighbors Tony and Cathy, our friends from Florida Bud and Deanna, and one of my co-workers Andrew and his wife. We have met quite a few others over on the CC boards as well. You might check out the thread on the Silversea board.

Hi, I am Jan from Maryland. Cardow (Carole's sister and Barb is our mother)
Got started cruising about 12 years ago.
I started to teach when I got of college- taught Kindergarten and now work for the State as a Licensing Specialist in Child Care Administration. Have a dog, Nicholas. Have been on RCCL, Celebrity, Princess then found Radisson in 3/2002. Found a nice group of people that have stayed in touch with from the cc board. They have given so much advise it is nice to have it before you leave. Last year went on the Navigator to Bermuda- would highly recommend it! The Navigator is now my favorite ship. This past Christmas went on the Christmas sailing on the Marnier with the whole family and had a blast. We loved St. Barts! Really enjoyed the people and ports. Just met up with someone that stayed on board the Mariner to do the South America portion and met with him the end of Feb. He kept us up to date on everything that we had missed since we had gotten off. :) I have the globe in my picture window and love to look at it. We had gotten it after we returned from the Christmas cruise. Eveyone that comes in my house goes right to it! We are going on the Diamond in May to the Med. Have not been on her yet. My first time to Europe was 5/01, and got to 5 country's. Enjoyed Europe. Have to get my refresher course in French again!! We love the Radisson way of cruising! :) Jan

Welcome to you as well, Jan!

Masaki

Jan, bienvenu!!! We are going on the Diamond to the Med this year as well, but we are doing late August Rome to Monte Carlo. Hope you have a great time. We did the Med last October on RCL, but we are looking forward to seeing it again this year without fighting the masses.

OK, exactly what IS MINT -- Mariner In November ...??? In any case, a November cruise would really, really be pushing my luck considering we're on a 17-day Silversea next month, a 4-day Diamond in April, and of course the biggie -- booking the World Cruise, I hope.

I appreciate all the invites, but if we book that World Cruise we'll be eating peanut butter sandwiches, riding bicycles, and staying home playing cards right up until Jan. 5th!!

Maybe in there somewhere I'll even WORK a little!

Betty

I suggested to my husband that we should sell our Grand Banks trawler and we could use the money to go on the World cruise. Keeping the boat up is getting a little hard for him. He said that if he sold it he would buy a Porsch Carrera. Since he already has 2 show cars I nixed that right away. I would love to go on that cruise.

GrayWolf, I am on SilverShadow late this month, Voyager in June, and MINT, November 12 LA-LA. This last cruise is just to meet people on this board and have a great time. Never thought I would think out of the itinerary "box" but this is an opportunity to meet friends I have been communicating with on-line for a long, long time. As you have the World Cruise in your future, no reason for this, since it starts a couple of months later. How I would love to do Segment 2 Aukland to Sidney!

Olivia: Have you posted your introduction?????? Joanna

Wow! What a friendly, interesting, and informative board!

I am a new poster to LCT. Although, I never registered or posted, I have read the postings of many of you on the cc board, and learned sooo much.

My husband, Larry, and I were persuaded to cruise, the first time by friends in 1997. We will do our 18th cruise on the Radisson S.
S. Mariner in May. Needless to say, we love it! We've cruised HAL, Carnival, RCCL, Celebrity, Princess, Windstar, and Radisson Seven Seas. We have now, also, discovered Ngaire, and have booked our next cruise through her.

We live on the east coast of Florida. Larry is in the hotel business. We have three grown children, and three beautiful grandchildren.

Thanks, to all of you, for sharing your wealth of knowledge!

Betty

Welcome BettyK! I hope you enjoy it here! With all your cruise experience, you'll be great at answering so many of our questions.

Welcome Betty! I just love when long time lurkers make their first post :) Just so you know, it becomes a habit thats hard to break!

Thanks Marcie.

Thanks Karen.

Just hope I can contribute.

Betty

Welcome, Betty. Looking forward to your expert advice and hearing of your experiences.

You mentioned that your husband, Larry, is in the hotel business. I am, as well. Which hotel does he work for? I'm with a hotel in So CA that is part of InterContinental Hotels Group.

OK - I just had a really nice dinner with friends, including a couple of JW Black's and I am feeling particularly talkative. Bob and I knew each other for about 2 years before our first date. We worked together at CPC International in NJ (Mazola Helmans Skippy etc) and I was very interested in him. In fact, every day I went over to his cubicle to say hi and chat etc. Bob never got it. At this time in my life, I owned a neighborhood bar with my cousin. I invited Bob to come for a drink. He did, with friends. Later, I got another job. I called Bob from my new job and asked him if he would like to meet me for a drink. He told me he could not - because it was raining. Ladies - you know that if someone (male) tells you he can't meet you for a drink because it is raining - he generally is not interested. So at that point - I gave up. He asked for my number. I wanted to know why - was he going to call me when the sun came out? No, he wanted to call me for a date. OK I gave my number thinking I would never hear from him. The following Monday, Bob called me to ask me out to dinner on Friday. I wanted to know if it rained did we have a rain date? NO we would go out regardless. Well we did, and 4 months later we were married. 25 years later I love him more than ever. Life is pretty good!
Joanne

Joanne, you really made me laugh. I guess that he didn't want to get his hair wet.

What a great story Joanne!! Guess he finally got his Nike's wet huh?

Welcome to BettyK and Joanne! Great story, Joanne! :D

Masaki

Betty and Marcie - turns out he was in the middle of a 3 weekend paycheck and couldn't afford to go out that first night and didn't want to tell me that. So of course what other excuse could he use? Makes me laugh too when I remember it.

Masaki - glad you enjoyed it too!

Joanne

Denise, Larry and his three partners own and operate several hotels, (different kinds...and
different locations) from Florida to Colorado.
Also, manage some for other owners.

I love Southern California. You are lucky to live there.

Thanks, Betty.

We are lucky to live in So. CA; however, our hearts belong to NY - our hometown.

So the LCT board is where everyone is at! Glad I found you...Little late but here is our story.....

Sandi and I (Greg) live in north San Diego County and have been married for 33 years. Our 23 year old twins graduated from college (SMU & USD)this past May 2003. We are now offically empty nesters.

Travel has been a key element to our marriage. Sandi flew 20 yrs with TWA and in which time we took full advantage of the benefits of her job and traveled the globe mainly island hopping. Additionally, I flew with her on many of her international trips. Cruising came into our lives back in 1982 when we took a 4 day athens-athens cruise on a ship which was about to be made into a reef! But it was enough exposure to get us hooked.

We bought a cruise only agency which we ran from home on a part time bases for five years furthering our commitment to cruising. Now a days, we try to mix up our travel between cruises, family vacations and speciality or destination specific trips.

For the past 13 years, Sandi has been knocking them dead as a realtor in our area and I've been in HR Management. Sandi is a child of 50 something and for me, I recently join the 60 year old group.

Only a few weeks until we depart on the Voyager canal cruise out of LA. Look forward to meeting many of you traveling on this trip.

Looking forward to meeting you on the VTC trip. We are from the San Francisco area but love San Diego. We were in Alpine right after the fire in June. Our house was hurt in a mud slide last month
but that was certainly nowhere nearly as drastic as that fire.

We'll also enjoy meeting you. We love the bay area, lived there a number of years ago but with our son being transfered to the city, I suspect we will be there more often. Daughter's company is based in SF so when she is there for meetings will be able to see both kids.

We were lucky that the winter rains were not as bad as they could have been. As a result of our hilly terraine in San Diego, flooding can be as devestating as the fires. Hope your damage was minimial.

Hi Greg & Sandi! Welcome to LCT!

Masaki

Hello everyone!
I'm the new kid (I'm doing myself a favor with 'kid') on the block and am very grateful to Judy for directing me to this wonderful website.
My name is Barbara, my husband Volker and I cruised on the Mariner last summer to Alaska to celebrate our youngest son's high school graduation (we have 5 boys) and apparently we created a monster since before we left the ship he put down a deposit on another cruise (which we're taking in the baltics with judy in august) and he swears he's going to do it again so that we cruise next year with radisson too. no complaints here! I have a pin that one of my son's gave me as a gift around the end of october, it says 'nothing can scare me, I have kids!' Now watch those famous last words come back to bite me! :)
My husband was a divisonal and subsequently general manager for Bayer AG in Latinamerica and now retired, we're living in Florida. Golf is big on the agenda and of course a love for traveling.
The wealth of information and the warmth of the posters on this website is like a family, very inviting and we're grateful now to form part of this family. And speaking of family, I know this sounds lame but we have a black bunny, Spike, who has the run of the house, (he's litter trained) who knew one could so totally fall in love with a bunny! We can't have a dog or cat since we live on a golf course with an open back yard (outside of the lanai) and gators that come and go in the pond out back.
I hope I can contribute in some small way to this site and perhaps can help someone with info on any trip to the Tampa Bay area and to some extent with Orlando! (or Guatemala or Chile where we lived many years.)

Let me be the 1st to say welcome to the LCT Barbara.
Where is Oldsmar, FL?

Thank you Kimmi for your warm welcome!
Oldsmar is in the Tampa Bay-Clearwater-St. Petersburg area, precisely at the northern tip of Tampa Bay and just 15 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. It was founded by Eli Ransom Olds, the inventor of the Oldsmobile and REO cars. He bought almost 40,000 acres here in 1913 for $400,000.00 at the time and used engineers and surveyors from Boston to design a city modeled on Washington D.C. with tree-lined boulevards leading from the bay to downtown. The streets were originally paved with oyster shells but over the years most of that has become buried under the sand. Olds spent $100,000.00 drilling for oil here but only found water. He had over 4.5 million dollars invested here by 1923 but when he realized Oldsmar wasn't growing as he anticipated, he started liquidating his assets. The population was only 200 when he left, when we arrived almost 7 years ago it was about 10,000. Oldsmar has a small town feel with a feeling of space in a very densely populated county. We love it here, it's a real treasure!

Hi Barbara:

I had a french lop many many years ago, also litter trained! Welcome to the boards.

R

Hello Robert;

Spike is a dwarf rabbit and thinks of himself as very 'macho'. My husband considers bunnies as outside animals, says that they're not pets like a dog that can play with you and defend you so it drives him nuts that Spike has the run of the house.
So it was really funny the other day when we were having breakfast that Spike was throwing a fit, thumping his back paw and glaring at the front door. I finally looked up and saw that a stranger was walking away from the door and Spike had been trying to let us know. (they had dropped off our new telephone book on the porch.) The greatest part was where Spike backed up so he could stare my husband down, as if too say, 'okay, wise***. Who says we can't protect our owners?' My husband gives him more respect now!
Thanks for the welcome to the boards. Sounds like you're coming our way for a cruise!

Welcome Barbara, I love seeing all these new faces! You are so lucky to have lived in so many exotic locales!

Hi Karen;

I got such a kick out of your 'live long and prosper.' Our son, Christoph is a huge star trek fanatic, his promised land is the Star Trek Experience in the Las Vegas Hilton where we have to go at least once a year and he wheels and deals star trek props online too. And of course we have to go to the star trek conventions each year in tampa and orlando. Might we see you there? Thanks for the welcome!

I have been to one Star Trek convention ...I tried to type that very quietly ;) It was an experience, I can say! Everyone was dressed as a Klingon or a Vulcan except me. Of course, I got interviewed by our local TV station and I had to indure the teasing from my friends the next day :rolleyes:

I forgot to mention, you can tell your son that I went as Yeoman Janice Rand to a Halloween party last year. Your son might be one of the few people on earth that would appreciate that :)

Welcome Barbara! Spike sounds adoreable! I'm sure your Baltics cruise with Judy and John in August will be fabulous!

Well, east coast, yes, but in the north! It's been years since my travels have taken me to FL. My mom and dad met at the Coconut Grove a billion years ago. Or so I'm told...

Greetings! We found Cruise Critic about 18 months ago, prior to our first RSSC Cruise, and are delighted to find LCT.

I am an old, native-born Californian. Born and raised in Orange. Bob was born in Idaho, moved to San Francisco at 6 weeks of age. His dad was stationed on Angel Island, and there was no dependent housing, or he would have been born in Calif. as well.

Bob's family moved to Juneau, Alaska, in 1953. They moved to Nome in 1958, Fairbanks in 1960,
and Anchorage in 1963. He went thru the 9.4 earthquake in 1964.

I went to Santa Rosa J.C., then moved back to Orange. When they tore down my favorite orange grove to put up an apartment complex, I moved to Alaska.

Bob worked in a women's clothing store in Anchorage, just around the corner from the travel agency I worked in. We were acquaintences for four years before he asked me out! Nine months later, we were married. It will be 29years on May 23.

We have one son, age 23.

Our first cruise together was in 1977, on the old Pacific Princess. We spent two weeks in Mexico with friends. Unbeknownst to Bob, I called Princess before we left and asked to sail from
Mazatlan to Los Angeles. We didn't find out until the day before sailing that we would be able to join the ship. Was he surprised!

We're Platinum on Princess, have sailed with Crystal, Carnival, RCCL, Seabourn, HAL, NCL, RSSC, and Temptress. We have enjoyed all of our cruises. Temptress was the most interesting -- a "soft" adventure cruise up and down the coast of Costa Rica. Only 15 pax, plus a film crew of 4. Talk about getting to know your fellow passengers!

My favorite cruise was a transAtlantic on Royal Princess. 10 Days, no ports!! Get up, eat breakfast, nap, eat lunch, nap, do some cross stitching or reading, eat dinner, dance, and sleep. Heaven!!!

Favorite ships are RSSC Navigator, Seabourn Sun,
and Royal Princess.

We moved back to Calif. ten years ago to be closer to our ever-shrinking family. We are in the third town north of the Golden Gate Bridge.


We did a Panama Canal cruise last March on RSSC Navigator to celebrate our aunt's 90th birthday,
and are taking her on the Navigator in May for our anniversary.

Next May we want to do something in Europe for our 30th anniversary, hopefully British Isles to Scandinavia.

I worked for Korean Air for 20 years in Anchorage. They offered a "buyout" and I took it when we moved back to Calif. Went to United, and when my job was moved to Chicago last year, I took a furlough.

Bob is self-employed, so we've been able to get away for some cruises.

I've decided I'm really tired of short cruises, and after our 7 day Bermuda, would prefer to stick with 10 days or more. Emphasis on "more."

Happy Cruising!