Around The World in 114 Days :: A Global Cruise Blog by Diane & John

I met the St. John’s many years ago on a Sitmar Cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Because we’re all native Californians, about the same age, and share a wicked sense of humor, we became fast friends and are still in touch decades later. They’ve attended my wedding and I’ve attended their daughter’s.

John and Diane recently completed an around-the-world cruise on the MS Amsterdam. You can read their daily adventures on their Holland American Line “Golden Anniversary Odyssey” at this link from Cruise Critic. Below you can read their first entry from last December in Fort Lauderdale…

John and Diane’s Amazing Round the World Adventure
We’ve talked about it, we’ve planned for it, and we’ve packed for it, but now we’re about to begin it: our 114-day round the world cruise on the MS Amsterdam. We’ll fly to Ft. Lauderdale on January 1 and sail on January 4.

For those of you who don’t know us, we’re John and Diane, retired English teachers, from Central California. We’ve been sailing fans since 1964, when we celebrated our first anniversary with a crossing from San Francisco to Honolulu. Since then, we’ve sailed (again) to Hawaii, to the South Pacific, to Mexico, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. However, we’ve never gone “all the way around,” so here we are! This is a grand way to see many of the places that have been on our “to see” list for a very long time.

This cruise is Holland America Line’s “Golden Anniversary Odyssey,” celebrating their 50th year of round the world cruises. We’ll visit Grand Cayman, Costa Rica, Panama, French Polynesia, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin), Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth), Bali, Brunei, Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, India (Madras and Bombay), Oman, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Libya (maybe), Gibraltar, Portugal, Madeira, Bermuda, New York and, on April 27, Ft. Lauderdale again.