January 19, 2014. Miami, Florida. The Norwegian Star.

This afternoon we board The Norwegian Star. We will be living in cabin 8032, our original cabin. Our upgrade is for The Queen Elizabeth, the Cunard Line that will take us from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand. I just misunderstood the information but it got straightened out and now I am even more pleased as the Queen Elizabeth cruise will be longer than through the Panama Canal and the ship is more elegant. I did laugh at myself when I finally figured it out. It is interesting how your mind plays tricks on you when you assume the facts. I was only thinking Norwegian Star even though the deck plans for our new cabin clearly stated Cunard on the web site sent to us by the agent. But today we will board. The day is beautiful but cold. Miami is clearly not used to this chilly weather. Our room is still uncomfortable unless in bed. Even then, in the middle of the night I found two extra blankets to keep us warm. It has been my observation that the more you pay for a hotel, the less you get. The internet signal is spotty. No breakfast is free. The TV in our room would not give us any channel above 22 so we called the maintenance man who came to check and found that it was probably the TV, which I assumed he would replace. After returning from dinner and discovering that the TV was still not correct, I called again and finally, after asking to speak to the manager, a new TV appeared and it worked, so I was able to watch college basketball and the Australian Open tennis. We have been away from our home in Jackson for 3 weeks. By the time we return we will have been gone for 23 weeks. I am checking off the weeks. So far, all has gone well and the plans have worked out. We have learned things about Florida that we did not know and we enjoyed our two weeks with Dave and Irene. Of course, the 60th cruise started off the whole idea and was a wonderful start. But now, here we launch out today, with the goal being New Zealand and Gill. We are ready.