Our fellow cruisers – (and pictures of a few critters we have seen)

I admit it, I am an eavesdropper. I figure if you talk loudly enough in public for me to hear you, you must not care too much about being overheard. As I have mentioned before, this is a diverse and interesting collection of folks. Some couples have been married 60 years; some are working on their 3rd or 4th marriage. You hear some people that you think might be on the cusp of discarding their spouse or roommate overboard before the cruise ends. Some are on this cruise via a divorce settlement. While at the piano bar one evening, I overheard a group of sweet looking older ladies talking, while enjoying their glass of wine. They were recapping past marriages. One lady had several exes that she was discussing in some detail. She said, “Well, Albert was my first husband. About the only good thing I can say about Albert is he taught me housekeeping – when I divorced Eugene years later, I knew how to keep the house.” The conversations floating around the piano bar are always fun. Another day at breakfast, two guys were talking over a cup of coffee. One guy commented, “I spoke to your wife after the port lecture yesterday”. To which the other guy dryly replied, “Really, I haven’t spoken to her in years - I didn’t want to interrupt her”. (She is a real talker.) He said it so deadpan I wasn’t absolutely sure if he was joking. I think one of my favorite exchanges was - a man at the lunch table was relating a particularly long winded story that droned on and on and seemed to be never ending – when another guy at the table asked, “Does this train of conversation have a caboose?” It broke up the whole table as everyone was wondering the same thing. I am sure these aren’t even original lines, but they gave me a laugh. I will say I have enjoyed the passengers – even the curmudgeons take cranky to new heights. We have one couple that spend much of their time wondering throughout the ship in their matching bathrobes. They glide along as if dancing to music only they can hear. The passengers may be funny, grouchy, or outlandish, but few are dull – well, there was that one guest speaker.