It’s New Year’s Eve!!

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2024 was quite a year. A couple of low-key sea days to end it meant that I was able to do a bit of summarizing and reflecting, in the times between glorious meals and onboard events and entertainment.

Our “year-end letter”, if we did one, would look more like an itinerary than a newsletter.

In January we were in Mexico and Hawaii on an almost month long Holland America Cruise.

For the month of February, we lived in the Mission Hills area of San Diego and got to thoroughly explore Balboa Park.

March saw us fulfilling some of our required 153 annual days in Canada, renting a first-floor flat in Maple Ridge BC near our grandkids.

In April we took a 16 day transatlantic cruise on the Diamond Princess to see the ABBA holographic show in London England, returning to BC for another fix of grandson hugs. Because long stretches in a single place make me antsy, by June I “needed” to pop out of province briefly, so we took an escorted land tour of Italy’s “Eternal Cities”.

For the last 2 weeks of July, we returned to our former “home base” of Toronto, Ontario to reconnect with our eldest son and as many of our Ontario friends and relatives as possible, before returning to BC for the rest of the summer and into the fall.

After celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, toward the end of October we boarded a Holland America ship for a 16 day repositioning cruise from Vancouver to Fort Lauderdale, completing our second lifetime transit of the Panama Canal … and of course on December 19th we joined the Viking Sky for this second World Cruise and third Panama Canal transit.

This is absolutely and exactly what we hoped our “homeless” (nomadic) retirement years would be like, and it is well worth celebrating.

There are two separate “parties” on the ship tonight: a low key event in the atrium with acoustic classical music on the grand piano, and by the string duo, and a more traditional party on the pool deck with the band, the Viking vocalists, and a dance floor under the stars. Bubbles will be flowing in both locations.

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Ted and I – and quite a few others on the ship – are a little bit stuffy and as of about noon today I have laryngitis , so we popped only briefly into the main celebration, but decided not to stay for kisses and hugs and the singing of Auld Lang Syne (not that I could) – just in case we’ve got something contagious. I was disappointed, because I’d been really looking forward to dressing up, dancing, and welcoming in the new year at midnight, but we’ve got to be responsible adults (I guess).

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Instead, we rang in the new year with just one other couple from our 21/22 world cruise, the Webers, in the atrium. Honestly, that was more our style anyway.

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2025 shows no signs of being less filled with travel.

We’ll be here on the Sky, seeing new (to us) parts the world, until May when we disembark in London. By then it will be time to re-establish our residency requirements in BC, which we’re doing by renting a coach house in Vancouver for the balance of the year.

We certainly won’t be staying put for more than our required number of days, though. Plans are already in place, and deposits paid, for two weeks in Germany in June, an ocean cruise to Alaska and another to Scandinavia in July, a ten day tour of Vancouver Island in August, and a Nile River cruise at the end of November.

Beyond that, 2 months in New Zealand to kick off 2026 are also in the works.

But first, New Year’s Day, and looking forward to what Viking has in store for us.

HAPPY 2025 EVERYONE!!!