Steve and Cathy's Blog

Okay, let’s start off with where we should have been, which was San Juan, Puerto Rico. When we boarded Riviera, we were advised that this port of call was canceled because, of course, of Covid and CFC and local restrictions. This did not come as a total shock, as the entire Itinerary has been in a state of flux for months. It’s a big disappointment, especially for Steve. He has friends that he works with at

THE PHOTO ABOVE IS ST. LUCIA AT SUNRISE, ONE OF THE ISLANDS WE WERE TO HAVE VISITED As we have explained in a previous post, Covid-19 has devastated the cruise industry in many ways. Even now, with the CDC graciously allowing the industry to operate again, the virus rules the waves, so to speak. Nothing we can say better describes the degree to which it impacts both the industry itself and the thousands of people at

We greet the morning looking at the beautiful sunrise that begins this post above. At 8am, we arrive at our first port of call, a small town on the north coast of the island of Hispaniola, upon which lie the nations of Haiti (on the west side) and the Dominican Republic (on the east side). The D R, as it’s commonly abbreviated, is a nation of around 12 million. Puerto Plata (‘Silver Port’) was named by

Our first full day and we are at sea all day. We awaken having been traveling all night through the Old Bahama Channel and find ourselves twelve miles off the Communist Paradise known as Cuba. As we won’t reach our first port of call, Puerta Plata Dominican Republic, until tomorrow, it’s the perfect time to catch up on the blog and to get acquainted with MS Riviera. Turns out that Steve will do the former while

Today we board at 1:30pm. We are both feeling more confident by the hour. For Cathy, who by nature has, for weeks, been overthinking every conceivable detail and what could possibly go awry, this is a relief. She is calm. Steve, on the other hand, who has tenaciously held on to the philosophy that “it will be what it will be,” can no longer keep his anxiety under wraps.  7:00am: The photo you see above is

WARNING: This post might well not be worth reading. We are writing it to recount certain mundane parts of our journey significantly affected by the pandemic and what we did to overcome its impacts. Cathy and Steve start out on the first cruise opportunity since the dreaded COVID-19 upended travel plans for the planet almost two years ago. Normally, we wouldn’t write a post about such a routine part of our journey, but COVID-19 caused us