CruiseWorld 2011 - What a Show!

Wow! I just returned from an information packed 4-days at CruiseWorld 2011 in Ft. Lauderdale.  It was so tempting to keep driving past FLL to Key Biscayne, my home of 40 years (I moved to Jacksonville, FL last week), but in a heretofore undiscovered burst of discipline, I headed to the Broward County Convention Center instead.

The Convention Center is enormous (600,000 square feet) and Cruise World only took up part of it, but I know I walked several miles in my gray suede pumps on day one.  I'll  spare you any gory pictures, but the first day blisters were enormous and painful.  A heartfelt thank you goes out to Joanie Ogg for the blister bandages!  By the end of the day I felt like there were nails being pounded into my little toes with every step.  I limped home to my brother's house, my head full of new ideas, but suffering from "de agony of de feet".

With Diane Churchy-Horan of AMAWaterways

In addition to gathering tons of information and about 40 lbs of new brochures, I also made some great contacts at the convention.  Here I am with Diane Churchy-Horan of AMA Waterways, one of the premier river cruise lines in Europe.  Having determined to increase my focus on river cruises in the coming year I was really glad to finally meet Diane and hope to get to know her well. AMA Waterways sails the rivers of Europe, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia and beginning in June 2012... Africa!   Imagine taking an African Safari & Wildlife Cruise ... this really sounds over-the-top!  Check out the MS Zambizi Queen - what more could one ask?

I also got to know Eric Molina of Viking River Cruises, probably the best known and most sailed river cruise ships in the world.  Like AMA Waterways, Viking River Cruises offers classical Danube, Rhine & Volga river cruises, but they also have cruises in China & SE Asia; not to mention the great cruises down the Nile in Egypt.  My clients who have sailed with Viking River Cruises have invariably come back to me with rave reviews, I wish I could have recorded them for you to hear.

With Eric Molina - Viking River Cruises

BUT ... speaking of recording testimonials so that other people can listen to them, apparently there is a free program on the internet that allows you to do just that and add it to your web site (one of the amazing internet offerings that various seminars revealed to me this week).  It's going to take awhile to figure out all the new technology I heard about - it seriously has my head swimming - but I'm going to stop blogging now and get started on one or two of the new items on my three page "To Do & To Learn" list!

Next up - touring the Norwegian Epic!