I am delighted to welcome this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, Laura Pedlar, creator of Cruise Lifestyle Blog. I got to know Laura a few years ago when I featured Cruise Lifestyle in my second cruising book, Cruising Interrupted amzn.to/3seFU8y, in a section called “Bloggers: Cruise Community Champions.


When I started writing Laura’s story she was coming off a great 2019–a year of firsts. Laura had experienced her first river cruise, which was on AmaWaterways AmaMagna on the Danube; her first time on an inaugural cruise, the launch of Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas with an amazing itinerary leaving from Barcelona, through the Suez Canal, to Dubai; and, she attended her first UK Cruise Lines International Association Conference, an indication that you have arrived as a UK cruise influencer. Perhaps most importantly it was Laura’s first year hosting Cruise Hour, as that is how I met her. Cruise Hour is a weekly online gathering of cruise enthusiasts who discuss fun topics about cruising including cuisine, fun things to do, excursions, destinations, etc. I happened upon Cruise Hour on Twitter and started posting responses to the fun questions posed by Laura, often proudly accompanying my responses with cruise photos, typically of my cruising partner granddaughter. I kind of thought Cruise Hour was a catchy Twitter name—and didn’t realize it referred to an actual hour! I was fairly new to social media, so I didn’t “get” live events early on. Despite being named Cruise Hour, I thought it was just an ongoing thread about various cruise topics. It took me a while to notice that my responses tended to be many hours, even days, after the Cruise Hour discussion ended and the participants had long moved on to other parts of social media, or were asleep—Laura was hosting the discussion group UK, a six-hour time difference from me in Florida! I told Laura that story when I was interviewing her for Cruising Interrupted, and she laughed, assuring me that others would respond even later than I used to. (I think she was trying to make me feel not so “duh.”)


Laura continued that torrid pace of cruise highlights into 2020 with a January two-week Southern Caribbean cruise on P&O Britannia to Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Vincent and Bonaire. Then the pandemic happened….
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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Steph, the creator of one of the top cruise blogs from the United Kingdom, Cruise With Amber. Steph and Cruise With Amber were featured in my new release The Joy of Cruising Again in a section called Blogger, Vloggers, and Content Creators. Cruise With Amber was created by Steph just at the beginning of 2020. So, like me, publishing a cruising-themed book, Cruising Interrupted, as the pandemic set in, as well as several other content creators, I featured in my new book, Steph presented her brand, Cruise With Amber, to the cruise world as cruising was shutting down. Didn’t stop her though! 

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Steph sailed her first cruise as an adult, immediately became hooked, and went on to experience milestone after milestone on cruises—got engaged on P&O Aurora, then returned to honeymoon on the same ship the following year; Steph and her husband Neil celebrated their 10th anniversary on P&O Britannia, along with their kids who were on their first cruise. Steph went all out celebrating on that cruise with a huge suite and balcony; unfortunately it set an expectation on her kids first cruise that every subsequent cruise would come with a butler! At least the kids got hooked on cruising right away, and that was very important to Steph. And since, the kids, Steph and her husband have celebrated a number of milestones on the ocean.

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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Jorge Solano. I’ve previously featured a Cruise Director, Holland America Line’s former top CD Jason Venner on episode #26. And, I have featured a cruise ship comedian, Carnival’s thought-provoking, hilarious Billy D. Washington on episode #8.


Jorge Solano can represent the perspective of both a Cruise Director and a stand-up comedian! He was a popular Cruise Director for Carnival Cruise Line for 10 years, and for over 35 years, he has been a stand-up comedian performing at comedy clubs, venues, and cruise ships worldwide. Jorge also appears often in and around his native Miami, a hotbed for comedy that I recall fondly from my days in South Florida. It was fun researching Jorge—as often his time as a Cruise Director would turn up in the searches and it was fun reading about cruises in the early 2000s. One said, “Carnival Triumph guests stop him to shake his hand and to tell him how much they enjoyed his shore excursion talk, his debarkation talk, but mostly how much they liked his introductions to the shows in Triumph’s theater. ‘You were much funnier than the comedian,’ they tell him, ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a professional comedian?’ Unbeknownst to the passengers, at the time Jorge was a professional comedian with many years of experience."


Comedy led Jorge to Carnival. While working the comedy club circuit he began to do guest performances on Carnival. The story of his introduction to working on cruise ships is both fascinating and hilarious. When Jorge heard Carnival was looking for Cruise Directors capable of performing an act, he pursued a new career that turned out to be successful—lasting 10 years—and helped establish Jorge as a comedy star. 


After a stint as Brand Manager of Carnival's Punchliners comedy club brand, Jorge transitioned to solely performing on Carnival ships and headlining other venues. He shares his poignant family story, and special friendships developed with a diverse set of individuals he met on cruises, that are just as moving to listen to. And throughout, Jorge is hilarious!

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This week I am delighted to welcome to The Joy of Cruising Podcast Dave Monk, the embodiment of the blog Shipmonk.Dave Monk is an award-winning cruise blogger and journalist who has written for the UK’s major publications. Dave created Shipmonk, the blog that cruise line executives, travel media, and passionate cruisers visit for up-to-date cruise industry news, ship reviews, and features. I wrote about Dave in the just-released The Joy of Cruising Again amzn.to/3lAfyON in a section called “The Cruise Communicators.”

Dave is a long-tenured UK professional journalist, and more recently the most prolific and keenly read cruise reporter on UK social media. Dave has been a journalist for over 40 years. In 2013, while still working at the newspaper Metro, Dave decided to establish a cruise blog, Shipmonk. In 2016 he was granted early retirement, which enabled him to pursue cruise writing in earnest. Now he was able to go on more cruises and to write about them at Shipmonk. He also began writing regularly for World of Cruising magazine, and travel writing for the Daily Mirror and Express, and then for the Daily Telegraph.
 
With 100 sailings, Dave has experienced an incredible diversity of cruises—from four-passenger motor yachts to the biggest cruise ships in the world. His favorite destination is Alaska, although Dave also loves the Norwegian fjords and the Caribbean islands. He cruises so much he has to turn down what would be bucket list sailing for the rest of us—like the Galapagos twice!

‘Any day at sea is better than a day in the office’—that’s the signature adage of the late John Honeywell, aka Captain Greybeard, iconic United Kingdom journalist, and cruise writer. It was the epigraph, the opening quote, to my first cruise book The Joy of Cruising. I thought it perfectly captured the essence of the book—the joy of cruising. I repeated it at the beginning of Dave’s feature in The Joy of Cruising Again because John Honeywell was a great friend and former colleague of Dave. Dave is an iconic UK journalist and cruise writer in his own right. And Captain Greybeard’s quote perfectly captures the essence of Dave’s story. He loves what he does—cruising and writing about it.

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On this bonus episode of The Joy of Cruising Podcast , I am delighted to welcome back to David & Stephanie, a married couple that performs as an intimate musical duo—David plays the guitar and sings, and Stephanie sings. In October of 2022, David & Stephanie attained their longtime goal of their first contract as cruise ship performers. They were assigned to Carnival Elation. They vlogged their experience and in watching, it was clear to me they were living their dream. Particularly touching was when David’s young son Ben, and David’s mother joined them for a week on the ship, and both were adopted by David & Stephanie‘s crew mates.

David & Stephanie recently completed their first contract as cruise ship performers on the relatively small, older but highly regarded in terms of guest experience, Carnival Elation. They just embarked on their new contract, on a different brand—Norwegian Cruise Line—on one of the world’s most anticipated new cruise ships, the amazing NCL Viva. Currently traveling around the Mediterranean, David & Stephanie are having the time of their life, seeing the world, enjoying the beaches, and doing what they love—playing music. The best is yet to come. David’s son and mom will be joining NCL Viva for a Thanksgiving transatlantic journey!

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​"I’m Nick, and you guys are the Dream Team." One of the several catchlines belonging to our precocious guest. I am delighted to welcome this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast ,16-year-old Nicholas Jackson, aka Nick Jay. Nick Jay is a content creator whose popular YouTube channel, and accompanying Instagram account Travels With Nick, mainly features Carnival Cruise Line content, sprinkled with content featuring Galveston, Texas hotels and cruise port. Galveston is close to Houston, where Nick was born and lives with his parents Nathan, Trecia, and older brother Nate. In a section called “Cruising’s Young and Restless, I wrote about Travels With Nick in the just-released The Joy of Cruising Again amzn.to/3lAfyON.
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A couple of things of note set Nick Jay apart from his fellow cruise content creators. One, of course, is age. Nick was 15 when I interviewed him—along with his parents—for his feature in The Joy of Cruising Again. The other, well-known to Nick Jay’s fans and followers, is his plan and desire to become a Carnival Cruise Director. That theme runs throughout his videos and posts. As you know, some established cruise directors have a staunch following who even influence cruises that people book. Long before Nick Jay is old enough to work on a cruise ship, he is developing his own following who believe in him, and fully expect him to realize his dream. I am not a prognosticator—my NFL and NBA predictions bare that out—but I closed Nick Jay’s feature with "I look forward to someday interviewing Carnival Cruise Director, Nick Jay."

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On this first of two episodes of The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome David & Stephanie, a married couple that performs as an intimate musical duo—David plays the guitar and sings, and Stephanie sings. In October of 2022, David & Stephanie attained their longtime goal of their first contract as cruise ship performers. They were assigned to Carnival Elation. David is the creator of David Paige Music and is one of the hardest working independent artists in the business. Hailed as a truly gifted entertainer, the Chicago rock singer delivers a seamless blend of pop and rock with a 90’s twist. He was a finalist on VH1’s “Make a Band Famous”, has appeared on national TV, and has toured the United States from LA to New York – headlining venues like House of Blues in Chicago, The Mint in LA, and Bowery Electric in New York. He performs with his original band, The David Paige Band; an 80s and 90s cover band called The Student Body; and as David & Stephanie. 

Stephanie is a classically trained vocalist with an impressive career, beginning with her first paid gigs at the age of eight. She eventually followed that passion out to New York to study musical theater at AMDA and worked as an actor and singer, with credits including an off-broadway musical, Mademoiselle Modiste. After college in Miami, Stephanie moved to chicago, where she has been performing consistently! She sings in a No Doubt tribute band called Don't Speak, and she sings and plays keyboards in the student body, the David Paige band, and of course sings in David & Stephanie. 
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Carnival Elation is the oldest, smallest ship in the Carnival fleet. Don’t take that as a slight however; near the end of their contract, Carnival Elation’s Hotel Manager informed the crew the Carnival Elation was selected as number one in guest satisfaction across the entire Carnival fleet. David & Stephanie loved that contract on Carnival Elation. But in the follow-up episode, OMG, wait until you hear where their next contract took them!

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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Patricia Nicholson Yarbrough, founder of Festival at Sea, the nation’s oldest and most successful African-American cultural cruise. Patricia is also President, Blue World Travel in San Francisco. 


In The Joy of Cruising amzn.to/3lAfyON I wrote extensively about theme cruising in a section called “Theme Cruising: Two Passions In One.” I featured Patricia and Festival at Sea, and writing that profile was indeed a labor of love—one of my favorite writing projects ever. It was made all the more sweeter by the fact that I experienced a Festival at Sea cruise during writing. A favorite anecdote I wrote about in the Festival at Sea feature was about a man I sat next to in the Celebrity Equinox buffet shortly after we embarked. I told him it was my first Festival at Seacruise and asked him how many times he had been. ‘15,’ he told me. Immediately, I thought that I had found a potential person to feature in the upcoming The Joy of Cruising—a seasoned cruiser with dozens of past cruises. I assumed that this individual was a very experienced cruiser given how many times he had been on Festival at Sea. I said, ‘Wow, 15 times on Festival at Sea! How many cruises have you sailed on altogether?’ He said, ‘15.’ 


That’s the kind of intense loyalty Festival at Sea garners. And why the majority of the following years’ cruise is booked before the current cruise is over. Toward the end of my cruise, I stood in a long line to book Festival at Sea for the following year. After a while, I decided I would just book online. When bookings opened up, I procrastinated for a couple days. Then I received a notification that next year’s Festival at Sea was sold out! That's how it is every year. 

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This week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Julie and Art of The Places Where We Go podcast and accompanying YouTube and blog. The Places Where We Go chronicles Julie and Art’s reflections of traveling throughout the world and across the US. Their mode of travel varies—cruises, land resorts, road trips, and hikes—and the places where they go are just as diverse.


Julie and Art recently returned from an almost month-long dream trip beginning with five days in London. They then boarded Princess Cruises Island Princess in Southampton for a 14-day Baltic and Scandinavia cruise. What an itinerary: Bornholm, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; Tallinn, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; Klaipeda, Lithuania; Gdansk, Poland; Visby, Denmark; and disembarking in Copenhagen, Denmark. Julie and Art capped off their trip with five days in Copenhagen before flying back to their home in southern California.


I was excited when Julie and Art indicated they were available to share a recap and highlights of their journey. I wanted you the listeners to enjoy the trip through Julie and Art’s eyes and words, and selfishly speaking it’s a part of the world that I am unfamiliar with and am anxious to get some insight about..

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I am delighted to welcome Captain Peter Bos to The Joy of Cruising Podcast this week. In a section called “Ship Life” in the just-released The Joy of Cruising Again I tried to provide readers a sense of what life onboard a cruise ship was like for crew, staff and officers, and wrote about several past and present cruise line employees. I am honored Captain Peter Bos agreed to be featured in the book.

Captain Bos retired from Holland America Line (HAL) in March 2018, after 37 years with HAL and 44 years at sea. He was the longest-tenured Captain at HAL when he retired. At the time he retired, Captain Bos was the captain of the Vista-class MS Noordam. Captain Bos traversed the world regularly, as Captain on ships with world cruise itineraries such as Rotterdam and Prinsendam. However, he is known best by HAL fans for his travels to Alaska, garnering the nickname, Captain Alaska, not just because of how much time he spends taking ships there, but the knowledge he routinely shares with his passengers about their surroundings in Alaska—wildlife and glaciers. As one Captain Bos fan I quoted in The Joy of Cruising Again said, “He makes you feel like he’s found something wonderful and can’t wait to show you.”

Captain Bos lives with his wife Kathryn on Lake Hickory in North Carolina, not that far from where I live, so a couple of our interviews for The Joy of Cruising Again were in person. When I was trying to get an official headshot from HAL of Captain Bos in uniform, because he lives so close, he offered to get dressed in his uniform and take a photo. I declined that gracious offer and ultimately did receive a photo from HAL. I told Captain Bos “I wish I could fit in my work clothes four years after retirement!”

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