Cruisers Just Like You and Me…Sort Of, Bill and Rosie, The Joy of Cruising Podcast, 12/21

This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Bill Raffel now of Fort Lauderdale. I say now of Fort Lauderdale because when I wrote about Bill and his wife Rosie several years ago, they lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I wrote about Bill and Rosie’s story in my first cruising book, The Joy of Cruising amzn.to/2EAMddF in a section called “Cruisers Like You and Me...Sort Of.” This section, a reader favorite retained in each book of The Joy of Cruising Trilogy, follows the theme of “ordinary” cruisers with extraordinary stories. And then I wrote about Bill and Rosie again in my second cruising book, Cruising Interrupted amzn.to/3seFU8y in a section called “The Passionate Cruisers of The Joy of Cruising...What Are They Up To Now?” So, of the approximately 75 or so fascinating cruisers I wrote about in The Joy of Cruising Trilogy, Bill and Rosie are among the few I can count on one hand that I wrote about twice!
 
I said now of Fort Lauderdale because when I wrote about Bill and Rosie several years ago, they lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Like me, Bill is a cruise geek! He told me one of the main reasons they moved to Fort Lauderdale “was to be near the multiple ports and of course the weather… We live along the inlet between the Ocean and Port Everglades, and I take photos of all the ships as they sail away. I post the photos in numerous Facebook groups where the people on the ships can see themselves as they sail away. For example, photos from Royal Caribbean cruise ships are in the “Royal Caribbean Cruisers” Facebook group.”
 
Amusingly, when I reached out to Bill to schedule him for The Joy of Cruising Podcast, he said, ‘…if you think your listeners would find my cruising life interesting.’ I responded, ‘Bill, I saw fit to write about you in two books so they will either find your cruising life interesting or question my judgment!” Interesting? Bill and Rosie have been on 81 cruises. Alaska four times, Panama Canal four times. Add to that Africa on a three-week Safari, Australia to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, and Hawaii and a whole lot more but I’ll let them tell you.

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