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Richard just returned from the cruise ship that started it all.

Norwegian Gem out of New York City.

It was a five-night cruise to Bermuda.

Richard, for the folks who may not have been listening for the past seven years,

how did this cruise, actually, welcome to the show, first off.

Well, thanks for having me as always.

And how did this cruise start it all for you?

Well, this was back when I had no

interest in cruising. I had booked, I had actually booked the Norwegian breakaway to be my first cruise,

which was going to be like just to get out of town. But it turned out. Then I got nervous. I was like,

well, what if I don't like being out at sea? What if I get

C-6? So this was back in the day when they happened to have the cruises to nowhere, which, of course, they no longer do. So I was able to jump on the gem for a one-night sailing and fell in love with not only cruising, but this ship in particular. This ship is really, really special to me.

And you're in the New York state, no longer, I guess no longer really close to the terminal

like you used to be, but you're still in New York regardless, a few hours away from the cruise ship.

So you make your way to New York. How was embarkation? It wasn't bad at all. It was, you know, it takes a little while to get there for me now, because whereas I used to be able to just cross to George Washington Bridge and hop on a ship. I now live in Woodstock, so it takes about two hours to get to the port. But once I was there, you know, and handed over the luggage, it was very, very smooth embarkation, in part because I have, you know,

I don't want to be one of those people who like brags about their loyalty level. I'm not

bragging about it, but when you reach a certain level with, with most cruise lines, including

Norwegian, you know, they have separate access for you. And so I was a Sapphire member and kind of like, you know, got to go to the nice

short line. Sapphire member, short line is, does the gem have like a haven? I know it's an

older ship. It does. It's, it's sort of a different haven. I debated whether or not to try and bid for

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