Welcome to the Royal Crime Blog podcast, a week of look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host, Matt Hotschberg, and this is episode number 413.

Another week, another cruise review.

This week, I'm back from Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, the first Royal Caribbean cruise ship to sail from the U.S., and I've got my thoughts on it up next.

Freedom of the Seas is sailing again.

And more importantly, it is the first Royal Crime cruise ship to sail from the U.S.

And my goal was to be on the first Royal Caribbean cruise ship to sail from the U.S.

And I achieved that this week, having gone on a quick three-night weekend cruise over to the July

4th weekend on Freedom of the Seas.

And this is far from my first time on Freedom.

But I also got this is my first time actually going on her after her refurbishment.

We'll talk about that a little bit later because, of course, the significance is cruising is back from the U.S.

That is something we've been waiting to hear for months and months and months,

15 of them, in fact.

And now we finally have that opportunity and more ships are going to be restarting from

the U.S. over the summer and it's an important very first step.

Now, if you listen to last week's episode,

or the last two weeks' episodes, I should say,

all about my cruise on Adventure of the Seas,

that was one experience.

But this experience on Freedom of the Seas

is markedly different

...