Our 1 month Villa-versary

Today is May 20, 2025 and we've been living in our new home, the Villa Vie Odyssey, for one month. 

Howzit going?? Below is the map of where we've been so far. Click on the map and it will take you to the interactive Google MyMap where you can click on the numbered icons and see photos and descriptions of where we were. 

It's wonderful. We're thrilled to be living here and experiencing exotic ports of call. We're enjoying the people, the views, the food, and the activities. We also recognize that this is not a normal lifestyle. There are some things that are just weird. 

Eating

We love eating from a buffet. You can get just what you want, and just the quantity you want. I am always distressed at restaurants when they serve me such large portions that I am forced to waste 2/3 of it or take it home. Here I almost always clean my plate. I love having so many vegetarian options available. In our own house it was near impossible to get our 5 fruits and veggies each day. Here, 5 is just a starting point! 

That's the good part. The bad part is that desserts are the best! At home we never had desserts, here it's hard not to just have a couple of bites of ... chocolate cake, caramel mousse, vanilla ice cream ... And, rarely do we pass on the 2 glasses of beer or wine offered with lunch and dinner. At home we would weigh ourselves every morning. We don't have a scales here (note to self: buy scales at next port with a Walmart) and we're worried that it seems our clothes are closing in. 

Mealtimes can be rather magical here ..

It's weird not to have a kitchen in your home. Of course, there is a kitchen here but we've never seen it. Other people cook and prepare the food that is available in the buffet. They do an excellent job. We love the food. But it's weird to not be able to wander into your kitchen, open the refrigerator door and browse for something to eat. We eat by the clock. For example, today we took a small boat ride out of Topolobampo, Mexico, to see dolphins and birds. It was wonderful, there is even one dolphin named Pechocho, who loved being petted. He'd come beside the boat where we could touch his fin and scratch his back, then he'd roll over so we could rub his belly!🐬🐬  

 It was so much fun, we didn't want to leave but we looked at our watches and started getting concerned that we might be late for lunch. The buffet closed down at 2. Oh no! 😥 Don't worry, we made it. We were able to get lunch. But no time for seconds!

As much as I enjoy the food here, I do rather miss the tuna melt sandwiches that Jim would make for me, as well as his breakfast egg sandwiches, and his chicken salad. I still think that my eggplant parmigiana is better than anything I've had here as well. But, we'll manage!

Travel

One of the top reasons to live in this ship is to travel around the world and we don't need to decide where to go or book air fares and hotels! Love it! No planning, no work. 

Or is there? 

We're in port just 1 or 2 days, sometimes 3. Although that's more time than normal cruise ships, it's still short. If you want to do anything special in a port, you may need to plan several weeks in advance. It's about 3 weeks until we're in Hawaii and we want to do a tour in Maui. I researched on trip advisor, viator, and Google, for tour companies and they were already booked for our date or couldn't accomodate our times. It's weird that you need to plan the details even though the overall travel is done for you. 

So far, we have not done much planning and we've still had fun. We've had special shore experiences 3 times during our 1 month on board:

1. Acapulco Cliff divers (May 3) - no planning, we just walked off the ship and found a taxi to take us to the El Mirador hotel where the restaurant had a great view of the cliff divers
2. Guided e-Bike tour in Mazatlan (May 17) we joined  our new friends Wayne and Donna, who had booked it the day before. We followed their instructions and booked the same.
3. Boat ride with dolphin petting in Topolobampo (May 20) - we were planning on spending the day on the ship but got antsy and saw people gathering to get the boat ride. They thought it could accomodate more people so we joined them, and it worked!

Sometimes, you don't have to do a thing. The entertainment comes to you, like this delightful Mariachi band in Topolobampo.

People

There are a bunch of really interesting people living in this ship. The community is probably the number one thing that attracted us to this lifestyle. In our normal lifestyle in our house in Fort Lauderdale, there is little opportunity to meet new people. We stay in our house day after day, eat meals with each other, work at our computers and watch TV. Occasionally we'd invite a friend or accept an invite from a friend to share a meal and some conversation. Here on the ship, you can meet new people many times each day. We go to the restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We've learned to sit at tables seating 4 or 5 if we want to be joined by others. Even when we sit at a table for 2, there might be another 2 right next to us and we'll strike up a conversation. It only takes 20-30 minutes to eat a meal, but we've sat there for 2 hours enjoying a good conversation!

Another way we're getting to know our shipmates is thru the "Speakers' Corner" organized by our friend Kit Cassingham. Many of the talks are recorded and put on YouTube here. Check it out.

That is wonderful! It is so fulfilling to have stimulating conversation whenever you want. 

What's weird is that it's almost like being back in high school, or in a new job. There are a lot of people you don't know and it can be a bit of a mine field to learn who you want to hang out with and who you don't. But, unlike high school or work, you can always go to your room. We've arranged our room to be a very comfortable place. Which brings me to another weird thing ..

Living in 140 square feet

When people would ask us, "are you sure you can live in 140 square feet?" That's the size of our room. We'd say, that's just our bedroom, we won't be there much. The whole ship is our home. While that is true, I've been surprised at how much time we spend in the room. It's also weird that we don't watch TV. It's very comfortable for us to sit at our computers in our room. After all, that's what we did most of the time at "home." When I want the escape that TV used to provide, you'll find me reading books on my phones kindle app instead. Or taking a nap! Or taking a walk around and around the promenade deck.

We also have a big picture window in our room. One friend (thanks Alex!) has dubbed the window our "travel channel" and it's so true!

Time

It's so wonderful that we don't need to spend any time shopping, cooking, cleaning, driving, or any other of life's minutiae. But the weird thing is that we don't have more time for work or relaxation. There is so much to fill our dance card on this ship that I'm still feeling overwhelmed with not enough time to do what I want. 

It's always about time ... when we went fulltime RVing, I thought I'd have more time. But no, we were driving a lot. Other things took up my time. Now, it's primarily meeting new people that takes up the time, but isn't that wonderful!!

Exercise

I can go to a stretch exercise class every morning at 8am. I make it 2-3 times a week. I'm disappointed with myself, but that's still better than nothing! And, I might get there yet. I do enjoy it every time I do go.

It is Oh-So-Easy to walk around the deck. Jim and I usually take a couple laps before and after each meal. Both of us have watches that track our steps. When I check my health app stats it says that I average 3500 steps over the last 21 weeks, but for the last 5 weeks (most of them on the ship) that is up to 7,000! Good stuff.

We have 2 photo albums about this journey. 

1. The first one is "Living on a Cruise Ship - the beginning" It starts when we first heard about the Odyssey and continues thru our first month on board. It is organized in chronological order from beginning to end.
2. The second one is "Geeks on *World* Tour" that is the continuation of our adventure. That one starts today and we will add photos and videos as we cruise around the world. It is organized in reverse-chronological order. As we add new photos, they will show up at the top. As you scroll down, you'll be going back in time.

I can't wait to tell you about our 1 year Villa-versary!

Cliff divers of Acapulco

Not only did we get off the ship, we even did it at night. We had originally planned to see the cliff divers during the lunch show, but then we heard that the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, would be coming by and we didn't want to miss that.  They originally thought she would be stopping by the ship and maybe even boarding, but that didn't happen. She did pass by however and gave us a nice wave in response to the shouts of some locals that were on the ship, "la presidenta, Claudia, we love you." It was a great moment and I'm so glad I caught it on video. That is quite the telephoto on my Samsung S25 ultra!

So, we went to the cliff diving for the dinner show. All open air seating right on the edge of the cliffs. 2 drinks, dinner, cliff diving show, and live music - all for  $92 for both of us. 

It was an epic night! It felt like the official launch of our world tour. To see something in person that you've known about most of your life, and seen in movies, just gives me goosebumps. And the divers did not disappoint! 

There were 7 divers. One of them was a woman. They started the show by walking down the stairs carrying a torch. Then they jumped off the rocks on the south side and swam across to the high cliffs. They climbed up the rocks and each stopped at a different height. Only one went all the way to the top and dive from there. 

It was a beautiful evening. We are loving life!

A busy day at Sea

It has been suggested that when we have 'Sea Days' I should be able to get a lot of my work done, record some tutorial videos, write some tech tip articles etc. 

Today is a sea day. We left one port last night (Huatulco, Mexico) and arrive at the next port (Acapulco) tomorrow morning. Here's how my day is going so far:

We went to breakfast at 8am, chatted with a couple different people and stayed in the restaurant for over an hour. During that time, we made arrangements to meet another couple for dinner at 6:30. Then, I tried to arrange a time to meet up with Sharon who said she had some questions about organizing her photos between her iPhone and her new Samsung. Great! I love to see how people work with their photos - 

• how about 11am? Ooops, no - there's a follow-up talk about how to make arrangements to attend the World Expo when we get to Japan. It's important to make arrangements well in advance. I definitely want to go to that talk. 
• How about 2pm? Oooops, no - there's a Samba dance class I want to go to at 2.
• How about 3pm? Oooops, no - there's a port talk to let us know what's coming up to see and do in the upcoming ports
• How about 4pm? OK!

We like Sea Days!

Too much fun, My brain is broken, I'm Lazy and Guilty

Yesterday was busy and fun with the wedding. See this Villa Vie Residences video about the wedding. It was SOO cool!

It also meant we ate and drank late, including wedding cake. That gave me acid reflux and I slept horribly. 

We docked in the port of Acajutla where one could take an excursion to Mayan ruins, but I just didn't feel like it. Besides, it's geek newsletter time. I made a valiant effort, sitting at my new desk in the room, to work on newsletter. Then our room Steward, Heidi, wanted to clean the room so I schlepped my laptop up to the business center for a couple hours but couldn't get my brain to stay focused on any one thing for more than 10 minutes. I bounced between making a fun with photos for Monday, to starting the newsletter, to answering email, to reading Facebook ... Like the ball in a pinball machine, I would hit on all these different things, back and forth, and finally packed it up, grateful that it was time for lunch!

We had a nice conversation at lunch with Craig and Cindy Who we learned were truck drivers. And Craig bought and developed the property in West Broward county that became Kings Manor where Jim once lived! Also at our table was Alicia, always fascinating. This time I learned that Alicia's home is Fairbanks Alaska! 

By the time lunch was over, I decided to give in to my laziness and go to our room to read my book. I'll get the newsletter done sometime. As for my guilt for not getting off the ship, I let myself off the hook for that too - we've just begun this new life, we'll figure it out sometime. We spent the last couple days opening up the boxes that were delivered and putting stuff away, setting up the room. I'm really quite impressed with how it's working out. We even both have a computer desk. I do think working in the room is more conducive to getting things done.

The most important thing is to take care of myself. I'm skipping dinner tonight and just drinking water - no wine. Clean the  brain. Get good sleep.

The older I get, the more important sleep becomes. My watch tracks the quality of my sleep and there is one metric called sleep fuel. If I didn't get any sleep fuel overnight, my brain simply doesn't work the next day. Just like a car that's run out of gas, she just doesn't go. That was my story yesterday. I would sit down at my computer to write and, like the ball in a pinball game, my brain would just bounce around. I couldn't stick to one thought (or one tab on my computer) for more than 1 minute. Note: I am writing this post a few days later after I did get decent sleep.

I watch that metric 'sleep fuel' and one other 'readiness' closely and try to connect the dots between my activity the day before. Here's what I find:

• the later I eat (the closer to going to sleep) the worse my sleep fuel rating
• the more wine I drink, the worse my sleep fuel rating
• the more water I drink, the better my sleep fuel rating
• the more I exercise, the better my readiness rating

If I want to function at the highest level, I need to get plenty of exercise, eat very little and eat early (skipping dinner altogether is good), don't drink wine (especially at night) and do drink lots of water.
But, what fun is that?!

Moving Day

When we first got on board, the cabin we purchased was under maintenance. They were working on fixing a leak in the shower, so they put us in another cabin just 2 doors down. That was actually a good thing. For our first week we didn't have to worry about unpacking and putting stuff away. We had the suitcases we brought with us on the plane and that's it. It's been a great week with no stuff, just enjoying the ship. 

But now we're ready. I'm tired of not knowing where anything is. It's time to move in and put things where they belong.

One of the things we shipped ahead was a simple little folding desk that we measured and figured it would fit where the big blue chair is now. I'm ready - I want my desk. 

What we bought on Amazon and had shipped ahead

Today they said our 'Villa' (that's what they call the cabins on the Villa Vie Odyssey!) was ready. Here's what we saw:

Oh my, where are we going to put all this stuff. And, this is only 5 of the 9 'boxes.' The closets are already mostly full with the contents of our suitcases. One bite at a time. We did get the boxes emptied and found a place for everything.

Jim set up my desk and got our custom-made cabinet attached to the wall. We had to put in a work order for someone from VVR (Villa Vie Residences) to take down the wall art that was in the room and put ours up. 

Then came the rest of the boxes! Jim is really good at sorting thru stuff and finding a way to 'pack' them in our room. He is much more of a 'nester' than I am.

He even had the forethought (from reading lots of the ship's whatsapp messages) to buy 'bed risers' so we would have the most room for storage under the bed.

And, here is the finished result!

I am finding it such a comfortable work/life area that I don't feel the need to schlep my laptop up to the business center. I even have a second monitor (see this video) and a keyboard drawer!