Planning to attend a world expo in Japan

We attended a talk on board given by Darrel, who has attended many world fair and is a huge fan of Japan. He talked about how our ships itinerary is going to make it possible for any of us to attend the 2025 world's fair in Osaka, Japan. 

How special is that?! 

I love the idea of attending the world's fair in Osaka, and that would never in a million years be in my list but for the fact that we're going to be there anyway! No way would I take the initiative to book flights from Florida to Japan, then hotels and expo tickets etc. A trip like that just would not make it into my radar screen. But now, my home is going to be docked in Kobe Japan for a few days, and it's just a matter of a 90 minute train ride if we want to visit the expo. One of our Geeks on Tour members (thanks Maurice!) had already alerted us to the fact that the Expo would be going on during our visit to Japan - so we were primed to learn more.

We gathered in the Coral Lounge to hear Darrel's talk about the Osaka World Expo

Darrel recommended that we do book a hotel for at least one night to allow us to visit the expo in the evening. The lights are spectacular and the temperature will be cooler than in the heat of day. 

Listening to Darryl talk about Japan, the expo, and how to make our arrangements really let it sink in how different life is now that we're living on the Villa Vie Odyssey.

Our ship will be in Japan from Aug 7 to Sep 12. 

See the full map of our itinerary here.

All aboard! Our first week living on a Cruise ship.

Clearing out the house, storing our RV and saying goodbye to friends and family in Florida was an exhausting, gut-wrenching ordeal. But we did it. 

Mark April 20th, 2025 in the logbook, folks, because that's the day we arrived "home." And yes, I'm putting "home" in quotes, but only because it's a bit unconventional! We stepped onto the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship, and I swear, the moment someone from guest services showed us to our cabin and we promptly collapsed into an afternoon nap, it just felt right. No need to talk ourselves into it – this was home, plain and simple. 

We woke up in plenty of time to go to dinner in the buffet restaurant called The Palms. Kit and Randy Cassingham joined us for dinner and made us feel oh so welcomed. It was their website, residentialcruising.com that sparked this whole incredible journey for us.

We are so excited about this new lifestyle, we want to share it with everyone. On 2 different zoom meetings this week, I used my phone and wandered around the ship, giving a bit of a virtual tour. You can see one of those tours on the YouTube video for tech for senior. Here's the link.

Slow Down! On the very first day, in my excitement, I got careless and twisted my ankle walking down the stairs. Was I ever grateful when I stood back up and could walk ok. It hurt, my ankle was bruised, but I was ok. Whew. Consider that my official "slow down and pay attention" memo from the universe. Or, maybe this is just a 'right-of'-passage' thing for me. I remember the first week of our fulltime RVing life also included a twisted ankle! ⁉️⁉️

Our stuff - we're not in our real room yet. The cabin we purchased is having some work done, so they put us in a room 2 doors down. Therefore we're not un packing any more than necessary and we're not getting the stuff that was shipped ahead of time. Actually it's nice not to have to deal with any of that yet. We're just enjoying the ship.

Food - I love eating buffet style. I get a bite of this and a bite of that. It is so satisfying and I never get over full. I especially like the prepared tiny salads that are different every day. My favorite so far is the beet-root salad. 

Exercise - going to and from meals we normally walk around the deck a couple times, easily racking up 5,000 steps with no effort at all. I've also taken advantage of the exercise classes and weight equipment in the gym 2 or 3 times this week. I hope to make it a more routine party of my day. 

Entertainment - we've attended a couple of lectures/talks on eclectic topics of CIA, and environmental poetry. We had fun with a group trivia - I won😲. And we enjoyed some live piano music.

Work - oh yeah, we still want to do our Geeks on Tour stuff! I schlepped my laptop up to the shared work area called the business center. I put headphones on and can work on the website, our editing videos. Jim has his workstation set up in the room and is comfortable there. I also stayed in the room more than I expected. I just sit in bed with my laptop on my .. lap! Just like when I'm in the RV. 

Travel - we started in Cartagena. Since we were just there a few months ago and took a city tour, we felt no need to get off the ship this time. Besides, did I mention we were exhausted? I was so envious then, when we were talking to a fellow resident (don't call us passengers! - we're residents) and she showed us photos of a beautiful sloth she saw in a downtown park. 

While docked in Colon, we got off just to pick up a couple things at one of the many dockside shops. Then going thru the Panama canal, we had perfect views and a wonderful commentary by a local guide. You could hear him thru the loudspeakers anywhere in the ship. Sometimes we were at the bow, sometimes in the observation room on the top deck. We even changed into bathing suits and took a dip in the salt water pool. Hey! We had to 'go swimming in the Panama canal!' Our transit this time was later in the day so it was night time by the time we got to Culebra cut and the centennial bridge. Soo pretty. 

Swimming in the Panama Canal!!

Sleep - the beds and comforters are so comfortable - we are sleeping like rocks. 

G'night

First Night, First Morning in our New Home

 After a nice nap, we woke up in time to go to dinner at 6:30. We immediately ran into Randy and Kit Cassingham, whose website ResidentialCruising.com is what started our adventure. It was great to chat with them through dinner and we felt so welcomed. We even had the same server, Chris!, who remembered us from when we were on board in December. 

We had a nice dinner, with our included 2 glasses of wine and then fell into bed, exhausted but happy. 

First Morning

I slept good! And if you don't believe me, check out my Apple Watch sleep stats! The purple marks represent deep sleep and I'm usually luck to have 6 or 7 of them.

It was not intentional that my stuffed animal pelican was placed on the window sill, but I think that's where she belongs! Our view is of the container port at Cartagena - fascinating to watch it work. You can see the city skyline in the background. 

Then!! a most exciting thing happened. I got an email from Ed and Deanna, longtime followers of Geeks on Tour. He said, "We are just pulling in next to you guys. We are on the Celebrity Summit ! Small world .” WOW - our first day living on board the Odyssey and we run into people we know. They had a city tour of Cartagena, but met up with us on the dock later. THANKS for reaching out Ed!

A few hours later, we were on our way.

After dinner we went out on the front of the ship to see the stars, that's a great thing about being at sea - it's dark enough to see the stars.

Are we excited?

Day before our flight ... People think we must be excited. Actually, I'm in total freak out mode right now. Did not sleep well. Trying to redo my poor packing job and worried about being ready for airport at 6am. I know we'll be fine. I better sleep good tonight. 😋 I'll be excited after we get there. 😱


Did we do the right thing by keeping the RV? We're leaving it stocked with dishes, pots and pans, a set of clothes, bedding, and various other things. If we just sell it after 6 months, someone will have to deal with all the stuff. Gee, maybe I want this notebook ... and this pair of shoes .. and ... I keep throwing miscellaneous things in my already overstuffed suitcase. Not good. Now we're going to need to purge again after we get to the ship and open these suitcases, not to mention all the things we shipped ahead in boxes.

Do we have everything? Too late now if we don't.

Evening before our flight - Alex arranged a party, a going away party for us. You see, I went to high school with Alex and many of my other high school classmates live nearby. We often get together. So this was one last time. I was afraid I would be too frazelled to be much fun, but it turned out great. Telling them about our upcoming adventure allowed us to feel excited again and not just freaked out. It was an early party and we got to bed by 8:30, setting the alarm for 4am.

We drove Alex's car to the airport - just 20 minutes away in Gainesville - and she will pick it up later. Brilliant. I was amazed how busy this small, regional airport was at 5am, but everything was quite efficient. We got off the ground at 6:30 and landed in Miami before 7:30. Our Apple airtags indicated that our luggage made it as well. We had 2 hours layover, then another completely full flight to Cartagena. The airport and luggage claim was a bit chaotic, but in the end we collected all of our luggage including the bag they took from Jim in the plane and checked due to no room in the overheads.

Sunrise over Miami

More chaos getting help with all our bags out to the taxis and finding one big enough to take us. Uber said the trip to the cruise port should be about $12 and we paid $40, but we made it! I am so glad that we now get to travel and not go thru any of that hassle. 

The drive went along the beach for a while and we were amazed at how many people were out swimming, sunning, and playing. Oh yeah! It's Easter Sunday.


The taxi dropped us off at the gates to the cruise port where someone official checked our passports and crossed us off the manifest. Someone would come with a car to take us the rest of the way. That took a while, but we had a peacock to entertain us while we waited!

Yay!! There it is, the cruise ship that is our new home! We walk up the gangway and are met by very friendly and efficient personnel who ask us our cabin number and tell us to leave all our bags - they would be taken to our rooms for us. We were asked to just stay put and someone from guest services would be down to check us in and take us to our room. So nice. No one else there. No crowds, no lines.

We get checked in and we go to our room - or our temporary room anyway. The one we purchased was having some last minute work done so they put us in a room 2 doors down. Oh my, this room must be smaller than ours right? hmmm, no, it's the exact same room - I think it shrunk in the last few months. Jim and I are fine in small spaces, but we're going to have a tough time fitting stuff in here!

I'll think about it tomorrow, right now I need to crash.

Aahhhh ...

 There's a physical sensation when mental stress is relieved. Oh, and it feels so good. 

We did our presentation last night. We're waayy out of practice for doing live presentations so it didn't go as smoothly as we'd like, but it was fine. In the end we had fun, and at least some of them learned stuff.

We made it back to the campground after dark. It's rare for us to leave a campground at night so we were relieved when the code to open the gate worked and we made it back to our site in time for a glass of wine and then bed. Here's how Jim stowed our luggage so we could use the bed.

Amazing that he was able to get it all piled on top of the driver's seat, so he could still use the passenger seat, turned around, for his 'office.' 

Next up, our Earlybird Toastmasters meeting at 7am. We used my phone, on the Google Fi network, as a hotspot. I saw that just moving it close to the rear window increased the signal from 2 bars to 5 bars. We had 60mbps down and 5 up. It served to power both my computer and Jim's without a hiccup throughout the meeting. See our video on how to turn your phone into a hotspot.

After the meeting we went for a walk around the campground. We breathed in the fresh air and contemplated our wide open future. A new beginning. A new chapter. Another adventure.

Our plan is to make it to Alex's in Melrose tonight, but there's no hurry. It's only a 3 hour drive and we don't need to leave the campground till 1. We're so comfortable in our little van.