~~~ out of San Juan a few times and thus the phone call from the travel agency.

I did not believe what they were telling me and called the cruise line directly and told them about the call and the proposal to follow by mail.

They confirmed that they would have to charge me a lot more for the cabin and that the agency that contacted me buys thousands of cabins from them at levels way below the lowest possible cabin cost.

Our cabin had a banging pipe noise over our bed and I knew exactly how to handle it since I worked in the hotel industry (Hilton, Holiday Inn, where I had the door on Singer Island years earlier) and they gave Barbara and I an outside, no show, cabin with a huge bay window with a living room...

The next morning we met two women who had the cabin on the other side (inside) and they asked us how much our cabin cost... When I told them the story they said their children paid for their cruise; $5000 each.

I talked my way into working in the kitchen one night to introduce the chefs to some very old Italian prep and presentation that they never knew existed and told them that I worked with LaPouzant and one of them asked me a question "Do you know if he ever baked a cake for a king?"
Not only did I describe the cake, I also told him what the king said when LaPouzant handed him the knife to make the first cut (slice).

One night I was able to see the table where the dice were inspected.

The casino was mostly female (British) dealers; the best I ever played with.

On the Countess and the Princess (Cunard) the dealers were all from Scotland... and I never saw a crew like that, since; masters at what they did.