Happy Birthday To Me!!

As I celebrated my 18th birthday yesterday (plus 30 years experience) it made me think about things I have done. As well as my my amazing four children and husband I have had an amazing life with wonderful opportunities.

One of the very first fam (Familiarisation) trips I ever had with cruise.co.uk was to Dubai where I was thrown in to a group of people that I had never met but oh boy did we all hit it off and I made some lifelong friends. I rode a camel for the first time although that was not without incident as my friend behind was trying to calm his camel but unbeknownst to him the noise he was making was what the camel farmer made when he wanted them to run!! I thought I was going to disappear into the desert never to be seen again.

I experienced the beauty of the Burj Khalifa fountains and the Burj Khalifa itself was stunning although I still think as a northerner that Blackpool Tower is pretty good. I also saw the beauty as the sun set in the desert and was amazed at the contract of the architecture in Dubai itself.

Whilst working with the company we get lots of opportunities to enter competitions and are able to win holidays, cars and sometimes money from the various different cruise companies.

I was lucky last year to win one of CLIA’s (Cruise Line Internatioanl Association) “Cruise Moments” by writing about when I realised how great cruising was. My prize for winning was a four night cruise on the Majestic Princess from Trieste to Rome. It visited somewhere I had never been, Kotor, so I was very lucky to have won and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My biggest achievement though was winning a competition to be the Royal correspondent for Princess Cruises in 2013 when they brought out their new “Royal Class” ship, Royal Princess. You had to explain why you should be chosen – my reason was simply as its where my love of cruises began! In 1992 I joined the original Royal Princess as a Bar Stewardess and this is where I met my husband Bruce so it felt like I had come full circle if I managed to win this latest competition.

I did win and was flown to Venice where I stayed for three nights in the world famous, Gritti Palace, I had dinner at Le Fenice Opera House and I filmed an intro into the building of a new ship for the Cruise Line International Conference. The video can be viewed on my Facebook page.

As part of the prize I was also invited to the naming ceremony of the Royal Princess and watched as she was christened by none other than the Duchess of Cambridge who was heavily pregnant with her first child at the time.

What made it more special was that I was able to share it with Bruce, my husband, who I had met 21 years previously on the original Royal Princess. A shared experience is always the best.