Have you had Proof that it really is a "small world" after all?

I was on a cruise around Iceland with my mom last week. She ran into a couple on the ship who live at the other end of her small barrier island on the Gulf coast of Florida (single street almost a mile long). The husband said "Of course I know your building, I ride my bike past it every day!"

Captiva?

Capriva has side streets and is more than a mile long.

It's a small man-made "island" in the sense one needs to cross bridges to get there, no actual name for it.

On our first HAL cruise I met my beer teacher. We had taken his class several months before. The chances of that were incredibly small as the Amsterdam had less than 200 pax onboard for that particular cruise.

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In 1995 we sailed on the Seawind that sailed out of Aruba. We had a dining room waiter won was awesome. Fast forward 3 years later we sailed on one of the Big Red Boat ship's. After we checked in, we were on the lido deck rationing and I went to get something, and who did I see? The waiter from the Seawind. He was now a supervisor. We hugged and chatted a bit. When I got back top the table my bofriend at that time asked me why was I hugging a c.f. member and I just boarded the ship. My parents and I explained to him he was a waiter that we had a few years ago and he helped the family out when we sailed on an European ship with direct current.

The proof for us is where we can fly, often for as little as $500 -$700 USD. Just about anywhere in Europe, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, China, even Australia.

 

Amazing. Could imagine affordable travel like this 20 years ago. This, and the Internet is what has made our world seem much smaller.

Although I enjoy reading about "small world" stories as much as anyone, I like the above post the best. I can fly from NY to Europe for not much more than NY to Columbus OH!! (but that's a different thread - FAA, are you listening?)

But "small world" coincidences are not rare at all. For example, you only need a room of 23 people, to have a 50% chance that two people share the same birthday.

On the Oasis, assuming an average family size of three, there are 2 million "pairs" of families - a guarantee that somebody will know somebody!

We did an Eastern Mediterranean cruise in 2009. One evening at dinner I noticed a couple and their two teenish kids a few tables away. They were a couple we had not seen in nearly 15 years who were in our adult Sunday school

class when we lived in NE. We moved to MN 15 years previously. We had a nice chat and found out they were only a few cabins down from ours. The day after we left the ship in Rome we ran into them again at the Colosseum.

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MANY TIMES. Just a few:

1) I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My first evening, my control officer and her husband invited me to dinner. When they picked my up, she explained she brought her boss along. At dinner, we played where are you from, turns out the boss had worked at the marina where we had our sailboat when she was in high school. She remembered the boat. :)

2) Was on another forum/board and somehow figured out an online friend living in Seattle area and I (living in MD), had dated the same woman at the same time in high school.

3) On the sunset cruise on the Zambezi near Victoria Falls, I got to talking the lady sitting next to me. She was part of a fairly large group of women traveling together. Turns out she lived less than 3 miles from my parents outside DC.

A few years ago when I was living in Christchurch, New Zealand I took my son to Disneyland in California. Amongst other things we did on that trip was a bus tour to Sea World in San Diego. Got chatting to a man on the bus and he mentioned he was going on a trip to New Zealand in a few months and Christchurch was one of the places he would be visiting. Back home a few months later went out for dinner to a local restaurant and he happened to be dining there as well.

A few years ago we were on a cruise and went to the meet and greet. We started talking to a lady and found out she was from a city about 15 miles away. She told us her brother lived in our city. After talking about what part of the city we lived in we found out her brother was living one street over from us in the house right behind us their fence between our yards.

A number of years ago my sister met a friend on a cruise via the Teen Club. She was from NJ and we are from NH. Several years later, we were on the Grandeur Of The Seas and met up with my sister's friend from NJ! And no, we didn't plan it, as after the first cruise, they lost touch.

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I have two.

First one. My parents grew up in Kentucky; mom on a little road called "Brushy Creek Road." That road had Brushy Creek running down it, and maybe a couple dozen people living there. In adult life, I moved from the Midwest to California and was talking to some man at a party. He asked me where I was from, and I told him I was from Indiana but my parents were from Kentucky. He said his parents were from Kentucky too. I asked him where they were from, and he said, "Oh, a little place you never heard of: Brushy Creek." !!

Second one. Hubby and I flew from California to Indianapolis to visit my family near there. We were waiting for our luggage at the carousel when I heard him say, "Dakota! What are you doing here?" It was the little girl who lived across the street from us - and her parents.

This thread is all about fun. Any cruise line, any location, any which way.

 

Have you ever had an instance of "Boy, it's a small world, isn't it?" I've had two, one involving me directly, and one I got to watch unfold.

 

The first one was on our first RCI cruise on Splendour of the Seas. We went to the Love and Marriage game show (still one of my favorites) and the middle couple turned out to be from my, and my wife's hometown, Appleton WI. (We now live just south of Appleton in Neenah). The next day we saw the couple and congratulated them on their win. We talked a bit, and their daughter was attending the same private high school that I had attended.

And to top it off, on the 4th of July we went to Neenah's fireworks, and who should we see just a few feet away, but this same couple. They were sure shocked to see us!!!

 

The 2nd happened just last year in the Cayman's. I was on a 3rd party scuba excursion (cuz Royal didn't offer one), and the group was composed of a couple of other cruisers and some others that were staying at various resorts on the islands. Between dives, I was talking to a mother and her daughter. The daughter was going to be attending UW Madison for the summer and she wanted to find an apartment in a good neighborhood. So I put her in touch with my nephew who has lived in Madison for years. But while we were doing that, the mom was talking to another diver. It turns out he went to the same high school as her brothers (who were a few years older than her as I recall), and he even had worked at the same business as her dad and one of her brothers! He had left that place a while ago, but still remember their names.

 

I'm waiting for the next one.

 

Now, who's next?......

Well, here's one straight from your post! I was born and raised in Neenah, my mom is still there, I am planning to move up there in the next few months, my brother and his family live in Appleton, and I currently live in Madison!

Go Rockets!

We took a family trip from North Carolina to Washington DC a few years ago. My husband was a preschool teacher at the time, and while we were walking around the Air & Space Museum we hear, "Hey Mr. Joe - look mom, it's Mr. Joe!" A couple of siblings from the preschool were there with their family and were very excited to see their teacher! :-)

In 1982 I did a summer study program in Coventry, England, and spent a few days in London beforehand. While walking around Regent's Park I heard a man say to his wife "Jane, it's over this way" and turned to look; the lady was my childhood neighbor from four doors down.

In 2000 I was on a TA on the QE2 and saw a couple who looked familiar. We had all volunteered at the same humane society on Guam in the 1990s.

In 2003 I was at Narita airport on a layover. In the same lounge was a gal from my home state, whom I had met on Guam in 1993 when she volunteered at the underwater archaeology lab I was running. She had moved to China and was teaching there.

We did a food tour in Venice in 2014. One of the other couples from the tour was also from New Zealand. Turns out their nephew was classmates with our middle son!

A few years ago I had a cruise booked out of Tampa in January with my mom and sister-in-law. A good friend from the military who I hadn't seen in 20 years messaged me a few weeks before asking if we could meet up since she was driving from Georgia through Florida (where we live). I told her yes, let her know the dates I'd be out of town, but that any other time was great. Long story short, my friend was on the exact same cruise with her mom, kids, and sister - their first cruise and my 20th (or so). We hadn't discussed the cruise, so it was just one of those weird coincidences! Definitely a small world, and we had the best time catching up on the ship!

Closest we ever came was when we got back from our first cruise and we stayed the night in Seattle; stopped and had breakfast in the morning and there was a car with license plates from the same small town in Wyoming that we are from--1,000 miles away!

 

 

 

On both of our Hawaii shore excursions, the tour guides (two different guides) were originally from Montana and were familiar with the area where we live; my DH had a nice chat with one of the guides who comes out to hunt the same areas that DH does.

 

 

 

Other than that, it's the rare occasion that we even meet somebody else from Wyoming or Montana on a cruise, let alone the same town or people we know :D

We live in Wyoming too and drive to Vegas and LA and Long Beach a couple times a year and never see plates from WY. I can't say we have ever met someone from WY on a cruise ship. Sometimes it feels like we're from another planet when we tell people where we live. Lol.

Not cruise related but in college I met a guy at the church I attended who was from my rival high school in WV. I went to a very small college in KY and came from a very rural area where people rarely move away. I also found out before I attended that my cousin had graduated from this college and still lived in the area. At 19 it was mind blowing. Lol.

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My wife and I booked a Royal Caribbean cruise through the Panama Canal in 2014. About 3 weeks before we boarded I posted something on Facebook about an upcoming cruise and it turned out that two women I work with were booked on the same one.

I met people on board who had actually been to my small town of 800 people for one our summer carnivals, as well as meeting people from nearby towns after they recognized my college t-shirt. The best example of a small world, was on our last cruise on the Carnival Fantasy. There was a group of singers and dancers called the Southeast Missouri Showstoppers. They are from Dexter, Missouri...about 20 miles from me. The grandmother of one of the girls owns the grocery store here in town and another girl had been one of my mom's students a few years prior to the cruise.

We met a nice young couple from the UK on a private tour of St. Michael's Mont in France; we were at the end of a Transatlantic, and even though we are quite a bit older we got along well.

The next year we were on a Med cruise and met the very same couple on the stairs on embarkation day. They suggested we meet up for drinks at a certain location later. Unfortunately we were both zonked from a red-eye flight and neither of us could remember the bar and couldn't find them. So, we stood them up; I still feel bad.

If anyone lives in the UK in the country and even has hens that run in and out of their house and are probably late 30's, lady is blond, I am so sorry and would like to reconnect with you!

My wife and I are going on the Nov. 5 Liberty of the Seas. A couple of weeks ago we found out another couple from our church is on the same cruise.

Our son & daughter-in-law were on their honeymoon cruise to the western med and one of her patients was onboard.

Another one, not me.

Three of us were in the Orlando area and went to a steak house, that also had "adult entertainment."

After dinner, we went into stage area, and several ladies came to join us. One was sitting with my friend, and asked him where is was from. They got talking, and her father was the school district superintendent in the school district where one of my friend's relatives worked. :D

Love these just for fun threads. Have had 2 occasions both because I am a quilter.

#1. Happened on a Hurtigruten cruise up the northern coast of Norway.

A woman who had taken a quilting class from me was part of the group.

#2. Happened on a New Years Eve Princess cruise to the Caribbean.

On the first night, we were in the Skywalker lounge watching the skyline.

As we sailed away, I hear a familiar voice & it is a friend from my quilting guild.