Meeting people on cruises

[MicCanberra]

4 hours ago, DarrenM said:

I was wandering round the ship when I bumped into someone that looked just like my wife.

 

Turned out it WAS her.

Does that make you lucky.😛

[DarrenM]

Yes but not as lucky as her.😛

[lenquixote66]

Another one from me.This past October we were on a shore excursion that took us to a museum.The Curator asked everyone where they were from.I replied LI but originally Brooklyn,NY .He replied that he too grew up in Brooklyn.It turned out that he lived around the corner from the house I lived in.

[ldubs]

12 hours ago, DarrenM said:

I was wandering round the ship when I bumped into someone that looked just like my wife.

 

Turned out it WAS her.

 

I'll bet you met a lot of people who were on your same cruise too!  😀

[Sancho_proudfoot]

We were in Vegas, ahead of travelling to San Diego to join our cruise. The Rugby Union world cup semi final was being played, and we could only find one bar that was showing it on TV.

 

That bar was full to (over) capacity. At the interval, while a few folk eased out for a tobacco break, we got talking to a guy stood in front of us. He was backpacking around the world, and had arrived in LA two days earlier from Japan. He was moving on tomorrow to Denver.

 

He lived in the next street to us back home in the UK.

[DarrenM]

11 hours ago, ldubs said:

 

I'll bet you met a lot of people who were on your same cruise too!  😀

How did you know? Were you there?

[SRF]

There is a small world thread floating about CC somewhere.

[MicCanberra]

I don't believe in a small world, our koalas are not and have never been purple.😛

[ldubs]

6 hours ago, DarrenM said:

How did you know? Were you there?

 

Yes, in disguise as a pepperpot!  A word I just learned.  Hahah

[JMorris271]

This is strange as a few of us were just talking about the same thing last week.

My wife had found us a table that seats 4 to eat breakfast. We were just 2 but there was nothing else available.\

Before I arrived at the table an older lady asked the 2 other chairs were taken. My wife said no to which the lady asked if it was ok if she and her husband shared the table which was fine.

I arrived with my plate and sat whereby my wife introduced the lady to me.  About a minute later her husband arrived and we exchanged greetings when it hit us both at the same time.  He was a professor that taught meet European History at TCU. 20 yrs ago.

I pulled an A so all was good.

 

[kcdd]

That is amazing!  It really is a small world!

[SRF]

Not cruise related, but I was in Phnom Pehn Cambodia for work.

 

The person I was working with me, contacted me the week before and asked it I would be interested in dinner with her and her husband that day I arrive.  I said sure.

 

So they picked up me for dinner, and there was another woman in the car.  My contact asked if I minded if her boss came along.  And I said no problem.

 

When we got to dinner, the boss and I started the where are you from game.  She said Maryland.  I said, where, I live in MD.  She named a nearby town, about 8 - 10 miles away, on the water.  I said we had kept our sailboat in that town.

She asked which marina.  I told her, and she said she worked there in High School.  I told her the boat's name and slip, and she remembered it.  Then she mentioned an incident she had, and I realized I remembered her two.

 

Nothing like finding someone from 12 years before half way around the world.

[bbwex]

We have had several similar situations.  On our first cruise in the Baltic, we ran into a couple we knew while we were having lunch at Catherine's Summer Palace, and then bumped into them again in Helsinki.  They weren't on our cruise, but we were in the same places.

 

On a cruise around Italy, we were standing around a train station waiting for a train back to the port and struck up a conversation with several couples.  They were from Corpus Christi, we were from Pittsburgh, but it turned out that they knew a cousin who lived in Corpus.

 

It is amazing just how small the world is sometimes!

[LittleYiaYia]

About 8 years ago my husband and I were on a Celebrity cruise that had just ported in Barbados.  We were having breakfast outside on the Oceanview deck and there was a lady sitting at the table next to us.  For some reason we started a conversation and found out we were both from St. Louis, though she lived in a different suburb about 30 miles from us.  She remarked that she was writing a letter to her son's high school math teacher.  She said she was thanking him for being so patient with her son and helping him understand math.  He had just graduated from college with an engineering degree and she was sure that this math teacher was responsible for her son's success.

 

  I told her that I was going to mention that to my son when we got home as he is a Math teacher at a private school.  Well, you guessed it, she was writing to my son.  She finished the letter, put it in an envelope and I hand delivered it two weeks later.  By the way, I never saw that woman again on the cruise. 

[DarrenM]

You lot must end up in lots of fights going by the amount of times you bump into people 

[lenquixote66]

 

One more from me.On a recent cruise I was wearing a Born in Brooklyn tee shirt.I was coming out of an elevator and a woman was going in.She asked where in Brooklyn I lived.I told her and she said she grew up there too.She asked what street and I told her,she said same street.She asked my house number ,I was 836 and she was 637.We could not continue talking and we never saw each other again on the cruise.

[Doug S]

Not cruise related, but I play senior softball, and we started up a small winter league last month for those of us that wanted to stay active until spring season. My team had 12 players assigned, with one lady playing who I didn't know. She saw my sweatshirt with a Big Red N college logo and asked if I was from there. I said no, I grew up in north Florida. We chatted a bit more and turns out we graduated from the same FL High School, a few years apart. Pretty slim odds to meet somebody in a small group of 12 that went to the same small school 5 states away.    

[lenquixote66]

10 hours ago, Doug S said:

Not cruise related, but I play senior softball, and we started up a small winter league last month for those of us that wanted to stay active until spring season. My team had 12 players assigned, with one lady playing who I didn't know. She saw my sweatshirt with a Big Red N college logo and asked if I was from there. I said no, I grew up in north Florida. We chatted a bit more and turns out we graduated from the same FL High School, a few years apart. Pretty slim odds to meet somebody in a small group of 12 that went to the same small school 5 states away.    

I have met at least one person on every cruise that I have been on who went to a HS in the vicinity of where I lived.

[Zach1213]

4 minutes ago, lenquixote66 said:

I have met at least one person on every cruise that I have been on who went to a HS in the vicinity of where I lived.

 

I grew up in a major US city and I assume I would have the same result...but that would require me having a desire to meet new people on my cruise 😉

 

Funniest coincidence of my "cruise life" is that, back in 2012, my (then girlfriend, now wife) and I took a cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Posted something on Facebook about it, and a Facebook friend (who was a friend of a friend in "real life") commented that they just got off Freedom on the day we got on. Turned out, we were in the exact same cabin. 

[cruisemom42]

Just for the record, I have been traveling and cruising since the 1970s (initially with my parents) and I take at least one international cruise and one international trip yearly, usually more....

 

I have never, not once, run across anyone with a close connection to me. No one from my high school, from my small home town, or that I have met previously outside of travel. (Occasionally I will run into someone I know on one of the small-group special interest tours I take because, well, there are a limited number of us with such in-depth interests....)

 

I also have never run into anyone famous or even semi-famous while traveling or even not traveling.

 

So if you want to go through the world unrecognized and unfettered, join me. 

[dickinson]

We were on a cruise and one couple we played trivia with in the morning ended up having used to live in my neighborhood two doors down from where one of my kids bought a house.  They had moved away years ago but still kept in touch occasionally with the people my child bought their house from.

 

Another time we had dinner one night and the lady I was sitting next to told me that two of my neighbors while growing up were her aunts.

 

Another cruise we met a couple who had the cabin next door to us.  They told us that on day one of the cruise they bumped into one of their cousins.  They did not know they were going to be on the cruise.

[clo]

2 hours ago, Zach1213 said:

I grew up in a major US city and I assume I would have the same result...but that would require me having a desire to meet new people on my cruise 😉

 

This^

[lenquixote66]

3 hours ago, cruisemom42 said:

Just for the record, I have been traveling and cruising since the 1970s (initially with my parents) and I take at least one international cruise and one international trip yearly, usually more....

 

I have never, not once, run across anyone with a close connection to me. No one from my high school, from my small home town, or that I have met previously outside of travel. (Occasionally I will run into someone I know on one of the small-group special interest tours I take because, well, there are a limited number of us with such in-depth interests....)

 

I also have never run into anyone famous or even semi-famous while traveling or even not traveling.

 

So if you want to go through the world unrecognized and unfettered, join me. 

I meet people on cruises and on public transportation if I engage them in conversation.

My father had the same knack.

[2BACRUISER]

On our last cruise in the Mediterranean walked into the main bar and who should be at the bar than the man who serves me in the local spar shop most days for my paper and milk! Very small world indeed. 🤔🙂

[clo]

1 hour ago, lenquixote66 said:

I meet people on cruises and on public transportation if I engage them in conversation.

 

Oh, I'm a tested out "extreme extrovert" but honestly don't care about establishing other than the most basic exchanges.