I am very happy you wrote this, I recognize my asking was probably a (large?) part of it. I do think you have plenty of right to complain about your luxury vacation.

I am sorry to hear about the troubles you have had over the past year. As someone who struggles with a balance between airing her problems to the world too often (way too often) and not enough (if you can believe that), I respect that you made the choice that was right for you.

And of course I am sad you had motion sickness issues and I am glad that Bonine was working for you in the latter half of the week.

Since I came into the cruise with JCCC2 but am friends with mostly people who were on the first, I have always felt like each subsequent cruise was going to be a disappointment and never live up to the original. There is no way it possibly could, everything else is a pale shadow of JCCC1 and I respect that.

I also get the feeling that my JCCC3 is going to be like your JCCC1, the one to live up to. I guess we will see, or at least I will see, in a year from now if I have a similar reaction. The way I am looking at things is that even if I peaked with JCCC3, future cruises will probably still be a place for me to see all my friends who I do not get to see together very much. And if my friends stop attending I will have to re-evaluate.

I guess for me, I did not expect JCCC2 to be a rehash of JCCC3, and am going to try really hard to make sure JCCC4 is its own potentially awesome but equally potentially horrible thing.

I am sad that you did not have the best cruise, though happy you did have fun. I am sorry if my irrational exuberance has rubbed it in, in any way. I am very glad that you shared this.

Love,
Alice

One only has to read through your list of favorites too see that despite the exhaustion and seasickness, this trip added to your life in special ways. I, for one, am glad you were there, glad you were able to feel a little better partway through, and sad that I didn’t really get to meet you and say hi.