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Monday, August 31, 2020

My Summer of Despair



The title sounds like it came right out of pulp fiction.  I have kept my circle small with either one-on-one or family outings. Yes, there have been rare times when I have thrown caution to the wind and had lunches or meetings with friends.  Oh, how is miss my friends. The Mercedes Club is on hold. Both of my business guilds are "Zoom" only. My board memberships are only e-mail and computer meetings.  What is a social girl to do?

So why shop, you ask?  I am a planner and know that the isolation will end someday. Not a minute too soon. Last week, Macy's had a beautiful casual dress that I fell in love with. A triple sale brought this designer "CeCe Off-The-Shoulder Balloon-Sleeve Belted Dress" into a reasonable range.  I love the off-the-shoulder look and this is both dressy and casual for a Florida day-to-evening outing.  Maybe even a cruise again someday.  

The only other item to mention is the "INC Luci Drawstring Crossbody, Created For Macy's".  I am such a sucker for drawstring purses and this one is especially cute with it's vintage macrame look.  Remember macrame?

I will keep you posted on fit and quality but I have purchased CeCe before and have not been disappointed.  

Lets all do our part to isolate the best we can, socially distance and wear a mask - Because you respect the health of others.  









Saturday, August 29, 2020

Friday, August 28, 2020

Red Wine Day



Deep Breath! To celebrate the end of the RNC Convention, I give you Red Wine Day.  Yes, it is a real day designation. It does not take a lot of research to find that every day is designated as something special. 

The "Spruce Eats" site provides "A Guide to the Different Types of Red Wine" and is a fun read. Red wines (Merlot Blends) are my favorite and my preferred wine producer is Sunstone.

I visited Sunstone in Santa Ynez, CA (Santa Barbara County) a few years back (2014) and loved their tasting room. It was a beautiful experience and I joined their club that day.  Since then, I receive orders on a regular basis and have shared my selections with friends / family.   

Here is a description of my favorite "Eros":


Eros




A delightful mélange of red and black fruits on the nose includes fresh raspberries, stewed plums, strawberries, and blackberry turnovers. Soft and round with structured acidity, the toasted oak character on the palate integrates well with the polished tannins and notes of cherries, strawberries, nutmeg and oregano.










My Sunstone Winery visit 2014

A bit of trivia - The Movie "Sideways", from 2004 with Paul Giamatti, was shot in the Santa Ynez wine valley.  Here is a short synopsis:    

Struggling writer and wine enthusiast Miles (Paul Giamatti) takes his engaged friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), on a trip to wine country for a last single-guy bonding experience. While Miles wants to relax and enjoy the wine, Jack is in search of a fling before his wedding. Soon Jack is sleeping with Stephanie (Sandra Oh), while her friend Maya (Virginia Madsen) connects with Miles. When Miles lets slip that Jack is getting married, both women are furious, sending the trip into disarray. Wikipedia


The weekend I visited was the 10th anniversary of the movie's release. There were a lot of visitors in town taking wine tours. The evening after my tours and well-needed nap, I had an elegant dinner in the nearby town of Solvang.  Fun... 


Thursday, August 27, 2020

Camp Aranu'tiq - A Camp for Transgender and Nonbinary Children.



Ants on a Log members Julie Be and Anya Rose
Helped curate a new album that affirms
the experiences of transgender and nonbinary kids
 August 13, 20205:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition


Noel King
Barry Gordemer 




A lot of summer camps had to close this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including Camp Aranu'tiq in New Hampshire, a camp for transgender and nonbinary children. Julie Be is a music therapist who has helped run the camp since it was founded in 2009 and also one half of the children's musical duo Ants on a Log, alongside Anya Rose. So the stuck-at-home campers would feel connected, Be and Rose put out an open call for songs that reflect the trans and nonbinary experience, use gender neutral pronouns or use humor to talk about gender. Together, they curated an album of children's music called Trans & Nonbinary Kids Mix.

The album hopes to connect with kids across a spectrum of ages: from elementary school up through early high school. Be says that older kids will hear the music in a more nuanced way, but that we need to give kids in the lower age range more credit, too.





"I think people underestimate the ability for younger kids to know about gender," they say. "There's a lot of research that shows that kids know what their gender is, even around age 2."

Songs like "Be Who You Are" and "Shine Bright" tackle finding love and support in affirming a kid's identity from their perspective; others, like "Daughter" by Ryan Cassata, tell a story aimed more towards adults. Be says they wanted to show kids and adults what the other might be thinking, but also stressed the importance of parents being open to conversation, even at a young age.

"You can't tell a kid to not think about something," Be says. "I would say in general, if a parent is uncomfortable with talking about anything big like this, like how a kid identifies, you are missing a big opportunity to connect with your child, to love your child and support your child. That's a big problem, gender aside."

For Be, an album like Trans & Nonbinary Kids Mix would have meant a lot to them at a young age. "It definitely would have given me language that I did not have," they say. Be hopes it can do the same for kids today.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Women's Equality Day

100 Anniversary of The 19th Amendment
Women's suffrage

Women's Right to Vote (1920)


The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state—nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them.




By 1916, almost all of the major suffrage organizations were united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and 2 weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920, changing the face of the American electorate forever.

The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and sometimes dramatic; yet ratification did not ensure full enfranchisement. Decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained. Many women remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory state voting laws.








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Our mothers, sisters, and friends fought for our right to vote.  Use it as the right/privilege that it is. Never has your vote been more important.


  




Tuesday, August 25, 2020

I Love A success Story - Married To A Man Named Sissy




Vickie and Sissy Goodwin



By: ANNA SALE

[Summary] - Douglas, Wyoming, natives Vickie and Sissy Goodwin got married in 1968. It was around the time they started their lives together that Vickie learned of a secret Sissy had been harboring since childhood—a preference for feminine clothing and cross-dressing in private. When Sissy decided to start wearing skirts, dresses and frills in public a few years into their marriage, Vickie struggled to accept it. And the couple quickly learned that Sissy's self-acceptance came with an often violent public backlash, both at home in Douglas and elsewhere.

We visited Vickie and Sissy at their home, for a conversation about masculinity, resiliency and staying married for 50 years. 

Read the whole article/interview at: 50 Years Married To A Man Named Sissy


Sissy Goodwin: I'm a male in every sense of the word, except the way I dress. I don't try to pass as a woman so I don't do makeup or fix my hair or anything.

Anna Sale: What words do you use to describe your gender identity?  

Sissy Goodwin: I heard the term GEM. Uh, it’s an acronym for "gender enhanced male." And I like that term. The term transvestite has gotten some negative connotation, kind of a nasty negative stereotype. So I prefer gender enhanced male. I like uh to do typical male activities. I like to work with my hands, uh like to work outside. And so I'm, I think I'm typically male in every aspect except my mode of dress.


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Monday, August 24, 2020

Feminine Differential - Coral



In most copy this color is called Coral.   It seems to be a very flattering color for my hair and I think would work for auburn as well.  It has been only recently that I have been drawn to this color.  It is absolutely not a masculine color and not sure I have ever seen a shirt in this color.  Maybe in that area it would be called orange.    

The above top is from Venus (BALLOON SLEEVE TOP) and is described on their site this way:


Balloon sleeves are an ultra chic way to add volume to an outfit. Thanks to its easy fit and flattering scoop neck, this Balloon Sleeve Top is THE fashion-forward basic to snag for the season.

The Venus top is on sale for a great price of $21.99 and find their knits to be a very generous fit. I paired it with my white skinny side zip pants and know it will work with my two Coach heels shown.  I find Coach heels to be of good quality and fit for slightly wider feet. 

No outfit is complete today without a proper mask. Banana Republic has the above mask in a "Face Mask 3-Pack − Classic Florals" for $29.00.  Our new reality.  Be safe - Be considerate of others. 




Wearing Coral - Not Just for Royalty 
 People Magazine - Celeb-Inspired Coral Outfits to Get You Ready for 2019’s Biggest Trend

Friday, August 21, 2020

History - A Time When Cross Dressing Was A Crime

How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century


A police officer arrests a male cross-dresser
 in a ball gown, circa 1940.

By: HUGH RYAN

In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, police arrested LGBTQ people based on an informal "three-article" rule. The Stonewall Riots helped turn the tide against these arrests.


 At that time you had to have three pieces of female attire” in order to avoid being arrested for cross-dressing. 


Masquerade Laws Revived to Target LGBTQ

Laws criminalizing cross-dressing spread like wildfire around the United States in the mid-19th century. New York’s, dating back to 1845, was one of the oldest. It declared it a crime to have your “face painted, discolored, covered, or concealed, or [be] otherwise disguised… [while] in a road or public highway.”

The state originally intended the law to punish rural farmers, who had taken to dressing like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors. But as scholar William N. Eskridge, Jr. recounts in his encyclopedic book Gaylaw, “by the beginning of the 20 century, gender inappropriateness… was increasingly considered a sickness and public offense.”

Existing laws against costumed dress, even if they didn’t specifically mention cross dressing—collectively referred to as “masquerade laws”—were increasingly pressed into service around the country to punish gender variance.

That these laws were often ill-suited to the task didn’t matter.

In Brooklyn in 1913, for instance, a person who we would today call a transgender man was arrested for “masquerading in men’s clothes,” smoking and drinking in a bar. When the magistrate noted that the state’s masquerade law was intended only to criminalize costumed dress used as a cover for another crime, the police were forced to let the man go. However, they promptly re-arrested him, charged him with “associating with idle and vicious persons,” and found a new magistrate to try the case.

When he was found guilty and sentenced to three years in a reformatory, the judge made it clear that despite the new charge, he was being punished for his dress:


No girl would dress in men’s clothing unless she is twisted in her moral viewpoint,” the magistrate proclaimed from the bench, according to a September 3, 1913 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.


Exotic Carnival and Ball held
Manhattan Center in 1962
Many men dressed as women were locked up on charges of masquerading and indecent exposure at the National Variety Artists' Exotic Carnival and Ball held at the Manhattan Center in 1962. Police and detectives herded the costumed guests into police wagons in front of the ball. 

Three-Article Rule Becomes Code

As America’s fear and panic over LGBTQ people became increasingly vocal and widespread in the mid-20 century, arrests like this became more and more common. Still, those arrests primarily revolved around 19th-century masquerade laws, none of which specified a number of articles of clothing to avoid arrest. So where does the idea of the three-article rule come from?

Kate Redburn, a JD/PhD candidate in queer and trans legal history at Yale University (who uses the gender-neutral pronoun, "they"), has discovered a few clues in their research. First, they say that mentions of the three-article rule are almost all retrospective, meaning they come up in interviews and memoirs about the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, but not in documents actually produced in those years.

Second, none of the cross-dressing laws they could find mentioned a specific number of clothing articles. Curious, they turned to more esoteric sources of legal codes, including military law and police procedural manuals (which lay out how a law on the books should be put into practice on the ground). When those also turned up nothing, they came up with two explanations: either the three-article law was an informal rule of thumb used by the police, or, essentially, a term used by the LGBTQ community as a way to easily warn each other.


Christopher Adam Mitchell, who researches LGBTQ history at New York City’s Hunter College, came to a similar conclusion. In the mid 20th century, he said, both the police and LGBTQ communities around the country were becoming more interconnected, making it easier for this kind of information to flow between localities, which explains why it gets referenced everywhere. Mitchell also noticed an additional wrinkle: gay men and transgender women who mention the three-article rule were usually being arrested in bar raids. Lesbians and trans men, on the other hand, were being accosted in bars and on the streets.




“Police were using this to check their underwear,” Mitchell says, using the law as an excuse for street-level sexual assault and sexual humiliation.

However, the greater danger to gender nonconforming people during this period, Mitchell suggests, was street violence, which was much more prevalent than street cross-dressing arrests—although the two sometimes went hand in hand.

New York City resident Martin Boyce recalls that on Halloween, 1968, a cop collared him in Queens because his Oscar Wilde costume was too feminine. Boyce argued back, brandishing the receipts from the unisex store where he’d bought his clothes. Their argument attracted the attention of a nearby gang. The police officer, frustrated by Boyce’s resistance, acquiesced to Boyce’s arguments—and then turned to the gang, saying. “He’s all yours.” The gang was so amused by Boyce’s defiant attitude, they let him pass unharmed.

Read More...


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Think this could never happen again?  There are those in the political arena that would like to return to that time. 
 Be visible.   Be Active.   Vote! 



Thursday, August 20, 2020

HOMECOMING - AWARD WINNING COMEDY SHORT FILM





With family, you're either in...or you're out.
When a college sophomore returns home to share some important news with his parents, things don't go at all the way he expected...until they do.

Winner of 13 festival awards including:
AUDIENCE AWARD - 2018 NYC SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
JURY AWARD BEST ENSEMBLE - 2018 LA COMEDY FEST
JURY AWARD BEST COMEDY - 2018 OZ INT’L FILM FESTIVAL
JURY AWARD BEST STUDENT SHORT - 2019 BEAUFORT INT’L FF
BEST COMEDY SHORT – 2019 SEDONA INT’L FILM FESTIVAL
BEST COMEDY SHORT – 2019 ARIZONA SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
BEST LGBTQ SHORT – 2019 THE WOMEN’S FILM FESTIVAL 
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD – CALCUTTA INT’L CULT FF 
BEST INT’L COMEDY – 2018 LONDON INT’L SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
BEST LGBTQ SHORT- 2019 VIENNA FILM AWARDS
BEST COMEDY SHORT – 2019 BRECKENRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL
BEST COMEDY SHORT & AUDIENCE AWARD- 2019 KANSAS INT''L FILM FESTIAL


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I want to thank my wonderful dear friends, Frank and Ann for sharing this.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

I Love A Success Story - Jackson Bird



Ted Talk 

Jackson Bird is a sought-after speaker with extensive experience presenting at schools, conferences, and other events. He has spoken at San Diego Comic-Con, YouTube, TED Women, VidCon, MIT, Yale, Oxfam, and more. His TED Talk, "How to talk (and listen) to trans people," has been viewed over one million times and his YouTube videos on related topics garner over 100,000 views a month.


Jackson's Book



Jackson is available for keynotes, panels, and workshops on the following topics:


  •     Transgender rights and experiences
  •     LGBTQ+ issues
  •     Gender & sexuality
  •     Digital, youth, & fan activism
  •     Digital storytelling
  •     Online video
  •     Social media
  •     Podcasting







Tuesday, August 18, 2020

How To Make Your Makeup Last Under A Face Mask







By Kelsey Stewart
Aug. 15, 2020

Though masks are of the upmost importance during the pandemic, cloth coverings and makeup aren't the best combination. If you're one to put on a full face of products daily (or any products for that matter), you're probably still navigating how to make your makeup last under a face mask. Good news: you don't have to completely forego your beauty routine.

"To make your makeup last with or without a mask, I think it’s important to layer," Mai Quynh, a celebrity makeup artist who works with Chloe Moretz and Kiernan Shipka, tells TZR. "I'll always do a cream blush, and then set it with a powder blush." She says she'll do the same with foundation. "Do a primer, a liquid or cream foundation, concealer, and then powder." Quynh says the more you layer products, the longer they'll stay on.

And choosing quality over quantity is essential. "To make your makeup last longer, I would really invest in proper primer and proper setting sprays and not just adding more makeup," Tasha Reiko Brown, a celebrity makeup artist, whose clients include Alicia Keys and Tracee Ellis Ross, tells TZR.

Below, find tips and products suggested by celebrity makeup artists to make your makeup last under your mask.

Read the whole post:


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I have been using Philosophy Supernatural Poreless Primer for years.  It make the make my foundation spread smoothly and now I see it has added "Supernatural" benefits - Highly recommended during these troubled times.


Monday, August 17, 2020

Our History - The Virgin Queen


Is this proof the Virgin Queen was an imposter in drag? Shocking new theory about Elizabeth I unearthed in historic manuscripts.








By CHRISTOPHER STEVENS FOR THE DAILY MAIL PUBLISHED: June 2013

The bones of Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess, lie mingled with those of her sister, Bloody Mary, in a single tomb at Westminster Abbey. But are they really royal remains — or evidence of the greatest conspiracy in English history?

If that is not the skeleton of Elizabeth Tudor, the past four centuries of British history have been founded on a lie.

And according to a controversial new book, the lie began on an autumn morning 470 years ago, when panic swept through a little group of courtiers in a manor house in the Cotswold village of Bisley in Gloucestershire.

The king, Henry VIII, was due at any hour. He was travelling from London, in great discomfort — for the 52-year-old monarch was grossly overweight and crippled by festering sores — to visit his daughter, Elizabeth.

The young princess had been sent there that summer from the capital to avoid an outbreak of plague. But she had fallen sick with a fever and, after weeks of bleeding, leeches and vomiting, her body was too weak to keep fighting. The night before the king’s arrival, his favourite daughter, the only child of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, had been dangerously ill. In the morning, Elizabeth lay dead.

Elizabeth’s governess, Lady Kat Ashley, and her guardian, Thomas Parry, had good reason to fear telling the king this awful news. It would cost them their lives. Four of Henry’s children had died in infancy and, of the survivors, one — Edward — was a sickly boy of five and the other an embittered, unmarried woman in her late 20s.

The ten-year-old Elizabeth was Tudor England’s most valuable child in many ways. She could surely be married to a French or Spanish prince to seal an international alliance — and her own children would secure the Tudor dynasty Henry so desperately craved.

Now she was dead, and when the king discovered it, Parry and Lady Ashley would surely be executed. Their sole duty had been to keep the princess safe: failure was treason. The penalty would not even be beheading, but death by the most gruesome torture imaginable.

Their only chance of concealing the truth, and perhaps buying themselves a few days to flee the country, was to trick the king.

Kat Ashley’s first thought was to find a village girl and dress her up in the princess’s robe, with a mantle, to fool the king. Bisley was a tiny hamlet, however, and there were no female children of Elizabeth’s age.

But there was a boy, from a local family called Neville. He was a gawky, angular youth a year or so younger than Elizabeth, who had been the princess’s companion and fellow pupil for the past few weeks. And with no time to look further afield for a stand-in, Parry and Lady Ashley took the desperate measure of forcing the boy to don his dead friend’s clothes.

Remarkably, the deception worked. Henry saw his daughter rarely, and was used to hearing her say nothing.  The last time she had been presented in court, meeting the new Queen Catherine Parr, she had been trembling with terror.

The princess was known as a gentle, studious child, and painfully shy — not a girl to speak up in front of the king who had beheaded her mother.

Read this more of this  fascinating story here...


If her secret was betrayed, the country could be plunged into civil war. There was no obvious heir, and Mary’s former husband was now Britain’s greatest enemy, Philip II of Spain. Certainly, Cecil was surprisingly stoic about the queen’s determination never to wed.

Publicly, Elizabeth sometimes claimed that people needed to feel their monarch was wedded to the whole country, rather than one man. On other occasions, she hinted that the debacle of her father’s six wives, and her mother’s death at the block, had put her off marriage for life.
If those reasons sound flimsy, the queen’s determination to control her image was iron.

She wore thick make-up and heavy wigs at all times: no one was permitted to see her without them. And she controlled her succession with equal ruthlessness.

On her deathbed, she commanded that the crown must go to her cousin’s son — James VI of Scotland, whose mother was Mary Queen of Scots. But the command itself was cryptically worded: ‘I will have no rascal to succeed me, and who should succeed me but a king?’

Was there a hint in those words that for 45 years the figure on the throne had herself been a ‘rascal’, playing a part? Author Steve Berry believes there is only one way to discover the truth. After Elizabeth died in 1603, there was no autopsy.

Instead of a magnificent state funeral for the monarch the nation called ‘Gloriana’, the queen’s bones were interred with those of her sister in Westminster Abbey.

Berry points to the recent DNA analysis that proved that remains discovered under a Leicester car park were those of Richard III, who ruled a century before Elizabeth.

Such high-tech methods would not even be necessary to establish whether the bones in the Abbey tomb were all female, or whether a male skeleton was buried there.

‘Elizabeth’s grave has never been breached,’ Berry says. ‘Now it’s  time to open it up and see what’s  in there.’


See Also Gender Variance Who's Who 





Sunday, August 16, 2020

Saturday, August 15, 2020

I Was Born To Be....


California 1989 after a UCSD speaking engagement. 



What would you like to substitute for "REDHEAD" in the above quote?

"Live your objective - Escape!"








Friday, August 14, 2020

Cruising '19 - Travel Log



This was a post from my cruise taken in June of 2019. I did not get around to posting this travel-log and was thinking yesterday how much I have missed doing a cruise this year. Someday the conditions will be favorable again and I so look forward to doing this again. It was one of the most magical and fun experiences one can ever imagine. 


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My Royal Caribbean, "Symphony of the Seas"* adventure of last year was outstanding in many ways. I mentioned that one Cruise Critic question was, "Would anyone bother to get off the ship in port, as it could take a week to try out all the on-board activities?" That was so true, however I did manage to book several excursions and had an adventure in each port. I will address, if anyone is interested,  the name/passport/security gymnastics. Suffice to say,  absolutely no issues. Cruise ships are incredibly accommodating. 

My ports were Roatán, Honduras; Costa Maya, Mexico; Cozumel, Mexico; and Coco Cay, Bahamas. The first three of these were western Caribbean destinations; a different route from 2018's Eastern Caribbean Islands. 

The first port was Roatán, Honduras. This is a beautiful small island off the coast of mainland Honduras. A safe cruise ship destination with many options and eager tour operators. I wanted to see the island, experience the culture and enjoy the day. The tour I booked with Anderson Roatán Tours, which included a chocolate factory, a native rum factory, beach time and lunch. The factories were very crude and not anything like what we call factories but still interesting. My tour guide/driver, Delon Washington, was wonderful, and in his new Honda van, took me all over the island - As he said, "anywhere I wanted to go". I was his only passenger and had his full attention.  The best part was lunch at a local's tree house cafe. I was the only tourist there and everyone was so friendly; plus good "local food". We all watched Women's World's Cup Soccer - a true international experience. The leftmost photo above is from the cafe overlooking the port and my ship. 


Temple of the Masks
The next port - Costa Maya, Mexico.  The port was very organized and the excursion booked was a Mayan Ruins Adventure. The site Kohunlich (X-làabch'e'en in Modern Mayan) was reached by a 1.5-hour modern bus ride into Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula near the Belize border. Kohunlich has relics dating back to 200 B.C. It covers about 21 acres, is surrounded by dense sub-tropical rain-forest, and contains almost 200 ancient mounds; all of which we are allowed to explore freely. The site is best known for its Temple of the Masks, an early classic pyramid whose central stairway is flanked by huge humanized stucco masks. 

During the bus ride there and back to the ship, we were treated to a wonderful history lesson by our tour guide, Carlos, detailing the The Mayan culture was far more advanced than I ever knew. The whole experience was impressive. 


Blue Topaz with Diamond Halo 
The last port was Cozumel, Mexico. As you get off the ship in Cozumel, there is an extensive tourist shopping village. That day it was an absolute mad-house of activity with two mega-ship in port. I passed through the port shops quick as possible and got a cab to the downtown shopping area; about 3 miles (4.8 km), $8 US. Downtown was a clean and interesting area where I had an authentic taco lunch. After that I found a cool and interesting jewelry shop where I did purchase a blue topaz ring from a very friendly and accommodating jeweler. He re-sized it as I enjoyed much needed air conditioning, a fan and bottled water. After getting home, I researched the stone, its size, and quality. I am very pleased with my purchase. 

Perfect day at Coco Cay
Our final stop was Coco Cay, Bahamas. Not exactly a port-of-call. It is a privately developed island exclusively for Royal Caribbean cruise ship guests, named "Perfect day at Coco Cay". It includes an optional all new thrill water park with multiple water slides, zip-lines, plus much more. Accessible for everyone is a lagoon overlooking the ship, freshwater pools, and a crystal blue water Caribbean beach. There are plenty of free beach lounge chairs with umbrellas, coming soon luxury cabanas. Available on the island are multiple buffets with endless ship's food and cooked on-site picnic hot-dogs and hamburgers.       

The final photo above is the ship docking before sunrise, back in Miami. What a wonderful time and I so enjoyed myself. Sorry, this got so long - the good news, is that you were spared separate posts for each port.

Cruising is the real deal of a vacation. I was sad to say goodbye to a friend who made the cruise such a wonderful memory (ESCAPE).  


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*I want to thank Barbara Muhlbauer, (barbara.muhlbauer@frosch.com) Travel Consultant with FROSCH Travel Management, Vero Beach for taking care of many of the cruise and travel arrangements/details.  A super job! 


I am so ready for another cruise escape.