What coincidences have you encountered on your cruises? ;-)

[fridaythecat.u.k.]

I'm sure you will have interesting stories to tell...So what coincidences have you come across on during your cruising escapades?

I had three on our Ruby cruise in August, felt a bit like the twilight zone sometimes... but the best one was as follows:

Our last port of call was Venice and we got in during the early evening. We decided to get the ship's water taxi into St Mark's square. When we got on the water taxi, it was very busy and we ended up standing at the front with quite a lot of other people, right next to a man, his wife and their early teenaged daughter, but we didn't speak.

We travelled towards St Mark's square with no incident, but then when we got to near the docking point, we had to wait for another taxi to disembark. We waited and waited, and then as the other one moved out and we were about to move in, the water taxi behind us pushed in the queue and went to the dock! Anyway, everyone was getting a little annoyed and started to talk about what was going on, but still we did not really talk to this couple and their child, but we gathered they were from the UK (from hearing them talk to others).

Then eventually we managed to dock and get off and for some reason we started to chat to these people. We were talking about the flight time home the next day and they said they were flying into Manchester, we said that was our nearest airport, although we flew from London to get direct flights... it was through this conversation that we eventually realised that the people who we had been standing next to for about an hour on the taxi lived about 5 miles away from us!!!

I would love to hear your stories, I'm sure there are some interesting ones out there

[frankathy]

My husband and I were on a Crystal cruise in the Med. We took a shore excursion from the ship. We knew our cousins we traveling Europe with AAA. The tour took us for lunch just outside the walls of Pompeii. Within 20 minutes our cousins group came into the same restuarant for lunch.

The four of us were in shock.

[idjaffe]

We are on the NCL Pearl December 2006...
A year later (Dec 2007) we are on the NCL Jewel - we get chairs by the pool the first day, and some random guy comes up to us - "Were you on the Pearl last year?"
"Yes"
"So were we - I think our kids played together"
(I see his little girl) "Yes they did, too funny"

We ended up spending a good amount of time together - had a great time. E-mailed a few times, but nothing major....

ANOTHER year goes by - We go on the Carnival Splendor (Dec 2008) - yup, you guessed it! Once again this random family from Chicago is on the ship...we ow call them our "cruising friends".

Now we are trying to get them to join us this year....and the timing is not working. If we had just let it randomly happen again.....

[boone2]

We had an aft balcony on the Tahitian Princess in FP in October. We were leaning over the balcony and started speaking to the couple in the next cabin. When we asked where we were from they lived 5 miles from us, even knew the road they lived on.
On the Emerald in the Med 2 years ago we started speaking with a British couple (we are originally from the UK and still have our accents so that always confuses people) We got quite friendly with them and they came back for drinks to our suite. It turned out that my cousins' husband was his boss
Terry

[san diego sue]

First night at dinner, one of the couples at our table were newlyweds from LA (we live in San Diego). We were celebrating our 30th anniversary. Don't know why I asked, but asked who married them. So surprised , same person that married us.

[Toto2Kansas]

We often have someone walk up to us and say they remember us from a past cruise. (my DH is hard to miss and once someone has met him, they rarely forget him-not explaining any further here lol). One couple we hadn't seen in 10 years, and we didn't remember them at all (I am embarassed to say), but they remembered us.

I expect to run into different staff members over the years, but am surprised how many passengers we happen to run into that we cruised with years ago but never stayed in touch with.

Always a surprise around every corner it seems.

[awhcruiser]

First cruise on the Coral in 2004 we had an awesome room steward. Next year on the Sun Princess I looked at the steward's name in our suite...Same one as the year before...And he remembered us...

[fridaythecat.u.k.]

Great stories so far, keep 'em coming

Our second coincidence occured about 10 mins after the first!

We had finished talking to the Shrewsbury family and were stood on a canal bridge in Venice looking at the Bridge of Sighs, a few metres in front of us. My DH was taking still photos and I was using the camcorder.

So I get a few shots of the bridge and its surroundings, and there were a lot of gondolas passing below. So I think, it would be good to track a gondola coming under the bridge and towards me, so I pick the next one when I see its front starting to come out from under the bridge.

So there I am filming this particular gondola, like I said one of many, when all of a sudden the people on the gondola starting waving and shouting "hello" etc. Well, I thought to myself that there was no need to play up quite so much for the camera, its not exactly a professional film or anything but then when I looked closer, realised that it was a couple from NYC that we had met at dinner one night early on! We kept seeing them around the ship after that and stopped to chat etc! Of all the gondolas I could have chosen, it was theirs

[mek]

We took a land based vacation to China in 2002. The flight to Beijing was a little over 14 hours, so people got up, moved around a lot, and talked to fellow passengers. Many of the couples on our flight were going to China to pick up their newly adopted children and there was one couple in particular that we chatted with the most. Over the next several days, we ran into this same couple three times at various locations around the city - amazing, since they weren't staying at our hotel and considering the size of Beijing.

[paul929207]

In August, we were in the gift shop in Qaqortoq, Greenland. We ran into a couple we met on an Amazn cruise earlier this year. In August, they were on the Maasdam,while we were on the Tahitian Princess.

[Wheretonext???]

I've had two that I remember. The first was on NCL about three years ago. I'd booked a private excursion in Mexico and at lunch the tour guide, my friend and I started chatting. Turns out that the tour guide was the sister of my favorite nephew's first love/high school sweetheart!

The second was in Jan of this year at FLL while waiting to board QM2. There was some confusion in the line, I looked up and it was a friend of mine who lives in the same area as I but I hadn't seen her for a couple of months and she didn't know that I was on the sailing--she and her husband had booked a week before sailing and were on their first cruise. What a surprise it was for all of us!

[Fetchpeople]

1. Talked to the desk person at a small boutique hotel (maybe 10 roooms) in Venice to see if anyone else was going on our Celebrity cruise and might want to share a water taxi to the ship. She found a couple who turned out to be former neighbors who lived 2 doors away from us. They shared and then we discovered that Celebrity put us at the same table and that DW and he shared a birthday.

2. Kept running into the same couple from the UK all over Istanbul. So much so that after one had her purse picked, they came looking for us at our hotel. Not accusatory, but asking if we had seen anything, etc.

[NotWthOutablcony]

This Hawaii cruise that we're planning, I don't know if you could call it coincidence or just plain lucky.
We had just gotten off the Star, and weren't all that happy with the ship, there wasn't anything "special" about it, but it was okay. We wanted to start planning our Hawaii cruise for 2011, alas, the Golden was the only one doing the Hawaii runs, we weren't thrilled, but hey, we were going to Hawaii! We constantly said to eachother, "wouldn't it be awesome if the Sapphire was doing Hawaii?!" They were always empty wishes. We got together with the 2 family members also joining us, to pick a date, we logged in online and there they were! 3 sailings by the Sapphire Princess during the time we wanted to go! Princess hadn't even released the announcement that they had added them, they litterally had JUST loaded them into their systems. I thought, "this can't be! No way!" So I called Princess to confirm, and sure enough!
We book through our TA, and this was a Sunday, so couldn't book until Monday, we had a large credit on our account including our FCC, so because of this, we were able to afford one of our favorite Emerald deck minis. We acted like we were booking to see which minis were available, and thought just how cool would it be if we could get on of the last aft minis with the extended balconies. I checked E728 and it had already been reserved I figured our chances for E731 were slim, I punched it into the room # field, and it was available!!! BUT, we still had almost 24 hours to wait until we could book the room through our TA, and if anyone was booking through Princess, they could certainly book that room if they saw that it was available. We anxiously waited until 9am the next morning when I placed the phone call to my TA, the conversation was so short, I wasn't sure we had exchanged all of the proper information, but she knows us so well! I waited, and waited, and waited some more, still no phone call from my TA, I logged onto the Princess website just to see if the room was available, it was not! I thought "oh no! We missed our chance! Now my TA is trying to get us a comparable room! That's what must be taking so long!" Then the phone rang! WE GOT IT!!!! I couldn't believe it! What luck! Then, to top it all off we found out that February is one of the best months for whale watching, and that you can litterally watch them right off your balcony! We were thrilled!!!! It couldn't have gotten any better than that! So call it coincidence or sheer luck, either way, this is one group of happy cruisers!

[karatemom2]

On our first Christmas cruise to Hawaii on the Diamond Princess a couple of years ago, my family was sitting at a table in the buffet watching the view as we pulled out of Kauai. There was an elderly gentleman standing by himself near our table watching as well. Since it was Christmas, we wished him a Merry Christmas and struck up a conversation. It turns out after we started talking about where we were from, not only were we from the same town, he was the father of a girl who I graduated high school with some 20 plus years ago!

[kooljamming]

Need background information for my story: I migrated to the the US from Jamaica in my early teens.

The story:
My first cruise was on RCCL 15 years ago. On the second day of the cruise, I walked up to the bar and odered a drink. I was not there long or said very much. About 15 minutes later DH came to the cabin and said that the bartender knows me. Now my twisted little mind is starting to work, trying to figure out how. I went back to the deck and the bartender was a guy I went to school with in Jamaica 20 years earlier. He remembered my name

Cabin luck
Without really trying I got the aft on Sapphire Princess and just booked the hump balcony on RCCL. I keep reading how these cabin are booked way in advance.

[caber]

We met a lady on a cruise who was the golfing partner to a man we had met on our honeymoon, 30 years previously.

[KarenCL]

We sat next to a lovely young woman and her mother at the Captain's Luncheon on Grand Princess. We had a nice conversation and wished each other well at the end of the lunch. Almost exactly one year later on Diamond Princess, we were seated next to them again at Captain's Luncheon. We looked at each other and decided that someone what trying to tell us something! We have been dear friends since that time and have taken several other cruises together, as well as visited each other on land.

[Sunmist]

It was the first sea day on the Grand Princess and I was in the bathroom washing my hands. The door to the restroom opened and I see this girl with really, really blonde platinum hair (natural I might add) and I thought to myself- I only know one girl who has hair like that- I had to take a double take of the girl that walked in because I had my sunglasses on, but once we realized that we weren’t mistaken we both looked at each other and started to scream! It was my best friend from elementary school. We went to the same jr high and high school together, but we kinda lost touch during those years. We hung out together for the entire cruise (thank God b/c it was mostly newlyweds on the ship and we were only 20 at the time) and now we are very good friends and hang out all the time!!! Thanks Princess!

[jean s]

Two years ago on Grand my dh wanted to sleep in on a sea day so I went to the dining room for breakfast by myself. I was seated at a large table and everyone was chatting about the cruise and where they were from. A young man was seated next to me and when I said where I was from he looked at me and said, "I work for the school system in that town." I looked at him and said, "So do I." We knew many of the same people but had never met each other. Last year on the Crown I was sitting at the aft pool reading a book when I heard my first name and maiden name called out. I looked up and standing in front of me was a classmate and neighbor from elementary school. We introduced our husbands and spent lots of time together.

[beachpeach1]

My dad's coincidence is a bit different. We had left the ship for an excursion and upon returning, needed to go through one of those checkpoints where you have your bags xrayed prior to boarding ship. There were many ships in port that day and all the passengers were mixed in at the checkpoint. My dad put his camera on the belt to be xrayed and when he was "scanned", went to pick up his camera from the belt. It wasn't there! He was naturally upset and left his information (name, ship, etc.) with those in charge, figuring his camera was a "goner". The next day we were at another island, and a lady stops my dad to ask if he had lost a camera! It had gotten mixed up in her belonging at the port the day before. She was on another ship, but in back of my mom in line. She was noticing my mom's hat at the time, and the next day, stood at the terminal checking people as they got off the boat, looking for my mom and her hat! Thank goodness mom wore that hat the next day! But how gracious of the lady to give her time and efforts to locating the camera's owners. And how coincidental that her ship landed at the same port on the same day and at the same time of day!!!!