I don’t know if I would call it a mid-life crisis exactly but at one point in my mid forties I quit the job I had held for almost 17 years and took to the seas.



I went from working in a land based casino in Australia to working in a cruise ship casino. I left my house in the hands of a friend and gave in to my desire to travel the world. It may not have been quite as dramatic as selling all my possessions and taking to the open road with nothing more than the clothes on my back but for me it was a major departure from the safe and secure life I had led to that point.



The first six month contract I did was purely based in the Caribbean but the second gave me the opportunity to do a world cruise.



This is a compilation of the blog entries I made as I went around the world on the MS Amsterdam, flag ship of the Holland America Line fleet. It is not meant to be a slick travel book but rather a series of diary entries made on the fly, usually immediately after I returned to my cabin after a day ashore. It is my observations, made at the time and with the feel of a city still fresh in my senses.