Invigorated by 7 evenings of dance parties on the New Year Caribbean cruise, as we disembarked in Fort Lauderdale I was eagerly anticipating the South Florida dance experience that my friend had planned for the next week. Organizer-extraordinaire, she had us set for  dance classes or hosted dance parties every night. 

I wasn’t planning a dance cruise over the New Year time frame as I thought my foot would still be slowly healing from my toe fracture surgery in July. A quiet Dec 31 with my family seemed the most sensible plan. But when my friend called and said “ let’s dance in the New Year on a Caribbean cruise” the song from Cabaret popped into my mind and wouldn’t go away. After a few days of listening to myself belting out “what good is sitting alone in your room, come hear the music play” I figured the only way to change the refrain was to book the cruise. Sure enough it worked and instead my singing switched to "let me be a dancin' fool”. Quickstep anyone?

This transatlantic leg of my Southampton-Baltics-New York dance cruise is the first time I am cruising as a solo traveller. All my previous dance cruises have been part of a group of dancers or with a dance partner. So when readers of my travelblogues have emailed me to ask how the onboard dancing is for people traveling alone, I have not really been able to answer from personal experience.