One of the things I greatly enjoy wherever and whenever Ted and I travel is the people we see and meet.  I love to watch children and to talk with adults.  No matter where we go, I’ve found that people are all the same.  I’m convinced that we could have world peace if we could exist without governments.  People get along with each other; it’s the governments that let politics get in the way of my dream for world peace.  Here are a few photos I took on Ted’s and my 2023 BT to show how similar people are around the world.

This is a picture of a candy store in Taormina, Sicily.  Apparently, superheroes are international.  How many can you find and identify in the store?  I named 20, counting Superman and Spiderman only once each.

When I was in elementary school, we had several cadences for jumping rope.  One was “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes (name) with a baby carriage.”  Well, love came first and here’s the marriage—a wedding that took place at the Church of San Giorggio Maggioni with an official photo being taken in the Venetian Lagoon and Venice in the background.

And here’s the baby carriage.  Ted and I saw this at a home in Chioggia, Italy.  It’s a girl!  Baby Lisa was born on September 9.  She weighed 3.560 kg (7.8 lb.) and was 51 cm (20 inches) long.  Congratulations, Mom and Dad!

Like everywhere else, in Taormina, Sicily, when it’s naptime and you’re not at home, the best place to sleep is on Dad’s shoulder.

After that refreshing nap, the best seat in the house is on top of Dad’s shoulders, like these two kids in Split, Croatia.

No matter where you go, if there’s a playground, there are kids playing just like they’re doing here in Šibenik, Croatia.  I still like to swing, ride the teeter-totter, go down the slide, and spin on the merry-go-round, but I limit myself to doing it when I’m not intruding on the kids.

Everyone knows that tired feeling you get after a long day of walking, then finally having an opportunity to sit down and fall asleep. Without Dad’s shoulder to sleep on, these folks settled for the motion of a slow-moving water taxi on our way back to the ship from Venice. They’ll be revived and ready for tonight’s entertainment onboard.

One person we met broke my “people everywhere are the same” mold and stands out because he had an unusual way of introducing himself.  You know how you meet new people when you’re traveling and you say, “Where are you from?”  When you do that, people usually name a city, a state, or a country, depending on how far away from home they are.  This particular man said, “Well, I did two terms in Bloomington, IL, but now I live in Florida.”  Bloomington is where the Illinois state penitentiary is located.  Wouldn’t most people simply say, “Florida”? That just proves another maxim: people will always surprise you.