So This Is The Intro Post ...

Welcome to Opals and Romeos!

Are you wondering about the blog title? For the uninitiated ... OPALS are Older People with Active Lifestyles and ROMEOS are Retired Old Men Eating Out. Most who hear these terms for the first time are ROTFLOL! Hope you are too!

Opals and Romeos describe my current life ... and a great one it is! Opal fits me pretty well (although I don't think of myself as 'old') and I'm married to a Romeo (although he's not 100% retired). We hang out with other Opals and Romeos on the west coast of FL.

What distinguishes Opals from ordinary 'old people' is the 'active' part. While you may think we sit around all day waiting for someone to call or visit, our lifestyle is about as far from that as you can imagine.

We play sports - golf, tennis & pickle ball - take walks, work out, kayak, paddleboard, play games (canasta, mahjong and hand & foot), take continuing ed classes, belong to book clubs, go to plays and concerts, walk the beach, volunteer and travel. We're busier now than when we had careers and children to raise!

As for this blog, I'm not certain what path it will take but the journey has begun. I invite you to come along and follow the adventure!

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Jamestown, St. Helena / Thu Mar 21

Today we're anchored off Jamestown, St. Helena which is a small (10 miles x 6 miles), volcanic island that's part of the British Overseas Territory which includes Ascension (more about that in the next post) and Tristan da Cunha islands. St. Helena is located approximately 1,100 miles directly west of Luanda, Angola, Africa and about 2,000 miles east of Brazil - basically in the middle of nowhere. Population is 4,500. The island is famous because it's the place of Napoleon Bonaparte's exile and death. When our ship's Captain came on the PA system the other day, he described these islands and what they had to offer. He ended his comments by hoping that we enjoyed our time on these two rocks in the middle of the ocean! LOL! We truly enjoyed our time today! We went on a ship tour that took us around most of this scenic island. Again, the pictures cannot convey the landscape's beauty. Jamestown is wedged between two very high peaks. We drove around m

Perth / Wed Feb 20

Today we docked in Freemantle which is a port city about a 20 minute ride from Perth. Perth is the capitol and largest city in the Australian state of Western Australia. We boarded a ferry in Freemantle for a ride up the Swan River to Perth. Lots of yacht clubs and beautiful homes lined the river. The approach from the river was quite scenic. In the photo below you can see the Tree Top Walk in Kings Park. We drove through various neighborhoods in Perth then stopped to spend time in beautiful Kings Park which is one of the largest parks in the world - even larger than Central Park in NYC. There were beautiful views of Perth from the park. We then had a brief stop at Cottesloe Beach before driving through Freemantle and returning to the ship. On our drive back to the ship we passed through some of the wealthier Perth neighborhoods. We saw a rare tree (think it's called a poker tree) -

Dakar, Senegal / Wed Mar 27

Today we docked in Dakar which is the capitol of Senegal. We took one of the ship's tours since we weren't sure what to expect safety wise. Surprisingly, the tour bus was pretty modern complete with air conditioning and our local tour guide's English was good. We spent about 4 hours going to some of the highlights of the city. We didn't always stop for photos and the windows of the bus were quite dirty so there aren't that many great photos to share. Dakar has many modern high rise buildings, well paved roads and a decent highway system yet there is so much poverty. People are set up almost everywhere selling their goods and piles of garbage are all around. On one corner we saw someone selling bed frames and in another area, selling refrigerators. There are modern cars on the road as well as horses, wagons and goats. You can see how developed the road system is in the city... We saw a number of small, colorful buses on the roads. T

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