Reader Jessica Lotz and her family recently took a British Isles cruise. While on the cruise, they discovered that one of the youth counselors onboard the ship was Karen Schwartz from O’Fallon, Illinois. Lotz said they were very surprised to have a local onboard, since only about one percent of the 1,100 employees on the ship are American.
“When my six-year-old son Ryan went to Splash Academy (the kids’ camp on board), he’d come back telling us how he and Karen spent time talking about their favorite food from Peel. Also, all of the youth counselors have fun names so Karen was really ‘Kupcake’ which she later told me was a nod to Sweet Katie Bee’s, one of her downtown favorites,” Lotz said.
The family took an 11-day cruise out of Southampton, England with stops in Guernsey (United Kingdom), Portland (England), Cork and Dublin (Ireland), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Kirkwall (Orkney Isles) and Inverness and Edinburgh (Scotland). Pictured, from left: Karen Schwartz (holding the Weekly), Ryan Lotz, Jessica Lotz, Sue and Dave McCarthy, and Craig Lotz.