Friday
Oh, forgot to tell you, checked with people who made the tour in Plymouth and it was another case of miscommunication. The tour driver checked with the pier dispatcher and was told that the next tender would be in 30-45 minutes so they decided not to wait since the tour was already shortened due to the ship’s late arrival. What he wasn’t told was that there was a tender on the way, which was the one we were on, and we arrived about 10 minutes after they left. The tour got mixed reviews from those that we talked to but no one indicated that they thought it was great, so I guess we didn’t miss much.
OK – today is Le Havre, France. Because we don’t speak French and most of the places to visit are quite a distance from the port, we opted to take our only ship sponsored tour today and we picked Impressions of Monet, a trip to his home in Giverny, a visit to a local museum, lunch and a tour of the medieval town of Rouen France.
This day and tour were so fabulous that I don’t have enough words to describe it. The pictures will help and I’ll post them later once I have time to edit and select the best of them. We must have taken a thousand pics between us today. The weather today was great with sunshine on & off – mostly on & temps in the high 70’s- this was the first day where we didn’t need jackets, and just carried a light raincoat in case the weather changed.
Our guide, Ann Marie was a French lady who was formerly an art teacher. She was wonderful and very, very knowledgeable. It was about a 2 hour bus ride to get to the town of Giverny and during the trip, she gave us lots of info about the area, Monet and the Impressionists. When we arrived at Monet’s house, we were given an hour to tour the gardens and the house. We could have stayed there easily all day. The flowers and the river and the flowers and the water lilies and the flowers and the landscaping and the flowers and the house and the flowers – oh my – just unbelievable. Words can’t describe the beauty of the place adequately. There are not enough superlatives to begin to cover this place. Everything looks just like the Monet paintings. The house and grounds and gardens are maintained just as they were in Monet’s time. Very interesting to us was the fact that the walls inside the house are just covered in a huge collection of Japanese woodblock prints.
After leaving, very reluctantly, the house, we walked through the town of Giverny to the museum which has rotating exhibits. Along the way we passed the famous poppy fields that were in full bloom and beautiful. There was a little French girl about 6 years old, sitting on the ground with her finger paints, painting the poppies – the next Monet perhaps? At the museum, luckily for us, the current exhibit was a wonderful gathering of 30 of Monet’s works, many of which were from private collectors and not usually on display. Ann Marie’s commentary here was really wonderful and she pointed out many things that we’d have missed on our own. In addition, there were tons of photos of Monet, his family and the house and gardens throughout the time he lived there. There was also the documentation of the requests he made to the local government for permission to redirect the river to build his water gardens and many of his sketches for the gardens. It was a fascinating exhibit. A few of the photos had been blown up to lifesize and it was almost as if Monet was in the room watching everybody admire his paintings and landscaping.
Next we walked to the restaurant at the Hotel Baudy where we had lunch. This was in the actual original boarding house (later hotel) where many of the Impressionist painters stayed and congregated when they came to visit Monet. Lunch was very good once we got past the slight mix up they had with our group and a group of Japanese tourists who were also there for lunch. How could they confuse us with a Japanese group??? We had a salad, chicken in mushroom sauce and some of the best potatoes in cream sauce I’ve ever eaten and a nice apple tart with coffee for desert. Back to the bus and we went to the town of Rouen.
The town of Rouen is a medieval city with narrow streets with tall timbered and stuccoed houses of all ages going back to the 9th and 10th centuries and some younger ones built just like the old ones. It is also famous for the cathedral there, which was built and rebuilt many times on previous foundations. Monet famously painted a series of huge canvases of this cathedral at different times of the day and in differing weather to show the changes in the façade in different lighting. Many, many years ago, on my first trip to Paris in the 60’s, I saw a museum exhibit of these paintings that had been gathered from around the world to be shown together for a short time. These images showing the cathedral in the golden shades of morning, the more brownish shades of late afternoon, the blues of dusk, the differing grays of rain and winter, have always stayed with me and to finally see the actual cathedral in person was just wonderful. Again our guide was great about providing the history of the various parts of the façade and why and when they were built that way. Unfortunately on the day we were there, they were preparing for the funeral of a bishop so the cathedral was closed to visitors and we were unable to go inside. Ah well, I guess we’ll have to save that for another trip.
We did a walking tour through the city, most of which is pedestrian only. I hate to think about how the people living on the top floors of the 5 and 6 story buildings (with no elevators of course) get their groceries home. Obviously not too many fat people live here. The city was delightful with lots of old wooden houses, art work, fancy clocks, medieval city walls, shops, boutiques, flower stalls, street entertainers, open air markets etc. Rouen is also famous for being the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. There is a marker on the spot where they believe it happened and the ruins of the church where it occurred. A new, very modern church has been built next to the ruins of the old church and for some reason it is connected by a long roof to the open air fish market. We had some free time in Rouen, some people on the bus wanted to buy some wine and our guide recommended that they stay out of “Wine shops” and instead go to the local supermarket to get the same wines at half the price. Bob and I went to a street café and had a drink and a rest.
This was a very full, interesting, exciting day and we were exhausted when we got back on the bus to go back to the ship. The bus got delayed in a big traffic jam on the way back and we were really glad that we’d taken a ship tour. Our bus was the last one back to the ship, coming in later than the official all aboard. Everything but one gangway had been cleared from the pier, there were ship’s personnel chasing us up the gangway and pulling it in after us. We hadn’t even gotten to our cabin before the ship started pulling away from the dock. Whew – that was close. We both took tons and tons of pictures in Giverny and Rouen and it makes me happy all over again to look at them. I’ll post them soon, but it’s going to be very hard to edit them down to a reasonable number.
We rushed to get cleaned up, then to dinner because we were pretty hungry after that long day and 3 of our table mates are leaving the ship tomorrow in Dover and going on to London for a few days and we wanted to say good bye to them. Of course we exchanged emails and will be in touch with them again.
After dinner we had to go to the computer center and estimate what our bags were going to weigh in order to prepay for them on Aer Lingus. It’s a significant savings if you prepay rather than pay at the airport. That activity was a miserable pain in the butt, and with the slowness of the ships internet we managed to miss the last ship show. Oh well – our record is intact, we didn’t see a single show this trip. This activity also used up all of my prepurchased computer minutes on the ship, so no more internet for us. Next time we connect will be in Ireland. One last time to donate to the casino and then it’s off to bed. Got to our cabin and had a wonderful surprise, the little card on the bed told us that we are going to gain an hour tonite since France is an hour ahead of England. Whoopee – more sleep time!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Catch Up - Wednesday & Thursday
Wednesday
We are into the port a day phase and it’s hard to keep up – will be jotting notes and fleshing out later as time permits.
OK – time now permits a bit of fleshing out. Today we were supposed to dock in the town of East Dunsmore which is the port town for Waterford, where the fancy glasses come from – or used to come from – the factory has been closed, the gift shop is still open, they no longer give tours and parts of the factory have been taken over by the workers who don’t want the place to close or go bankrupt and the situation there is very murky.
Anyway, because of these north Atlantic storms bringing too much water to these coastal towns, they were unable to dock in East Dunsmore, and instead used a dockage some 11 or 12 miles further upriver, supposedly in the town of Belleview. All we saw was that we were docked at a small pier next to a scrap metal dump. There was no town and no streets. Holland America did a great job of lining up every available bus in the area to shuttle us to Waterford about a 25 minute ride away. I think they charged us 10 euro per person roundtrip which wasn’t bad at all. The weather was a standard gray and cloudy day with short spurts of mist and rain. Same as most other days. We went to the tourist office for info and then toured their museum, which mostly dealt with the Viking past of Ireland, and had just a little of the history of the glassworks. Then wandered about the town, there was a nice central plaza and pedestrian only streets and there were some cute shops, but I’m still restricted buying anything before we go to Dublin. We needed to stop for lunch and found a very cute pub called the Gingerman – if you are ever in this area, be sure to stop here for a drink, but find somewhere else to eat. The food wasn’t good. Bob had the fish & chips and it was full of bones, I had something that I can’t even remember but it was awful and I left most of it on the plate. Did a little more looking around and it began to get very dark and threatening so we headed back to the shuttle bus and back to the ship we went.
Because we were so far up a very narrow river, we had to wait for high tide to depart. The narrowness made it impossible to turn the ship around so we had to be guided backwards down the river to the basin where we could be turned. This activity was going on while we were in the dining room having dinner and it was something to see. It actually took over an hour to turn the ship so that we could proceed. As a result of this and some other funny water conditions, we’ll be late to our next port where we will be tendering in rather than docking at a pier.
Thursday
Today we are stopping in Plymouth England and we’ve booked a full day, non-ship tour called the Hound of the Baskervilles Tour with some of the other cruise critic folks. We will be heading out into the Dartmouth Moors in small vans to see the flora and fauna of the area and visit some of the sites mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes book the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Long story short – lots of confusion and miscommunication due to our late arrival and the delayed tendering process and we missed the tour. We sped thru breakfast, picked up some rolls and cold cuts and made sandwiches to take with us since we knew we’d be late starting and that the lunch break would need to be eliminated. Sped back to our room and down to the tender ticket location where we just missed one tender and had to wait 20 minutes for the next tender. When we arrived at the tender dock and there were no tour people, we checked with the dispatcher for the local shuttle bus who advised that the 2 mini vans left about 15 minutes earlier. Fortunately for us, this one was a pay on the bus deal, so you’d think it would have been to their benefit to wait for us but they didn’t.
I was really very disappointed, but nothing to be done except take the ship’s shuttle bus into town and wander around. Since I’d booked the tour, I’d done no research about what to do in the town, so we wandered about for awhile – checked out a local market – flea, vegetables and meat then went out and found a taxi and arranged a short taxi tour of Plymouth. It’s a really nice town, lots of shopping (still can’t buy anything pending flight to Dublin) and quite a distance from where the bus dropped us there was a lovely waterfront area with lots of quaint streets and shops for browsing. We’d booked a ½ hour tour with the taxidriver, but he was very proud of his city and he insisted on driving us around for over an hour to be sure we saw everything. It was very nice. Back in town and dropped off near our shuttle bus, we had time for a bit more shopping. I spent some time in a TK Maxx – same as TJ Maxx at home, and did manage to buy a black tank top that won’t take up too much space or weight in the suitcase. While I was in there, Bob found a bakery and bought himself some of the meat pies and sausage rolls he loves so much. Then he found a convenient bench and a couple of local octogenarian ladies who come into town to people watch, helped him pass the time till I finished. They were sitting on a bench right near a flower stall and when we left, the ladies were thrilled when Bob bought them each a bouquet of flowers to take home.
The weather today was sunny and nice but very, very windy. We needed our jackets in the morning but not in the afternoon. The wind was so great that by the time we got back to the ship my hair looked like a place birds rejected as a nesting place. Other wise my Chico Marx hairdo has been holding up very well and is very low maintenance, which is great.
We walked back to the bus but he waited until it was full, so we sat there for 25 minutes, when we got to the tender dock there was a huge lineup and we didn’t get into the next arriving tender, so we had to stand out there in the wind for another 25 minutes or so. Then the Plymouth Ferry pulled in – it is much larger than a tender and apparently the ship had commissioned it to help out, so about 200 of us boarded and were ferried to the ship, wind blown and wind burned from all the waiting on the pier. Our sailaway was delayed since they were so long in getting people back from town on the tenders and the ferry. We arrived back just at the boarding time and there were at least 2 or 3 more tender trips required to pick everybody up.
A quick shower to clean up and try to tame my hair and we were off to the Captains Farewell Dinner (don’t know why it was tonite since we have several nites to go but on the ship, the captain rules). And finally, here it was, the sliced filet of beef and lobster tails and taa daa the baked Alaska parade of the waiters! Dinner was delicious.
Another small donation to the casino and off to be we go, where we find that miserable little sign on the bed that tells us that we are going to lose another hour tonite – damn.
We are into the port a day phase and it’s hard to keep up – will be jotting notes and fleshing out later as time permits.
OK – time now permits a bit of fleshing out. Today we were supposed to dock in the town of East Dunsmore which is the port town for Waterford, where the fancy glasses come from – or used to come from – the factory has been closed, the gift shop is still open, they no longer give tours and parts of the factory have been taken over by the workers who don’t want the place to close or go bankrupt and the situation there is very murky.
Anyway, because of these north Atlantic storms bringing too much water to these coastal towns, they were unable to dock in East Dunsmore, and instead used a dockage some 11 or 12 miles further upriver, supposedly in the town of Belleview. All we saw was that we were docked at a small pier next to a scrap metal dump. There was no town and no streets. Holland America did a great job of lining up every available bus in the area to shuttle us to Waterford about a 25 minute ride away. I think they charged us 10 euro per person roundtrip which wasn’t bad at all. The weather was a standard gray and cloudy day with short spurts of mist and rain. Same as most other days. We went to the tourist office for info and then toured their museum, which mostly dealt with the Viking past of Ireland, and had just a little of the history of the glassworks. Then wandered about the town, there was a nice central plaza and pedestrian only streets and there were some cute shops, but I’m still restricted buying anything before we go to Dublin. We needed to stop for lunch and found a very cute pub called the Gingerman – if you are ever in this area, be sure to stop here for a drink, but find somewhere else to eat. The food wasn’t good. Bob had the fish & chips and it was full of bones, I had something that I can’t even remember but it was awful and I left most of it on the plate. Did a little more looking around and it began to get very dark and threatening so we headed back to the shuttle bus and back to the ship we went.
Because we were so far up a very narrow river, we had to wait for high tide to depart. The narrowness made it impossible to turn the ship around so we had to be guided backwards down the river to the basin where we could be turned. This activity was going on while we were in the dining room having dinner and it was something to see. It actually took over an hour to turn the ship so that we could proceed. As a result of this and some other funny water conditions, we’ll be late to our next port where we will be tendering in rather than docking at a pier.
Thursday
Today we are stopping in Plymouth England and we’ve booked a full day, non-ship tour called the Hound of the Baskervilles Tour with some of the other cruise critic folks. We will be heading out into the Dartmouth Moors in small vans to see the flora and fauna of the area and visit some of the sites mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes book the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Long story short – lots of confusion and miscommunication due to our late arrival and the delayed tendering process and we missed the tour. We sped thru breakfast, picked up some rolls and cold cuts and made sandwiches to take with us since we knew we’d be late starting and that the lunch break would need to be eliminated. Sped back to our room and down to the tender ticket location where we just missed one tender and had to wait 20 minutes for the next tender. When we arrived at the tender dock and there were no tour people, we checked with the dispatcher for the local shuttle bus who advised that the 2 mini vans left about 15 minutes earlier. Fortunately for us, this one was a pay on the bus deal, so you’d think it would have been to their benefit to wait for us but they didn’t.
I was really very disappointed, but nothing to be done except take the ship’s shuttle bus into town and wander around. Since I’d booked the tour, I’d done no research about what to do in the town, so we wandered about for awhile – checked out a local market – flea, vegetables and meat then went out and found a taxi and arranged a short taxi tour of Plymouth. It’s a really nice town, lots of shopping (still can’t buy anything pending flight to Dublin) and quite a distance from where the bus dropped us there was a lovely waterfront area with lots of quaint streets and shops for browsing. We’d booked a ½ hour tour with the taxidriver, but he was very proud of his city and he insisted on driving us around for over an hour to be sure we saw everything. It was very nice. Back in town and dropped off near our shuttle bus, we had time for a bit more shopping. I spent some time in a TK Maxx – same as TJ Maxx at home, and did manage to buy a black tank top that won’t take up too much space or weight in the suitcase. While I was in there, Bob found a bakery and bought himself some of the meat pies and sausage rolls he loves so much. Then he found a convenient bench and a couple of local octogenarian ladies who come into town to people watch, helped him pass the time till I finished. They were sitting on a bench right near a flower stall and when we left, the ladies were thrilled when Bob bought them each a bouquet of flowers to take home.
The weather today was sunny and nice but very, very windy. We needed our jackets in the morning but not in the afternoon. The wind was so great that by the time we got back to the ship my hair looked like a place birds rejected as a nesting place. Other wise my Chico Marx hairdo has been holding up very well and is very low maintenance, which is great.
We walked back to the bus but he waited until it was full, so we sat there for 25 minutes, when we got to the tender dock there was a huge lineup and we didn’t get into the next arriving tender, so we had to stand out there in the wind for another 25 minutes or so. Then the Plymouth Ferry pulled in – it is much larger than a tender and apparently the ship had commissioned it to help out, so about 200 of us boarded and were ferried to the ship, wind blown and wind burned from all the waiting on the pier. Our sailaway was delayed since they were so long in getting people back from town on the tenders and the ferry. We arrived back just at the boarding time and there were at least 2 or 3 more tender trips required to pick everybody up.
A quick shower to clean up and try to tame my hair and we were off to the Captains Farewell Dinner (don’t know why it was tonite since we have several nites to go but on the ship, the captain rules). And finally, here it was, the sliced filet of beef and lobster tails and taa daa the baked Alaska parade of the waiters! Dinner was delicious.
Another small donation to the casino and off to be we go, where we find that miserable little sign on the bed that tells us that we are going to lose another hour tonite – damn.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
Sunday and Monday and Tuesday
Well – Sunday seems so long ago – it’s now Monday evening and we just returned from our tour of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was great and I’ll get to it once I finish up Sunday.
This was our last sea day and our last (happily) formal nite. I felt much better than I did on Saturday and knew I was well when I woke up hungry and dreaming about bagels. I did have breakfast, but opted for eggs benedict which they do very well on the ship. The weather was the nicest we’ve had at sea. Waves only 5-7 feet and no rain or fog, just overcast with some actual periods of sunshine. Walked around on deck for awhile then off to an activity in the Cooking Studio – the art of Marzipan – whoopee. It lasted about 12 minutes and they had 2 pastry guys with a predone dummy cake making 3 roses and a twisted snake to put on top of and around the cake. After that I spent some time reading in the library, Bob was on the balc with his cigar and book. Had a snack in the afternoon and headed back to the Cooking Studio for something called Bread Critter Creations. This one took a bit longer – maybe ½ hour but was as much of a waste of time as the marzipan. This time there were 3 guys – 2 bakers and the Pinnacle Grill Chef who acted as the translator and clown for the other 2. They were only showing how to make the strictly decorative bread animals that are made of salt dough that is inedible and lasts for a month or two if there is no humidity. Most everybody in the audience wanted to know how to make the real breads that they serve in the dining room. One favorite at our table (and apparently others as well) is a very delicious grainy dark brown bread. They had many questions about it and the basic answer is that it was a Dutch bread known as Ruggerbrod , which is difficult to make due to the number of ingredients, so they buy it as a mix and just add whatever liquid is required, throw it into their mixer and then bake it, and it only appears a few times each cruise. They thought we should be able to buy the same mix in any US supermarket – in their dreams!.
Made our normal daily contributions to the casino – I only donate, but Bob has been a bit luckier and sometimes gets some back. Now that we are out of sea days, the afternoon donation period will vanish – Yipee!
Food at dinner continues to be good and our dining companions make it a very enjoyable time as we exchange stories about our day. I was just a bit disappointed in tonite’s dinner – usually the last formal is lobster tail nite but I guess that’s where they are doing a bit of economizing. The filet mignon choice was there but no lobster tails, no other shellfish either so no surf & turf for us. The closest was the seafood cocktail served as a starter, but I’d had enough of those. Although we have almost another week on board and I’m usually very optimistic, I just don’t think we are going to see those good old lobster tails. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happily surprised – but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for them.
Tonite they made an announcement that due to the need to catch the tide properly in Liverpool on Tuesday, we’d need to get there a bit earlier than scheduled so our sail away time in Belfast needed to be moved from 10 pm to 8 pm.
Monday
If it’s Monday it must be Belfast. We’d booked a non-ship tour with a bunch of people from our Cruise Critic website roll call group to go to the Giant’s Causeway. Amazingly, Bob and I were first off the ship. Our bus was there and everything went well. Our tour was booked with McCombs Executive Tours and Travel and our guide was Alan. Alan was wonderful and went out of his way to ensure that everyone had a great day and saw everything that they wanted to in Northern Ireland that could be covered in a single day. We had one of those really huge touring buses and there were only 14 of us so we had plenty of room to spread out. Belfast is in Ulster County and we were off to see the sights of Antrim County. There are the 9 glens of Antrim and we went through about 7 of them. Glen we are told means valley and each valley has its own little towns. The beautiful greens of Ireland were all around us. It is spring here, there must be a thousand shades of green and the flowers are in full bloom. Unfortunately, when we left the ship, it was very overcast and became uglier and wetter as the day went on – we had mist, drizzle and on/off rain all day. The temp was about 60-62ish so it wasn’t cold, but the damp was ugly.
There were lovely homes with beautiful gardens in all of the towns we drove thru. We stopped at Carrickfergus castle for a photo op then did a potty stop in a small town that we wandered thru for 10 minutes or so. Next we went to the Bushmills Irish Whiskey distillery where we didn’t have time for the tour – it was a bank holiday here and the wait was too long – but we did make it to the bar for a quick drink and to the gift shop for a quick purchase. Bob tried their special reserve 16 year old single malt Irish and he liked it. Too bad we really can’t carry any more stuff with us – it’s the only place they sell that stuff and all he could get was one drink. Back to the bus and off to the Giant ’s Causeway. On the way there Alan passed around the menu for Lunch at the Causeway Hotel. He was able to phone our orders in and get us a small private dining room so we saved a bunch of time. Both Bob and I had (the first of many I’m sure) real Irish Fish and Chips with peas. Bob had a Guiness and I had my favorite Magmer’s hard cider on tap (and I’ve not found it this way in the US anywhere).
After lunch we were able to walk over to the Giant’s Causeway entrance. You can walk down a steep long path to get there – or for only a pound each way ($1.60) you can take a bus. We opted for the bus since it was raining. This is Northern Ireland’s only World Heritage Site and it is a natural geological rock formation of black basalt hexagonal columns and piles of stones that form a couple of nice coves. I thought it was fascinating but we chose not to go rock climbing in the rain. Many people were crawling around on the rocks, but we just stayed on the path. Back to the bus and making our way back to Belfast – on the way we stopped for another photo op at the Carrik-a-reade (sp??) Rope Bridge – it had something to do with fisherman and salmon originally, but currently is only used as a tourist attraction. We stopped way above it and nobody in our group was interested in getting any closer and trying the walk across it. I had a good nap on the bus going back to Belfast. When we got there, the driver took us to the center of the shopping district downtown and turned us loose for 45 minutes – we went to Marks & Spencer which was the closest shop with good bathrooms and wandered around in there, then there was an international festival of sorts in front of the city hall area. By now it was just misting, so we wandered around there for a bit. There were food stands with different international flavors. The german sausages smelled and looked wonderful, as did the Spanish paella, the French pastries and cheeses, the assorted salamis, the roasted hog sandwiches, the candies, coffees, teas, beer gardens and everything else we saw. We were good and just enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells and waited till we got back to the ship to eat.
The Titanic Connection is very strong here since the Titanic was built here in Belfast – we stopped at the dry-dock where she was launched, saw the shipyard where she was built and much of this area has been converted into a huge people-plex – a complex including a multipurpose arena (sports and musical venues), movie theaters, eateries, museums etc. We also drove thru the downtown of Belfast and saw many interesting buildings of all ages and styles.
Back on the bus and now we got to see the real Belfast – Alan took us to the areas most impacted by “The Troubles”. It was very interesting, is still a troubled area but they are really working on the peace process and everyone hopes it will succeed. Of course there are always extremists and when you see some of the bombed areas, boarded up areas and the fences and walls that were built there is still a great sense of nervousness and fear of terrorism in the hardest hit areas. We drove around this area for more than 45 minutes as Alan pointed out many of the wall murals in the area that have been changing from the most extremist of hooded assassins with guns to some really nice sports (mostly what they call football but we call soccer) murals and some that have been done by the school children showing more of the cultural and geographic highlights of Northern Ireland. It was a difficult area to tour but we were left with a feeling that hope was entering the picture and that most people really want the peace to succeed. Our last stop of the day was at a famous pub – The Crown, for a pint before going back to the ship.
Our tour cost us 35 pounds each ($56) plus another 9 pounds ($15) each for lunch, for a total of $71 per person. The ship tour that just did the Glens of Antrim and the Causeway included lunch but missed all of the other places we went to cost $229 per person. We decided we’d gotten a really good deal. This was a wonderful tour and we were exhausted when we got back to the ship only 20 minutes before our early all aboard at 7:30 and sailaway at 8pm.
Tuesday
Today we are in Liverpool – we did not get to take the ferry across the Mersey, but we did most everything else. It was cold and windy when we got off the ship but the sun was shining. It did warm up some during the day but we still needed our jackets because of the wind. We docked at a huge floating pontoon pier right on the river Mersey that actually goes up and down with the tides.
We did the hop-on, hop-off bus today (also known as the HOHO). It was very windy up top – it’s a double decker but the views were great. This was one of the ones with a recorded audio description of where you were and what you were seeing. Fortunately the first one bus we were on early in the day was able to drive on pace with the recording. We stayed on for the full hour tour to get our bearings and decide where we wanted to get off to see more sights. I’d expected Liverpool to be a dingy kind of manufacturing, warehouse bound city, but it isn’t – it’s clean and modern and has lots of interesting architectural buildings everywhere and lots to see and do. There is lots of refurbishment going on and it is a great city to wander around. The dock area with it’s lovely old buildings is a World Heritage Site and the old brick warehouses on the river have been converted into Albert Dock, with lots of restaurants, pubs, coffeehouses and shops very much like the South Street Seaport in NY.
I had a special request in Liverpool from my nephew Cole who asked me to get him a soccer jersey from the Liverpool team. So after completing the first full cycle of the HOHO bus we got off at the biggest shopping area in Liverpool. There is a huge pedestrian only area of really neat shops and shopping plazas both indoor enclosed malls and a wonderful outdoor but covered mall. We wandered around a bit and did find the Very Official Shop of the Liverpool Football Club. Cole – if you are reading this – we were successful in getting exactly what you wanted. I’ll tell you one thing – these people are worse than the NFL in protecting their logos and products and you are going to need to keep this shirt in a glass case and not get it dirty because it cost almost as much as an original Picasso painting!
Due to our luggage restrictions (which we’ve greatly exceed already) flying from Amsterdam to Dublin – we are reallllly trying to be good about not buying anything to add to the suitcases. Any purchases we make will have to be in Dublin because it won’t cost so much for excess baggage on the transcontinental flight back home. This makes it very hard for me to enjoy shopping when I know I’m not going to be buying anything. Awww – poor me!
While we were still wandering around this part of Liverpool we came across a big open square in the pedestrian area. We actually got here by asking a number of people on the street to recommend a good pub for lunch. We were headed for the Queens Inn which was on the corner of the square. Before we got there we found this great fountain that springs up from the concrete (some fun pics will follow – it takes too long to post pics from the ship – so pics will come once we hit Dublin where internet access is included with our hotel fee). There was also a big crowd here so we went to investigate and found this great big dancing Robot. It was a hoot! Not only do we have pictures of him but we both took videos as well – it will be a new thing to post a video on the web, but if I can master photos and blogging I’m sure I can manage videos. There was absolutely no information about the blasted robot, no signage, no name on the big carrier he rides around in, but amazingly enough he comes with his own large entourage. There was one man who was apparently his handler and manned the control booth and there were 4 or 5 identifiable security people and who knows how many plainclothes security types were there. We watched him for quite awhile then went into the Queens Pub for lunch where we had the second authentic fish & chips & peas meal of the trip! We’d gotten a table near a window and while we were having lunch, they moved the robot over to the outside of the pub, so we watched him again.
After lunch, we walked over to what is called the Cavern Quarter. The Cavern was the bar where the Beatles started out. On this one street there are now 3-4 clubs all called the Cavern, there are Beatles shops and statues everywhere. We were told that Eleanor Rigby’s statue is there somewhere, but we never found her. Oh well.
Oh – I forgot – on the way from the shopping area to the Cavern Quarter, we passed a very aromatic bake shop that smelled delicious – Bob just knew that he smelled sausage rolls, his favorite English treat, so in we went and he got an assortment of sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and a meat pie to take back to the ship (like they don’t already have enough food) and decided that this would be his dinner for tonite.
Back to the HOHO and off to see the 2 famous Liverpool Cathedrals – first is the very modern, round Catholic Cathedral with 4 Bells out front named for 4 saints (whose names I don’t remember) but nicknamed John, Paul, George and Ringo by the local population. The church is breathtaking in its simplicity and the stained glass tower and wall inserts are just gorgeous. The pictures just don’t do it justice.
We were going to go the the Anglican Cathedral next but we were pretty tired at this point and still wanted to see Albert Dock which was very near the cruise ship dock. Back on the HOHO and off to Albert Dock. We wandered around there and went in and out of a bunch of little shops, went to the Maritime and Slavery Museums, which were in the same building and were both very interesting (including a section on the Titanic in the Maritime museum), and could barely walk anymore when they threw us out because they were closing. As we were staggering toward the street and the HOHO to go back to the stop closest to the ship, we ran into a couple of ladies we’d made friends with in the ship casino – they play the same machines we like every nite - and they’d ordered up a taxi and invited us to join them to go back to the ship. Man – were we ever happy to take them up on their offer.
The weather today was great most of the day, except for the wind – it was mostly sunny with a few clouds here and there. As we were getting out of the taxi, some big black clouds were rolling in and by the time we walked over to the pier from where they dropped us, and thru the terminal building, it had started to pour rain and we were saturated by the time we got to the gangway. I think it’s a requirement that it rain everyday of this trip.
Back aboard, I took a very refreshing shower and got my second wind and realized that since some folks were still ashore, the itty bitty self service laundry room was empty, so I quick ran down and got a million quarters and did the laundry before going down to dinner. Bob stayed in the cabin and enjoyed his meat pie assortment and managed to make it down to the casino about 10pm in time to meet me as I exited the dining room.
This morning just before we got off the ship, they made an announcement that due to the bad storms in the North Atlantic there were docking problems everywhere and that we could not dock at all tomorrow, Wednesday, in East Dunsmore, the port for Waterfordds Ireland, but that they were seeking alternatives for us, and that there were also problems in Plymouth England our port for Thursday and that we’d been rescheduled there to arrive at 10 am instead of 8am. We have another non-ship tour booked in Plymouth, this time it’s a Sherlock Holmes Hound of the Baskervilles tour, so I sent an email to the tour guy but haven’t logged on since to see if there is an answer. It seems that many of the harbors are overflowing with water from heavy rains or storms further out and this is causing big issues especially in tender ports. Although nothing has been officially said yet – I’ve also heard rumblings that there may be issues at LeHavre the port for Paris where we scheduled our only ship tour to go to Monet’s home at Giverny. We’ll keep you posted on where we wind up. To the captain and the Holland America staff, I’m sure this is a big headache, to us it’s just part of the adventure.
So the adventure will continue! Hi to everyone, I hope you are all having good adventures of you r own, and keep those cards and comments coming.
Well – Sunday seems so long ago – it’s now Monday evening and we just returned from our tour of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was great and I’ll get to it once I finish up Sunday.
This was our last sea day and our last (happily) formal nite. I felt much better than I did on Saturday and knew I was well when I woke up hungry and dreaming about bagels. I did have breakfast, but opted for eggs benedict which they do very well on the ship. The weather was the nicest we’ve had at sea. Waves only 5-7 feet and no rain or fog, just overcast with some actual periods of sunshine. Walked around on deck for awhile then off to an activity in the Cooking Studio – the art of Marzipan – whoopee. It lasted about 12 minutes and they had 2 pastry guys with a predone dummy cake making 3 roses and a twisted snake to put on top of and around the cake. After that I spent some time reading in the library, Bob was on the balc with his cigar and book. Had a snack in the afternoon and headed back to the Cooking Studio for something called Bread Critter Creations. This one took a bit longer – maybe ½ hour but was as much of a waste of time as the marzipan. This time there were 3 guys – 2 bakers and the Pinnacle Grill Chef who acted as the translator and clown for the other 2. They were only showing how to make the strictly decorative bread animals that are made of salt dough that is inedible and lasts for a month or two if there is no humidity. Most everybody in the audience wanted to know how to make the real breads that they serve in the dining room. One favorite at our table (and apparently others as well) is a very delicious grainy dark brown bread. They had many questions about it and the basic answer is that it was a Dutch bread known as Ruggerbrod , which is difficult to make due to the number of ingredients, so they buy it as a mix and just add whatever liquid is required, throw it into their mixer and then bake it, and it only appears a few times each cruise. They thought we should be able to buy the same mix in any US supermarket – in their dreams!.
Made our normal daily contributions to the casino – I only donate, but Bob has been a bit luckier and sometimes gets some back. Now that we are out of sea days, the afternoon donation period will vanish – Yipee!
Food at dinner continues to be good and our dining companions make it a very enjoyable time as we exchange stories about our day. I was just a bit disappointed in tonite’s dinner – usually the last formal is lobster tail nite but I guess that’s where they are doing a bit of economizing. The filet mignon choice was there but no lobster tails, no other shellfish either so no surf & turf for us. The closest was the seafood cocktail served as a starter, but I’d had enough of those. Although we have almost another week on board and I’m usually very optimistic, I just don’t think we are going to see those good old lobster tails. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happily surprised – but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for them.
Tonite they made an announcement that due to the need to catch the tide properly in Liverpool on Tuesday, we’d need to get there a bit earlier than scheduled so our sail away time in Belfast needed to be moved from 10 pm to 8 pm.
Monday
If it’s Monday it must be Belfast. We’d booked a non-ship tour with a bunch of people from our Cruise Critic website roll call group to go to the Giant’s Causeway. Amazingly, Bob and I were first off the ship. Our bus was there and everything went well. Our tour was booked with McCombs Executive Tours and Travel and our guide was Alan. Alan was wonderful and went out of his way to ensure that everyone had a great day and saw everything that they wanted to in Northern Ireland that could be covered in a single day. We had one of those really huge touring buses and there were only 14 of us so we had plenty of room to spread out. Belfast is in Ulster County and we were off to see the sights of Antrim County. There are the 9 glens of Antrim and we went through about 7 of them. Glen we are told means valley and each valley has its own little towns. The beautiful greens of Ireland were all around us. It is spring here, there must be a thousand shades of green and the flowers are in full bloom. Unfortunately, when we left the ship, it was very overcast and became uglier and wetter as the day went on – we had mist, drizzle and on/off rain all day. The temp was about 60-62ish so it wasn’t cold, but the damp was ugly.
There were lovely homes with beautiful gardens in all of the towns we drove thru. We stopped at Carrickfergus castle for a photo op then did a potty stop in a small town that we wandered thru for 10 minutes or so. Next we went to the Bushmills Irish Whiskey distillery where we didn’t have time for the tour – it was a bank holiday here and the wait was too long – but we did make it to the bar for a quick drink and to the gift shop for a quick purchase. Bob tried their special reserve 16 year old single malt Irish and he liked it. Too bad we really can’t carry any more stuff with us – it’s the only place they sell that stuff and all he could get was one drink. Back to the bus and off to the Giant ’s Causeway. On the way there Alan passed around the menu for Lunch at the Causeway Hotel. He was able to phone our orders in and get us a small private dining room so we saved a bunch of time. Both Bob and I had (the first of many I’m sure) real Irish Fish and Chips with peas. Bob had a Guiness and I had my favorite Magmer’s hard cider on tap (and I’ve not found it this way in the US anywhere).
After lunch we were able to walk over to the Giant’s Causeway entrance. You can walk down a steep long path to get there – or for only a pound each way ($1.60) you can take a bus. We opted for the bus since it was raining. This is Northern Ireland’s only World Heritage Site and it is a natural geological rock formation of black basalt hexagonal columns and piles of stones that form a couple of nice coves. I thought it was fascinating but we chose not to go rock climbing in the rain. Many people were crawling around on the rocks, but we just stayed on the path. Back to the bus and making our way back to Belfast – on the way we stopped for another photo op at the Carrik-a-reade (sp??) Rope Bridge – it had something to do with fisherman and salmon originally, but currently is only used as a tourist attraction. We stopped way above it and nobody in our group was interested in getting any closer and trying the walk across it. I had a good nap on the bus going back to Belfast. When we got there, the driver took us to the center of the shopping district downtown and turned us loose for 45 minutes – we went to Marks & Spencer which was the closest shop with good bathrooms and wandered around in there, then there was an international festival of sorts in front of the city hall area. By now it was just misting, so we wandered around there for a bit. There were food stands with different international flavors. The german sausages smelled and looked wonderful, as did the Spanish paella, the French pastries and cheeses, the assorted salamis, the roasted hog sandwiches, the candies, coffees, teas, beer gardens and everything else we saw. We were good and just enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells and waited till we got back to the ship to eat.
The Titanic Connection is very strong here since the Titanic was built here in Belfast – we stopped at the dry-dock where she was launched, saw the shipyard where she was built and much of this area has been converted into a huge people-plex – a complex including a multipurpose arena (sports and musical venues), movie theaters, eateries, museums etc. We also drove thru the downtown of Belfast and saw many interesting buildings of all ages and styles.
Back on the bus and now we got to see the real Belfast – Alan took us to the areas most impacted by “The Troubles”. It was very interesting, is still a troubled area but they are really working on the peace process and everyone hopes it will succeed. Of course there are always extremists and when you see some of the bombed areas, boarded up areas and the fences and walls that were built there is still a great sense of nervousness and fear of terrorism in the hardest hit areas. We drove around this area for more than 45 minutes as Alan pointed out many of the wall murals in the area that have been changing from the most extremist of hooded assassins with guns to some really nice sports (mostly what they call football but we call soccer) murals and some that have been done by the school children showing more of the cultural and geographic highlights of Northern Ireland. It was a difficult area to tour but we were left with a feeling that hope was entering the picture and that most people really want the peace to succeed. Our last stop of the day was at a famous pub – The Crown, for a pint before going back to the ship.
Our tour cost us 35 pounds each ($56) plus another 9 pounds ($15) each for lunch, for a total of $71 per person. The ship tour that just did the Glens of Antrim and the Causeway included lunch but missed all of the other places we went to cost $229 per person. We decided we’d gotten a really good deal. This was a wonderful tour and we were exhausted when we got back to the ship only 20 minutes before our early all aboard at 7:30 and sailaway at 8pm.
Tuesday
Today we are in Liverpool – we did not get to take the ferry across the Mersey, but we did most everything else. It was cold and windy when we got off the ship but the sun was shining. It did warm up some during the day but we still needed our jackets because of the wind. We docked at a huge floating pontoon pier right on the river Mersey that actually goes up and down with the tides.
We did the hop-on, hop-off bus today (also known as the HOHO). It was very windy up top – it’s a double decker but the views were great. This was one of the ones with a recorded audio description of where you were and what you were seeing. Fortunately the first one bus we were on early in the day was able to drive on pace with the recording. We stayed on for the full hour tour to get our bearings and decide where we wanted to get off to see more sights. I’d expected Liverpool to be a dingy kind of manufacturing, warehouse bound city, but it isn’t – it’s clean and modern and has lots of interesting architectural buildings everywhere and lots to see and do. There is lots of refurbishment going on and it is a great city to wander around. The dock area with it’s lovely old buildings is a World Heritage Site and the old brick warehouses on the river have been converted into Albert Dock, with lots of restaurants, pubs, coffeehouses and shops very much like the South Street Seaport in NY.
I had a special request in Liverpool from my nephew Cole who asked me to get him a soccer jersey from the Liverpool team. So after completing the first full cycle of the HOHO bus we got off at the biggest shopping area in Liverpool. There is a huge pedestrian only area of really neat shops and shopping plazas both indoor enclosed malls and a wonderful outdoor but covered mall. We wandered around a bit and did find the Very Official Shop of the Liverpool Football Club. Cole – if you are reading this – we were successful in getting exactly what you wanted. I’ll tell you one thing – these people are worse than the NFL in protecting their logos and products and you are going to need to keep this shirt in a glass case and not get it dirty because it cost almost as much as an original Picasso painting!
Due to our luggage restrictions (which we’ve greatly exceed already) flying from Amsterdam to Dublin – we are reallllly trying to be good about not buying anything to add to the suitcases. Any purchases we make will have to be in Dublin because it won’t cost so much for excess baggage on the transcontinental flight back home. This makes it very hard for me to enjoy shopping when I know I’m not going to be buying anything. Awww – poor me!
While we were still wandering around this part of Liverpool we came across a big open square in the pedestrian area. We actually got here by asking a number of people on the street to recommend a good pub for lunch. We were headed for the Queens Inn which was on the corner of the square. Before we got there we found this great fountain that springs up from the concrete (some fun pics will follow – it takes too long to post pics from the ship – so pics will come once we hit Dublin where internet access is included with our hotel fee). There was also a big crowd here so we went to investigate and found this great big dancing Robot. It was a hoot! Not only do we have pictures of him but we both took videos as well – it will be a new thing to post a video on the web, but if I can master photos and blogging I’m sure I can manage videos. There was absolutely no information about the blasted robot, no signage, no name on the big carrier he rides around in, but amazingly enough he comes with his own large entourage. There was one man who was apparently his handler and manned the control booth and there were 4 or 5 identifiable security people and who knows how many plainclothes security types were there. We watched him for quite awhile then went into the Queens Pub for lunch where we had the second authentic fish & chips & peas meal of the trip! We’d gotten a table near a window and while we were having lunch, they moved the robot over to the outside of the pub, so we watched him again.
After lunch, we walked over to what is called the Cavern Quarter. The Cavern was the bar where the Beatles started out. On this one street there are now 3-4 clubs all called the Cavern, there are Beatles shops and statues everywhere. We were told that Eleanor Rigby’s statue is there somewhere, but we never found her. Oh well.
Oh – I forgot – on the way from the shopping area to the Cavern Quarter, we passed a very aromatic bake shop that smelled delicious – Bob just knew that he smelled sausage rolls, his favorite English treat, so in we went and he got an assortment of sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and a meat pie to take back to the ship (like they don’t already have enough food) and decided that this would be his dinner for tonite.
Back to the HOHO and off to see the 2 famous Liverpool Cathedrals – first is the very modern, round Catholic Cathedral with 4 Bells out front named for 4 saints (whose names I don’t remember) but nicknamed John, Paul, George and Ringo by the local population. The church is breathtaking in its simplicity and the stained glass tower and wall inserts are just gorgeous. The pictures just don’t do it justice.
We were going to go the the Anglican Cathedral next but we were pretty tired at this point and still wanted to see Albert Dock which was very near the cruise ship dock. Back on the HOHO and off to Albert Dock. We wandered around there and went in and out of a bunch of little shops, went to the Maritime and Slavery Museums, which were in the same building and were both very interesting (including a section on the Titanic in the Maritime museum), and could barely walk anymore when they threw us out because they were closing. As we were staggering toward the street and the HOHO to go back to the stop closest to the ship, we ran into a couple of ladies we’d made friends with in the ship casino – they play the same machines we like every nite - and they’d ordered up a taxi and invited us to join them to go back to the ship. Man – were we ever happy to take them up on their offer.
The weather today was great most of the day, except for the wind – it was mostly sunny with a few clouds here and there. As we were getting out of the taxi, some big black clouds were rolling in and by the time we walked over to the pier from where they dropped us, and thru the terminal building, it had started to pour rain and we were saturated by the time we got to the gangway. I think it’s a requirement that it rain everyday of this trip.
Back aboard, I took a very refreshing shower and got my second wind and realized that since some folks were still ashore, the itty bitty self service laundry room was empty, so I quick ran down and got a million quarters and did the laundry before going down to dinner. Bob stayed in the cabin and enjoyed his meat pie assortment and managed to make it down to the casino about 10pm in time to meet me as I exited the dining room.
This morning just before we got off the ship, they made an announcement that due to the bad storms in the North Atlantic there were docking problems everywhere and that we could not dock at all tomorrow, Wednesday, in East Dunsmore, the port for Waterfordds Ireland, but that they were seeking alternatives for us, and that there were also problems in Plymouth England our port for Thursday and that we’d been rescheduled there to arrive at 10 am instead of 8am. We have another non-ship tour booked in Plymouth, this time it’s a Sherlock Holmes Hound of the Baskervilles tour, so I sent an email to the tour guy but haven’t logged on since to see if there is an answer. It seems that many of the harbors are overflowing with water from heavy rains or storms further out and this is causing big issues especially in tender ports. Although nothing has been officially said yet – I’ve also heard rumblings that there may be issues at LeHavre the port for Paris where we scheduled our only ship tour to go to Monet’s home at Giverny. We’ll keep you posted on where we wind up. To the captain and the Holland America staff, I’m sure this is a big headache, to us it’s just part of the adventure.
So the adventure will continue! Hi to everyone, I hope you are all having good adventures of you r own, and keep those cards and comments coming.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Thursday, Friday and Saturday - Sea Days All
The sea days all look pretty much the same. Once we got out of the rain and fog and the one nice day in St John’s we entered the North Atlantic and found storms. The weather has been awful – dingy gray and cloudy with rain on and off all the time. We’ve been tracking thru a storm all three days, the seas have been rough with 15-22 foot waves, and the wind has been gale force numbers 7-9 in whatever scale they used to measure wind. There was even a snowstorm at sea on Thursday, for about an hour. No noticeable accumulation on the ocean however. The barf bags were put out on Thursday morning and remain available. Remarkably, I’ve not been affected. I was a little queasy on Thursday, but took a Bonine and it went away. The captain has been turning the ship with the wind in the daytime to minimize the rolling effect but everyone still looks drunk when they walk.
The activities on this ship are not great, especially since nothing can be done outdoors. There are trivia, scategories, pictionary , charades and a couple of bridge games going throughout the day, but we aren’t interested in these. The movies have been good titles, Slumdog Millionaire, The Changeling, Benjamin Button and 7 Pounds but the ones I haven’t seen play at stupid times. They are repeated next day on the TV, so I did watch most of the Changeling today. The cooking demos have only been done by the ship staff – no guest chef and although I’d like to see them, they were always scheduled for the same time as something else I was doing so I haven’t gotten to any of them.
The floral arrangements on the ship are really beautiful and very creative – we asked at the front desk if we could get a tour of the floral department and they were able to arrange it. We met Eddy the floral designer and went to the cold room in the subterranean part of the ship. It was very interesting and we enjoyed chatting with him. Yesterday, he gave a flower arranging demo in the theater/culinary arts studio and we enjoyed that too.
Yesterday we were invited to the Captain’s Brunch for returning passengers. It was at 11am in the dining room and the dress requirement was that stupid ‘smart casual’ – so far I’ve determined that that is wide open to interpretation except that it means no jeans – but most everything else is acceptable. We duded ourselves up and went to the worst lunch menu I’ve ever seen. There were no brunch items and very limited choices on the courses. They didn’t encourage lingering, since the regular lunch in that dining room started at noon. The captain said about 8 words then turned the microphone over to the cruise director and the guy whose job it is to get you to sign up for more cruises. They’ve suspended handshaking on board, and instead recommend elbow bumping. Boy does this ever look stupid.
Tonight’s entertainment is a combination of the magician, the oboeist and the singer. Maybe in short bursts they’ll be OK. I have heard varying reports on the oboeist – one raved about how good she was and the other raved about how bad. No matter – I’m not sorry we missed her.
Of course there are the obligatory port talks but for some reason, the woman who did the first 2 days of them (and was interesting) left the ship in Halifax and has been replaced with a dorky guy who’s not so interesting. He spends as much time talking about himself as he does the ports. The requisite ‘educational’ speaker is a man who is very knowledgeable about the birds of the North and South Atlantic. Boring!
We continue to make our daily and nightly donations in the casino – I’m keeping mine small and Bob hits a winner and collects some bills every once in a while. The machines in there are old, although they suck bills in, they spit coins out. There are no voucher printers or ways to save the credits you have for another time as is done on other ships. Other than nickels, all other coins are tokens that have to be exchanged for bills. The casino is small but there are a decent number of 1 cent, 2 cent and 5 cent machines. I haven’t even done bingo yet – it’s up to $25 for a 3 pack of cards, but at our dinner table, we are talking about doing a syndicate for the last snowball bingo when the prize is 3 grand and just splitting it if any of us win.
During the night last night I got up with a sick stomach – not seasick – more like food poisoning and the symptoms lasted most of the morning. I’ve stayed in bed all day today, drinking water and once I started to feel hungry – I hit the snack bag and ate a small can of Pringles. I’m better now and have had my shower and plan to go to the dining room for dinner but will need to watch what I eat. I’ve been eating mostly the seafood choices, but tonite I think it will be plain soup and maybe the ever present grilled or roasted chicken breast.
I’ve also been trying some of the cold soups on board – they had an apple vichyssoise that was wonderful and a peach almond cream soup that was also good. Last night I tried the blackberry bramble soup with a dollop of lime sorbet. I took one spoonful and was looking for a place to spit it out. They never strained it and the all I got was a mouthful of millions of blackberry seeds floating in the worst tasting lime stuff I’ve ever encountered. YUK! Other wise the food has been generally good with lots of choices. I had some delicious salmon and very good cod. I think my stomach problem may have been related to the seafood cocktail’s I’ve had the last few days – lots of baby shrimp, scallops and mussels. Must be the mussels. No more of them for me!
OK – I’ve got to go get dressed for dinner. See y’all next time. Roberta – Bob wanted me to let you know that he had a Kettle One for you this afternoon. Hope you enjoyed it!
Just got back to the room – went to dinner and ate lightly, had chicken tenders, egg drop soup and some plain pasta tonite and only ate ½ of everything. Went to the casino but the smoke it there was making me feel sick so I went to the internet café and checked email and your blog comments.
Lew & Cheryl – thanks for the Dublin suggestions, we will look forward to going to all of those places.
Rebecca – I knew you could do it! What I don’t understand is why Cheryl is having problems.
Steve & Jane – we will talk to you and hopefully see you before your September cruise. Yes Jane - I have been doing well with all of my bargain purses. The small bucket sportsac is perfect for onboard. The large sportsac is great for getting off the ship – it holds everything and my glitzy gold evening bag is also just perfect and holds everything I want to lug around in the evenings.
Judy & Paul – thanks for checking in.
Sharon – thanks for the champagne & strawberries.
And to the person who thought I cleaned up good – thanks I always appreciate a kind word but I don’t recognize your name, do I know you?
If I missed anybody – I’ll catch up next time. The internet connection doesn’t work well in our cabin (sometimes not at all and you can waste 20+ minutes trying to get connected after log on and still come up with nothing) and it took me awhile to figure it out. So I actually type all of this stuff in MS Word then need to cart the laptop down to the internet café to log on and send it. Sort of the same with the pictures. We load them to the computer, set up a file of those we want to post and have to do uploads in the internet café. All of this is still lots slower than in real life – according to the ship’s internet guru satellite is a very slow connection. According to me – when they charge you a ridiculous amount per minute of connect time, it’s in their best interest for it to be slow.. There will not be any pics of the gray and dreary sea days – it all looks the same. However, we will send more pics once we hit land.
Well I think that tonite is the last change of the clocks and the last hour lost. I sure hope so. I’m tired of losing time and besides, on Monday we start hitting ports everyday and that means getting up early and off the boat. So, I guess I’d better go to sleep now.
I expect to post this to the blog tomorrow morning, but I’ve found that sometimes the internet connections work better late at nite. See you all in blogoland!
The activities on this ship are not great, especially since nothing can be done outdoors. There are trivia, scategories, pictionary , charades and a couple of bridge games going throughout the day, but we aren’t interested in these. The movies have been good titles, Slumdog Millionaire, The Changeling, Benjamin Button and 7 Pounds but the ones I haven’t seen play at stupid times. They are repeated next day on the TV, so I did watch most of the Changeling today. The cooking demos have only been done by the ship staff – no guest chef and although I’d like to see them, they were always scheduled for the same time as something else I was doing so I haven’t gotten to any of them.
The floral arrangements on the ship are really beautiful and very creative – we asked at the front desk if we could get a tour of the floral department and they were able to arrange it. We met Eddy the floral designer and went to the cold room in the subterranean part of the ship. It was very interesting and we enjoyed chatting with him. Yesterday, he gave a flower arranging demo in the theater/culinary arts studio and we enjoyed that too.
Yesterday we were invited to the Captain’s Brunch for returning passengers. It was at 11am in the dining room and the dress requirement was that stupid ‘smart casual’ – so far I’ve determined that that is wide open to interpretation except that it means no jeans – but most everything else is acceptable. We duded ourselves up and went to the worst lunch menu I’ve ever seen. There were no brunch items and very limited choices on the courses. They didn’t encourage lingering, since the regular lunch in that dining room started at noon. The captain said about 8 words then turned the microphone over to the cruise director and the guy whose job it is to get you to sign up for more cruises. They’ve suspended handshaking on board, and instead recommend elbow bumping. Boy does this ever look stupid.
Tonight’s entertainment is a combination of the magician, the oboeist and the singer. Maybe in short bursts they’ll be OK. I have heard varying reports on the oboeist – one raved about how good she was and the other raved about how bad. No matter – I’m not sorry we missed her.
Of course there are the obligatory port talks but for some reason, the woman who did the first 2 days of them (and was interesting) left the ship in Halifax and has been replaced with a dorky guy who’s not so interesting. He spends as much time talking about himself as he does the ports. The requisite ‘educational’ speaker is a man who is very knowledgeable about the birds of the North and South Atlantic. Boring!
We continue to make our daily and nightly donations in the casino – I’m keeping mine small and Bob hits a winner and collects some bills every once in a while. The machines in there are old, although they suck bills in, they spit coins out. There are no voucher printers or ways to save the credits you have for another time as is done on other ships. Other than nickels, all other coins are tokens that have to be exchanged for bills. The casino is small but there are a decent number of 1 cent, 2 cent and 5 cent machines. I haven’t even done bingo yet – it’s up to $25 for a 3 pack of cards, but at our dinner table, we are talking about doing a syndicate for the last snowball bingo when the prize is 3 grand and just splitting it if any of us win.
During the night last night I got up with a sick stomach – not seasick – more like food poisoning and the symptoms lasted most of the morning. I’ve stayed in bed all day today, drinking water and once I started to feel hungry – I hit the snack bag and ate a small can of Pringles. I’m better now and have had my shower and plan to go to the dining room for dinner but will need to watch what I eat. I’ve been eating mostly the seafood choices, but tonite I think it will be plain soup and maybe the ever present grilled or roasted chicken breast.
I’ve also been trying some of the cold soups on board – they had an apple vichyssoise that was wonderful and a peach almond cream soup that was also good. Last night I tried the blackberry bramble soup with a dollop of lime sorbet. I took one spoonful and was looking for a place to spit it out. They never strained it and the all I got was a mouthful of millions of blackberry seeds floating in the worst tasting lime stuff I’ve ever encountered. YUK! Other wise the food has been generally good with lots of choices. I had some delicious salmon and very good cod. I think my stomach problem may have been related to the seafood cocktail’s I’ve had the last few days – lots of baby shrimp, scallops and mussels. Must be the mussels. No more of them for me!
OK – I’ve got to go get dressed for dinner. See y’all next time. Roberta – Bob wanted me to let you know that he had a Kettle One for you this afternoon. Hope you enjoyed it!
Just got back to the room – went to dinner and ate lightly, had chicken tenders, egg drop soup and some plain pasta tonite and only ate ½ of everything. Went to the casino but the smoke it there was making me feel sick so I went to the internet café and checked email and your blog comments.
Lew & Cheryl – thanks for the Dublin suggestions, we will look forward to going to all of those places.
Rebecca – I knew you could do it! What I don’t understand is why Cheryl is having problems.
Steve & Jane – we will talk to you and hopefully see you before your September cruise. Yes Jane - I have been doing well with all of my bargain purses. The small bucket sportsac is perfect for onboard. The large sportsac is great for getting off the ship – it holds everything and my glitzy gold evening bag is also just perfect and holds everything I want to lug around in the evenings.
Judy & Paul – thanks for checking in.
Sharon – thanks for the champagne & strawberries.
And to the person who thought I cleaned up good – thanks I always appreciate a kind word but I don’t recognize your name, do I know you?
If I missed anybody – I’ll catch up next time. The internet connection doesn’t work well in our cabin (sometimes not at all and you can waste 20+ minutes trying to get connected after log on and still come up with nothing) and it took me awhile to figure it out. So I actually type all of this stuff in MS Word then need to cart the laptop down to the internet café to log on and send it. Sort of the same with the pictures. We load them to the computer, set up a file of those we want to post and have to do uploads in the internet café. All of this is still lots slower than in real life – according to the ship’s internet guru satellite is a very slow connection. According to me – when they charge you a ridiculous amount per minute of connect time, it’s in their best interest for it to be slow.. There will not be any pics of the gray and dreary sea days – it all looks the same. However, we will send more pics once we hit land.
Well I think that tonite is the last change of the clocks and the last hour lost. I sure hope so. I’m tired of losing time and besides, on Monday we start hitting ports everyday and that means getting up early and off the boat. So, I guess I’d better go to sleep now.
I expect to post this to the blog tomorrow morning, but I’ve found that sometimes the internet connections work better late at nite. See you all in blogoland!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday nite to Wednesday
Wednesday – May 20th 2009
Time sure does fly when you’re having fun – and we are! I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already. I’ll resume with where I left off on Sunday.
We never got a response to our comment card – guess they figured we should be happy being assigned to Mail Seating late dinner as requested. And basically we are.
We are at a big round table for 9. Our table mates are a retired doctor and his wife from somewhere south of San Francisco, a matrimonial lawyer with her husband and 23 year old daughter from Toronto and a computer systems couple from Mountainside, NJ (about ½ hour from us and she and I already have agreed to meet at Short Hills mall for lunch when we get back).
Dinner was quite pleasant, the food was good and once again our table was one of the last to leave the dining room. We made our post dinner contribution to the casino and went to bed.
The weather has been horrible since about an hour outside of New York Harbor. Fog so bad you couldn’t see 10 feet beyond the railings. Lots of rain and mist. On Monday we arrived in Halifax and it was pouring. We delayed getting off the ship until it stopped for a bit. By the time we got our jackets and took the elevator to the gangway deck, it was pouring again. We spent about an hour touring the inside of the pier building. It was like going to a craft show. Lots of booths with crafty stuff, most made in Nova Scotia but not much that we needed. I did buy a funky beaded jacket and you may see it in the photos at some point..
By the way, about the photos, they take a lot longer to load than I expected so smaller numbers will be coming your way while we are still on board. The notification that the photos are posted comes from my google gmail (which is the same as my aol address except it’s @gmail not aol at the end) so you may need to check your spam folder which is where I found mine.
Crossing the Atlantic the clock changes can make you crazy – we’d lost another hour, then gained a half hour the night we left Halifax, then lost that half hour when we left St. John’s. Between here and Belfast we have 4 sea days and 3 more hours to lose
We haven’t been to any of the shows on board yet – so far they’ve had a comedian, a magician and a piano player, and we get out of dinner usually about 10:15 ish so we’ve just headed to the casino to make our donations each nite. I have found a few penny and 2 cent machines that allow me to play for an hour or more on $10.00, so I figure that’s OK. Bob has been luckier and has actually collected $60 or $70 a couple of nights on penny and nickel machines. The casino is very small on this ship and doesn’t get a big crowd.
The ship has a well equipped gym which I’ve used twice so far and Bob has gotten up there once. There are treadmills, rowers, bikes, ellipticals and all of the Cybex weight machines that we use at the J at home. They do have some early morning classes, but I went to the first one and it was four women lying on the floor doing sit ups. On the floor is not for me so I just did some treadmill and some weights. The staff in there are part of the Spa concession and so there’s only one person in there at a time and they are there to sell personal training at $80 an hour or at a bargain rate of $750 for 10 hours. If they aren’t training you, they really don’t want to talk to you. We did bring swimming gear knowing that the pool has a roof that opens and closes, but even when it’s closed it’s been very cold up there – so I think that the swimming stuff will come home unused. That’s too bad because I was hoping to get in some water exercise.
Yesterday we were on the island of St. Pierre which is actually part of France not Canada. We went ashore by tender and it took about 15 minutes. The fog was so bad that they had to send the tenders in convoy fashion and even still, one got lost on the way back. Some of the people at our table were on it and it took them over an hour floating around looking for the ship. We wandered around on the island for a couple of hours, but there is not much there. It’s basically a fishing village with brightly colored houses and not too much fishing anymore. It was very damp, cold and foggy so we headed back to the tenders. Had to wait on line in the cold wet for about 45 minutes till they were able to load us on and deliver us back to the ship. My recommendation – if you have no need to go to St. Pierre, don’t.
Although the weather has been awful, the seas have been relatively calm and other than a bit of rocking around when you walk down the hallways, it’s been smooth sailing. No green faced days yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it will stay this way.
Today we were in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Here they are having unseasonably warm and sunny weather. We went out wearing about 7 layers of clothing based on what we’ve experienced so far and the ships weather forecast and had to shed layers all over the place. It got up to about 70+ degrees and it’s a nice little town with lovely shops and pubs. We wandered around from about 10am to 3pm and had a nice visit to this nice town. If it weren’t so far away, I’d like to come back here. There were signs in all of the shops welcoming the Rotterdam, and the local chamber of commerce equivalent, had tons of people wearing red fleece vests with a huge question mark on the back, stationed all over town with maps and guides and helping people find whatever tourist attraction they wanted. It’s a very friendly town.
Sailaway was at 4:30 this afternoon and since the weather was good, it was daylight and it’s a pretty harbor, there were tons of people out on the open decks to watch it and look for whales and icebergs in Iceberg Alley. We did see lots of interesting birds, no whales and 2 icebergettes. One was too far away to be seen in a photo as anything other than a white speck but I’ve got some shots of the other one and it will be included in the next batch of pics.
Tonite’s entertainment is an oboeist . Spell check says that’s not right but it’s suggestions looked worse. Anyway – it appears to be a lady who plays the oboe as a soloist, so I guess it’s the casino for us again.
By the way – thanks Roberta for letting us know that you got the blog, and thanks to Steve for letting us know that the photos got out. Also thanks to Steve and Judy for following the blog. If anybody else has sent email in the last day or so, I haven’t seen it yet. Logging on thru the ship’s system is horrible, so I’m doing all the typing off line and just copying it into the blog when I get a chance and usually check mail after its loaded and sent.
That’s all for now.
Time sure does fly when you’re having fun – and we are! I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already. I’ll resume with where I left off on Sunday.
We never got a response to our comment card – guess they figured we should be happy being assigned to Mail Seating late dinner as requested. And basically we are.
We are at a big round table for 9. Our table mates are a retired doctor and his wife from somewhere south of San Francisco, a matrimonial lawyer with her husband and 23 year old daughter from Toronto and a computer systems couple from Mountainside, NJ (about ½ hour from us and she and I already have agreed to meet at Short Hills mall for lunch when we get back).
Dinner was quite pleasant, the food was good and once again our table was one of the last to leave the dining room. We made our post dinner contribution to the casino and went to bed.
The weather has been horrible since about an hour outside of New York Harbor. Fog so bad you couldn’t see 10 feet beyond the railings. Lots of rain and mist. On Monday we arrived in Halifax and it was pouring. We delayed getting off the ship until it stopped for a bit. By the time we got our jackets and took the elevator to the gangway deck, it was pouring again. We spent about an hour touring the inside of the pier building. It was like going to a craft show. Lots of booths with crafty stuff, most made in Nova Scotia but not much that we needed. I did buy a funky beaded jacket and you may see it in the photos at some point..
By the way, about the photos, they take a lot longer to load than I expected so smaller numbers will be coming your way while we are still on board. The notification that the photos are posted comes from my google gmail (which is the same as my aol address except it’s @gmail not aol at the end) so you may need to check your spam folder which is where I found mine.
Crossing the Atlantic the clock changes can make you crazy – we’d lost another hour, then gained a half hour the night we left Halifax, then lost that half hour when we left St. John’s. Between here and Belfast we have 4 sea days and 3 more hours to lose
We haven’t been to any of the shows on board yet – so far they’ve had a comedian, a magician and a piano player, and we get out of dinner usually about 10:15 ish so we’ve just headed to the casino to make our donations each nite. I have found a few penny and 2 cent machines that allow me to play for an hour or more on $10.00, so I figure that’s OK. Bob has been luckier and has actually collected $60 or $70 a couple of nights on penny and nickel machines. The casino is very small on this ship and doesn’t get a big crowd.
The ship has a well equipped gym which I’ve used twice so far and Bob has gotten up there once. There are treadmills, rowers, bikes, ellipticals and all of the Cybex weight machines that we use at the J at home. They do have some early morning classes, but I went to the first one and it was four women lying on the floor doing sit ups. On the floor is not for me so I just did some treadmill and some weights. The staff in there are part of the Spa concession and so there’s only one person in there at a time and they are there to sell personal training at $80 an hour or at a bargain rate of $750 for 10 hours. If they aren’t training you, they really don’t want to talk to you. We did bring swimming gear knowing that the pool has a roof that opens and closes, but even when it’s closed it’s been very cold up there – so I think that the swimming stuff will come home unused. That’s too bad because I was hoping to get in some water exercise.
Yesterday we were on the island of St. Pierre which is actually part of France not Canada. We went ashore by tender and it took about 15 minutes. The fog was so bad that they had to send the tenders in convoy fashion and even still, one got lost on the way back. Some of the people at our table were on it and it took them over an hour floating around looking for the ship. We wandered around on the island for a couple of hours, but there is not much there. It’s basically a fishing village with brightly colored houses and not too much fishing anymore. It was very damp, cold and foggy so we headed back to the tenders. Had to wait on line in the cold wet for about 45 minutes till they were able to load us on and deliver us back to the ship. My recommendation – if you have no need to go to St. Pierre, don’t.
Although the weather has been awful, the seas have been relatively calm and other than a bit of rocking around when you walk down the hallways, it’s been smooth sailing. No green faced days yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it will stay this way.
Today we were in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Here they are having unseasonably warm and sunny weather. We went out wearing about 7 layers of clothing based on what we’ve experienced so far and the ships weather forecast and had to shed layers all over the place. It got up to about 70+ degrees and it’s a nice little town with lovely shops and pubs. We wandered around from about 10am to 3pm and had a nice visit to this nice town. If it weren’t so far away, I’d like to come back here. There were signs in all of the shops welcoming the Rotterdam, and the local chamber of commerce equivalent, had tons of people wearing red fleece vests with a huge question mark on the back, stationed all over town with maps and guides and helping people find whatever tourist attraction they wanted. It’s a very friendly town.
Sailaway was at 4:30 this afternoon and since the weather was good, it was daylight and it’s a pretty harbor, there were tons of people out on the open decks to watch it and look for whales and icebergs in Iceberg Alley. We did see lots of interesting birds, no whales and 2 icebergettes. One was too far away to be seen in a photo as anything other than a white speck but I’ve got some shots of the other one and it will be included in the next batch of pics.
Tonite’s entertainment is an oboeist . Spell check says that’s not right but it’s suggestions looked worse. Anyway – it appears to be a lady who plays the oboe as a soloist, so I guess it’s the casino for us again.
By the way – thanks Roberta for letting us know that you got the blog, and thanks to Steve for letting us know that the photos got out. Also thanks to Steve and Judy for following the blog. If anybody else has sent email in the last day or so, I haven’t seen it yet. Logging on thru the ship’s system is horrible, so I’m doing all the typing off line and just copying it into the blog when I get a chance and usually check mail after its loaded and sent.
That’s all for now.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Saturday/Sunday
The car came on time and we headed for the ship terminal in NYC. Being Saturday morning, there was no traffic and we got to the pier in about 1 hour and 10 minutes and arrived there at about 10:15am. At about 11:15 am they had us line up for security and check in and by 11:45 we were on the ship and headed for our cabin.
The Verandah Suites on this ship are much smaller than those on the last cruise we were on. Even though the cabin itself is smallish, the storage space in both drawers and closets is the best we have ever had. The suitcases plus the case of seltzer and the case of water were delivered one at a time but by 4 pm they were all here and unpacked. It was kind of a good thing to get them one at a time – unpacking was not as overwhelming as usual if all you had facing you was one bag. Of course Bob overpacked again! His carry it onto the boat bag must have weighed 40 pounds all by itself, never mind the other 2 ½ bags he filled (I had 1 full bag plus the other ½ of the bag we labeled miscellaneous stuff – you know – all of the extra shoes that didn’t fit any where else, cigars, snackie things for the cabin, cosmetics, hair goop, all of the electric cords, and power strip to use with the chargers for cameras, phones, walkie-talkies, curling iron, etc., etc., etc.).
After finding the cabin and depositing the carry on stuff we went to the
Up next was sailaway, which we did from the balcony of our cabin. This was the first time we left from NY when it was daylight and not raining. We were facing the NJ side which was also the Statue of Liberty side. We waved to the lady in the harbor and she waved back. You can see her waving at us in the pictures. Soon after that we passed under the
Decided to make the best of the ‘Anytime’ dining so we dutifully changed into ‘smart casual’ and made our way to the dining room just before 8pm. When we got there we were told that it would be 20-30 minutes for a table. We didn’t want to wait that long so we decided to go to the
Last nite the casino had a welcome aboard champagne reception, so we went there to cheer ourselves up after the dinner disaster. We got a nice glass of champagne and a raffle ticket. Then the slot machines ate more of our money while we waited for the raffle. Guess What?? I won the first raffle – I got a pen, a baseball cap and a very heavy metal keychain that I’m going to throw overboard to see if it will anchor the ship. The second and third raffle winners got the same great prizes.
We lost the first hour last nite but I slept really well and didn’t notice. Although the weather has been foggy and rainy all night and most of today, the seas have been calm and the ship just has that nice rolling motion that lulls you to sleep, or makes you look slightly drunk when you’re walking around.
Today was an at sea day, I got up early and went and exercised in the gym – back to the room for a shower and we went to breakfast. After that was the galley tour which is always nice but this ship is much smaller than the last ones we were on so the kitchens were a lot less impressive. Next we were off to the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet., where we met many of the people we’d been communicating with online. Now we have a bunch of folks to say hi to as we pass them in the various gathering spots around the ship. It’s nice too because we’ve set up a number of tours with them and it’s been very convenient to have a ready made group.
We went to Tea this afternoon in lieu of lunch and that was good – nice little sandwiches, Bob was thrilled they had sausage rolls, and lot’s of nice pastries. After that it was off to trivia for me – my team tied for first place with 2 other teams – but we lost in the tiebreaker. I really didn’t feel too bad – the prize was a heavy metal keychain! The casino had gambling lessons today so I learned how to play blackjack, Caribbean stud poker and three card poker all with fake money. When they wanted real money I switched to the slot machines which were fun until they ate all the money.
Now we are back relaxing and typing in the cabin. We do need to get all duded up for the first formal night at which we will meet our tablemates for the rest of the cruise. I hope they didn’t punish us by putting us at a table with non-English speakers (there are a fair number of German and Scandinavians aboard).
So that’s all for now. I will try to do something with the pictures later or tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be in
Friday, May 15, 2009
We are off again
Hi Everybody,
We are off on another adventure. The limo arrives at 9am tomorrow morning to take us to our luxurious floating home away from home. We will board the Holland America Rotterdam in New York City and be pampered and fed well for the next 15 days. Our itinerary is shown below. From the Rotterdam dock in Rotterdam, we will be taken by bus to Amsterdam airport and fly to Dublin, where we will spend 6 more days before flying home.
We will be blogging as time permits, so join us for stories of our adventures and hopefully we will also be able to manage to post pictures as we go.
Here's where we will be headed:
ITINERARY
DAY DATE PORT
Sat May 16 New York (Manhattan), NY
Sun May 17 At Sea
Mon May 18 Halifax, NS, Canada
Tue May 19 St. Pierre, French Territory
Wed May 20 St. John's, NL, Canada
Thu May 21 At Sea
Fri May 22 At Sea
Sat May 23 At Sea
Sun May 24 At Sea
Mon May 25 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Tue May 26 Liverpool, England
Wed May 27 Waterford (Dunmore East), Ireland
Thu May 28 Plymouth, England
Fri May 29 Paris (Le Havre), France
Sat May 30 London (Dover), England
Sun May 31 Rotterdam, Holland
This time we will be taking a much more northerly route than the last time and we expect cooler weather for the entire trip. We anticipate that the temperature range will be 40 - 60 degrees, although it may be colder off the coast of Newfoundland in an area known as Iceberg Alley. We are finally packed, except for the cosmetics and computer which will be used in the morning. If we wind up with a heat wave, we'll just have to go everywhere in bathing suits because just about everything else we packed is more winter than summer. Won't that be a sight? Yikes!!
OK - have to go to bed now. Hope to see you all soon. You can respond to us by commenting on this blog where all can see your questions and comments, or for friends and family, just email us directly.
We are off on another adventure. The limo arrives at 9am tomorrow morning to take us to our luxurious floating home away from home. We will board the Holland America Rotterdam in New York City and be pampered and fed well for the next 15 days. Our itinerary is shown below. From the Rotterdam dock in Rotterdam, we will be taken by bus to Amsterdam airport and fly to Dublin, where we will spend 6 more days before flying home.
We will be blogging as time permits, so join us for stories of our adventures and hopefully we will also be able to manage to post pictures as we go.
Here's where we will be headed:
ITINERARY
DAY DATE PORT
Sat May 16 New York (Manhattan), NY
Sun May 17 At Sea
Mon May 18 Halifax, NS, Canada
Tue May 19 St. Pierre, French Territory
Wed May 20 St. John's, NL, Canada
Thu May 21 At Sea
Fri May 22 At Sea
Sat May 23 At Sea
Sun May 24 At Sea
Mon May 25 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Tue May 26 Liverpool, England
Wed May 27 Waterford (Dunmore East), Ireland
Thu May 28 Plymouth, England
Fri May 29 Paris (Le Havre), France
Sat May 30 London (Dover), England
Sun May 31 Rotterdam, Holland
This time we will be taking a much more northerly route than the last time and we expect cooler weather for the entire trip. We anticipate that the temperature range will be 40 - 60 degrees, although it may be colder off the coast of Newfoundland in an area known as Iceberg Alley. We are finally packed, except for the cosmetics and computer which will be used in the morning. If we wind up with a heat wave, we'll just have to go everywhere in bathing suits because just about everything else we packed is more winter than summer. Won't that be a sight? Yikes!!
OK - have to go to bed now. Hope to see you all soon. You can respond to us by commenting on this blog where all can see your questions and comments, or for friends and family, just email us directly.
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