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.