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.