Heading Home

We experienced several "lasts" in the past day.

• Last dinner with Gail, Kathy and Judy
• Last Princess breakfast buffet
• Last view of England
• Last use of Cruise Card to pay for everything 8-)

So we are back in the "real world". Our flight back was uneventful. Caught some shut-eye on the 8 hour flight and finished the book I was reading. Had a nice dinner and a snack before landing on this thankfully uneventful flight. We left Heathrow 30 minutes late and we arrived in Detroit about 45 minutes late. Had long lines at Customs, but moved through rather quickly - maybe 35 minutes.
We were promptly picked up at the airport in 90 degree heat (we had one or two days or got over 70 on our whole vacation), got home and eventually had our traditional LIttle Ceaser's supper. We left unpacking for Friday.
As of today I'm not sure when I'll get a full picture page up, but that is on the radar and when it's ready I'll post a link here. You can follow all posts for this vacation by clicking on the "British Isles" tag. Ta-ta for now!

Guernsey Island

Our last port today was Guernsey Island, the only British territory occupied by the Germans in WWII. It's one of the Channel Islands located just a few miles off the French coast.
We did not book an excursion at this stop. Mary wanted to shop and we wanted to see The Little Chapel. We tendered to shore,found the Visitor Center and they gave us direction for using the bus to get to The LIttle Chapel.
The chapel was amazing! It was small, but large enough to walk inside. And it was covered with broken pieces of Wexford China to give it a mosaic feel and coloration. The interior of the chapel was similarly decorated and had a main altar and several side altars. It was build by one man - quite the amazing feat.
Now we head to Southampton and on to London Heathrow for our flight home. I'm planning a photo page with more pictures and will post again once that is ready.

The Blarney Stone

We arrived at the pretty seaport of Cobh at 7:00 this morning. This is the port where most Irish emigrated to America. We had an early excursion to visit the Blarney Castle. It started off not so well and that continued - guess some days are like that.
We arrived at the Princess Theater for our excursion at the very early hour of 6:45. About 7:15, they announced that the busses had been parked in the wrong order so another excursion would get their busses before us. 10 bus loads later, at 7:50 we finally got to our bus. When we arrived at Blarney Castle we found that those 10 busses plus a few more were already there so the lines were very long. We had 1 hour 45 minutes before our bus left and the line was estimated at 1 hour long so I got in line to climb the castle while Mary toured the grounds and did some shopping. Well, 1 hour 40 minutes later I got to the top of the castle and did a quick kiss of the Blarney Stone. A 15 minute walk later I got back to the bus 10 minutes late which was thankfully! still there.
After we got back to the ship we had lunch and relaxed. I played Wii-Archery and got a medal, but came in 3rd in putt-putt golf. It was a warm sunny day so we swam, enjoyed a lobster supper and to top it off they had Mary's favorite dessert - Floating Islands tonight.
We enjoyed the final floor show in the Princess Theater and called it a night. Guernsey Island tomorrow, then packing and preparing to head home.

Dublin

Our morning was much less eventful than yesterday, but that's not saying much! The main excitement was being parked next to a Russian Destroyer. It was interesting watching their morning routine before heading to our excursion. Today's excursion was a 1/2 day tour of Dublin with stops at St Patrick's Cathedral and Trinity College. After Trinity College we had the option of staying in town and catching a shuttle later, which we did.
We had a very good tour guide today - had lot of humor and did a good job of narrating. After driving around the city we stopped at St Patrick's Cathedral. Our guide said this is the largest cathedral in Europe, which was very surprising. As with other cathedrals, this one is filled with graves, including it's most famous Dean, Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. It also had very beautiful stain glass windowsas you can see in this picture of the nave.
We then drove through a large park to a cross where Pope John Paul celebrated Mass for over 1 million catholics in 1989, then we headed to Trinity College. I'm not sure why this was a stop, as we took a couple of pictures then headed out for lunch at the Bleeding Horse pub, a favorite of Mary's favorite singer, Mack Bailey. They have taps right at your table so you don't even have to walk to the bar. So we enjoyed a "pub grub" lunch and a pint of Guiness.
After that we headed back to the Princess shuttle bus, but Mary spotted a sweater shop. I found a nice blue pull-over on sale and could not resist. Sure hope we have enough room in our suitcases!
There are having an Irish music and dance show later this afternoon which we plan to attend.
Now to wait for the internet to come back (reportedly after we sail today) so I can post this along with yesterday's post!

Liverpool and Wales

Today we docked in Liverpool after a rather eventful morning. About 5:10 this morning, I felt the ship lean to one side a little, then some more, then more yet! I'm not quite sure how far we listed, but it sure created quite a mess on board. In our cabin, I first heard some batteries roll around on the desk, then Mary's purse slid off the table and crashed to the floor. We did not have anything damages, but I know of one other passenger whose camera fell on the floor and suffered minor damage. Also the Horizon Buffet (which was supposed to open at 6:00) was still closed at 6:30 and they would not let us even walk through to the Caribe Cafe (we later heard due to broken glass). With 2000+ people up early for excursions, the Caribe was overflowing. But, as we got in line, they opened one side of the Horizon buffet so we did get our breakfast on time. I'm sure some junior officer is not doing so well today...
After that start we did head out on our excursion. Apparently there are no ferries operating any more so we took a tunnel under the Mersey River and headed to Wales. At our first stop there were wild sheep grazing on open range. After days of trying to get pictures of sheep from the bus, here they were, just a few feet in front of us. Scotland has about 7.5 million sheep for 5.5 million people and the ratio is even higher in Wales - 3.5 mission sheep and about 1.5 million people. So yes, we saw a lot of sheep.
After a steam train ride, our next stop was Chirk Castle, a refurbished home that looked like a castle. They had some people dressed up in costume and the home was very nicely decorated with a beautiful gardensurrounding it. It was very pleasant and relaxing to walk the grounds of this home.

Loch Lomand

Our excursion was, again, a drive through the countryside as we took a bus trip to Loch Lomand, made famous by Scottish song. At least now we know what the "low road" and "high road" mean and why the person taking the low road gets there first.
Since we had an afternoon excursion, Mary and I spent much of the morning wandering around the town of Greenock. We saw a few interesting shops before finding an 80 store shopping mall.
Our bus trip first stopped at a resort village called "Loss" which is on the shores of Loch Lomand. ("loch" is celtic for "lake") It was a pretty lake, but very cold. Only had a couple of swimmers in it.
After leaving Loss, we took a rather pretty bus ride through the Scottish Highlands, ending up at a ferry terminal where we crossed the Firth of Clyde and headed back to our ship.
The big surprise of the day was that our ship actually got a Scottish sendoff! Virtually every port has some local there to greet the passengers upon arrival, but this is the first time in 9 cruses we've had a send off. A bagpipe band played 4 numbers and a tour guides stood on the dock and waived flags as the ship pulled away. It was very impressive! People were lining the port side balconies and clapping as each number was finished. I recorded a short video segment of the bagpipe band but need to wait for home before uploading it due to internet bandwidth.
PS This post is a bit late since the ship internet has been down since yesterday morning (about 30 hours ago)

Northern Ireland

While we docked in Belfast. we did not visit the city, only the countryside, with the main event being a place called Giant's Causeway. This is a very unusual geological formation that looks like a series of pilings close together as you can see in this picture.

The formation is quite large and covers quite an area. We walked around just one point of the causeway. I got to climb a lot of rocks and ventured out to the point. The area had beautiful scenery and cliffs as shown here
After leaving Giant's Causeway, we headed into a small Irish town where we had an hour to talk around and have lunch. We found a nice cafe that served a great irish stew, then did some souvenir shopping. We then had a pleasant bus ride back through the beautiful Irish countryside back to the ship.
Back at the ship we found out that the dry dock where the Titanic was built was right next to our ship so we got a picture of that, then, since we were on the Lido deck, stopped by the Horizon buffet for a late afternoon snack before heading back to our cabin.
Tonight at supper I got my birthday cake after enjoying a nice salmon steak.
It was a very good day.

Second Day at Sea

Today started with an unusual event. When we awoke, the ship was slowing to a stop just off the north of Scotland! We then spotted a small boat headed our way. It turned out to be a service called Lifeboat and was meeting our ship due to a passenger medical emergency. No details were provided, but I did see an older man and lady being helped onboard the Lifeboat.
Yesterday at the local museum I spotted some brochures about Scotland. What caught my eye was the German editionwhich had this interesting title. When I studied German in college I recall the German word for Scotsman was "schotte" so I figured my ancestors must have migrated from Scotland to Germany back before last names were assigned and were known to the Germans as "the Scots". But this is the first time I've seen our surname in print with the exact same spelling.
We have quite a few activities today. This morning Mary attended the cooking demonstration followed by a gallery tour while I watched the final space shuttle landing on CNN. After she finished the tour we headed to Pub Lunch for fish and chips, then I played bridge while Mary attended the Port talk.
Late afternoon, since it was such a beautiful, sunny day, we put on our bathing suits and hit the hot tub! Who'd think we'd be doing that so near the Arctic Circle. (At our northernmost point when we passed Scapa Flow and the Orkney Islands we were nearly 59 degrees north latitude.) But it was warm enough today -- as long as you stayed in the sun. Sorry, no pictures were taken 8-)
It is formal night tonight so we got dressed up and enjoyed a nice dinner. We had a variety of entrees, but all enjoyed the cold soup even if it was not as good as the pina colada soup the first night. All in all, a nice relaxing day at sea.

Inverness and Loch Ness

Our second stop in Scotland was in northern Scotland at the port of Invergordon with an excursion to Inverness, Loch Ness, and the ruins of the Urquhart castle.
As we pulled into port in the famous former British Naval port, we saw several oil rigs. One was under repair while another 4 were being stored in the harbor. It seems one of the main uses of this port and town is servicing oil rigs, including a volunteer lifeboat service.
We wandered around the small town in the morning with Mary doing some shopping while I visited the town museum. After lunch, we headed out on our half day excursion.
Our bus took us to Urquhart castle which sits on Loch Ness. his castle was first built in the 12th century and had been expanded several times over the centuries. It was intriguing to see how it had been designed and how thick the walls were (5 feet in places). As you can see it was spread out over quite a wide area and still had one tower fairly well intact (at least strong enough to support all the tourists climbing it!)
After leaving this very busy stop we drove along Loch Ness as we headed to Inverness.
You can see Loch Ness behind the castle in this picture. The Loch is very deep and maintains a constant water temperature between 40 and 50 degrees F, never freezing.
We then drove through Inverness on our way back to the ship. Not much to say about our trip back -- pretty town and pretty countryside.
Tomorrow is another day at sea (Hurrah!) before we have 6 straight days of excursions. It's a great feeling to know that we've been on vacation seeming forever and we still have a full week to go!

Edinburgh

Our first stop in Scotland was Edinburgh, the national capital.
Yes, Scotland is a separate country but all foreign policy is handled by Great Britain. We had to tender into Queensferry, then take a bus for our excursion. You can count on tendering to get great shots of your cruise ship!
Our excursion was to the Royal Yacht, decommissioned in 1997. During it's 44 years of service it sailed over 1,000,000 miles, going around the world several times. It was operated by a crew of 20 officers and 220 sailers, including a 26 piece Royal Marine Band. We were able to tour the entire ship.
This picture is of the formal dining room where heads of state were entertained. The ship was very spacious and luxurious as you can see from this picture of the family sitting room
Basically the front half of the ship was for the crew and the back half for the Royal Family. Several couples honeymooned on this ship, including Charles and Diana. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip each had their own bedrooms, while 4 others were shared by other Royals.
After completing our tour of the ship we took a bus ride through Edinburgh. Unfortunately we hit a rain shower so few pictures through the bus windows turned out. This one is of the train station. The tower clock is kept 5 minutes fast to encourage people to be on time for their trains.
After we got back to the ship, we had lunch and are enjoying a quiet afternoon.

First Day at Sea

Woke up early and wished Mary a Happy Birthday! Looking forward to a day at sea - bridge, port talk, Pub Lunch and all the other trappings.
We're in the North Sea and last night they cautioned us to be prepared for some higher seas and strong winds, but the ship has been remarkably stable with little pitching and rolling. Our balcony railing was wet this morning, but it's fresh water so apparently from rain.
We had a nice quiet day, after laundry (we've boon gone for a week now) I played bridge and Mary did some shopping on the ship.We grabbed a quick lunch before the port talk, then went to the buffet for dessert only to find Princess had Mary's very favorite dessert! Floating Islands. Floating Islands is spoonfuls of meringue floating on custard sauce. Yum! She also got her Birthday balloons and sign on our door.
After lunch we watched The Kings Speech in the Princess Theater. It was very neat to see places in the movie that we had been to just a few days ago. Later we had dinner and watched the floor show tonight "Motown"

Normandy

We had a very inspiring excursion today to Normandy with a special focus on Omaha Beach and La Pointe Du Hoc. It was special to actually be in France.
Unfortunately, we had a rather wet day today. We had a beautiful ride through the French countryside, followed by a very wet visit to La Point Du Hoc.
This is a point between the Utah and Omaha beaches that could rain shells down on both. It was attacked by a company of Rangers who had to scale 50' cliffs using rocket assisted grappling hooks and rope ladders. The attack, while delayed, was successful. This picture shows how heavily this point was shelled based on the many bomb and shell craters. Unfortunately, we got back to the bus quite soaked.
Next was a visit to Omaha beach with this new memorial to the American invaders. This was the beach that took the heaviest casualties.
I found it inspiring to walk that beach and look at the hills they had to attack. We heard the story of the attack numerous times during the day from different perspectives.
Our next stop was the American Cemetery overlooking the beach.
The monument there had many famous quotes and battle depictions, but most impressive was the care taken to landscape this cemetery as well as the crosses - fields of crosses. They had a very nice visitors center with exhibits of WWII memorabilia such as this soldier's kit which is one like Mary's dad carried and used.
Our visit was followed by a very nice lunch at a local French restaurant and a visit to another museum in Arromanches. We watched one video here about the invasion, then while mary went souvenir shopping I watched another, only to find it was narrated in French.
We then had a long bus ride back to the ship and a nice buffet dinner with Gail, Kathy and Judy.

Boarding the Crown Princess

No picture today. Yes I could have posted one from the ship, but having been on a ship like this several times before that did not seem very meaningful.
Our van came to pick us up before 10:00 and I was surprised by the heavy traffic on a Saturday morning as we made our way from London to Southampton so it took us a full 2 hours to get to the ship. There were no lines when we arrived and they were already boarding the ship so we quickly received our cruise cards and boarded the ship.
We did our customary tour of the ship, ate an excellent lunch in the buffet, and relaxed on our balcony (listening to Mack Bailey music) as we waited for the Sail-away party. Dinner was prime rib with pina colada soup after which we settled down for the night as tomorrow is a full and very busy day starting early since we need to be ready for our excursion by 7:30 am which means getting up by 6:00 for our tour of Normandy. And tonight is a 1 hour time change so we loose 1 hour sleep tonight as well.

Bye-Bye, London

Just had to post one last picture from London. We had a great time and enjoyed the great transportation system (even if some trains and busses were pretty packed) and fortunately had great weather. So now its on to phase II of our trip - a 12 day cruise around the British Isles on the Crown Princess. Due to internet connectivity, I won't be posting as many pictures (upload speed is notoriously bad), but still plan a daily entry. So stay tuned for more updates as we visit Normandy, Scotland, Irelend, Liverpool, and Gurnsey Island.

Our Third day in London

Today was a beautiful day in London! Sunny, warm and we accomplished everything we wanted - and more!
Our day started with heading to the London Eye with Gail, Kathy and Judy (the three John Denver friends we are cruising with).
The Eye was very cool! A nice smooth ride up and over London. We purchased Flexi Fast Passes so we could arrive at any time and get priority boarding - that worked out very well. We got some great pictures from The Eye like this one with Parliament and Big Ben in the background. We also got pictures of St Paul's, Buckingham Palace, and other London attractions.

After that we took a boat ride on the Themes to the Tower of London. The Tower was very impressive with some very ancient parts and quite the history. We started out on the Beefeater tour, but it was going rather slow and the main attraction was the Crown Jewels so we cut out on our own with Rick Steves' Pocket London tour notes.
The Tower is famous for it's torture and executions and we saw some of the torture equipment and many tales of famous executions before heading to the Crown Jewels. There was quite a line, but it moved fast. The Jewels were very impressive, including the Coronation Crown (that is only worn for 20 minutes) and many other crowns, scepters, orbs, challices, patens, and regal paraphernalia.
Next on our list was Buckingham Palace. It was very impressive to see the balcony where William and Kate stood for their famous kisses.
We noticed the Royal Mews was nearby and we had free admission so we stopped in. The Mews contained the Royal coaches that were used for various purposes including the Australia Coach and the Coronation Coach.
That wrapped up our day and our London sightseeing. Tomorrow we head to the Crown Princess to begin our cruise!

London Day 2

Today we had 3 objectives: Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and St Paul's. Well 2 out of 3 is a pretty good average since we had to defer pictures of Buckingham Palace to tomorrow due to some train issues coming back from Windsor Castle, but more on that later.We set out for Windsor Castle about 9:00, only to find out that our travel passes were not good on the subway until after 9:30! So we cooled our heels in the subway station for 20 minutes, then caught our subway to the first train then to a second train and we made it to Windsor Castle about 10:45. As we arrived they had a copy of the Queens Engine in the station and I reached for my camera - and came up empty. So todays pictures are either from Mary or my phone.
Windsor Castle was quite large and interesting. As with Westminster Abbey and St Paul's, no interior photography was allowed, but the rooms were very impressive. They even showed where the 1992 fire started and you could see in several of the rooms that the wood was new. We saw Queen Mary's doll house and dolls. The doll house was a 1:12 scale castle with 4 floors and included cars and garages. There was another display of her dolls which were nearly 2 feet tall and had furs, gowns, and many fancy clothes.
Upon leaving we made it to the second train station, but our express train was marked as delayed.
Another came,but just as they cancelled our train due to "track blockage", that train pulled out so we had to wait on another. Given the loss of 1 hour, we decided to head right to St Paul's and got there by 3:30, 1/2 hour before it closed. Again, no interior photos allowed, but it is a very impressive church.
We stayed for Evensong, only to find this was their school commencement as well. The pastor had a very good address for the kids. But it, as with Westminster Abbey, was a very nice worship service with the historic liturgy.
So all in all, it was a good day.

London - Day 1

The day started out with things not going quite to plan so we changed and ended up having a nice day.
First up was Princess Di Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park.
I was not able to capture the memorial on one photo, but you can get an idea of it from this picture. The basic design is an oval with various type of water flows as he water cascades down each side. Very impressive and seemingly appropriate.
We had some time before lunch our next schedule change was a double decker bus ride across London through Piccadilly Circle to Trafalgar Square.
Due to lots of construction this took quite a while, but fortunately the trip back across town was much faster as we headed to lunch at Harrods! Harrod's is an amazing department store. We spent quite a while there shopping before buying sandwiches in the Food Hall and eating them on a part bench outside.
After lunch was the main attraction of the day - Westminster Abbey. As we exited the tube stop, there was Big Ben! Could not resist taking a picture of the most photographed clock on the world.
Unfortunately Westminster Abbey does not permit photography inside or I would have taken many dozen additional pictures. It was very impressive, not only for the architecture, but for the hundreds of people buried there! There were tombs everywhere! in the walls, in the floor, in fancy crypts - you name it. There were even some very recognizable names like Lord Tenneyson, George Fredrick Handle, Ralph Vaugh Williams, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens.
After our tour we stayed around for Evensong, a daily choral worship service. Since we had tickets for today we were admitted early and had front row seats. It was very liturgical and since it used the historic liturgy, it was also quite familiar with confessional and absolution, the Magnificat, Nunc Dimittus, and common versicles and response.
All in all , very good day.