Cruise Day 2 - Sea Day

Today was very relaxing and quiet.  We were awakened quite early by the rising sun shining into our east facing room, but closing the curtains took care of that!  In the morning, I did Pilates and golf putting while Mary went to a destination presentation and caught some rays on our balcony.  After some internet time (we have to pay by the minute on this ship — can’t wait until Medallion Net is rolled out to all Princess ships!), we enjoyed lunch at the grill. 

In the afternoon the Princess Dancers gave a preview dance from the Bravo show they are putting on this evening, then it was time for golf chipping into the pool.  I did not win any prizes today. Being elite status, and since it was formal night, we had complimentary canapés delivered to our room.

Mary treated me to a special Father’s Day dinner in the Sterling Steakhouse.  What a great meal!  Appetizer, soup,  filet mignon, and a delicious peanut butter and chocolate dessert!  What a great and thoughtful gift! 

The Bravo show is one of Princess’ best.   Very elegant construes and Princess actually brings an opera singer on board for it!  It is a series of well-known songs accompanied by dancers.  Mary and I instantly recognized all but one of them (I think that one was in Italian) What a great lineup of production shows we get to see on Princess! 

Tomorrow is a very early start as we need to be ready for our excursion by 8 am.  It’s a scenic boat ride up the Lysefjord.

Cruise Day 1 - Embarkation

Happy 45th anniversary to us, and what a nice anniversary it was.  This morning we had an uneventful trip to our ship.  Our Silver-Fleet driver arrived on time and we were at the ship shortly after noon.  We were at our room by 12:45, then enjoyed a buffet lunch, and were happy that our luggage arrived by 2:00.  Very efficient!  

After unpacking, we attended the mandatory safety drill then went out for a rather chilly and windy Sail Away.   At dinner we both had Princess’ delicious Pina Colada soup.  Mary enjoyed a pork dish while I had prime rib, with flourless chocolate cake for dessert.  After coming back to the room we were VERY surprised to find these two towel swans on our bed!  Our cabin steward knew about our 45th wedding anniversary today and made them for us.  

Tonight’s welcome show was quite interesting.  After a brief introduction of the Princess dancers, a string artist named Gary Lovini came out with his violin and played a series of songs, starting with traditional Irish numbers, then branching into many others.  What was intriguing was that he kept playing while coming off stage into the audience, and even posed for pictures with people while he was still playing! 

We are looking forward to enjoying a quiet sea day tomorrow, one of only 3 with 11 port days. 

Last Day in London

Our visit to London has gone quite well.  We had a quiet morning today before heading to our Afternoon Tea on the Thames River.   We had sandwiches, scones, and some sweets, along with plenty of tea as we took a  1 1/2 hour cruise up the Thames River, well past the Parliament buildings, before returning to our dock.  It was neat to see London from the river as you get a different perspective on the buildings than you do riding a bus or walking. The upper pictures are of our boat and our tray of goodies.  Below are two of the MANY pictures we took while sailing on the river, namely the London Eye and the Parliament Buildings. But we also took pictures of the Big Ben's tower, The Tower Bridge, The Shard, and Battersea Power plant among others.
Remember you can click any picture to see a larger version. 

This evening we are getting ready for the start of the cruise tomorrow.  We have a car coming in the morning to drive us to Southhampton to head out on the Sapphire Princess.  If you want to see where we are you can always check out the Bridge Cams link.   

Day 3 in Sightseeing in London

We had a nice visit to Kensington Palace this morning.  Rain was forecast for all day, but we missed most of the showers, and only had a little light rain.  Since we arrived before it opened we enjoyed a nice walk through the gardens.  Inside the Palace was a special exhibit honoring Queen Victoria, since she was born 200 years ago. 

This was our second visit here, and we enjoyed it as much as the first time.  The Victoria exhibits kept reminding us of scenes from the PBS special we've been watching for 3 seasons now.  It was amazing to see how many of Victoria's actual garments and accessories they had on display.  The tv program really did a good job of casting her husband, Alfred, and the young Victoria.

Our next stop was Harrod's.  We like going there to be amazed by the size and breadth of a mainline department store.  Who knew there were that many lines of perfume, purses, etc even existed!  We also have a tradition of buying lunch there which we kept alive again on this visit. There is nowhere to eat the lunch there (only take away) so we brought our sandwiches back to our hotel (it was very nice to have a bus that dropped us off near to our hotel. No long walk back from a tube station!).

This evening we went to a concert of Haydn and Mozart music at St Martins of the Fields church on Trafalgar Square.  They have a great restaurant called The Cafe in the Crypt, located under the church where burials took place a long time ago.  We have eaten there before and could not wait to try it again.  We both had Fish and Chips with mushy peas (Mary gave me hers), which was excellent.  The concert was a string ensemble with a flute and they played beautifully.

Tomorrow we can sleep in before enjoying Afternoon Tea on the Thames. After that it's time to pack up and get ready for our cruise.  

Windsor Castle

Today we had one objective - Visit Windsor Castle - which we accomplished and had a very good time.  We enjoyed the tube and train ride to Windsor and were VERY glad we had pre-booked and printed tickets which took us right to the security entrance, bypassing some very long lines. 

Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside the castle nor inside St George's chapel (where the Harry/Meghan wedding was held) so I only have a few outside pictures to post.   After visiting the castle we walked around town and enjoyed a traditional Cornwall Pasty for lunch. YUM!
After lunch and some shopping we caught the train back to London and to our hotel.  After 15,000 steps yesterday and another 9,000 today, we are looking forward to a quiet evening and a couple of less strenuous days.

Tomorrow is Kensington Palace in the morning and a Haydn concert at St Martin of the Fields in the evening. 

First Day in London

Well, today we had  good plan, but then reality set in.  The one event I did not pre-book tickets for was the Winston Churchill War Rooms.  Big Mistake.  We arrived there just after 10:00 and were told there was a long wait.  Well by 11:30 the line was still quite long and we feared missing our scheduled time at The Shard so we decided to leave and pre-book tickets for later in the week  So we walked around St James Park for a while where we observed the pelicans, then headed for The Shard.

On our way, we passed Big Ben.  You may have heard that it is being renovated.  We hoped we could still see it, but no way, as you can tell from this picture.  There is no part of this famous clock that remains visible.

After a ride on the Tube we bought lunch from a street vendor then took a picture of The Shard from the London Bridge. The Shard is the highest  observation platform in London.  We rode to the top and spent quite a while taking in the view from over 800 feet high.  This was a great alternative to riding The London Eye for a third time.  Here you can see The Eye and Buckingham palace from atop The Shard.

Since we finished earlier than expected, we headed back to our room for a bit before going to Westminster Abbey for Evensong.  We love going to Evensong -- beautiful liturgy in a gorgeous setting makes for a special worship experience.  After a stop in the gift shop we had supper at a Chinese restaurant, then back to our hotel for the night.  We determined that we could do the War Room early Thursday afternoon but when I checked on pre buying tickets, only 1 ticket at 1:30 was available and none for Friday morning.   So we can scratch that activity from our plans.
After walking over 15,000 steps today we are hoping for a few less as we head to Windsor Castle tomorrow!

Travel Day

Today was our travel day to London. It was a nice relaxing day since our flight was not until 10:30 pm so we had some down time in the afternoon to make sure we had everything in order.   Our flight to London was smooth and uneventful. Being an overnight flight, we tried to sleep and both of us slept a bit, but not a lot.   Once there we cleared customs, picked up our luggage and caught a cab to our hotel.  Unfortunately we had to wait nearly 2 hours for our room, but we did get checked in and took a nap to make up for the lack of sleep on the plane.

After that we walked to the 3 Kings Pub for dinner. I had loaded Mac and Cheese with a London Pride beer while Mary had a chicken wrap. There is a lot of rain in this area today but fortunately we were able to get back to our hotel before it started raining hard.
Nothing much planned for tonight, just getting oriented to the time change and preparing for tomorrow when we are planning to visit the Churchill War rooms, followed by viewing London from the top of The Shard.