Heading Home

Our day started very early since Princess had us meeting at 7:20AM for transportation to the airport for our 2:00PM flight. I was hoping our transport would be more like 9:00.  We got up at 5:30 to have breakfast, showers, etc and arrived at the lounge at 7:15 only to be told to head out to the bus where we were nearly the last ones on board.

Arrived at the airport by 8:30. Due to the long wait I booked us into an.airport lounge where we could relax and enjoy some refreshments, food, and fast internet.  It was money well spent (and saved buying lunch!). 

We had a 3 hour flight to Reykjavik, followed by a 2 hour layover and a 6 hour flight to New York City where we will stay the night.  As of this posting we've been up for about 20 hours. During the second flight Mary got some great pictures of Greenland, including this one.  We really appreciated being Saga Class on IcelandAir - that is their reasonable-priced business class. We enjoyed large seats with lots of leg room, beer or wine, and meals on both flights.  It was a nice way to end a cruise.

We are returning to Detroit tomorrow, and that ends another wonderful trip. 

Leaving the Regal Princess

It was nice to have a sea day on the day before we disembark.  A bit relaxing and back to a more casual list of activities. As with other sea days, I went to Zumba, we saw the last classic comedian lecture which contained clips of skits by comedians he had not covered in prior lectures (including the entire Who's on First skit), and I played bridge in the afternoon before we packied our suitcases and headed to the buffet for dinner.

We were surprised at breakfast by having a major chocolate display, including this chocolate fountain!  You could pick chocolate oatmeal, waffles, pancakes, muffins, donuts, tapioca, and cookies dipped in chocolate. 

I know I've posted several dessert pictures on this blog, so I could not resist posting one more -- my last Princess dessert (at least for this cruise!).  Peanut butter pie and blueberry cobbler with vanilla sauce.  YUM!  Back to eating healthy next week.....

Tomorrow we have to leave this beautiful ship, flying from Copenhagen to Reykjavik Iceland, and from Iceland to NYC. It's been a great 14 days, but lots to do once we get home.  

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Our excursion today was to visit the Tulip festival at Keukenhof.  Mary and I both agree that pictures cannot do justice to what you actually experience when you are there.  To be surrounded by so many flowers of many different colors, artfully arranged in various flower beds was truly amazing.
Mary found a reference that there were over 7 million flowers in this 79 acre garden!  And after walking several miles around it today, I believe it. Everywhere we looked was a new picture waiting to be taken!  We did constrain ourselves a bit and it took me a while to sort through them and select these to add to my blog.
There were also many tulip fields in the distance but those pictures were not as impressive as these.
Mary and I did each enjoy a whipped cream waffle there for lunch today.  It was neat to enjoy them while sitting on a bench surrounded by these beautiful flowers.

Click on a picture to enlarge it, the top one is Mary trying out some oversized but colorful wooden shoes.

Brugge Belgium

Today we visited Brugge, Belgium.  We had a 1/2 day shore excursion which was a lot less taxing than yesterday's full day trip.  We had beautiful weather as you can see in this picture. After a lengthy walk around the town we took a boat ride on the canals, then had a lunch break for Belgian waffles.  Mary had chocolate and whipped cream n hers while I had mine with nutella and bananas.  YUM!!!  They were delicious.  After our waffles I enjoyed a Belgian light beer.  I can now confirm what our Belgian guide said when asked "Do you like Budweiser?"  His reply, "No I drink real beer. "

After our enjoyable day we had reservations at the Crown Grill, Princess' steak house.  It was a very enjoyable way to end our day with a great meal, courtesy of Crucon, our travel agency.  Here's what we had for dessert: 7 Layer S'mores, YUM again! 

On to the tulip festival in The Netherlands tomorrow.

Cherborg, France (REPOST)

If you are getting this for the second time it's because the original post disappeared from my site after sending the email.
Today we had an all day shore excursion to visit the D-Day sites. We were scheduled to leave when the ship docked and return at 6:00pm, the ship’s All Aboard time,  We did leave pretty much on time, but returned at 6:30,  time the ship was acheduled the leave!  We had 3 more busses behind us so at least we were not the last ones to board the ship.  Sure glad for the Princess shore excursion guarantee.

We had a lot of stops today so I’ll be brief.

Our first stop was a village where a paratrooper got stuck on the church steeple. They keep a life size dummy of him hanging up there for the tourists (click on the picture to enlarge so you can see him.) Next was Utah beach, one of the two beaches where the Americans landed. It was nice to be able to walk the beach and see what they faced

The American Cemetery at Omaha Beach was next. This was very moving. Mary enjoyed seeing the invasion maps which showed where her dad served. The museum had displays of equipment carried by typical GIs and that her father probably used.
We arrived at a small beach town for lunch around 1:00 pm. It was a very nice lunch with wine and a pasta and chicken main dish.

After lunch we headed to Arromanches where the Allies built a temporary harbor in only 10 days after the D-Day invasion. They used prefabricated modules built in England and towed them across the English Channel. That was quite a feat! Some of the modules still exist as ruins after 74 years. Check out both the foreground and background of the picture. Last we headed to Point du Hoc, a German bug battery that had to be eliminated early in the invasion since it could cover both American beaches.

Now we are on our way to Belgium for a tour of the town of Bruge.

Another Sea Day

Today was a very special sea day since I got to do the Ultimate Ship Tour!  There is a fee for this (paid for by my retirement gift cards), but I'd heard many reviews that it was well worth it, and having experienced it, I heartily agree.  It started at 8 am which was quite early since we had to move the clocks forward 1 hour again last night. The group was limited to just 16 people and we toured many crew-only areas.  Unfortunately no cameras or personal pictures were allowed due to being in secure areas of the ship.
Here's what we saw:

1. Medical Center - a 7 bed hospital with full lab and x-ray
2. Princess Theater - backstage for a talk by the stage manager, got our picture taken on the stage, then visited the dressing room to see the costumes and talk to two of the performers.
3. Main Galley - place where nearly all food is prepared for the ship. Saw many areas including the soup & sauces, breads, vegetable, pastry, and meat preparation stations.
4. Store Rooms - Stores Manager talked about what it takes to order supplies and store them, especially for this 14-day cruise.
5. Photography Studio - where all pictures are color-balanced and printed.
6. Print Shop - Where all the paper items are printed.
7. Engineering Control Station - where all ship systems are monitored and managed
8. Forward mooring station - place where all the forward lines are managed to tie the ship up to the dock. This included seeing the anchor and anchor chain.  Very cool!
9. Bridge - Met the captain who talked about the challenges involved in docking the ship as well as how they keep the ship stable to give the passengers the smoothest ride.   A group photo was taken here.

Overall the tour was scheduled to take 2 1/2 hours, but ended up taking nearly 4 hours!  

After lunch I played bridge and Mary watched some movies.  Dinner tonight featured prime rib.  When the waiter delivered mine he said "Who do you know in the kitchen?", based on the huge size. No, I was not able to finish it!

When we got back to our cabin I found that my gifts from the Tour had arrived.  I was amazed at what was included:

• A Princess Robe
• A Princess apron
• A framed 8x10 picture with the captain on the bridge
• A personalized pad of note paper
• Three 5x7 photos from other locations on the tour.

Quite the haul!

On to France tomorrow for our Normandy tour. 

Cruise Day 8

Today we had one change to our regular sea day routine, since the port lecturer boarded the ship yesterday.  She missed boarding a week ago since she was in Miami, our ship was in Fort Lauderdale, and her luggage was in Tampa!  But now she is on board so we had two port lectures today, about Cherbourg and Belgium.  Today's Classic Comedian presentation was about Carol Burnett. But to make room for the port lectures and due to a large content, he is splitting it into two talks, one today and one tomorrow. In the afternoon I played bridge and Mary watched a movie.

Tonight was the last formal night on the cruise and that means lobster! Mary enjoyed her favorite meal, with a caviar based appetizer, a main course of lobster, and floating islands for dessert.  I also enjoyed lobster but had a special Chocolate Journeys dessert (Chocolate Journeys is a series of special chocolate desserts created for Princess by a famous chocolatier).

Tonight's production show was titled "Bravo!' It's a new show that we had not seen before. It turned out to be nearly all singing and was very formal.  Unless you are into opera, you can skip this show.

The highlight of tomorrow is my doing The Ultimate Ship Tour!  It starts at 8:00 and takes passengers into many all crew areas like the engine control room, bridge, and medical center.  I am looking forward to that VERY much.