Bonus sea day photos

June 2, 2015

Here are some photos from our bonus sailing on a rough sea day. This was also the afternoon of the Gala Tea on the last afternoon of the cruise segment.

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Amsterdam

Friday, June 5, 2015

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Clay woke me again leaving the room. It was 6am and breakfast started today at 6:30am also I looked out and we were already in a canal. I don’t know long we sailed due west before turning back east last night. The good news is that the extra sailing time in the English Channel was calm so no harm. We arrived on time and the ship cleared on time. I was a little worried because I watched as we sailed past Central Station, past the river boat dock and past the cruise terminal! We pulled into another channel and it looked like we’d keep going but at some point we just spun around over there and came back and docked on the port side.

It was very sunny and unseasonably hot at nearly 90F today in Amsterdam. It was not a dry heat and was very sapping. Always something to complain about I know, but it seems Europe skipped spring entirely and went straight to summer.

So, since we had been here before we had planned to just knock around and maybe revisit some museums. We had planned to use a shipboard credit on the next cruise’s stop here to take a ship’s tour to Edam for cheese and windmills. But, then a man on our Cruise Critic roll call asked for someone to replace his travel companions today for $125 pp on a similar tour in a private car. We stepped up. The driver/guide’s name was Stefka and her email is info@hollandprivatetour.com. The car was a Citroen Picasso. Three of us sat in the back and one up front with her. It was a nice car with good visibility but it was not a roomy van. Our first stop was Clara-Maria in Amstelveen. It was a family farm where they made wooden clogs and cheese. It was interesting. I love to see things being made. They only made Gouda cheese there. But they make it in a lot of flavors. We all liked all the cheeses as well. We bought a small smoked one. All along the drive, Stefka explained the pumping and dykes and dams and how the harvesting of peat was how most of The Netherlands got below sea level in the first place. Polder is what they call the low flat land that has been pumped dry. Again, it was all interesting. Next stop was an old windmill at Etersheimrbraak. It was still able to function, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t enough wind and there was an electric pumping station at the other end of the field. We saw a lot of birds, rabbits, cows and sheep this morning and the domesticated animals all day long. At one point, we had to slam on brakes for a line of ducklings crossing the road. The roads! They were supposedly 2-way, but were a single lane with a bike lane on either side! Keep in mind there was usually water on one or both sides and sometimes a lane of parked cars. It was crazy! We decided to skip a Dutch apple pie and coffee stop here in lieu of lunch soon after. It seemed that we drove a long time through the polder after that and looked at local styles of historic architecture much with a roof of tile and thatch. The buildings reflected the local farming history as well as the technique of building atop a former lake bed. Everything was manmade and laid out in a grid and is a UNESCO world heritage site. The area is the Beemster. They have their own cheese that tastes different because the grass the cows eats is salty or something. We didn’t have any cheese even though Clay thought he ordered a sandwich with some at lunch, but the sandwich didn’t come with cheese and they told him he didn’t order it. Oh well. He did get a local blonde beer. I got my Dutch ham & cheese pancake. I also learned that the Dutch would still put sugar beet syrup on a savory pancake. I never knew that before. I ate 2/3s without syrup and the last 1/3 with as dessert. Oh, we had lunch in the blazing sun for an hour of misery at Wapen van Munster in De Rijp. After lunch, we walked around the immaculate little historic town. It still has canals and a lock but they don’t really use them anymore. It was originally a fishing village before the land was drained and a dam was built and they couldn’t get to the sea anymore. After lunch we went straight to Volendam and wandered. It was a seaside tourist town. It was the first really crowded place we went. We were all exhausted and spent by then. The hour long lunch in the blazing sun was clearly a mistake. After that we drove through Broek in Waterland Noord. Then we drove right back into Central Amsterdam and returned to the cruise terminal.

It looked like the cruise terminal was a nice building. It looked like it must have had free Internet based on the number of people sitting around in there when we returned.

We will just eat at Terrace tonight. We will not go to a show. The show is Edward Garth again. Tomorrow we are in Bremerhaven, Germany where we must not have any plans. We should be there from 10am to 9pm.

I don’t think I have mentioned the dramatically different passenger demographic on this segment of the cruise from the past 2. We think from the number of children aboard now that the average age must have just dropped by about 20-30 years. It has been amazing. I guess it will be really felt the first time we have any sailing time. I think maybe it has to do with the time of year and school ending vs. the 2 earlier segments. But who knows? Maybe it is the itinerary.

We are back from dinner with bad news. First, for not the first time on this segment, Clay has failed to get served at the Terrace Grill. He either never gets to order because the same team of 3 guys never asks him for his order, they just keep passing by him to the next person who comes up, or like tonight he places his order 3 times and they keep cooking and giving his food to someone who ordered after him. Either way, it meant I only ate an appetizer and a dessert because of the wait. He is pretty angry about it but as I told him, he needs to complain to someone who can do something about it. I think he doesn't want to because one of the guys is according to Clay "my buddy". The other bad thing was that I put out our Please Make Up My Room sign when we left, but when we got back it had been turned to Privacy Please, so our room had not been serviced. Our room stewardesses were appalled and so were we but given that someone also stole our Newfoundland magnet, it was less shocking. We are in the card room now, while I update this entry for the last piece of bad news.

We left the cabin at 6:30pm to go to dinner. We were still tied to the dock. We should have sailed at 6pm. There had been no announcements. We looked around Amsterdam from a top deck and it started raining as we walked downstairs. Stefka, our guide today, had warned us that they were predricting storms around sunset today because the unnaturally high heat of the day was going to destabilize the atmosphere and cause early evening storms. The other cruise ship in port with us, Magellan, left before we did and I guess got out. At 7:10pm, Julie James our cruise director, came over the loudspeakers and announced that the pilot and the captain had decided that due to predicted 50 miles or knots per hour winds at the IJmuiden canal locks. We didn't even know we had come through locks last night to get here! I knew we were in a canal this morning when I woke up but had no idea! So they decided we could not safely reach the sea. Because of that we are spending the night docked in Amsterdam and will sail at 3pm tomorrow. We are skipping the port of Bremerhaven and sailing straight to Oslo, the next port on the itinerary.  I guess the good news is that we did not have any plans there!

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Belgium!

Thursday, June 4, 2015

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Clay was up early after a short night last night. I guess since he went to sleep directly after dinner that he had slept long enough. Since he did that, he had not transferred his photos or uploaded any for the blog. I am guessing that is another reason that he was up and out of the cabin an hour before the gym opened. He woke me up when he opened and closed the door and since I knew we were to meet up with others and try to leave the ship at 8am, I just got up too. We never saw much of the English Channel sailing at night, but even better we didn’t feel it either. It was like sailing on a lake!

Breakfast was exciting with the Terrace shaking dishes off the table as the side thrusters were abused for about 15 minutes trying to turn the ship to dock on the port side in Zeebrugge today. Cruise passengers are not allowed to walk in the port of Zeebrugge but must use a shuttle bus between the ship and the port gate. The good news is that the port provides that shuttle free of charge. The other good news was that if you are thinking of going to Brugge alone, it was simple. The port provided a shuttle from the foot of the gangway to about a block from the Blankenberge train station. The first shuttle left about 8:20am and the last returned at 4:50pm. The shuttle bus ride was about 15 minutes long. (In the bad news category, we had planned to take a taxi to and from and had arranged with a couple from our roll call to share, but we never saw a single taxicab until we reached Brugge!) The shuttle bus is timed to meet the trains. The shuttle dropped us about a block away, but the driver just pointed and told us to go across the street. To his credit, the bus driver did advise us to go inside and buy tickets because that would be cheaper than buying them onboard the train. The problem is that we had 7 minutes to find the station, buy tickets and board the train. That might not sound like a problem, but there was a block long construction site between us and the station! We crossed the street where the driver pointed and turned left because I had been watching on the bus ride in and had seen the temporary entrance through trailers. We made the 8:42am train! The trains to Brugge from Blankenberge leave every hour at :42 past. The trains back to Brugge from Blankenberge leave every hour at :04 past. We went to the ticket counter instead of using a machine, because there was no line and we thought it would be faster. Clay asked for a return ticket Brugge. Not only was it faster but the ticket guy asked if we were from the cruise ship and we said yes, he turned around a big colorful sign that advertised a special RT 5 Euro ticket! We had expected to spend about $100 on taxi fare today! The train to Brugge from Blankenberge takes about 15 minutes too. So, we were in Bruges by 9am. Clay advised me to use the toilet before we left the station. I probably could have skipped that. It was an unpleasant encounter that cost me .50 Euro and some unnecessary human interaction and I found plenty of other free toilets at places where we did business later. We found our way out the main entrance at the bus stops. All the buses with Centrum on the front will stop at the Markt Square area. I think that might be about 8 different bus routes. We got on #16, the first one to arrive. The fare is 3 Euros. It was about 7 or 8 minutes on the bus from the station to the Markt. The return buses had different numbers and there only appeared to be 3 different routes that would stop at the station, but there is signage and they have STA on the front with their other destinations. Again, we got on the first bus to stop along the Post Office side of the Markt. It was route #2 and we asked the driver, train station? before we paid. The only other glitch today was that the 3:04pm return train was about 20-25 minutes late and there were never any announcements in English. There were probably more than 50 people from the ship waiting for that train and there was a lot of stress. It all worked out!

Since we got to Brugge so early, things weren’t open yet. But, the quiet and lack of crowds and brilliant morning light were worth it. We checked out the Belfort, or Bell Tower, fist because Clay loves that kind of thing. It was going to open in about 10 minutes but that was 8 Euros each and 366 steps. I probably could have made it up, but for a couple of weeks now my right knee cap has been sliding out of place when going down stairs. It comes and goes but had gone out this morning. It is painful. I have to go down only bending my left knee which is tricky because it does the same thing from time to time and if both go at once I don’t know how I’ll get down stairs. Anyway, I made some whiny noises like Clay should go alone and we decided to skip it. We went back out into Markt Square to admire it. As soon as we crossed the street, a couple of teenaged boys approached us. They asked if we spoke English. Then asked if we were Americans. They had a sheet of paper that had questions on both sides and they needed to interview an American for a school project. They asked if we were willing. I went. The 2^nd question after my name was my age. This caused both boys to turn red and have a conversation between themselves in their own language before they both eyed me and made a decision. They told me this was rude, but the next question is what is your age? It was very funny. I told them unemotionally while Clay made fun of how old I was and we all had a laugh. They asked several more questions about me, my impressions of Brugge and my own homeland and languages and American attitudes to other languages and tourism. One of the questions they asked was what was I looking to buy in Belgium or Brugge to take home? They prompted me to say chocolate and I agreed. Clay told them I would be looking for and hoping to find a patch from Brugge. They didn’t understand what we meant. I had 2 NC patches in my purse. The state flag and the state seal. It took both Clay and I to dig through the bottom of my purse to finally locate the patches but when I did I gave them to them. They discussed it between themselves and didn’t not come up with another word they would use for a patch. One of the boys tried to hand the patches back and I told him, no they are for you, one each. They were very surprised but appreciative. The last question on their survey was to provide proof they had interviewed me. Now when Clay and I have done this in other countries (and it has happened before!) they usually take a photo with us. This time the boys were all smiles because I had already given them proof, a NC souvenir! They thanked us again for our time and cooperation and the patches and we all went on our way. Since Clay was still taking photos, we wound up not far apart and we heard a lot of loud voices and turned to find a whole bunch of teenaged boys staring at us as the 2 with the patches pointed and passed them around! How funny. I guess our 2 boys got the best proof. I had to put 2 more patches in my purse when I got back to the cabin. My goodwill diplomacy gifts.

After that we headed for Maria Str. I wanted to see the Michelangelo Madonna & Child in the Church of Our Lady and the Hieronymus Bosch triptych at the Groeninge Museum. Clay wanted to buy chocolate,  do the De Halve Maan brewery tour and have lunch. We both thought a canal boat ride sounded good. We got all of the done plus some. We stopped at a now open gift shop and I not only found a Brugge patch but a lace bookmark. Later we saw a woman outside a shop tatting lace by hand. Clay bought chocolate that we watched some women in a shop making. We came upon a canal boat ticket stand and bought tickets and walked right on. It was a very crowded boat and a less than positive experience. We paid 8 Euros each. It lasted about 30 minutes but people were crammed in there all facing each other and not out, so no one had a clear view of anything but the sky and all of the photos anyone took would just have either heads or hands with phones, tablets or cameras stuck in them. We made it down to De Halve Maan brewery in time to buy tickets for the 11am first tour of the day in English. (I think it was 8 Euros each.) It was a large group and only about 5 minutes of it was in the working part of the brewery. It was the hottest and sweatiest part. The other 40 minutes were more comfortable and we must have gone up and down about 100 ladder like steps and tiny doors. We were atop the roof for a while! The payoff was the free beer at the end. They serve their unfiltered Brugse Zot. That means Bruges’ Fool and it is their lightest beer. It is served unfiltered because the truck it at 6am every morning out of center Bruges to their filtering and bottling facility 3 km away. They are currently building an underground pipeline between the brewery and the bottling plant. The canal boat driver told us that first and we thought it was a joke. Evidently, it is a big joke in Bruges but it is also true! When we left the brewery, Clay was on his way to being drunk. He drank my beer as well as his. It was noon now and Clay was thinking about lunch. I wanted fries and waffles. Clay wanted beer and mussels and didn’t mind also having fries and waffles, but wasn’t sure where to find them all. I didn’t really care if we even ate. So, I was focused on finding mussels that he didn’t think were too outrageously expensive. A challenge in Bruges! But, just a bit down and across the street from the brewery was the Brugse Zot Frite. They had indoor and outdoor seating. Clay had a big pot of natural mussels for 15 Euros and a .5 L Brugse Zot for 5.50. I had a Friet for 2.50 and mayonnaise was and additional 1 Euro. My strawberry waffle was 5 Euros. It was delicious. The waffle was a little crunchy and sweet and flavorful. The strawberries were juicy and sweet and tasted so delicious. It prompted another conversation about how bland and tasteless and monotonous the food on Marina is. How do they make even the raspberries and strawberries tasteless?

After lunch, we backtracked on our morning walk to find the Church of our Lady and paid 3 and 2 Euros to view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child. It was exquisite and they had some other Flemish artwork on display as well. We walked up to the Groeninge Museum last. We were now feeling in a rush because we weren’t sure how often buses ran to the train station. It was about a block long maze of a walk from the front entrance through the gardens and courtyards to reach the door and ticket counter. We paid 6 and 8 Euros and had to check my purse and Clay’s string pack into a locker with a 1 Euro coin deposit. They evidently did not have any floor plans available because we looked and didn’t find one. We knew we were looking for a Bosch triptych of Judgement Day. We did not find it, except on a magnet in the gift shop! We did find a Bosch triptych though it was about Job. Go figure. We used the rest rooms and made our way back as described above.

We will have dinner in Terrace tonight and not go to the show. It is Anthony Scott again, Scottish Comedian.

We have been sailing for over an hour and a half now leaving Zeebrugge. We are sailing due west into the setting sun. I am pretty sure that Amsterdam is East of here…

Tomorrow is Amsterdam. We will be last minute replacement passengers in a private car with a couple from our Cruise Critic roll call who had their travel partners cancel on them. It is $125 pp for a 7-hour tour outside Amsterdam. It visits cheese and wooden clog makers, windmills and Volendam, a fishing village. More tomorrow! It is amazing how a good night’s sleep on calm seas and a sunny warm day and some good luck can cheer you up!

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Southampton, Salisbury and Stonehenge

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

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We had set the phone with a wake-up call at 5am to be sure we’d be downstairs and ready to leave the ship today at 7am. It wasn’t necessary. They were outside on the deck below us at 4:30am banging around getting ready. Clay was up before that. Breakfast at Terrace wasn’t until 6am so we had no rush. There had been some talk about needing passports and clearing customs & immigration. I don’t know if that was for passengers leaving the ship with luggage, but it did not apply to us. We just walked right out, albeit with a local escort to walk us through the luggage hall to the exit. Southampton City Cruise Terminal had a very large and nice building though we didn’t see much of it. It was a change from docking at a parking lot or tent on a tarmac lot.

We shared a guided car tour with a couple from our Cruise Critic roll call. It was through Salisbury & District Value Cars. For 110 pounds per person we had a very nice Mercedes van with a guide/driver from 7:10am (was supposed to be 7:30am but we were all early) to 3:30pm. It was a bright and sunny day with temps in the 60s but with a cool breeze. It was good to be a bit warmer and nice to see the sun shining again. The downsides were that the 4 back seats were facing each other. So, 2 people had to ride facing backwards. The 2 men volunteered but Clay said it gave him a headache and I am sure it made it harder for them to see things. The other was that English was a 2nd language for Sebastiano and it made it difficult to understand a lot of the time, though he was well-informed, informative,  personable and did a great job.

We drove to Salisbury and did a self-guided tour of the Cathedral. Well, more or less self-guided as they had brochures for that. But, we had gotten there before they officially opened so the Donations Desk had not opened and we just went inside and picked up brochures and started. We dropped donations in a collection box. Shortly after we got started a volunteer found us and kept coming back. He was very informative and would have been willing to keep us there all day I think. Being in the huge space more or less alone was magical. Mid-way through our visit the organist started practicing and that just made it all the better. The best preserved copy of the 4 existing Magna Cartas is also housed there but it was not open yet. Sebastiano, our guide said we could come back later in the day and we did. He drove us through the countryside and we saw thatched roofs including one under construction. We saw sheep and lambs and pigs. We saw a small Avon River (there are 4) with swans on it. We saw Sting’s house. We used metal rods to check out the lay lines where the people that built Stonehenge landed the stones they moved from Wales. We went to Stonehenge and it was stunning in the sunshine even with the crowds. They have a new visitor/exhibition/interpretative center there and they have done a great job. We went to a pub for lunch. Then we went to Durrington Walls and Woodhenge. They are both sites related to Stonehenge. We were running out of time, so we just did a drive by and stop in the van at Old Sarum without getting out. Then we returned to Salisbury for the Magna Carta which is 800 years old this year. It was much busier there, but we did not have a long wait.

We had to be back onboard long before the 5pm sailaway because they had a mandatory muster drill at 4:15pm. It was our shortest yet at under 30 minutes. We went up to Horizons for the Cruise Critic meet & greet. Our goal was to find a couple that we had arranged online with to share a cab tomorrow in Zeebruge. That was accomplished and we learned one of the group’s main organizers had an auto accident in London and had gone home missing our cruise. We should have made more of an effort to keep up with the roll call!

We had dinner at 6:30pm in Polo Grill. It was good. We have to move the clocks ahead an hour tonight. We have another early morning and long day ahead tomorrow, so good night.

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Bonus sea day - segment end

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

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It was very rough last night and very rough this morning. The TV says the wind is Full Gale force at over 40-some knots, but shows the seas as moderate, 8.2 feet. I can tell you they are the largest waves and swells we have seen so far, so that can’t be right. We were only making 13 as ship’s speed early this morning and are up to 15.2 knots now at 10am. I think we are going to have to find a way to pick up speed to make Southampton on schedule.  According to the map, we look to be about an hour from rounding Land’s End and turning. I have every hope that conditions will change for the better then!

I slept in again and really did not want to get up or stay upright. I insisted on breakfast in the GDR since it is lower. It wasn’t any smoother than our cabin, but I have to assume it wasn’t as rocking as deck 12. I forgot to put my seabands on after dressing. Clay bravely went back to the cabin to get them for me!

Right now Clay is asleep on the loveseat. We got our blog postings updated and email since Internet was back this morning and actually quite fast. In Montreal, the day before turnaround, the Internet was so bogged down as to be unusable with everyone trying to do online airline checkin and boarding pass printing 24 hours in advance.

This morning we found new keycards for the remainder of the cruise to June 17. We also found a list of our specialty dining reservations for the next cruise segment.

At 10:30am, they finally updated the sea conditions report on the TV to 21.3 feet. We both agree that the wave heights appear at least 1/3 smaller now than they were earlier this morning. The wind speed is Fresh Gale at just over 40. We are now making 16.2 knots. So, it seems that things are getting marginally better. But, you’d have to be paying close attention to find the improvements!

At noon, the Captain announced pretty much what I have already reported except he said he expected to be in Southampton an hour early and said we are in the English Channel. I was overly optimistic about rounding Land’s End. We only made the turn about 12:30pm. We did survive lunch on deck 12 in Terrace. But just barely. One lurch threw a large new waitress against my chair, myself and the table and it was nearly a catastrophe! Terrace had my favorite little triangle toasted ham & cheese sandwiches. Perfect for a queasy day. The problem was that the chips we bought at Tesco were in the cabin. Once again, Clay rode to my rescue and brought chips up for me. Now, it was my perfect lunch. Clay had a tougher time putting together a lunch and he did not get satisfaction but had an ice cream cone to finish.

We got a letter today from the purser letting us again know that due to the Code Red GI outbreak that we were required to be off the ship and cannot return until afternoon. Last turnaround day in Montreal, we had a couple of letters/cards inviting us to RSVP for lunch in Jacques. This time we are not invited to be onboard for lunch at all!

The weather and sea conditions did get better during the afternoon, as the Captain promised at noon. We watched 2 movies on TV. Beyond the Reach and Big Eyes. Strange. There was an afternoon popcorn movie, but we saw it last time they showed it. The Grand Budapest Hotel. There were 2 lectures today but we didn’t go. Clay went up and photographed the Gala Tea but we neither wanted to go. We both feel like we’ve eaten so many mediocre desserts and wasted so many calories. Clay asked me this morning if meals were ever this monotonous and the same on our long Regent cruises. I guess the answer is no. He had memorized the Terrace cheese rotation. When I insisted on GDR this morning, he missed brie. Geez!

We’ll go to Terrace for dinner and nowhere after. Tonight they have a Scottish Comedian, Anthony Scott. No idea why since we have no port stops or even canceled port stops in Scotland on Marina. Anyway, we’ll skip that too. We’ll probably go to bed early since we have to be up and off the ship by 7:30am tomorrow. We are sharing a car tour to Salisbury and Stonehenge from Southampton tomorrow with a couple we met on our Cruise Critic roll call. So, at least we have plans to be off the Marina all day already.

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Dublin, Day 2

Monday, June 1, 2015

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Repeat of yesterday morning without the rough seas overnight. I did not want to get up.  So we had still not really fixed on a plan this morning. After breakfast, I showed Clay on the map that we could/should catch the first shuttle bus at 9am. From Kildare St. walk through Temple Bar and Merchants Arch, across Ha’Penny Bridge and through the pedestrian streets over to the National Leprechaun Museum. This took much less time than expected. Nothing was open and there was no traffic. We were early as the museum did not open before 10am and the earliest tour tickets online were 11am. We walked over to O’Connell Street and took photos of the Spire, a statue of James Joyce and another guy and the Post Office Museum. Then we started back down Henry St. to Jervis and the museum. On the way, we stopped at another Butler’s Chocolate Café. This time I got a marshmallow hot chocolate (which again scored Clay his choice of a free chocolate candy and he got a different one this time). I liked the marshmallow better than the plain. Though they put whipped cream and a handful of shredded white chocolate on my plain yesterday. Both were warm and delicious and warmed me right up. Perfect for a cold, windy, drizzly day.

We got to the National Leprechaun Museum about 10:15am and they were selling tickets for a 10:30am tour. She let us both pay the senior fare even though I was not 60. So, we paid 20 Euros for the 2 of us. I just had time to use the restroom. I needed it because I had inhaled a melted marshmallow through the little sippy hole in the cup lid and set off a coughing fit that nearly made me pee my pants! It was curiously by a statue of a cow lying in dirt. We later exited the museum at the same spot! I have no idea what the dirt square or cow statue were about, we didn’t find any signs, but found a block-long stack of ancient headstones stacked up along the museum wall of the dirt square. No idea! The Leprechaun Museum was probably even sillier than you might have expected. It was fun though and was 45 minutes out of the weather. The best part was the giant’s house with enormous furniture to climb up on and take photos. We were all helping each other and laughing like fools! When we came out, we stood under our umbrellas on a corner and studied what we should do next. A friendly local came up and asked if he could help. I told him we weren’t lost, we were just trying to decide what we should do next. He looked up at the sky, snugged his jacket collar up and advised us “ta find a place ta get outta da wedder.” Sound advice from a wise local. We decided to head right back to the ship. The LUAS tram went past us and we followed it to its stop. There we had a disagreement over which direction we needed to travel and Clay was completely wrong. We bought tickets from a machine that we understood were good for 90 minutes from Jervis Station to The Point in the Docklands. We paid 2.20 Euros each and I guess it was on an honor system, because we never saw anyone validate or check the tickets anywhere. There were stanchions were you could tap your reloadable LEAP card, but we didn’t buy those. The train was packed when we got on and that was the most people we saw all day. By the time it reached the last 2 stops, it was nearly empty.  I argued for getting off at Spencer Dock, one stop before the end, and walking a block to the river to get a photo of the Irish harp-styled bridge. Clay wasn’t sure still. I think he was still convinced we were going the wrong way. So, we rode to The Point Station at the end of the line. We got off and many people stayed on. The driver got out and walked to the other end of the train and got back in. Clay said we should get back on and go back to Spencer, like you said. We did. Got the photo. Waited for the next train, back to the Point and off. It was about a 30 minute walk back to the ship, which you could see from the tram stop. It was not a scenic walk, but we had our heads ducked down for the wind and rain anyway.

We got back onboard and went up to Terrace for lunch. I think this was the first meal since we got here that didn’t have a British theme. There have been a lot of shepherd pies, meat pies, Guinness stew, Yorkshire puddings, etc. I had a Maryland corn chowder that hit the spot and then a half order of penne followed by dark chocolate mousse. Clay had salad, pizza and ice cream and a cookie. He had lemonade for the first time today and it appeared to have been fresh squeezed as he had to sweeten it and it was full of pulp. That was impressive.

Tonight between 5 and 7pm, we have to go downstairs to the atrium on deck 5 and collect our passports. We have a 6:30pm dinner reservation at Red Ginger. We sail for Southampton at 8pm. Fingers crossed for calm seas since that was what the cancelled ports were all about! Tomorrow is a sea day. The next day we have an all-day shared private excursion with a couple from our Cruise Critic roll call who are also staying on to Stockholm. There will be no down time after that. It will be go go go until we get home except for the days in Stockholm before we reboard Marina.

I guess because O closed the self-service laundries due to the Code Red GI outbreak, they decided to offer one more day of the laundry special. It was today only 20 pieces for $24.95. This sounds expensive, but as we have been turning in bags with less than 20 pieces and seeing $50+ bills per bag, I guess it is a special price! Of course, we would never want to pay either of these prices when you can wash and dry yourself at $2 per load per machine. But on a long cruise with the laundries closed, I guess you wouldn’t have much choice. We’ll see. We had laundry service included on our 41-day booking so it hasn’t been an issue. On the way back from Stockholm to Southampton, it is not included. We will be off Marina for nearly 4 weeks and will have to do laundry somewhere. Either ashore or on a Hurtigruten ferry, if they have machines which I believe the coastal ones do, but not the one at Svalbard. Then we’ll need to either do laundry again before we reboard Marina or as soon as we reboard. I guess I will be looking to see if they reopen Marina’s laundries when the new cruise starts in Southampton with the hope that it will be reopened when we reboard in Stockholm. It will work out and if we have to we can hand launder some things to get by.

So all day to day, we have barely been able to see the view that we saw yesterday from our balcony. Not that we’ve been out on the balcony today as it has rained most of the day today. But the difference has been dramatic. Dramatic enough that we are now worried about seas and sailing conditions for tonight and tomorrow to Southampton. Having crossed the English Channel in a small ferry years ago, I have always been worried about returning to sea on the English Channel. But we are wondering what it was the Captain was so afraid of that he canceled 2 ports to avoid and if he is actually avoiding it or if it is arriving late. Anyway, we know when you get on a ship that you are going wherever it goes not where you thought you booked a ticket to go. This is what is known as ship happens. It does happen. But, listening to not only other passengers but crew, you’d have thought a good part of the people working and traveling onboard had never heard of it happening before. It just seems a lot of people have decided to be disgruntled and unhappy and they want everyone else to be the same. It is not ideal, I understand and the 2 lost ports are small and a bit unusual and the kind people are most likely to feel the loss of most keenly, but still. Even though we had spent too much time here to want to spend another 2 days and 2 nights, I think we have done our best to deal with it enjoyably. The woman we booked the Holyhead, Wales tour with from our Cruise Critic rollcall has been able to convince the tour operator to reverse his zero refund policy and share the pain and let each party should have 50% of the loss. Since she paid the operator and we paid her, she will claim the remaining 50% loss on her travel insurance and see what happens there. If she gets some or all of the other 50% back at some point, she will explore how to reimburse the rest of us.

So, it is as we imagined. At 6:07pm, Julie James, our cruise director, came onto the loudspeakers in the cabin to announce that the local port authorities would not allow us to sail on time tonight because of the high wind and rough weather. Right now, we have a new scheduled departure time of 10pm. She also warned that we could expect high waves, high wind and rough conditions all day sailing tomorrow and that the outer decks would be closed and we should take care to hold onto something at all times when moving about the ship. Shit! That was just what Clay and I had feared, that we had parked here long enough to catch the worst of it.

It is 8pm. We are back from dinner. Red Ginger was the same, as good as we remember it though we changed things a little. Tonight there was a birthday celebrated right behind me. In 25 nights that is the first celebration we have witnessed onboard. We were just as glad that our anniversary had been overlooked and ignored. It is our previously scheduled departure time and the wind has died down, no white caps in the harbor and the mountains are visible in the distance for the first time all day. The sun is shining in the west about an hour from setting. I guess we are still on for 10pm departure. I hope these pleasant conditions hold up outside the harbor!

Tonight the Jean Ann Ryan Co. presents Under the Big Top. Clay says we have seen it but I don’t recall it. So, we are going as they are featuring a special salute to the crew. Last time they did that they must have had over a 100 of them parade from front to back.

Tomorrow is the sea day we gained with the canceled ports and they are finally holding their Gala Tea. I will probably avoid it and the bonus needlepoint if it is as rough as Julie warned us. Horizons is as far up and forward as we can go and if it is rough, I know I don’t need to be up there. Clay says they have posted in Currents that they open early for photography opportunities, so maybe he will go take some pictures and post them. We’ll see.

We are back from the show and it was really very good. It was this JAR Company casts’ last show. They have been onboard for 6 months and they leave in Southampton the day after tomorrow. One of the male dancer/singers, Luke, told me that they will be replaced with a new JAR cast. So, we’ll see. It is 10:45pm. We felt the engines and the ship moving about 10:20pm. When I looked out our balcony we were still in the harbor, but it looked all calm and clear and I am hoping against hope for some smooth sailing!

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Dublin, Ireland

Sunday, May 31, 2015

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Clay was up, walked on the treadmill and came back in the cabin before I ever woke up this morning. Of course, he slept through me getting up around 2am during what felt like a gale and retrieving the balcony furniture from against the railing where it was banging in the drainage ditch along the edge. I don’t have any idea how he could have slept through all that noise or the wind sweeping through when I opened the door! I had to get up again to take more meclizine and put on sea bands. By the time, I was ready to go for breakfast, we were docked and cleared. Since it was Sunday, we tried the Grand Dining Room again. Still not loving it. There were only 3 other couples in there while we ate and probably 15 waiters. Service was not stellar, regardless. Clay asked what was missing from the Regent dining rooms where we almost always had Sunday breakfast. I was like, really? He meant it. Um, champagne, mimosas, caviar, caviar even on the Eggs Benedict unless you asked them not to put it on. Oh, right. He remembered. I’d just as soon eat at the Terrace buffet and not try to imagine this is a luxury experience.

We spoke to the solo Dublin tourism representative onboard and got the shuttle schedule and a map. We asked him about our plan to visit and tour Dublin Castle since it was closed for a diplomatic event the last time we were here and we missed it. He immediately impressed on us the importance of going today because tomorrow is a bank holiday as well as a women’s half marathon in Dublin and it would be closed as well as a lot of other museums, shops, etc. and that it was going to be very hard to get around with over 10K race attendees expected. Clay went to the Destinations Desk to see if he could find that they had put on anything especially for our extra day here on Monday, preferably something out in the countryside. One, the destinations person had not heard the first thing about the bank holiday or the race and two, they had not put on any special tours for the additional day.

We are docked at Berth 33 Ocean Pier. We are docked on the port side but our starboard view is scenic again. Not as scenic as Belfast, but okay for a big container port! There is no cruise terminal here. There is a trailer at the entrance to the port area, maybe a quarter of a mile away that must have free wi-fi since we saw crew clustered around it outside in the weather!

We studied the map and had more questions about possibilities for Monday. It is difficult to do any research or find any information with no Internet. Which raises the fact that this port is worse than yesterdays’. At least they had put up a big tent. Here there is nothing whatsoever to serve as a cruise terminal. There is a trailer parked across a parking lot where the shuttle buses come and go and it is a tourism office. We went there when we found the sole guy onboard surrounded by a crowd when we went back down. There were 2 guys outside, but they also had a small souvenir shop in there. Since we were the only passengers, we got to ask a lot of questions, but he didn’t think any of our plans for Monday were feasible. He too advised us to stay away specifically from Merrion Square and the area south of it because of the race. The problem is that the shuttle drops off a block from there, so if you take the shuttle then you’ll be in the thick of it anyway. We still don’t know what to do with our extra day here. When we took the shuttle back today, it drove right past Merrion Square to return and we got a bonus look at the Oscar Wilde statue there.

Today we thought to walk since we were off on the first shuttle bus and as it was Sunday either things weren’t open or didn’t open until afternoon. The shuttle drop was on Kildare Street which was convenient for us as it was the first place we stayed the first time we were here. We walked S to St. Stephen’s Green and saw cygnets! Bonus. We walked down Grafton Street where the first thing I spied (since I had forgotten my gloves and ear muff!) was a Butler’s Chocolate Café. The other day when we were trying to remember countries where we had had submarino-type hot chocolates I had completely forgotten buying Butler’s Hot Chocolates in Ireland! We went in and bought a box of 10 Hot Chocolate disks and a hot chocolate to go. It was delicious! I went in a souvenir shop and bought a Dublin patch to match my Belfast patch. We thought about seeing instead St. Patrick’s Cathedral but realized it was Sunday morning and that wouldn’t work. We found another, larger Butler’s Chocolate Café on the way to Dublin Castle and it had seats inside where you could have had a real cup and a sit down out of the wind. Oh, well. I was just happy the sun was shining. Clay picked today to leave the umbrellas in the cabin. You can probably guess how this story ends…

We got to Dublin Castle about 11:20am. The ticket office opens on Sundays at noon. The tourism guy knew it would be opened today and not tomorrow, but didn’t warn us about the noon opening. We found the door where the ticket office was and I stood in front of it. People would come up and brush me aside or try to get in front of me, but I’d just stand there and tell them the office opens at noon. The first employee to arrive about 20 minutes early, told me that they don’t open until noon and I told her, OK I’ll be here. Clay was annoyed but as I told him, go sit down and come back. I’ll stay. This is what I want to do today. A guided tour. If I leave and come back at 10 of noon there will be a mob scene. It pretty much was. Eventually as the later arrivals came, they did join the back of the line, but not at first. We got in first and got our tickets. They were 15 Euros for the 2 of us. When I got back to the meeting point, the first person I overheard talking said that the couple behind her were the last 2 to get tickets for the 12:15pm guided tour. The tour lasted 1 hour and 10 minutes and I enjoyed it. It gave a good history of Dublin and Ireland. Not to mention it is still a functioning government complex. We walked back by a different route to look for 2 pubs that the tourism guy had told Clay were good places for a bite and a pint. We found The Porter House first and went in. Clay had a half dozen huge local oysters on the half shell with a Porter Red Ale that is brewed for them. He also had a very hearty bowl of chicken noodle soup with something like McCorkle’s brown bread. I had bangers & mash with Yorkshire Pudding. The Porter House did not serve Guinness, so now we had a problem. It started pouring rain as we were walking back. We ducked into a few stores but eventually we just had to bite the bullet and buy umbrellas. It was probably the most expensive store we were in by the time that happened.  I was willing to get the shuttle back now or to go up the street to the Museum of Ireland which did not open until 2pm on Sunday. Clay decided he wanted to get on the shuttle. We walked up and got in line. It looked like at least 100 people were in front of us and I guess that was about right because those double decker buses held at least 70 people. We got left about 20 from the front of the line. The buses at that point were running every 30 minutes. I suggested going back to the Blarney Inn that we had stayed over before and he could have his Guinness. We did since it was raining again. He had his Guinness and we shared a warm brownie with chocolate ice cream. It was good. We went back and got in line again an hour later. This time there was a woman with a sign policing the line and keeping people from cutting the line, or she was trying. She was keeping count. When I got at the back of the line she told me I was 42, when I started to board the bus I was 49. Go figure. Anyway, over 70 people fit on the bus, but there were staff/crew in line an hour earlier and they still didn’t make it on this bus. We saw them unload out of a packed taxi van as the bus arrived at the ship and they were running. I am guessing that the over 1 hour they waited to not get on a shuttle bus made them late back for their shifts.

We got a phone call shortly after returning. It was the 5^th floor concierge. He was calling us because we are cruising back to back cruises and there is a Code Red condition onboard right now with the GI outbreak. He said that the CDC rules required all passengers to disembark the ship no later than 9am for the special deep cleaning between cruises. I asked him if he meant we had to actually pack up and fully disembark. Mercifully, the answer was no. He just meant we had to get off and leave the ship and not return before noon at the earliest. He said he wasn’t actually sure they would be able to allow us back onboard at noon, but that was the earliest the rules allowed us and that only because we were continuing cruisers. I stopped him and told him that we had plans to leave early and spend the day going to Stonehenge and we would be gone until late in the day and he was very relieved.

We spent some time looking over the maps we had been given today to see about what to do tomorrow. The bank holiday and hopefully miss the race area. The guy on the bus outbound had handed me what turned out to be a different map when I boarded. Since I already had a marked up map and I didn’t realize his really was a different map, I just stuck it in my purse. Anyway, I was looking at the back of it and it was covered with box ads. A yellow box was for Butler’s Chocolate Experience which was an enhanced hands-on factory tour! How did we not hear about Butler’s in Dublin the first time we were here? We didn’t hear about Butler’s at all until near the end of a 2-week tour of Ireland and didn’t know they were in Dublin. So, we weren’t sure how to get there so Clay went looking for a tourism rep. He wound up back out the trailer. The same man looked at the map with the ad that Clay took with him and scratched his head. He said he lived right by that Clonshaugh Business Park that the ad listed as the address and that he had no idea there was a chocolate factory there or that it was where Butler’s was located. He checked online with his phone and confirmed. He was surprised and only warned it would be expensive, perhaps $100 roundtrip taxi. Clay forgot the map and left it with him. So we lost one of the few resources we had. Clay tried to book tickets online since we remember the ad said by appointment only. He could book for 10am or noon tomorrow, but when he reached the payment screen there were T&Cs and conditions and one was that the factory was not in production on bank holidays. I had argued that the price of the tickets and cab fare would not be any more money than O was charging for walks you could do alone and we wanted to do this, or that it wasn’t more than the lost Holyhead excursion. But, that was before I learned the factory would not be in production. I don’t want to tour a factory that is NOT producing chocolate! So, we’re back to square one. We have no plans again. We could go inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral but neither of us really seem to care about doing it. I found the National Leprechaun Museum on the map. I am not sure that is PC. Unfortunately, their website is not mobile-device compatible and with the Internet shutdown all we have is Clay’s phone. The tourism people have left for the day so we will start out from zero again tomorrow.

What is up with all the bank holidays? This is our 3rd in 4 weeks, right? One in Canada, one in St. Pierre, France and now one in Ireland tomorrow. What are the odds? You have to wonder if the decision makers knew about this when they decided to extend our stay here. Certainly, when Clay asked the destinations desk person, it was the first they had heard of it. Poor planning.

In other news, tonight there was a DVD order form on our bed. I don’t think I had mentioned this before. We did get one of these at the end of the last cruise in Montreal too. Evidently, Oceania produces a DVD of cruise memories on every cruise. This is not unusual. RSSC did this. RSSC provided the disk to disembarking guests at no charge. When we ended our Alaskan Dream cruise, they gave every disembarking passenger a complimentary DVD. I am pretty sure that also happened on Le Boreal to Antarctica. It may have happened on other lines as well. Oceania is charging $40 for their DVD.

There is a new performer onboard tonight. Craig Owen, virtuoso violinist. We will not attend. There is another late night cabaret tonight with Edward Garth and we will not attend. I will hope for a good night’s sleep since we are docked. It would be nice if there were some upside to this change in plans. Since there is no Internet for 2 days and nights, I will get this posted as soon as I can after that!

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