Aug 6th–London

 

We started our day with  a full English breakfast at our hotel.  This consists of bacon, sausage, beans, fried egg, grilled tomato, and toast.  Next we took our normal ride on the tube, this time to Westminster station.   From there we went on a 9:15am tour of Parliament.  Part of the complex, the Westminster Hall,  dates back to William the Conquer in 1099, A new roof called a hammerbeam roof was added by Richard II in 1399.  This is a larger hall, larger than a football field.   It is used as a staging point for us tourists, and major events such as when the Pope or President Obama spoke to all of Parliament.    The rest of the complex was built over the years, some of the major rooms were designed as chapels.   Throughout the complex there is a strange mixture of religious themes, knights (for example in one room there are relief panels that tell all about King Arthur) and politics, not just in the building and decoration, but how it actually operates.

After touring Parliament we crossed the street and toured Westminster Abby.  The building is a stunning Gothic Church with flying buttresses.  On the inside, the building is cluttered with tombs, gravestones, and statues.  It was very crowded and you wind through all the tombs. stepping on scores of gravestones.  This ornate church was the setting for William and Kate’s magnificent wedding, we walked in their footsteps!!

We had lunch at a great café (the Wesley) in the Central Methodist hall across the street from the Abby.

After lunch we toured the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker where Churchill directed the war effort.   It has map rooms, communication centers, and a room that only Churchill had access and that had an occupied lever when he was in side.  It looked like the door for a toilet, which it was most of the staff thought.   In fact, it was a secret communication room, one end of and underwater cable, with the other end at the Whitehouse.   Very few people knew that Roosevelt and Churchill had the capability and talked on the phone regularly.  The staff in this 30,000 square foot complex tended to work 15 hours a day, many of them bunked in crawl spaces under the complex.   Signs told tell them what the weather was like outside, as many did not get out of the complex for days and days.  While in the bunker, Nancy looked over and said, is that David Gurgan, and sure enough it was, clearly on holiday.

We finished touring the War Rooms before 2pm, and decided to head back to the hotel for a well deserved nap.   We walked past the Horse Guards and 10 Downing Street on the way to the tube.

This evening we had a great Greek dinner at a restaurant near the hotel and then took the subway to the Adelphi theater to the play, Love Never Dies.    It is the sequel to the Phantom of the Opera; and was excellent, but sad.  (Love may never die, but the same can not be said of for one of the key principals in the story.

A quick trip back to the hotel.  We counted the steps (67)to get to our room on the third floor, the ground floor is up about eight steps, and the first floor is above the ground floor.  Tomorrow, Stonehenge and Bath!!!

August 5, 2011–London

We got up early this morning to take a 7:30am guided tour.   It is beautiful, sunny and warm.  They drove around town picking people up from various locations in a double decker bus, and then transferred us to regular tour bus at a central location where lots of tour busses and tourists gather.   Mark, our dapper guide, talked about the Royals and London as we rode to Windsor Castle, arriving about 9:30am.  We were given head phones, and off we went to explore the Castle.  We could take pictures of the outside, but not the inside.  The outside pictures don’t do it justice, as it is so large and sprawling.  We saw Queen Mary’s  three story tall doll house complete with electricity and running water.  It is immense, 8 feet by 5 feet with real books, miniature oil paintings and dolls, etc.  The Castle and grounds were great.   This is the royal families favorite location, and they spend every weekend here, except when they are on vacation.  The moat was filled in and is now a beautiful flower garden.

We rode back into town for lunch on our own, before the 2pm start of Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is clearly in the city and has a a much busier feel.   This is where the royal family live and handle most of their formal work.   We saw many of the public rooms filled with art and beautiful furnishings and special displays of the Faberge’ collection and THE DRESS, shoes, and earrings.  A streaming video gives all of the details of the design and making of Kate’s wedding gown.  It is spectacular.  It is lucky that we are here now, the Palace is only open for a few weeks during the summer when the royal family is away in Scotland. 

 

We finished touring the Palace about 3:45pm, and were back on our own.  We had dinner a popular local pub filled with folks enjoying their pints, even out into the street and finished in time for our 7:00 pm Harry Potter Walking Tour.  There were close to thirty Harry enthusiasts in our group, all ages and many nationalities.  We saw the alley that inspired Daigon Alley (photo) two different sites used for the Leaky Cauldron (photo), the bridge that was destroyed by the deatheaters, the Tower Bridge that Harry flew by on a broom (photo), a couple of other sites before we finished the tour with a stop at Platform 9 3/4 (photo).    It was a great tour, and we saw parts of London we never would have seen otherwise and walked for two and a half hours.  Interestingly we have not seen Harry Potter items in shops, lots of Will and Kate doo dads though.

We finally got back to our room at about  10:15pm.   Yesterday we logged over 5 1/2 miles of walking and today, over 7 1/2 miles.   Nancy has decided I am trying to kill her.   Although she did try to have me crushed by a tube door.  The final event of the day was climbing the windy stairs, 4 stories, to our humble abode and sleep!

August 4th–London

 

We left Boston’s Logan airport at 7:45pm on Virgin Atlantic (we half qualified, we were flying over the Atlantic).  We arrived six hours and five minutes later at 6:50am.   Nancy upgraded us to seats with a little more leg room, and the plane was only half full, so we ended up with two seats each.   But it was still not enough to really stretch out and get a good nights sleep, nor did we have the time, but we managed to get in a few winks.  

The lines getting through customs were very long, and it probably took us a good half hour.  It was just like being in a serpentine line at a popular ride at Disney.

We than took the Heathrow express train to Paddington Station in London.  This is a picture of Nancy in the train station beside our train. 

Our hotel is only about a block from the station.  We dropped off are bags and took the subway to the Tower of London.  The place is huge!  This picture of Nancy in front of the Tower Bridge gives you a clue of how are morning went – fairly steady rain.  

We saw the crown jewels, absolutely gorgeous but we could not take pictures in that area  A video of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth streams as we wound our way to the jewel vault.  The diamonds and other jewels are so sparkly!!    We were able to take pictures of the armor.  It looks so uncomfortable.  We saw the armor for Henry VIII when he was slim and later when he had become more portly.  We had lunch at a café at the Tower and took the tube over to the British Museum.   It is also huge!  The main item we wanted to see was the Rosetta stone.

 

No one was able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.   The Egyptians used pictures, so everyone assumed the picture represented a word, but it did not make sense.  The Rosetta stone had the same text written in three languages, two of which were known.   It was then realized that the pictures actually were letters to spell words, and they had a fair text to start translating from the Rosetta Stone.  We also saw this wonderful statue of Rameses the Great.

Other wonderful exhibits included Assyrian statues and reliefs and statues from the Parthenon.

By three we were exhausted, and took the tube back to our hotel. The Cardiff is an old hotel beside a  lovely park.  Our room is on the third floor in Britain, 4th floor in the states, no elevator.  Roger tour guide and tube planner extraordinaire, also served as busboy, lugging the 40lb. suitcases up the narrow winding stairs to our very basic room.  The air conditioning consists of a fan and open window, very nice.  It is a quiet neighborhood with lots of ethnic restaurants and Paddington station close by.  This evening we enjoyed a proper British meal in a nearby pub, fish and chips and a tender tasty beef rib with ale and gin and tonics, yum.  Dessert was a cup of Ben and Jerry’s from a convenience store near the hotel. Now we are finalizing our blog before we have our well deserved sleep.  So far we have experienced London in the rain with seas of multicolored umbrellas and are becoming seasoned tube riders.  Tomorrow, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Harry Potter Walking Tour….

Friday February 11th–Santa Domingo

We are, hopefully,  launching this blog from Santa Domingo.

On Wednesday we visited St. Kitts.   We went ashore on our own and toured the St. Kitts historic museum and the very old catholic and Anglican churches.  While St. Kitts is visited much more by cruise ships and clearly wealthier then St. Vincent, there was litter and trash everywhere as compared to St. Vincent which was very clean.  Nancy found a fabric shop and bought some fabric.

(Photos – Fabric Shop, Episcapal Church, and Catholic Church)

On Thursday we visited St. Thomas.  We had a snorkeling excursion to St. Johns.   The tour did not leave until 10:30am and came back right before the ship sailed, so we were not able to launch a blog.   We were loaded on the Island Girl boat for the 45 minute ride to St. Johns.  There we entered the (US) national park.  It was gorgeous and the turquoise water and white sand beaches were incredible.  The park has an underwater snorkeling trail that takes you out along one of the reefs.  We saw a couple of colorful parrot fishes as well as other varieties and lots of hard and soft corals including purple fan coral and brain coral.  We spent about an hour in the water and then had to head back to the ship.   In the evening we attended the Captains Cocktail party for those who have sailed with Princess before.  In the evening we went to a very funny ventriloquist. His dummy is 90 yr. old Orson who includes all of the appropriate old person sounds and groans in with the banter and humor.

 

(Photos – First two our bay where we went snorkeling, then another bay on St. Johns, and finally a little private boat we were next too – note the hatch on the side for storing the small boats….)

Today we are at Santa Domingo.   We are not on an organized tour, but have not yet decided if we will go into town.  We can see an internet sign from the ship, so we may just go in the shore terminal.  

Tomorrow we will be at sea, with our last formal dress night.   On Sunday we will be on Princess”s private island in the Bahamas.   Then on Monday we will be in Ft. Lauderdale.  We are going to take an airboat tour and see a flamingo sanctuary before we hit the plane.    So we will probably not have access to the internet until we get home so this will probably be our last blog before then.

We will have one more blog from Northampton latter in the week, that we hope will include some underwater snorkeling pictures.

Wednesday February 9th–St. Kitts

We hope to be launching this blog from St. Kitts.

On Monday we visited Barbados.   Barbados seemed like a great place.  We started the day, after our routine gorging on breakfast, with a snorkeling tour.   

We knew it would be interesting when we saw the name of our snorkeling boat, Thriller.    It was a high speed catamaran.   When zipping along we were kicking up duel rooster tails of spray and passengers were treated to a complimentary sea spray facial scrub.    At one point we zoomed past the Grand Princess from bow to stern in 20 seconds, which would suggest we were going well over 30 miles an hour.  Our first stop was a small bay where the sea turtles like to hang out.  We jumped into the water and the tour operator put out food to attract the turtles.   Eventually at least five, and probably six turtles were swimming around amongst us.   Farther down on the ocean floor two stingrays were playing around.  Next we jetted over to a protected area where the wreck of the Berwyn lies in 25-30 feet of water.   The Berwyn was sunk in the early 1900’s and is covered in several varieties of soft and hard corals.   The top of the wreck is only about 8-10 feet down.  After liberal sprinkling of fish food we were swarmed by fish enjoying their breakfast.   Finally we went to a nearby white sand beach, which was beautiful.  We paddled around and talked with other passengers while enjoying rum and coke, rum and sprite, rum coolers or rum and rum.  Everyone was happy.  Unfortunately we were not able to get a photo of the “Thriller.”

After we returned to the ship and had lunch, I (Roger) went back out and took a two dollar shuttle into town.   I searched for an internet site, and was finally given directions to one, but when I went in they said I could not use my laptop.   There were some Mormon missionaries in there, and one of the suggested I try the library four doors down, and sure enough, they had Wi-Fi and I was able to launch the Barbados's blogs. I grabbed a five dollar cab back to the ship, where we spent the evening at a great Motor City (Motown) show.

On Tuesday we visited St. Vincent.  St. Vincent seems like a new port for the cruise ships.   There was relatively little development of the tourist industry.  We walked about 10 minutes into town, and it was clear that was where everyone came to shop.  The streets had the typical indoor “supermarkets”, pharmacies, and small restaurants.  Also a market area where hundreds of little stands  were set up selling fresh fruit, salted fish, spices, and vegetables.  We walked past a Methodist church and stopped briefly at a garden courtyard of the Roman Catholic school in an old church.  A lot of the cruise ship staff don’t like the stop as it is not well developed, but we felt like we were visiting an island unspoiled by tourists.  We found a place to send some E-mails, and then returned to the boat for lunch and an afternoon nap.  

Monday February 7th–Barbados 1

We were going to launching this Blog update from Grenada, but the only internet was at the cruise ship terminal and incredibly slow.    We will therefore be launching it from Barbados as a three part update.

On Friday we were in Curacao.  Curacao is a small Dutch island.   We walked from the ship in into the cute city of Willemstad, toured around the town, checked out a fabric store, and launched our last blog.  We returned to the ship and spent a quiet afternoon on board.

On Friday evening we participated in the Chef’s Table.  Two to three Chef’s Table dinners and galley tours are held per cruise, with 10 people per event.  You have to sign up for it on the first day, and they usually sell out within the first hour after boarding starts.

At 7:15pm our party of 10 were met by the Maître d’ Hotel, who escorted us to the main kitchen.  We had to put on white coats and wash our hands, and then we met the ship’s Executive Chef.  He gave us a brief tour of the main kitchen.  They use 20 to 22 tons of ingredients per day to prepare all the meals.   After the tour we went to a quiet area of the kitchen where we could enjoy appetizers.    We started with lobster margarita with avocado and mango; then tuna tartare with wasabi, pickled ginger in Belgian endive; then bistro mini quiche Provençale; and finally new potatoes with sour cream and caviar.   The wine steward served a nice champagne with the appetizers.

(Photo’s starting from the upper left and going clockwise are the dinning area in the kitchen, the lobster margarita; the delicious bistro mini quiche Provençale; and Executive Chef Giuseppe explaining the new potatoes with sour cream and caviar.)

Continue to Barbados 2

Monday February 7th–Barbados 2

Continuation from Barbados 1

We then left the kitchen and went to the dining room for the meal.  It started with asparagus risotto with lobster tail and claws (wonderful!)   It was served with a chardonnay.  Then we cleared our palate with lemon sorbet with mango and a healthy dose of Absolut Citron vodka.  The main course was roast veal shank and veal tenderloin, with pepes and jus, vegetables, and fondant potatoes.  The wine steward served a merlot with the main course.  We then had baked camembert with pine nuts, port wine, and walnut bread which they served with ice chardonnay.  Then we had the most exotic desert we have ever seen of iced Cointreau, French vanilla apple compote, and brandy snap tuille served on a blue sugar dish.  The final course was homemade biscotti and amoretti served with coffee or cappuccino.

(Photos from left to right/top to bottom: the lemon sorbet, the veal shank, veal tenderloin flambé, two photos of the iced Cointreau and a photo of our group photo.  For the iced Cointreau, what looks like a blue bowel, gold spring, and clear straws are all edible food!)

Each course was presented to us by Giuseppe, the Executive Chef.  At the end they took our picture and gave each couple a Princess Cruise recipe book.  We finally broke up at 10:15pm; stuffed with the most incredible meal we have ever had, a truly memorable experience …

Continue to Barbados 3

Monday February 7th–Barbados 3

Continuation from Barbados 2

On Saturday morning we participated in the ultimate ship’s tour.  This tour is also restricted to just a few participants.  Unfortunately we were not able take cameras on the tour.  We toured the performance stage, make-up and costume storage areas, kitchens, meat/vegetable locker area, laundry, print shop, photo lab, engine control room, aft mooring station, medical center and ended at the bridge enjoying a glass of champagne with the Captain (he was not drinking as he was driving.)  The ship is powered by six generators that can generate a total of 90,000 horse power.   Three generators will power all the regular electrical needs and power the propellers at 11 knots.   If you kick in all six generators the ship can go 22 knots.  They try to run with as few generators as possible to conserve fuel.

(Photos of our photos, with our tour group on the stage, with the Chief Engineer in the Engine Control room, with the Executive Officer in the aft mooring bridge, and with the Captain on the Bridge.)

Most of the departments give participants lovely parting gifts from their departments.  So far we received terry cloth robes from the laundry and a chef’s coats from the galley, note pads with our names printed on them, and the photos above from our tour.  (Personal cameras were not allowed.)

In Grenada and Barbados we had wonderful snorkeling tours and saw an underwater sculpture garden, sea turtles and stingrays, and a sunken wreck.   The following photos are of our ship, some participants in a sailing race on Granada.  Granada just celebrated 37 years of independence and the sailboat races and big party were held at the beach we visited.

The second formal evening was Saturday and had a formal portrait of our family group.

Friday February 4th–Curacao

We are launching this blog from a sidewalk café in warm and sunny Willemstad, Curacao, but the following describes our activities yesterday in Aruba.   Yesterday we launched the blog from a little bar/restaurant named Mambo Jambo on the second floor overlooking the main shopping area of Aruba.  For four dollars we had two sodas and free WiFi.  Pictures: 2nd floor bar/grill and view from the bar/grill.

We looked around town a little bit, then had lunch on board the ship and headed out for our first snorkeling excursion.    We were driven to the boat in a island party bus, with a wooden door and no windows and huge speakers mounted around so we rocked the town!!!

Photo’s: The party bus, the gorgeous water, and are snorkeling pirate boat.

The boat was one of the Jolly Pirates fleet (of at least two).   We went out to the Antilla, a world war II German freighter that was scuttled in 60’ of water during the war.  We tried snorkeling there but visibility was poor and the waves were too rough to make it any fun, and no one ever even saw the wreck.  From there we went to a great site in shallower water (12’) where there were tons of fish.  We encountered a never ending school of bait fish when we first jumped into the water.  It was so large that they were swimming through when we go out 30 minutes later.  Our third stop was also in shallower water closer to shore, fewer fish but still a nice place to snorkel.

We returned to the ship, cleaned up, ate too much, and joined my sister and her family at the evening show.  It was a singer named Tony Cherry, who does vocal impressions of other singers, I thought he was pretty good, Nancy did not think so.    We then crashed, as we had been up all day and the snorkeling took a lot out of us.

Tonight we are two of ten people at a special event called the Chef’s Table and tomorrow we will be taking the Ultimate ships tour, we will tell you more about them in the next blog.

February 3rd–Aruba

Welcome to the start of our Caribbean Cruise blog!!!!  We are launching this update from Aruba.

We are on this cruise with my sister Dorothy, her husband Robert, their son Bob and daughter-in-law Kim.   Dorothy and Robert didn’t know we were on the cruise, it was a surprise arranged by their kids, with the plan that we would show up at their dinner table the first night.

We flew into Ft. Lauderdale and spent an hour and a half killing time until we received an all clear from Bob that we would not run into their parents checking in.  A quick taxi to the cruise, we jumped on board, and went to our room.   It is a nice room, we are on the Lido Deck (deck 14), with a balcony.  We tried to keep a low profile during the afternoon so we would not run into Dorothy and Robert.  The one challenge was that we had the same muster station for the life boat drill.  We almost ran into them, but we were able to go into another section and they did not see us, but we saw them!!!

We went down to dinner five minutes after the start of dinner, with the plan to join them, but they had not arrived yet.    Kim indicated they were having trouble with the elevator so we went around a corner and hid for a few minutes, with the other diners wondering who are these strange people?   Dorothy and Robert arrived and we went over to the table and asked “”are these chairs taken” and Dorothy was thrilled!!!!! It is Dorothy and Robert’s 20th Princess Cruise, Bob and Kim’s 22nd. and our 2nd….  After dinner we wandered around the ship, learning the layout, as we set sail for two days at sea and our first port, Aruba.

We had two relaxing days at sea, playing some trivia games and BINGO, watching the hilarious comedian Al Katz and the show “Stardust” featuring songs of the past and we boogied at a 50’s sock hop. 

Nancy has had problems with shoulder pain for a couple of years, so we decided to see if acupuncture would help.

This morning we docked at Aruba.  Nancy had her hair styled before we went ashore, and this afternoon we will be going on a schooner to go snorkeling, including snorkeling at the wreck Attila.

We have been enjoying the cruise and will keep you posted!!!