A Day For Rest – At Sea

    In all the years that we have been cruising, today we did something different. After the long day yesterday – about 36 hours with no sleep we slept in. We did not get out of bed until nearly 11 am. Last night we had a clock advance which was partially responsible but the long day took a toll. We are still a bit draggy today but managed to find things to do all day.

     We did miss zumba and the port lecture in the morning. We did manage a bit if the line dance class and it getting marginally better. He did go over 4 dances while we were there. We missed the first 20 minutes and the electric slide! By noon it was time for breakfast and of course tea at the international cafe. We skipped the champagne art auction in favour of the ballroom dance class. The dance was the Merengue and the instructor taught 5 or 6 moves. Usually they teach 2 or 3 so that was also a pleasant surprise.

After Judy bought her Clinique (enough until the next cruise). We then headed for the Princess Theatre for a talk by Pete Best. He was the original drummer for the Beatles and he talked about the early days in Liverpool and how the band came to be. He is a good story teller. Ringo came in just after they cut the demo for their first album. He was replaced just before recording the final cut. We heard him on the last cruise and he seems to have become a staple on some cruises.

Formal Night

A glass of wine, our canapes and a nap finished the afternoon. We dressed for the first formal night and were on our way to see the comedy and magic show. So the second thing happened that in all our years of cruising has never happened before! We have been locked out of our room because of a faulty key slide. In this case we were locked |IN OUR ROOM. The door would not unlatch no matter what we did. They tried from the outside (after our panic call) and still no response. I started to think that they would be handing down our meals in a bucket. Finally the steward appeared on our balcony. The balconies have doorways that can be opened so you can go from one to another. We escaped through the room next to ours. Fortunately the people had already left! When we returned later in the evening the door handle had been repaired.

Chocolate Dessert

We got in. I hope we can get out in the morning for our tour.

     The Captain's champagne reception waterfall, speeches and a formal photo took place before dinner. Dinner was excellent, followed by a 'new' production show. Gone from this show was all the old style musical show that featured mainly singing and dancing. This one was called Magic To Do which was a simple background story joined by a series of illusion we have seen before. People appearing and disappearing from boxes, etc. It was quite entertaining.

   We packed up for our early tomorrow. We are going on a hike up a fjord. The all day trip is our longest booked tour. The weather is suppose to be cool but no rain! We shall see!

A Long Tiring Day

  We arrived in England early this morning. When we were checking in in Toronto, the kiosk would not print our boarding passes because “something was wrong”. This was the first time that have not been able to do this. Turns out that the problem was that the name on the reservation was not the same as on Judy's passport. The reservation was made with here middle name but her passport does not show it. We need to be sure of this in the future.

   The flight to England was under 7 hours which was about 6 hours to long. We were jammed in as usual but our seats backed on a bulkhead which meant we had about 1 inch of lay back room. The they did not come around with more wine! Flying is getting more uncomfortable all the time. We cleared immigration in an hour. We thought that we would never get out of that airport. The bus had to pick up passengers at 2 other terminals.

The transport from the airport to the ship took 2 hours. We were among the first to arrive and quickly checked it. Princess had an “Elite” lounge set up with drinks and fresh baked goods. The ship started boarding shortly before noon. Having been up all night we were tired but glad we had finally arrived.

   We lunched in the dining room with a couple from Australia and one from England. Both were well traveled cruisers. One had been to the fjords a couple of times and it was good to hear first hand from someone who had already been there. A walk around the sunny deck and a small nap before the life jacket drill followed in quick order. Luggage was in our room by the time we got back. Clothes were put away before the emergency drill. We fought the need to sleep all day! The sailaway party was a bit of a bust!

On Deck

   Our assigned dinner time is 8 pm. We arrived first and immediately asked for a new table. We requested a table of 10 and ended at one with 4. We saw the head waiter and changed to a table of 6. One couple is from Australia and the other is from England.

  There are 1400 British, 900 Americans and 300 Canadians. A good mix! We attended the welcome aboard show with a comedian. He did about 50 minutes and had some good lines. Judy remembers him from a previous cruise. Finally we can get some sleep. Tomorrow is a sea day followed by formal night. We should be able to get our energy back before our first port. A long tiring day comes to an end.

Midnight Sun and Summer Solstice

    Norway here we come. It has been almost a year since our last cruise. We just didn't find something we liked. In any case after the wonderful time in Florida this past winter, we are headed back to the Princess cruise line. The “Midnight Sun And Summer Solstice” cruise heads to Norway, a destination that has been on our list of places for a long time. We have been to Norway before but the ports have all been in the south. This time we are headed along the entire coast right up to the North Cape stopping in many fjords along the way. The writer of the cruise article in the local paper noted that Norway is like Alaska in beauty. We think it will be better because the ports requiring sailing into many fjords. There are 11 stops on the 14 day cruise.

The added bonus on this cruise is that we will be farther north than we have ever been as the map shows. At this time of year we will be getting extended hours of sunlight – hence the “Midnight Sun and summer solstice cruise title. Sunrise will be around 4 am and sunset around 11pm in the southern part of the cruise. As we get near the North Cape we should have 4 days of 24 hours of sunlight. It should be an interesting experience. The map with Greenland and Norway shows just how far north we will be!

    We are sailing on the Crown Princess which is similar to most of the big Princess ships. It will be our 4^th time on the Crown. We are on Aloha deck about mid ships  This is an "upgrade" - part of the package that we booked. The ship does have the International Cafe, the small food bar in the atrium which is where we like to go for daily tea and small meals .

    As the map shows, we sail and return from Southampton England.

Ship Schedule

North Of Iceland!

We have booked four ship tours. After doing the research on all the stops we have a good balance between exploring the ports on our own and the ship's offerings. We have booked hiking to the top of a fjord, going to North Cape at the top of Norway, driving through the Lofoten Islands; going through a fjord to a waterfall. We have also booked a bike tour in one port. The bike tour is only 7 kilometres each way but then we hike to a waterfall. I think we have a nice balance planned if the rain holds.
Being on the west coast next to mountains means that we can expect to use our wet weather gear often!

 We stayed in Toronto last night. We leave early Friday afternoon from Toronto arriving in London at 6:30 am. The overnight time change routine.
    We are ready to enjoy the perks of being “Elite” on Princess.  It means free laundry, on board credits and prepaid gratuities! Anyone that has cruised will appreciate the free laundry luxury. It means that you do not need to pack as many clothes. The mini bar, free internet (basically) and wine tasting are also nice.

        At the bottom of each post is a small icon that looks like an envelop. If you open it, you should be able to send us an email directly to my gmail address from the post. If you have a gmail account I think that you can leave a message on the blog. A simple email will also do it. The “free” internet means that we have time to look at emails. Because of where we are in Europe, we "should" have good internet service. It is always nice to read the comments of people interested in our travels.
    More Later!

Goodbye Caribbean Princess Hello Home

          We arrived in Southampton early this morning apparently on time which was first time this trip that we actually did. Now this CO gets to leave! We were able to have a nice leisurely breakfast before we headed to our assigned departure room. We had a chance to give a hug to Laura and have a talk with Carla one of the Zumba instructors. We made sure we told both of them how they made the cruise so much more fun. We were able to depart the ship find our bus and head to the airport quickly. It was probably the easiest departure from a cruise that we have ever had. We were at the airport and checked in in short order before the 3 hour wait for our plane.

       The flight time was over 8 hours as we were non stop Heathrow to Detroit. We flew Delta/Virgin Air – a very nice international airline. We actually had leg room. The wine was free flowing and the serving portion were generous. The movies were up to date. With the over 8 hour flight we even had time for a nap as there was a 5 hour time difference between London and Detroit.

      No paper work to fill out on the plane as it is all done at a kiosk in Detroit . Customs and Immigration went quickly and after our good friends pick up, we were back in Windsor by 8pm. So another cruise officially ends. That is 20 on Princess! Thanks to all who left messages and emails about our trip. No plans for the next one -yet! So with the 5 hours time difference, bed came early!

Ashore in Le Havre France

     We arrived in Le Havre at just after 7 this morning. So the Captain missed another docking time after his announcement yesterday and the tour desk changing all the departure times. It did not affect us as we just going ashore to wander around town. We had been here before but had never seen the town as we toured with Princess. We had a nice leisure breakfast in the dinning room, sitting with another couple we had met and after that proceeded into town..We had researched the city before we left so we did have some definite things that we wanted to do although it is not Berlin or Paris! The shuttle dropped us in he middle of the city and our first stop was the market. It is always interesting to see what types of food that they sell. Fruits and vegetables are pretty well the same but the fish shops are always interesting. Some items that appear strange for us but nothing like the market in Busan Korea. However we did pass a number of pastry shops!

Notre Dame

St Joseph

        We then headed to Saint Joseph's church an odd concrete structure that was old but has been rebuilt in modern times. It was quite interesting. The next stop was the MuMa Fine Arts Gallery. There was a long line up to get in which we thought was a tour from the German Cruise ship that was in town. Turns out that it was filled with locals as the first Saturday of the month admission is free. I guess we lucked out! It was filled with Impressionists painting and a few Monet's but many from that style. Another short walk took us to Notre Dame Cathedral (what else) which is very old and has the typical style of churches built centuries ago. A short walk to the waterfront found us at a large stone beach filled with people just enjoying the day. Of course we sat and just looked out at the theocean for awhile, watching the large container ships come into port. Le Havre is the

At The Beach

Selfie with eclaire

fifth  largest port in Europe. We walked back to the market area to get our chocolate eclairs that Judy had eyed earlier in the day. As it was getting on we took the shuttle back where we enjoyed some pizza and a beer.

      Of course packing took up part of the afternoon and the rest was spent resting up for the trip home. There were many all day tours to Paris, the beaches of Normandy, Rouen and Giveney the home of Monet so the ship was relatively empty until dinner hour. Then it was time to say goodbye to Mike and Marge our dinner partners after an excellent meal.   Out went the luggage, reset the watches an hour ahead (finally) and get set for our flight to Detroit.

Last Sea Day

       We left Hamburg sometime after midnight. We were delayed as we had to wait for the high tide. It seems that the Captain of the ship can't seem to get sailing and docking times right! Of course he has to contend with pilot and berth availability, ship repairs, passengers, etc. The Captain then announced that because we left late we would be in an hour late tomorrow. You would think that he could make up an hour over 30 hours. There is probably more going on here than we know. In any case it is only a 20 minute bus ride into Le Havre so we should have plenty of time to see the sights

      After the long day people seemed to be just hanging around. Actually the activities for the day are pretty scarce. The program always looks full but I think they make things up just to fill it out. If you skip the look younger, skin care, back ain,metabolism, good feet, restore your looks and such things you get down to things to do. They are all put on by the on board spa. You get the idea. Zumba this morning was not too good. Since we were in port yesterday overnight, it seems that cruise staff, waiters, etc. had a real chance to go ashore and have some fun. The result was that the Zumba class did not flow very well! We did go to the last “big” sale but nothing appealed to us. I did get my 2 tee shirts early in the cruise.   Breakfast was early this morning so we had lunch in the dining room. We sat with a couple from the Vancouver area and one from California. The American talked about how he was able to get his 2 - 38's across the border and had to pay tax on cases of beer. I got the impression that he had little regard for the Canadian border. The Vancouver couple told him that if he had been caught, he would have been in jail and he said that he knew that. Since the Vancouver man said something we did not need to say much more.

Formal Night

           We had missed line dance class (nothing new) and did the afternoon Zumba with Theo. He did another great job that lasted about 50 minutes and I think he would have gone on longer but the Bingo people were starting to push exercisers (including me) out of the way. I told the lady that dabbing was way to much exercise for me. I don't think she saw the humor in it. The classes today were not well attended. The rest of the afternoon was spent on deck enjoying the sunshine but cool (60F) weather. We did receive our departure instructions which said we were to leave at 7:35 for Heathrow for our flight that goes after 2 in the afternoon. Then we got a revised departure – 8:30. The terminal changed , now we have the correct one. It would have been a disaster going to the wrong terminal.    

Formal Night

      Tonight was formal night which meant we got our in room canapes. We managed to finish our wine along with the eats. We headed down for a drink and to meet some people but we never connected. We did have a nice conversation with a couple. He was a former pilot with the U.S. Navy. We did catch the early show. The comedian was quite entertaining. Dinner included escargot, lobster tail and king prawns. By about 10 everything except the bands had finished. It was time for some rest. Le Havre the last port on the last full cruise day. We leave Sunday.

A Great Day In Berlin

        What a day of adventure. - Berlin. The day was warm and sunny.  We were up very early and finished breakfast quickly. We had an early meeting for our tour. During breakfast and when I went to get tea and coffee the lack of people milling about was noticeable. When I got back to our room, I check the tickets which we had ready the night before. We were not suppose to meet at 7:30 but rather at 6:45. The later time was from the tour we missed. We were 25 minutes late. We did the 100 or so steps down in record time. We got to the Princess theatre and the tour people said that we had missed it! Then they said 'just joking'. However we were the last 2 to enter the theatre! We waited for 10 minutes and then we all left. So no lines and no waiting for about 45 minutes! I guess it worked out. We were off to the bused for the short ride to the train station. It was a bit disorganized with 600 or more people all going to the same place. They had a “private” train just for the Princess people. The train ride took about 2 hrs 30 minutes. We arrived at the Zoo train station which is in the very centre of Berlin before 11.

The Church

Brandenberg Gate

              Bobby was our tour guide and he was excellent. He was German but sounded British but his language was very clear. You could understand everything he said. Our first stop was the Allied museum at the former American sector HQ. They had a nice display on the Berlin airlift along with a British plane actually used in the airlift. A French troop train was also on display. The museum highlighted the U.S. efforts in the divided Berlin immediately after the war. There was a short section of the Berlin Wall, a Soviet wall watch tower and a building that previously was at Checkpoint Charlie.

At The Gate

Reichstag

 After a drive through an exclusive big homes area of Berlin, the next stop was lunch at a downtown 5 star hotel. It was an excellent full meal that everyone at out table seemed to enjoy. We headed for the Brandenburg Gate at the very centre of the city passing the Kaiser Wilhelm church which is bombed out and has been left a memorial of the destruction from WW2. A photo visit to the Reichstag and then crossing into what was East Berlin followed. The area near the gate was in the Soviet sector and had many of the historical buildings of Berlin. The buildings are slowly being restored and should be completed by 2020. We visited the place where the Nazi book burning took place, the university and a war memorial. The buildings that the Soviets build were very 'Stalinist” in style. Finally we headed to the location of Checkpoint Charlie. Only 1 small building remains. Throughout the city there is a stone pathway that

Berlin Wall

marks the actual location of wall. We were constantly crossing from East to West Berlin. The portion of the wall has a wonderful history of the Nazi rule. Is is on the grounds of the ing and SS headquarters. Only 1 building remains from the Nazi government. You can still see the marks from bullets on many of the old buildings in this area. The wall is lower than the one in Dublin separating the 2 sides there but there was a wide no man's land on the East side and gun watch towers. In all it was everything you might think it would be. We saw where Hitler had his bunker but it was blown up by the Soviets, filled in and apartments built over the site. Nothing remains of that bunker.

Checkpoint Charlie

      Finally we drove around the centre of Berlin viewing other buildings and getting a sense of what a wonderful city we visited. By around 4:30 we headed back to the train station and by 5 pm we were on our way back to Hamburg. They did provide a small light snack on the way back. We arrived at 7:30 and had finally made our way back to the ship by after 8. We were just to tired from the long day to go to dinner. We ended up having something light and calling it a night. A light sea day tomorrow after leaving Hamburg after midnight.