We have been going through all of our the pictures, and have added both pictures and revised text to the postings, starting at Transatlantic Day 5 up through our Travel Day home. Enjoy!
We have added a Menu Tab at the top of the main page for direct access to the Photo Albums Page for this trip. Select the tab titled “Trip Photo Albums” to proceed directly to the photos. In addition, there is also a Menu Tab to go to the Photo Album Viewing Tips page that outlines a few helpful hints on viewing the photos individually and in slideshows.
TIP: To skip all of the Trip Planing Posts and go directly to the posts for the trip itself, choose the “Trip Posts Only” Menu Tab above this post.
Stephanie and I are currently planning the details of our cruise, mainly what we want to see and do in each Port of Call. The purpose of this cruise is to celebrate our Birthdays, both of which are in April. This cruise will be for my 50th Birthday Celebration, and will be for Stephanie’s …..(well I will be nice and not state which birthday this is for her!!) XX Birthday. We will celebrate Stephanie’s on the actual day, April 15th, during one of our day’s at sea crossing the Atlantic. We will pick a “belated” date to celebrate my birthday, since it occurs on the 6th, prior to our departure date on the 10th.
The cruise is a 15 day Transatlantic cruise, with Ports of Call in Bermuda, Scotland, Ireland (2), Great Britain (2) and France, ending up in Southampton, UK. The original plan was to then travel to London by train, and spend two additional nights in London before departing on our flight back to Jacksonville.
Although the cruise “officially” ends in Southampton, UK, we now plan on leaving the ship a day earlier, at the port of Le Havre, France. We will travel from Le Havre to Paris by train, and spend the night in a Paris hotel. This will allow us to avoid the 2.5 hour return trip to the ship in Le Havre, and giving us a few more hours to see Paris, and especially to see Paris at night. We will leave Paris on Saturday afternoon, April 25, and take the “Chunnel” Train to London. Once there, we will spend two nights in London, per the original plan, and depart Gatwick Airport on Monday, April 27 for the flight home.
We start the trip with a drive in a rental car to Ft. Lauderdale early on the morning of Friday, April 10, 2009.
Stephanie and I will be off on our trip two weeks from tomorrow. We are getting ready, putting packing lists together, trying to minimize the clothes we want to take, and continuing to read about our destinations. Yesterday we finalized our plans for the stop in Falmouth, UK. Planning our activities for Dublin, Ireland is already finished, as is Bermuda.
Well, its official, Princess is going to let us off the ship a day early in Le Havre, France. We had not planned on seeking permission, but after reading a few more cruise forum postings, we realized that it would be better to get official approval ahead of time. We contacted Princess and Travelocity, and found out how to process the request. Since we booked through Travelocity, they had to make the official request through the Princess “Dispatch Department”. Within a few hours, our information on the Princess Web Site indicated our Disembarkation point as Le Havre, France instead of Southampton, UK. Now we just have to make sure all is set once we actually are on the ship, and can make sure the arrangements fit our plans in person.
We have completed most all of our planning for the ports, at least in so far as making sure we have all of the information with us to make the final choices. For a couple of ports of call, we have “options”, mainly so we can have alternate plans in case of bad weather. We are trying to avoid having to use our free ship board Internet time for port planning, it is both slow, and tedious to try and accomplish much through that service.
Since we have a lot of days at sea before we arrive in the British Isles, we will utilize that time to finish reading our Rick Steves’ guide books and make our final choices.
We start the fun process of packing this week, mainly trying to eliminate the “extra” items and pack as lightly as we can. Nothing worse than lugging unused items around on a train as we travel at the end of the cruise in Paris and London.
We finally made it to Ft. Lauderdale, the drive was uneventful, and the rental car made it without any problems. Departure time from home was an early 6:00 am. We went to the Ft. Lauderdale airport to return the rental car, and took the free shuttle to the port. After going through security and check-in, we were in our cabin by 12:15.
After a brief and small lunch of fish for Good Friday, we walked around the ship and finally made it to the computer area to work on this Blog.
It is sunny, but windy here, and not as warm with the temperature in the 70’s. We are now waiting on our luggage to make it to the room, hopefully without incident, i.e., confiscation of any “spirits”, strictly for medicinal purposes of course! It is a long time at sea, and we could get ill.
The ship only seems to be about 2/3 full, there are a lot of empty cabins with no name tags, mostly interior cabins.
Relaxing on the Balcony
We depart at 5:00 PM this afternoon. We hope everyone enjoys reading about our adventure, and we welcome any comments.
Update: All of our luggage arrived safely and without incident (including all of our medicinal spirits). The weather actually cleared, and with the additional sunshine, the temperature warmed up more to what we expected from southern Florida.
We left port on time at 5:00 PM, and headed north-eastward along the coast.
Leaving Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
We ate dinner in the buffet, which consisted of boiled shrimp, and king crab legs. Princes Cruises are so predictable, this is the normal buffet spread for the first night on cruises normally departing for the Caribbean.
We headed back to the cabin early; we were both tired from the early rising and full day’s travel.
Today we awoke to sunny skies and fairly calm seas. After visiting the buffet for breakfast, we sat out by the pool for most of the morning and afternoon. We are trying to take advantage of the warm weather while it lasts, knowing that as we cross the Atlantic, we are likely to see much cooler temperatures, and possibly rougher seas.
In the afternoon, we attended Easter Vigil Mass in the Explorer’s Lounge. Mass was done by a priest from Houston that is traveling on the cruise.
We went to dinner in the dining room tonight, and the service was good and prompt. Since the cruise is only about half full, there was no line to get a table. We are doing “Personal Choice Dining”, which gives us the option to go at whatever time we want, similar to going to a normal restaurant.
After dinner, we happened upon the comedy show in the main theater, it was absolutely full. We had to stand to watch the remainder of the show. I think all of the passengers on the ship were there, we hardly saw anyone else walking around before we got there! The comedian was from Great Britain, and was very good.
We are expecting to run into a little bit of weather tomorrow as we approach Bermuda, the Bermuda weather is calling for winds gusting to 35 knots, and unfortunately, a cold front will be passing through on Sunday, and the high temperature for Monday is only expected to reach 65 degrees. We were also informed that the bus drivers on Bermuda are on strike, and this limits the availability of public transportation to explore the island. We will most likely have to take taxis to visit the beaches since the main mode of transportation is the buses.
The Easter Bunny actually visited our cabin last night, courtesy of Stephanie. The weather this morning was sunny, but a little more windy and cooler, as was expected from the weather forecast. We went to breakfast, and walked around the ship. The crew had been busy last night decorating for Easter.
Easter Sunday At Sea
There was a display in the atrium made by the chefs. It consisted of giant decorated chocolate eggs, and other works made from various decorated dough and chocolate items. There also were other decorations and balloons placed in most of the common areas and lounges.
Easter Decorations in the Atrium
It was a nice sunny day on deck, and we spent the afternoon lounging around the pool, eventually watching the Masters Golf Tournament on the big screen. We are now 1 hour ahead of Eastern Time, so the golf tournament did not come on until later in the afternoon.
It was humorous that the ship actually posted the incorrect time for the coverage of the tournament to begin, they themselves forgot about the time change, even after continuously reminding everyone the day before about the change.
Tonight was the first of three formal nights, and it was the Captain’s Reception, so we got dressed in our formal wear and went to the atrium area on the ship for the free champagne cocktails, and the champagne fountain display.
Stephanie went and poured champagne onto the fountain with the assistance of the Maître D. It seemed mostly to be a ladies participation event, but eventually couples started to go together, so we did that.
Champagne Fountain – Formal Night
Afterward we went to Dinner in the dining room, and had a good table near the window, and found a waiter and assistant waiter that we liked. We are now reserved for that table for the cruise.
After dinner, we went to the Easter Ball, and Stephanie got dance lessons for the Waltz and Cha-Cha from one of the assistant cruise director’s staff. There we a lot of couples participating, and the cruise staff were giving out raffle tickets to the dancers for free bottles of champagne.
It was a nice evening, and we turned in early knowing we are in port in Bermuda tomorrow morning, and need to get an early start to our day ashore.
This morning brought us to Bermuda. At sunrise, we were off the west end of Bermuda, and traversed through the channel on the northwest side of the islands to berth at Dockyard, the old naval port for Bermuda.
Sunrise Off The Coast Of Bermuda
We were about an hour and a half late in actually getting berthed, but it matched up better with the Ferry schedule to St. George’s. It was a bit windy, with the temperature in the 60’s in the morning. The high for today was forecast to be about 68 degrees.
Hillside in St. George’s, Bermuda
We purchased our transportation tickets at the information booth right at the port, and walked a few blocks to the Ferry dock. The ferry arrived at 9:30, it was a water jet powered catamaran that looked like it could hold about 200 passengers.
The winds were out of the NW, which is not the normal prevailing wind direction (Normally SE), so the seas were a bit rougher on the North side of the island than normal, but it was still a fairly smooth 25 minute ride over to the city of St. George’s.
Once we departed the Ferry, we walked around the town, and we visited an old Anglican Church. We then headed out to walk to Fort St. Catherine. Unfortunately, we did not have a good map of St. George’s, and got just slightly lost. We eventually got directions to the fort, and took a longer, but very scenic route.
Canon in Fort St. Catherine, Bermuda
Some of the areas of the fort were undergoing some restoration, but most of it was open, and it was very interesting to see the underneath levels of the fort; places where all of the food was cooked, weapons were stored, and where the powder and shells were stored.
Ferry Boat to St. George’s From Dockyard
We then made our way back to the city where we got on a bus for the 35 minute ride to Hamilton, the largest city on Bermuda. The entire island was much more elevated and hilly that we had expected, and the roads are very narrow and winding. It was nice to be able to see different parts of the island as we traveled to Hamilton. We actually passed through the airport terminal area on our way.
Once in Hamilton, we walked around a little, mainly trying to find a place to eat lunch. We found a small sandwich shop and had some very good Panini’s. Afterward, we boarded another bus to ride to the south shore of the island, where most of the famous beaches are located. We stopped at a beach called Jacob’s Cove, known mostly for its rocky shoreline.
Rocky Coastline – Bermuda Beaches
We walked from that beach to another more famous beach called Horseshoe Beach. The entire area is a string of beaches tied together by trails through the dune areas, mostly used by joggers. Stephanie collected some of the “pink” beach sand Bermuda is famous for.
Pink Sand Beach – Bermuda
It was a long uphill walk back to the main road from Horseshoe beach, where we got back on another bus for the 45 minute ride back to the Dockyard. We arrived about 4:00 pm, and had enough time to walk around and take a few more pictures before we re-boarded the ship at 4:25.
The Cruise Ship Dock in BermudaStephanie & The Golden Princess – Bermuda
We did not realize that we were about the last passengers to get back on board, even though we were still earlier than the 4:30 pm time that was posted as the required time to return to the ship.
We guess that most of the passengers just got back early. By 4:50 pm, the ship cast off and we were once again underway. We again navigated the channel around the north side of the island, and then we were out to sea.
Fort St. Catherine As Ship Departs, Bermuda
The seas were rougher that they had been at any point so far.
We spent about 30 minutes in our usual hot tub near the spa area and then returned to our cabin to get ready for dinner. By the time we finished dinner, the seas were quite rough, and continued that way for most of the night.
After a rough night, we awoke to partly sunny skies, and slightly calmer seas than we had overnight. However, it was still fairly rough, seas were running about 10-12 ft, and the temperature was in the low 60’s. We went to the buffet for our breakfast, and then spent some time walking around the ship. There was a fruit and vegetable carving demonstration in the Atrium that was very interesting to watch. We did not do much else the rest of today, we just spent the time relaxing.
The pools had all been emptied overnight due to the high seas, but also appeared that the crew was performing some maintenance in the pool areas. I guess the cruise line anticipated the cooler temperatures keeping everyone inside, away from the pools, and they were correct.
The seas calmed down some in the afternoon, the sun came out, and made for a nice afternoon. We spent some of the afternoon reading on our balcony since it was protected from the wind, and the ship was in a position to expose the balcony to the sunshine. After that, it was off to the hot tub for our standard late afternoon soaking.
Our Dinner Table for the Cruise
Dinner was at 7:30 pm, and we headed to the Dining room for dining with our wait staff, Nicoletta and Rommel. We had a nice dinner, and were able to watch the “Chef’s Dinner” that was taking place at a table located very near to ours. We had a nice view of the ocean during dinner, with the time changes, sunset was not until 8:20 pm.
After dinner, we had planned to go watch some of the live entertainment, but ended up staying in the cabin and watching a good movie on our TV. Tomorrow, we will be celebrating Stephanie’s Birthday!
Today is Stephanie’s Birthday – HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE.
It was another bouncy night last night, but by morning when we woke up, the seas had once again calmed some, only about 5-8 ft. The temperature today is forecast to be 59 degrees, but the sea temperature is 67 degrees, so it may feel a bit warmer. Luckily, the wind is mostly coming from behind the ship on our current heading, so there is not a lot of wind out on the decks. The seas did increase as the day went on, once again getting to at least 10-12 ft. However, since the wind was now almost coming directly from the stern, it was not that rough of a ride. Our cabin steward, Melwyn, had placed Stephanie’s birthday balloons outside above the door, so we were greeted by that when we left for breakfast.
Stephanie’s Birthday Decorations On Our Cabin
We spent another day relaxing at sea, reading books that we had gotten from the ship’s library. I was actually able to find a book I had been reading before we left, but since I had only a few chapters to finish, I had not wanted to bring it along since it would not take long to finish. We had not thought about using the ship’s library and not bring our own books, now we will know better. We also played putt-putt (Stephanie won both games), and shuffle board (Stephanie also won, must be her birthday), and ping pong.
Tonight, we celebrated Stephanie’s birthday at dinner. We took a bottle of wine to drink with our dinner, which consisted of a “surf and turf” main entrée, filet Mignon and grilled shrimp, which went perfectly with our bottle of Merlot. The wait staff brought Stephanie a special birthday dessert, and about 10 waiters sang her Happy Birthday.
Wait Staff Singing Happy Birthday to Stephanie
Our dinners have been very nice, there are so few persons on the ship that we get almost personal attention at dinner, and most nights there may be one other couple in our section. We got to meet several of the wait staff, it was surprising to find out that several of the female waiters are married to other waiters on the same ship, and our waiter, Nicoletta is married to one of the head waiters, Carlos, whom we also met. These are the nice things we get to experience by being on a ship that is not full.
Our Great Waitstaff, Nicoletta and Rommel
After dinner, we went to a show at the Explorer’s lounge and ran into Ricky, one of the assistant cruise directors we had met a couple of nights ago that was teaching Stephanie the Waltz. When Stephanie told Ricky it was her birthday, he preceded to take her up to the stage and have the performer, Maritzio, sing her Happy Birthday in front of the entire audience.
Ricky then gave us a bottle of Champagne. It was a special birthday.
Entertainer Maritzio Sings Happy Birthday to Stephanie
After a couple of dances, we went over to the main bar in the lounge, and happened to meet up with some other couples on the ship, along with the art sales director, who had been on our last cruise. We spent a couple of hours talking with our new friends, and then we retired for the evening. Unfortunately, since we lost another hour tonight adjusting the time changes as we proceed across the Atlantic, it was really 2:00 am before we made it back to the cabin.
Ricky Gives Stephanie a Bottle of Champagne for Her Birthday
