We are still trying to recover from the six hour time change and the 23 hour long day we had last Friday flying home. Stephanie has pretty well recovered from her mild cold, but now I seem to be coming down with something. It is no wonder, after having been subjected to drastic changes in weather, lack of sleep, and exposure to lots of people in confined spaces as we…
We found another great deal on a Transatlantic Cruise this April on Princess Cruises. This will be our seventh Transatlantic Cruise, and our sixth on Princess Cruises. This trip will be on one of our favorite ships, the Regal Princess, which is currently the newest ship in the Princess fleet, at least until the Majesty launches this spring. The cruise is 15 days long, and leaves out of Ft. Lauderdale,…
We will be driving a rental car down to Port St. Lucie. Florida on Saturday, April 1, 2017. We will initially get a ride to the airport in Columbia to pick up our rental car for the drive down to Ft. Lauderdale since we will be flying home from Berlin, Germany at the end of this trip. We will coordinate the rental car pick up time in Columbia so that…
We have steadily been working on the detailed planning for this trip since it is now only thirty days until we leave for our drive down to Port St. Lucie, our interim overnight stop on the way to our ultimate destination, Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. As stated in an earlier post, we are visiting some of the same ports as we did on our last April Transatlantic in…
We have one week until we depart from home to drive to port St. Lucie, Fl., on our way to Fort Lauderdale the following day to board the Regal Princess. We have continued to refine our planning for the ports of call, and for our four night stay in Berlin, Germany after the cruise is completed. We have not altered our plans for the port calls, just put some final…
Our vacation departure day finally arrived, and it was time to make the long drive down to Port St. Lucie, Florida, for our overnight stop on the way to Ft. Lauderdale. We got a good nights sleep and woke up around 7:00 AM to finish our packing and get everything ready for the trip. We were not scheduled to leave the house until about 10:30 AM to drive to the Columbia…
We had set a wake up call for 5:15 AM this morning so that we could get ready and go to Mass at 6:15 AM at the St. Lucie Catholic Church, located about four miles from the hotel. We both slept pretty well in the king size bed, but for some reason, the wake up call never came. I had woken up about 5:00 AM anyway, somewhat worried we would…
It was a beautiful sunny morning when we woke up today. There was some wind coming from the bow of the ship, but the seas were fairly calm. It was nice to be able to see outside with the balcony cabin and to open the sliding door slightly and listen to the waves breaking near the bow of the ship. Of course, it was late, about 9:00 AM on yesterday’s…
When we finally got up, we discovered it was another beautiful weather day as we continue to cross the Atlantic. The time changes have not been easy to adapt to, we will need to try and start getting up earlier so that we can adjust. By the time we got up and got ready today, it was already 10:30 AM, and we barely made it to breakfast in the buffet…
Today was the best weather day of the cruise so far. We did not do a good job of getting up at a reasonable time again today. The time changes are just hard to adjust to, even though we got a break last night and did not move the clock forward. We are only two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time, but it seems like more than that. …
After having our best weather day yesterday, we had our worst today. It was really cloudy when we woke up, having set a 8:00 AM wake up call to keep us from sleeping in so late. It was not that cool, but with the wind and occasional rain showers, it was not pleasant to be outside, even when protected from the rain. Today is my 58th Birthday, and we have…
Today’s post will be short, we did not do that much today after we stayed out too late last night on my Birthday and then slept in way too long this morning, not budging from the comfort of our bed until noon. It was not so much that we excessively celebrated with adult beverages as much as just being out late, and we lost another hour to the time change.…
Today is our last of the six sea days before we reach Ponta Delgada in the Azores. It was a little windier today, and cooler, so we were not able to do a lot outside without bundling up. But first, from the beginning of the day…. We got up a little earlier today, trying to acclimate to the time change before we hit our first port tomorrow morning when we…
Today is our first port of call since we departed from Ft. Lauderdale six days ago. It was pretty rough last night, the ship was rocking in a fairly quick motion, not slow like it had been from the large swells on some days during the crossing. We both slept pretty well, but I know I was a little concerned about the wake up call actually occurring even though they…
Today was another “Brunch” morning, we did not get going and out of the cabin until about 11:30 AM, after having lost yet another hour of time, totaling five one hour changes since we left Ft. Lauderdale. The good news is that tonight is the last time change we have for the entire trip, until the flight home. After showering and getting dressed for the cooler weather that was forecasted…
We woke up much earlier this morning, having set the wake up call for 7:30 AM. It was still really dark outside at that early hour, possibly due to our being farther northward. This was the last time we needed to adjust our watches, we are finally on the same time as all of the ports in Europe we will visit. We did not get up and going right away,…
The seas have been much calmer since we entered the English Channel yesterday. We are closer to land, and the English Channel is more protected from the winds. When we woke up this morning, the weather was similar to the past couple of days, much cooler, mostly cloudy, but less windy. We set a wake up call for 7:30 AM, but did not really get going until almost 8:30 AM. …
Today was our first port of call since the Azores, and we felt the impacts of getting up earlier than we had since that stop at Ponta Delgada. We tried to go to bed early last night but we were up a little later than planned, and I did not sleep well, probably anticipating getting up and getting the rental car. We had put together all of our daytime travel…
Today we stopped in Zeebrugge, Belgium. There were partly cloudy to mostly cloudy skies when the sun came up this morning as we were heading into the port. Our port time today starts at 9:00 AM, a little later than yesterday, so we did not get up until about 7:30 AM. As the ship headed into the port and then headed for the pier, we discovered that we were parking…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO STEPHANIE! Today we stopped in the port of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, which is about 30 kilometers inland from the coast, on the Nieuwe Maas River. It takes the ship over two hours to transit the river into Rotterdam, and the Captain had informed us that they were picking up our Harbor Pilot at 3:30 AM this morning. We had set a wake up call for 6:00 AM,…
HAPPY EASTER! Today is the last day of the cruise before we arrive in Hamburg early tomorrow morning and disembark the Regal Princess. Of course, we took the opportunity of sleeping in this morning since we did not really have to anything to do today but pack. The morning weather was one of the best yet for the cruise, at least as far as the sunshine was concerned. We awoke…
When I awoke this morning at 6:00 AM, we were already tied up at the pier in Hamburg, and the cruise was officially over. I woke up before the wake up call set at 7:00 AM, thinking that maybe we needed a little more time to get ready and finish our packing. I went ahead and showered while Stephanie slept just a little longer. I headed down to the International…
It was very cloudy and cold outside when we woke up this morning. We slept good in the bed, but we were either too hot or too cold with the duvet, or down filled cover, that is used as a the only top cover in most places in Germany. It is a little thick, so you get hot when it covers you and then if you take it off, you…
It was a beautiful sunny morning when I woke up at 6:30 AM. We were looking forward to having a nice sunny, but cold day according to the weather forecast. I worked on the computer for a little while, processing some photos from yesterday before I woke Stephanie up. She was suffering a little from a slight cold, so it was good to let her sleep in a little longer. …
We had another beautiful sunrise this morning, it starts to get light at about 6:00 AM, and it gets quite bright in the room with the large windows, even with the shear curtains closed. I went ahead and got up at about 6:00 AM, it was just too light outside and inside for me to sleep. I worked on the blog postings while Stephanie slept in a little while longer. …
We went to bed last night at a reasonable hour, around 10:00 PM, knowing we would be getting up early this morning for our travels home. We set an alarm for 5:20 AM, and also had a back up wake up call set for 5:30 AM, not knowing how reliable either would be. Stephanie had to reset the time on her phone for the alarm, and we did not have…