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 2016. The repeat ports include Ponta Delgada, Azores; Zeebrugge, Belgium, and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Although they will be the same ports, we are planning on visiting completely different areas nearby. Below is a basic description of our current plan for all of the ports.
Ponta Delgada, Azores
We estimate this will be the fourth or fifth time we have visited Ponta Delgada. Some of the previous visits have been on a Sunday, and this is no exception. We are planning to attend Mass at one of the Catholic Churches, especially since it will be Palm Sunday. This may change if we find out that there is a priest on-board our ship, and if so, hopefully there is a vigil Mass on Saturday evening on the ship. Since this trip takes place over Easter, we are hoping that a priest is traveling with us, or possibly a deacon. However, if not, we are putting together a plan to attend Mass the morning we arrive here, and then spend the rest of the day sightseeing.
We visited Ponta Delgada just a few months ago in October, 2016. On our list of sights to see, but have never made it to is the Caldeira das Sete Cidades, which is the volcanic crater lakes. This is the top sight to see here, but it has previously either been a really short stay, or it has been foggy, or both. If it is foggy, there is nothing to see up in the mountains. We were in Ponta Delgada for a longer port stop in October, but we just did not find a tour we wanted to do to see the crater lakes, so we just walked around and visited some new sights in town that we had not seen before. This time, we have reserved a ship’s tour that leaves in the afternoon. Leaving later in the day increases the chances of clear weather. Since we can cancel the tour up to the day before, we have not yet given up on finding something on our own that visits there, especially something we can book last minute, based on having good weather. If not, we may once again visit the market and some other sights around town. The ship is in port from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Le Havre, France
This will be our second time in Le Havre, but we did not stay long the last time we were here in 2009, when we disembarked our ship and took a train into Paris for an overnight stay before flying home. This time, we opted to skip going into Paris by train, it is about three hours travel each way, and then you are not there long enough to enjoy seeing very much. Since we have been to Paris twice before, we did not want to go there for just a long, but also short half day actually in Paris on this trip.
We have reserved a rental car at the Le Havre Pier, and will be spending the day driving to three coastal towns. The first town will be Etretat, famous for its white chalk cliffs (Featured Image For this Post). The second town will be Honfleur, another quaint coastal town where many famous artists traveled to to paint along the seaside. The third coastal town, time permitting, will be Deauville. All of these towns are very picturesque, and close to Le Havre. The entire driving loop from Le Havre, north to Etretat, and then south to Honfleur and Deauville and back to Le Havre is 133 km, and takes 2.5 hours to drive, excluding the time we spend at each location.
We are in port from 7:00 AM until 8:00 PM, so we certainly should have enough time for the drive and sightseeing. This is a long port day so that the tours from the ship can make the three plus hour drive each way to Paris and back in a day. If we run short of time, we will choose to eliminate Deauville. Our plan is to be back at the pier no later than 6:30 PM. Most likely, the ship will leave late anyway, the tours will probably all be late returning to the ship from Paris because it is a long drive, and the potential for delays is high.
One interesting side attraction on our planned route is the Pont de Normandie suspension bridge that crosses over the Seine River south of Le Havre, on the way to Honfleur. When completed in 1995, the bridge was both the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world, and had the record for the longest distance between piers for any cable-stayed bridge. It was more than 250 meters (820 ft) longer between piers than the previous record holder. However, in 1999, it was eclipsed by a larger bridge built in Japan. There is a Euro 5.60 toll to cross each way, but the ride over the bridge is supposed to offer spectacular views.
We have posted a driving route map that can be accessed from the Cruise Itinerary & Travel Maps menu on the main page header. Of course, we will take and use our Europe Map Garmin GPS for this drive, we don’t want to leave it solely up to driving directions downloaded from Google in case we have to reroute for some reason.
Zeebrugge, Belgium
Zeebrugge is the next port stop after Le Havre. We are in port here from 9:00 AM until 8:00 PM, which is another long port stay. On our last visit here in April, 2016, we took a tram to Blankenberge, and then took a fifteen minute train ride to Bruges. Bruges was nice, but it was awfully crowded. There were three other ships in port on the day we were there, and I think everyone on them went to Bruges. Our last visit was not long after the terrorist issues in Belgium from the Paris attacks, so it might have discouraged a lot of ship’s tours from going to Brussels, where some terrorist residences were raided not long before we arrived.
This year, we have decided to travel into Ghent, which is supposed to be a lot less crowded than Bruges, and less touristy. there are some nice sights to see there, Ghent was the second largest city in Europe, after Paris, in the 1300’s. There is a historic city center with several castles, churches, and museums.
The only issue with Ghent is that it is slightly harder to get to by train than Bruges. In fact, some of the trains to Ghent make stops in Bruges, and you have to make a connection to continue to Ghent. However, there are a few direct trains, but it is dependent on which train station we leave from, either the nearby Blankenberge, or from the Zeebrugge-Dorp Station. There is not a lot of information on where the ship will be berthed when we arrive at Zeebrugge, and this caused us a lot of confusion last time we were here, all of the information we had was based on the ship docking at a different area of the port than we actually were at. If we dock in the same location, we will know what to do based on our experience last time, but if not, we hopefully now have enough information to better understand where we will be in Zeebrugge, and which train or tram we will need to take to get to Ghent. It would be nicer if we knew now, but that detailed port schedule information is not readily available for the port of Zeebrugge like it is for other ports. Therefore, we have to have double up on the information to cover all of the possibilities. Luckily, we will have a balcony cabin, so we can see where we are when we arrive, and then try to plan accordingly. I am betting we are in the same location as before since the ship is so large.
Since we dock at 9:00 AM, we will need to be on the first shuttle out of the port so we can make the trains that leave between 10:00 and 10:40 AM from either of the two stations previously mentioned. Our plan is to leave Ghent no later than 4:00 PM, and be back on the ship by 6:30 PM.
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Rotterdam is the next port we visit after Zeebrugge. We are there from 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM, the longest port stop of the trip. This is also Stephanie’s Birthday.
Last time we were in Rotterdam in April, 2016, we visited the Keukenhof Tulip Festival, which was really nice, other than the weather. Rotterdam is an easy port to access public transportation from, there is a underground station just a few blocks away, and it is a quick ride to the main train station.
This time, our plan is to go to Amsterdam since we have such a long day in port. There are express trains from Rotterdam, and it only takes about 50 minutes to arrive in the Amsterdam Centraal Station (yes, spelling is correct). Once there, we will purchase daily transportation passes and spend the day visiting the city. There are a couple of museums we may try and go to depending on how long the lines are when we arrive. Our visit will be on a Saturday, so it is more likely to be crowded at any of the popular sights. We will put more detail into this plan over the next couple of weeks. If the weather is bad, we will probably stay in Rotterdam, it is not much fun walking around in the rain all day.
These are all of the ports that we will visit before we disembark in Hamburg, Germany. We will have one Sea Day after Rotterdam, so it will give us a chance to relax a little, and pack our luggage for the end of the cruise, and our extended trip to Berlin. We will post more information on our plans for Berlin in a subsequent post.