June 3/4

Am finally at hotel with wi-fi in Southampton, but still can't seem to get photos into blog posts. Sorry.

 June 3 at sea again. The seas have been really calm, almost glassy, including the Atlantic, the North Sea and the English Channel. Come to think of it, all the cruises I've taken in the past 5 years (6 except for a hurricane in Drake's Passage) have been quite calm. Gotta keep that weather magic powered up and working!

 First I slept really late, getting up only briefly to let room service deliver breakfast which I did eventually have for lunch. I then "planned" a day of not doing much of anything and achieved it. I sat in the Library for a while and partially listened to the excitement of the Egg Drop Contest out in the Atrium. Evidently contestants get some time to try to devise a container for an egg to keep it from breaking when dropped. It appears that most break, and only a few survive, but I'm not sure how high the drop is...3 feet or 3 floors. It's just another variety of shipboard silliness. I generally avoid such activities even as a spectator, and if I rarely do go to watch, I sit in the back row and never volunteer for anything.

 I had a nice chat with a lady from Brisbane. She and her husband had been driving around England for a month. They got tired of that and happened to see an ad for this cruise in a travel agency window. It was the right timing and a heavily discounted price, so they hopped on to see Ireland and Scotland. That's something about cruises...people aren't afraid to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. I like that.

As it was a formal night, I finally made it up to Skywalker's for the Captain's Cocktail Party. To get
there, you hike to the aft elevators and go to the top which is Deck 18. Then you walk up a long slope to get to Skywalker's on Deck 19. There you get a great view of the ship's wake, a free glass of champagne and an hors d'oeuvre or two. Then you reverse the process to get to dinner down on Deck 6.

June 4 is our last stop at Le Havre, France. I'm not sure why this is on the itinerary instead of one of the east coast British ports. It's probably so that the Americans can do all-day tours to Paris or Normandy and say they've been to France.. I, personally, am doing everyone in Paris a big favor by not going there. Each time I've been to Paris in the past, either the bus drivers or the Metro workers or both have gone on strike resulting in traffic jams so colossal that the entire city was grid-locked and you couldn't get anywhere at all.

 In fact, I didn't even set foot on Le Havre. And have no photos worth posting. There is a huge
passenger terminal which supposedly has free wi-fi, but this can wait for a more comfortable venue. The city center is a very long walk away, mostly through the docks, although there is a shuttle over there for a few euros. There are several other cruise ships in port including the Celebrity Infinity and another whose name I can't see and whose logo and paint job I don't recognize.

So I decided to just take it easy, pack up slowly, and enjoy the ship with most of the passengers gone. However, there were a fair number of people sunning themselves up on Lido Deck, and even a few in swimming. Brrr.