October 27

Sunday, October 27

Shades of Amtrak, Israel, Delta Air Lines from Barcelona, and even US Airways to Nassau. All have been the scene of damage to whatever walker I was traveling with at the time. Now I can add to the list US Airways from Charlottesville to New York. My new walker on its first trip arrived at LaGuardia minus a screw that holds the right front wheel in position. With the wheel assembly flopping around, the walker was less useful than a 3-legged quadruped. I will say that the US Airways baggage claim agent was as sympathetic and helpful as she could be. Once I got on board the Caribbean Princess, I got the Front Desk folks to send a ship's carpenter who turned up early this morning with his box of miscellaneous nuts and bolts, so my walker is back in business again. 

Our bus from LaGuardia to the dock in Brooklyn had the personality of an Egyptian camel (Frances H will know what that means). She only made very wide turns and complained bitterly every time. Add to that New York/Brooklyn Saturday afternoon traffic and extremely narrow streets with a perfect maze of one way signs, and we had quite a trip with a side trip or two through and around the maze. Fortunately our driver had patience and a sense of humor and must have been a camel driver in a former life.

Mark and I had a lovely long dinner last night at Sabatini's which is the Italian specialty restaurant on board Princess ships. It turns out that if you want a nice, unhurried dinner in any of the specialty restaurants, plan to go the first night as that is the least busy time. As soon as you get to your cabin, phone for a reservation and you can get your choice of times at any of them. Anyway, I had a fabulous Spaghetti Carbonara, and Mark had a veal dish that appeared to  be about half a calf. We had a nice long catch-up-on-news session over dinner.

By the time we finished dinner, the ship was out in the Atlantic, past the heavy traffic shipping lanes and beginning to head south. "Rocked in the cradle of the deep" would have described sleeping last night except for the ship's stabilizers. They did a fine job of cutting the soothing rolling and replacing it with several varieties of jerky motion in an irregular pattern. Ah well, I managed to get a good night's sleep anyway.

Today was wonderfully calm and relaxing. The sea was like glass...not even any white caps or clouds. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon on our large balcony watching, alternately, the ocean and the inside of my eyelids. This evening is a formal night, so we will be meeting our table-mates for the first time in all the personal splendor we can muster which includes Mark's Jerry Garcia wild purple tie.

October 23, 2013

Sorry I never got around to adding photos. I'll get to it eventually.

Meanwhile, in 3 days I'm off again. This time it's a 10 day cruise on the Caribbean Princess from New York to Houston with my friend Mark. Here's the itinerary:

Saturday, October 26.  -   To New York and boarding
Sunday, October 27.  -   At sea
Monday, October 28   -   At sea
Tuesday, October 29.  -   Grand Turk
Wednesday, October 30.  -   At sea
Thursday, October 31   -   Curacao
Friday, November 1.  -   At sea
Saturday, November 2.  -   Grand Cayman
Sunday, November 3.  -   Cozumel
Monday, November 4.  -   At sea
Tuesday, November 5.  -   Houston and home

I like the number of sea days on this one, and since I've been to all of these places, some multiple times, I'm not sure how often I'll even get off at these ports. I do enjoy being on board when most everyone else has gone ashore.

June 22

I will add photos to all this once I get home.

June 20/21/22

June 20, at sea in the morning and at Gibraltar for the afternoon and evening.

I've never given any thought to what's at Gibraltar besides The Rock and its apes, other than I once saw a tv show about how difficult the airport is for pilots due to crosswinds and a major road that crosses the middle of the runway. Now I've seen that runway, and seen planes land and take off, and I plan to never fly into Gibraltar. Past the runway is what appears to be an isthmus connecting the area around the rock to the Spanish mainland. The coastline curves around in a huge bay. There's a lot of ship and boat traffic in the bay, and there's about to be more. A ship docked next to us carrying at least a dozen gleaming new pleasure boats. They were in the cabin cruiser to small yacht size range. By afternoon, it had off-loaded its cargo and sailed away. I didn't see where the pleasure boats went.

I didn't go ashore because to get off the dock area is about a mile hike, and there weren't any excursions that would accommodate my wheels. Even to get to the buses was over a quarter mile, and I really didn't want to try that without the walker. But the weather was really lovely, so I enjoyed the view and the sunshine on the open deck. I talked to one woman who came back from a tour most disappointed, so I figure I didn't miss much except a look at the famous Barbary Apes (actually tailless monkeys) about 60 of which still live there and, by legend, keep it a British territory. Mark took a tour that went to some WWII tunnels.

I did win at trivia this afternoon, but only because just 6 of us showed up, so we played as a single team. We had fun with some fiendish questions like "How many flowers are on one side of an Oreo cookie?" (no fair peeking).and "What is the second-most widely spoken language in the world?" I then decided to splurge at the spa with a pedicure today and a manicure tomorrow.

Since Mark's tour was a late  one, we had a nice quiet dinner without the rest of the group. However, after dinner, we went up on the Sports Deck to get a good spot to watch the big, loud, Latin-themed Sail Away Party that began about 10:30 p.m. and met the group there. There was supposed to be a big fountain and light show on the Lido Deck. The previous night it didn't happen because of some problem with a pump. Last night it happened, but was somewhat less than spectacular. After that, I went back to the cabin and watched us actually sail through the Straits of Gibraltar. As we turned eastward, I could see lights on the coast of Africa, and sea gulls swooping past the ship's lights made white shadows in the night against the faint silhouette of The Rock. It was really neat.

June 21, Malaga, Spain. I had originally planned to go ashore here, but when I found out that the process would involve at least two and maybe three shuttle buses just to get from the ship off the pier area and to town, I decided to give that experience a miss. After a late breakfast, Mark and I spent the morning at the back of Lido Deck with the best view of the city. Mark wrote postcards, and I chatted with a couple from the Hill Country of Texas. The weather was pleasant, temperature-wise, but there was a heavy mist, almost a fog, that obscured much of the view from our port side.

This afternoon Mark and I were invited to tour the Bridge! Mark has been on bridge tours before, but I hadn't, and this _is_ a maiden voyage, after all, so we were reasonably excited about the prospect. It was a great tour with only 8 of us passengers. This ship, brand new as she is, is totally state of the art, and the tiniest joy-stick on the bridge is the one that steers the ship when the computer isn't doing it. There is redundancy upon redundancy upon back-up upon back-up for every system. Every zone of the ship has all services needed in an emergency like a galley, water, vacuum system for toilets, etc. No Carnival debacles for this ship! They had the bell from the original Royal Princess which was christened by Princess Diana in 1984, and which my mother and I sailed on in the mid-1990s. That will eventually be displayed in a case downstairs in the public area. It was a really neat tour.

Right after that I went off to get a manicure before formal night. While I was gone, Mark received a lovely arrangement of roses and other flowers in honor of this being his 50th cruise on Princess. We figure that is why we've been getting a number of extra little perks all along. It certainly wasn't because we have so many days on Princess, as the winners in that category are a couple with over 2,000 days, and together Marl and I have about 600. Formal night began with the Captain's Circle cocktail party where we met up with Janet, Roy, Mike and Jeff. Next came dinner, followed by a very high energy show by a group reprising the Beatles and their music ... just the right thing for the demographic on board. A fun end to a good day.

June 22, at sea. It's the last day of the last cruise. A quiet day getting organized and packing. Mark and I had a nice lunch in the dining room with the couple I met yesterday morning and two men from Toronto. Lots of lively conversation.  I plan to go to Trivia with our group one last time, then, of course, our final dinner.

It's been an excellent trip, even though I had various health problems. But this time I am looking forward to being home again. See y'all next cruise!

(The answers to the above trivia items are 12 and French.)

June 18/19

June 18, Vigo, Spain. I am again released upon an unsuspecting world. The "HazMat" team came by one last time. Mark was impressed because he'd never seen that aspect of shipboard life in operation before. 

Vigo is the port from which most tourists go to visit the shrine/cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. That, however, is a long day's tour, so I didn't sign ip for one. I mostly wandered around the ship and took a few photos. In the evening we met up with Jeff, Mike, Roy and Janet plus an assortment of other interesting characters for drinks before dinner. After dinner most called it an early night as they had all partied hearty the night before when I was in isolation. 

June  19, Lisbon, Portugal. Up early to watch as we sail up the Tagus River under the spectacular 25th of April bridge which is reminiscent of the Golden Gate bridge. Mark had a tour out of the city to two villages, one in the mountains and the other near the coast. I had wanted to do that one, but was convinced by the Shore Excursion guy not to, so I did a short city drive around and take photos thing instead. It was a pleasant tour with some sunny spots and some overcast. We saw the main monuments and city squares, going past some of them several times. On return, 

After the tour, I grabbed a bit of lunch then had a nice nap before meeting the rest of our group for. afternoon trivia. We didn't win. Dinner with the usual crew of Mark, Janet, Roy, Mike and Jeff, was quite a manic experience this evening with a great deal of confusion about limoncello, shot glasses, blue cheese and port wine. Fortunately, I was rather at the periphery of things so didn't feel I really had to keep it all straight.

Changing time yet again tonight for the third night in a row. It turns out that Portugal doesn't do daylight savings time. 

June 16/17

June 16, Southampton. The beginning of cruise #4 aboard the brand new Royal Princess. I wasn't the first person on board, but was certainly in the first hundred or so, maybe even the first fifty. My walker and main suitcase were at my cabin before I got there, but my carry-on was a no-show. One of Mark's suitcases showed up about an hour later, and he arrived about half an hour after that.

Our cabin is one of the ADA fully-accessible ones, and is hugely spacious. Instead of a closet and dressing area like most cabins, we have a large bathroom with roll-in shower and grab bars everywhere, and in the main part of the room, a triple wardrobe with tons of hanging space and a set of shelves. For each twin bed, there is a nightstand with 4 big drawers and a shelf. There's a desk area with a fridge and 4 more drawers. Mark and I are so used to making do with small amounts of storage space that we are positively rattling around in here. 

Oh, I forgot to mention the balcony which has an ingenious ramp arrangement so you could get a wheelchair out there along with the 2 comfortable chairs and a little table. The whole cabin is wider than usual to allow space for a wheelchair to maneuver. And, instead of a small sofa/sitting area, there are two chairs and a little table (which we immediately shoved under one end of the desk area). There is a gigantic flat-screen tv with the most minimalist remote I've ever seen. It will take us all week to figure that one out.

We did some slow exploring and had lunch at the Horizon Cafe on Lido Deck. The pool area is lovely and has a nice variety of seating options from lounge chairs to tables and chairs, to big round booths to couch and easy chaIr groupings. We walked past the SeaView area which sticks out beyond the side of the ship and has a glass floor so you can look down to the water. There's not enough money in the world to get me out there!

The buffet area at Horizon is just as crazy as the one I've already ranted about on the other ships. It does have multiple lines, but at least they don't go in circles. However, at the very aft end of the Horizon, there is a nice outside area with variety seating again and its own set of coffee/tea machines. When/if the temperature warms up some, that should be a nice spot.

About mid-afternoon, we connected with Jeff and Mike and their friends Roy and Janet, at Crooners which is one of the bars at the Atrium. Mark and I invited them to our cabin after the Emergency Drill to share our balcony and bubbly while we sailed down the Solent. We were a bit disappointed that there weren't more people quayside to watch her go for the first time.

The evening began back at Crooners Bar on the top level (Deck 7) of the Atrium which is a truly spectacular space. I cannot begin to do it justice in a description. I would recommend that you go to www.princess.com and view the videos of the Royal Princess. The decor of this ship is several steps up the ladder of sophistication from other Princess ships that I've been on.

June 17 at sea. Well, I'm back in isolation in my cabin again after another flare up last night after dinner. Medical reports at three ships in a row! Someone at CDC is going to have fun tracking my peregrinations over the past several weeks from the forms I've had to fill out. At least here I have a window with real daylight and passing ocean to look at. I certainly wouldn't have been spending time out on the balcony today as it is very chilly and windy out there. In the morning it was solid grey overcast, but in the afternoon it got sunny, but still chilly. Also this time I have Mark to talk some of the time and to run errands for me if necessary. Supposedly I will be free again tomorrow morning, although I will be missing the first formal night's dinner in favor of lasagna from Room Service.

I forgot to update about our missing suitcases. Mark's second bag turned up just before the Drill, but my carry-on was still missing. So I started a complaint to Passenger Services. I got the expected answer of "we are still delivering bags, madam." By the time we had sailed, I was moving into harassment mode. Fortunately, I got a lovely young lady named Annabel from the Philippines at Passenger Services to work on my dilemma. She certainly went above and beyond for me harassing the Security Department, the manager for our floor's cabin staff, etc. and going after them multiple times that evening and reporting back to me. Eventually the silly thing turned up, tag less, sitting in a hallway somewhere. My name was in several places inside, and they had been pretty well sensitized by Annabel to look for my name, so it got to me okay.

June 14 again & June 15

June 14, again. Right after I posted the previous entry, the afternoon went from pleasant to totally frustrating. I got all the way back to my cabin and found that I had the wrong key card. So all the way aft and up to Metropolis. After some confusion there, it was back down to Reception, where it appeared that the cards had been switched in one of the shops where I had bought a small souvenir. Whoever wound up with my card had been having a good time at the shops and Bingo. Those charges did finally get cleared from my account. Meanwhile, they made me a new card. Number 4! By this time, I was totally exhausted from hiking around the ship, but I got downstairs to my cabin and Number 4 didn't work in my door. After trying it multiple times, I went back to Reception and had a nice fit of hysterics for their benefit and edification. The clerk looked at me as though I was crazy while maintaining that there was nothing wrong with the card and went away with it. After a long enough period for a new card to be made, he came back swearing that Number 4 was a good card. So I insisted he accompany me and prove it, which he did (damn it, I still think I'm now on card #5). I am not leaving this cabin again until time to get off the ship. I'll just order room service again. Pfui.

June 15, Southampton, England, also again. We disembarked at the same pier where the Royal Princess will sail tomorrow. There were already huge bouquets in place in preparation. I can't wait to see it all tomorrow!

Meanwhile I got back to the Novotel about 9:00 a.m. but my room wasn't ready until about 1:00 p.m. But now I'm in a room with a bathroom bigger than a phone booth! Lovely! And now that I've thoroughly enjoyed that, I'm watching the horse races on BBC4. Hmmm ... on to the weather forecast. It's odd to realize what a small area they're talking about and showing on the map as compared to our US weather maps. The UK map shows probably less area than just the South on our Weather Channel maps. The same sort of applies to news reports, like a missing teenager. The reports felt more like a state-wide alert back home. It really brings home the difference in the scale of life. I've noticed some of this in my travels to Norway in recent years. Many of the things I admire about the way their society operates in Norway would never be possible in the US because Norway is only dealing with a population of 4.5 million people.