George Washington out for a ride in the Park |
Monday, November 22, 2010
21st November- It’s a bit chilly out there
20th November- A walk around Boston Town
Falun Gung doing Tai Chi in the Park |
Saturday, November 20, 2010
19th November- Heading to Boston, Mass. .
Mayflower 11-The sequel! |
Its a stone I tell you!-Its called Plymouth Rock |
18th November- Coventry, Richmond, Harwich, Yarmouth et al
Thursday, November 18, 2010
17th November- Time to leave New York
16th November- Put those walking boots back on!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
15th November- A pleasant day and taking it easy
Jen, Francis and John |
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday 14th-November- A Grand walking tour of downtown New York
Frogs with Legs |
Sunday, November 14, 2010
13th November- Things were going so well before we docked
12th November- The waves are down but the wind is strong
10th November- It’s getting a little choppy out there
11th November- It’s a real storm
Neither of us slept well overnight with the boat moving around all over the place and when we woke we noticed that several things had fallen off shelves and also the bed had moved 12 inches to the right and stopped by the cupboard doors. Wow didn’t notice that.
After breakfast we walked to the front of the ship and overlooked the Captain’s Lair, as we arrived we hit a particularly large wave and their chairs, on wheels would you believe, slid across the control deck and smashed in to another couple of chairs. The Captain appeared at a fast rate and then lots of red flashing lights went for reasons we know not, but we did find out.
Back through the ship we finally passed duty free with stuff all over the place and cupboards falling over, Noel was looking for damaged bottles of whisky but no such luck. Further up the corridor there were groups of Filipinos busy sweeping up water, on the 6 and 7 th floors. We then noticed another group of engineers trying to tie down some relaxer chairs on the 7th floor with wind whistling past and water going everywhere, quite dangerous for them anyway.
We stopped for a few minutes to look out the window and take some photos at which time they announced that several restaurants on the upper decks were closing for safety reasons and that having food sent to your cabin will be quicker as they put more people on this job. It would also appear that some furniture in the ‘Great Outdoors’ Restaurant has either been washed away or more likely blown overboard from the 12th floor. But it is certainly closed down now with rope everywhere holding tables and chairs and imitation pot plants
Noel took some photos of the waves from deck 7 and they were much higher than deck 7 and were quite awe inspiring really, not like the River Wey at all.
Whilst typing this at around
Noel is reading a book called ‘The Hunt for Red October’ by Tom Clancy, a seafaring story no less and there is a quote which says ” a ship is like a prison in which you can also drown” nice!!!
The film they are showing today is ‘Titanic’, actually it’s not it’s called ‘Angels and Demons’ so we went to watch it. If you have seen the film you will know that part of the action takes place in cars travelling fast around Rome, you are in the car going fast around the corner and the ship is lurching all over the place, it’s just like being in a simulator. There are little white bags stacked around all over the place just in case.
In the evening with the Garden Café closed there were more people than places available to eat unless you wait till quite late and so we said ‘bugger it’ and went back to Cagney’s Steak House which was good, but you do have to pay more.
Following dinner a short stay in the Star Bar listening to the four piece string group and then on to the Theatre to see a show put on by the crew which was good and bad in places.
The ship was still moving around quite a bit when we got back to the cabin, there is another hour to be lost overnight which means that by Friday we are already on
Bedtime calls.
9th November- Let’s do something different
We also watched the ‘
8th November - We are sailing, we are sailing etc
Well for the next five days we shall be sailing across the
It’s strange that when we are walking around the deck we like to go clockwise but everybody else goes the other way round, cannot fathom this out at all.
We missed the Doctors presentation about losing weight by hypnotherapy and also acupuncture as there were so many large people there we could not get in the room.
On Monday night we went to the evening show where a young lass, from
Monday night was also dress up night and so many ladies went to great trouble to look nice but the male of the species did not try so hard and in fact perhaps wore a better and new set of jeans and trainers. The wind has started getting a little stronger and the waves are about 3.5 metres high at the moment although against the size of this ship you hardly notice them at all whilst the ships speed is around 19 knots.
7th November- Arriving in Ponta Delgado, The Azores
A group of large
Upon leaving the ship we were struck by the newness of the Harbour Facilities with new shops and open air cafes and the streets were clean. Even the pavements did not have the large
As it was a Sunday most of the shops, apart from the ones at the Port were pretty much closed but we walked from one side of the town to other and were pretty impressed how well kept this place is compared to
then we moved on to a mall where they also advertised free internet, we could find the signal but could not get access until a person at the next table said you need this code and from thereon it was ok but very, very slow connection indeed. This is not surprising as there must have been 30 odd people with notebooks etc trying to connect.
We did a final walk along the beachfront to the Old Fort at the end of the town then headed back and came across a local drum band with mostly teenagers and some people dressed up in cow outfits, not sure why.
On board we settled in to watch the Grand Prix and were getting nervous that it must have started and then it turned out they could not find a suitable satellite and so they would show the film ‘Mama Mia’, Noel does not like ABBA anyway and Jennifer has already seen the film so after ten minutes we decided there were better things in life than watching this.
We went topside for a cuppa and cake and I forgot to mention that since leaving
Tonight we tried the Grand Main Dining Room which is at the back of the ship and seats about 900 people. The food was OK but not especially brilliant and we felt that the food in the garden café which is always served piping hot is perhaps better. It was worth the experience however.
During dinner we discussed the merits of cruising, Jennifer felt that it might be better to go on a more expensive ship where they don’t push extra items at you all the time, On Jen’s previous ships they have given talks about where your are going and the history of the place and nice places to visit by experts. On here it’s more like selling their own bus tours which are expensive and presented by people who read a script. Noel felt a little cramped and missed the freedom and also the opportunity to see more of the places we visited and having the complete freedom to do it our way. We are now not sure if we will do the
We both agree that the opportunity to eat at the different restaurants is good rather than sit in the same seat at all meal times but somehow this will most likely be the last cruise for quite a while and we stick to our old routines.
After dinner we did a walk around the decks and put our heads in to the big Theatre where there was a group of youngish guys who may be failures from the X-Factor doing their best to sing Freddie Mercury and failing quite well really.
Shame
One final matter, as we pulled out of Ponta Delgado the Finnish Captain said that due to severe storms in certain parts of the
Sunday, November 07, 2010
6th November- A day all at sea
We thought when waking this morning we would most likely have a quiet’ish day after walking a long way yesterday, only we was wrong.
The weather is still quite nice and although rain was forecast it did not appear and the sun was quite bright when we had breakfast this morning on the aft deck. The rest of the morning Noel spent going through his now several hundred photographs to make them ready for the web for when we can reach an internet connection and Jennifer was deep in her book.
A light lunch was followed by more time reading and Ipod music then a good mile and half fast walk on the deck to get the blood moving to get ready for our dinner in the Orchid Chinese Restaurant. The dinner was pretty good and the style was mostly Northern Chinese style but being served by Indian and Philipino waiters and with Japanese chop sticks and no stick rests it wasn’t quite right and even the Jasmine tea was tea bag style, Oh for Hong Kong!!!
Following dinner we went up to the Spinnaker lounge at the front of the ship, we though, to have a quiet sit down, meditate and let the dinner go down only there was a ‘Newly Wed Show’ hosted by, you guessed it, Goodmorning Laideese and genelemen Cruise Director. It is supposed to be a quiz where you ask couples who are married the same question to see if they answer the same. So here is the twist, when they were looking for a very newly married couple a guy put his hand up and said they had been married for only 27 days and so the hostess asked them to come to the floor. It was then that everybody discovered that it was a male gay marriage. This seemed to temporarily throw Miss Cruise Director for a minute. They were pitched against another two couples with the questions getting more personal as time went on, Ummm, not sure about this.
When this was finished the Philippine band started up and they seemed a bit off key and so we left there intending to go to the Bliss lounge but the second house of the show was just starting in the amphitheatre and so we went to that instead. Twelve boys and girls dancing and singing along to old numbers from a past age and they were not bad, but the band was very good indeed and it’s a shame they don’t seem to perform anywhere else on the boat. So they perhaps do three hours every other night, tough life really.
Back to the cabin and pleased to find a note that they will be showing the Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix on TV tomorrow at 3pm and so it looks like we may have a shortened visit to Ponta Delgado which is on a Portugese Island several hours off the coast of Portugal in the middle of nowhere, good place to leave the wife.
Let’s hope there is an internet café shop somewhere as we had no luck in
PHOTOS WILL BE ADDED WHEN WE GET A FAST CONNECTION
5th November- This time it’s Lisbon Portugal
We were looking forward to visiting
As the passengers alighted from the ship they were greeted by, of all things, a red duck type bird played by a Christian Ronaldo look alike. When you have 2000 passengers arriving in a country which is known to have some minor financial difficulties you would think that the Mayor or somebody would come to entice the passengers to spend their US Dollars in his town, but no.
We decided not to take the hop on and off bus today for a change as we wanted to walk to the centre of town so as to get the feel of the place. And did we get the feel of the place, this City has serious problems of graffiti everywhere, dirty streets, very old unkempt housing and in the main areas too many beggars and people trying to sell you sun glasses and watches, to you cheap ay?.
There were so many police around you had to guess why as in the Starbucks Loo
is this large sign saying watch your bags etc,
Why Starbucks you say, quite frankly most of the cafes and so called restaurants looked dirty and they lined the street with cars and buses rushing past and kicking up dust. We thought that the pavements in Weybridge were bad but these were terrible and most of the time you had to walk looking down to avoid tripping over or falling down a big hole.
Anyway we toured around for quite a while and both formed the opinion that it’s not a nice place to visit. It could be if the Government and the people had pride in their city and at least kept it clean. They are poor neighbours to
The sun was shining and the temperature was about 23 degrees and by
We arrived back at the ship around
At dinner they had a large roasted pig, which unfortunately took up quite a bit of space on our table but was very enjoyable indeed. We went up to the Star Bar to listen to the classical string quartet which we now think are Russian, possibly spies we also think, but they played well and with a varied repertoire of music.
During the last few days we have noticed that people seem to spend an inordinate amount of time at the bar and we hate to think what their bar bills might be. A glass of wine is USD 6.25 plus 15% service and a reasonable bottle of red is somewhere between USD 26/28 plus 15% whilst the cost of whisky and brandy etc is not cheap at all. I am not sure if their liver suffers more than their wallet?
We are now on the open sea going to the
One last comment about Lisbon, I have just read the blurb about the City and it would appear that even the Portuguese Royal Family don’t like it here as they live some miles away in a town called Sintra. That tells you something doesn’t it.