We’ve gone ‘full circle’ and arrived at Southampton this morning. We left our checked luggage outside the door last night, and all 3,000 (and more) of us will be taken to the airport, or just to London. Believe it or not, there is a number of people just staying put on the ship – they are going on another cruise, on the same ship ! This ship goes up to Norway as well, so that might be the one that they are on. So there is a busride to the airport, and then our flight will leave Heathrow early afternoon and get us back to Seattle about the same time on Thursday.
It was a long day, but interesting to see the Normandy beaches made famous by the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. Our tour guide was Amelié (a very French name, and she spoke with a very French accent). Our first stop was at the village of Arromanche, where the temporary harbour and vehicle landing strips were built. The British landed there. Then we stopped at the large American Normandy Cemetery and Memorial that overlooks Omaha beach. It’s actually American property, given to the USA by the French government. Then we made a stop down at the Omaha beach and one more at Utah beach. We had one World War II veteran in the group (you have to be say, 85 or older if you were a young man at the end of the war).
So .. the voyage around the British Isles is coming to an end! Tonight it’s packing up, and off to Southampton and directly to Heathrow airport from there for the flight back to Seattle.
We are sailing out of the port of Le Havre. The captain sounded the cruise ship’s horn three times, each long and extended. On the breakwater, below the black and white smokestack, there was a group of people waving at us (at me?) .. it made me smile, and I waved back with both arms.This figure is “Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves” by Donald DeLue, 1949. The inscription on the arch reads ‘This embattled shore, portal of freedom, is forever hallowed by the ideals, the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen’. There is a group of touring school kids in front of the memorial. The park ranger played a recording of the Star-Spangled Banner in a simply chime seemed very fitting, and then she called for a minute of silence.This gravestone made me teary-eyed .. it has no name on like the others and simply says ‘Here rests in honoured glory a comrade in arms known but to God’.This is Utah beach where some of the Americans made their entry for D-Day. The inset picture is of a bunker on the top of the cliff. Maybe the landscape looked a little different in 1944; the cliffs here look very hard to scale by foot or with equipment !The beach at Arromanche. So this is Gold Beach where the British forces made their landing for D-Day.Here is a map (it was actually my lunch plate’s mat at the Hotel Normandy) that shows the beaches used for the Normandy landings. The left inset is the cover of a graphic documentary book of the events from the museum store. The inset on the right shows a window from a restaurant in Arromanche; ‘Welcome to our Liberators’ says the text.
At this position in the English Channel (about 8 pm on Tue night) we’re positioned on top of the Chunnel, which runs from Calais in France to Folkstone in England.The string quartet down below in the main lobby of the ship is playing music, seemingly oblivious of the balloons above them. I think the balloons will be let down later tonight as a final hurrah. Tomorrow night (Wed) is all about packing up and getting ready to disembark very early Thursday morning.
We’re in the English Channel, or shall I simply say The Channel, so as not to offend the French too much who may equally claim the name to be La Manche. (The French term has been in use for a longer time than the English one, actually). We’re heading toward the port of Le Havre in the north of France. I’m signed up for a long bus ride to Omaha Beach where the famous Normandy landings in World War II happened.
We arrived in Edinburgh on Monday morning, but (somewhat shockingly) there was no dockside to moor at. Part of the problem is that the 18 storey tall cruise ship could not pass under the Fourth River Bridge, an engineering marvel of stone pillars and steel trusses that was constructed in the 1890s. So the tender boats got us to shore for our excursion to Edinburgh castle, the city of Edinburgh and the royal Brittania yacht (Queen Elizabeth’s yacht for state visits, commissioned in 1954 and only retired in 1997).
It was a gorgeous sunny day, the best so far this year, said the locals, and the Edinburgh castle was crowded. We filed into the castle’s museum to see the Scottish crown jewels : not as impressive as the ones in the Tower of London! a crown with gold and pearls and some diamonds (I think), and a big square stone called the Stone of Destiny. (It played a central role in the crowning of several Scottish kings and at times, have been lost for many decades in the mists of time and legend).
I would have loved to see more of the city. The city has lots of grreenerry (imitating our guide’s Scottish accent), and the very modern building housing the Museum of Scotland that was designed by a Spaniard was not on our list to do.
Monday night we set sail for Le Havre on the French coast, but we will need a day of sea in the North Sea to get us there.
Here a view of the Royal Brittania yacht, Queen Elizabeth II’s vessel used for state visits during 1954 until 1997 when the ship was decommissioned.This gorgeous building is on the Royal Mile, the street that runs down from the Edinburgh castle to downtown Edinburgh.Here’s the Fourth Bridge that carries traffic and rail over the estuary of the Fourth river.
This is the upscale Jenner department store on Princes Street. We made a dash for it right before we were due back on the bus, Wait! I said on the third floor : I have to buy a piece of china. Is this Scottish? I asked the saleslady, of a Royal Dalton coffee mug. ‘No, but you can say it is’ came the reply. Good enough, I had just about £6 left, and it was well spent on a ‘Scottish’ porcelain mug. And of course that is a Scotsman with a kilt, lifting up a shortbread cookie.An inside view of the Edinburgh castle. The tourists are all lining up to go into the castle’s museum. The figures in the inset pictures are from the museum store. The axe-man is the scariest, no doubt.Upper : We’re on our way back to the ship, with a game of cricket at a school in the foreground and the Edinburgh skyline in the background. Look for the imposing Edinburgh castle on a hilltop overlooking the city. There are several private ‘colleges’ (high schools) in Edinburgh. Enrollment typically runs at £22.000 per year. Lower : The main entrance to Edinbugh castle.
This is 10.10 pm at Saturday night and we are at about 58°N 3°E. The sun is just setting over a cliff north and west of us (the sun here sets north west, not west). We are having a post-dinner cocktail in the Skywalker lounge on the uppermost deck aft of the ship (the colored dots are reflections in the window). The sun would come up again just 6 hours later.Here is Dunrobin castle viewed from its garden. The castle itself was built in the 1300s, but the French garden was laid out much later, in 1850. The bird in the inset is a golden eagle from the falconry, one of several birds of prey there tethered to their perches, but hopefully they are all taken good care of. They seem to be. The daisies are from the garden.(Right) Scotsman Andy Murray appeared on the cover of the Sunday Mail even before his victory this afternoon in the Wimbledon final; that is the Scottish flag on his ‘superman’ chest. (Left) This is a comic strip book I bought at a grocery store here. ‘Oor Wullie’ is as far as I can tell ‘Our Willie’ with a Scottish accent. It’s a collection of comic strips that appear in the Sunday post. In one episode he appears on TV as a prank and the heading o f the cartoon reads ‘Pa isnae pleased to see that wee mannie on TV’.
Invergordon is where we moored on Sunday morning. The sky was blue and the air was crisp: a beautiful day on the Scottish highland. We went out to Dunrobin castle near the village of Golspie, about an hour from Invergordon. We made a little detour through the village of Tain. (I would have loved to go to Loch Ness nearby to check out the ‘home’ of the Loch Ness monster, but there is only so much to fit into one day at the shore).
My cellphone picked up enough signals to show our position at sea. This is around noon on Saturday.The main picture is from the stern earlier today when we walked around the ship on the promenade deck. The wind was blowing steadily across the bow (information from our stateroom’s closed-circuit TV). The sea conditions changed from ‘slight’ most of the previous days, to ‘moderate’ today. We could feel the ship roll last night.
We’re making our way up around the northern part of the British Isles. It’s all Scotland here, and our next port- of-call is Invergordon. To get there we have to go all the way around the north and then east and south, some 500 miles from where we left Greenock port (Glasgow area) on Friday night. It’s been blustery and raining most of the day, and we’ve seen some rocky outcroppings in the sea, and some coastline on and off during the day when the rain and fogginess allowed.
The Culzean castle is south of Ayr, right on the coast.Castles feature even on British summer lollies.
We docked at Greenock port in the Glasgow area on Friday morning. After breakfast we took the bus out to Culzean Castle, about an 1 ½ hr drive to the south from Glasgow. The castle is much more recent : 19th century, and furnished inside. No pictures allowed inside, though. On the way back we stopped at the town of Ayr to check out the scenery, the shopping and the Scots. We have a day at sea on Saturday. We have to make it down and up all the way toward the northern coast of the British Isles to reach Inverness for the next stop.
Here’s Culzean Castle’s main view. Insets : Scottish shortbread cookie from the restaurant; Scottish terriers on a tea cloth, and a Scottish thistle from the garden at the castle.
We stopped in Belfast on Thu Jul 4, and are heading over to Glasgow, Scotland for Fri Jul 5.
We steamed into Belfast harbor this morning. After breakfast, we took a bus into the city for a tour, starting at the Belfast City Hall on Donegall Square. A young red-haired Irishman called Liam took us through the main lobby, the chambers and the dining hall. The city officially became the capital of Northern Ireland in 1921.
After walking around a few blocks we stopped at McHughes’s pub, established 1711 said the front sign. I had a Harp lager. The harp is one of Ireland’s national symbols, maybe more so than the (sometimes silly) three leaf clover. After that the official excursion was done, and we were left to our own devices to walk around the city. Besides the very old buildings that survived World War II and ‘The Troubles’ (the ethno-nationalist conflict that reached its bloodiest year in 1972), there is not a whole lot of eye-catching architecture to be seen, to be honest. Many of the buildings are plain, utilitarian, some downright ugly. There is not a lot of car traffic in the city; lots of buses, though. To be fair, it is not a city on a par with Dublin or Liverpool as far as size goes. Belfast’s population is only about 280,000; all of North Ireland’s population at about 1.8 million.
P.S. Happy Fourth of July to my American readers! The cruise ship seemed to roll out all its red-white-and-blue decorations that it had, and put up a display of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Statue of Liberty, and painted portraits of prominent US presidents. They blasted out Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ from 1985 over the closed circuit TV in the staterooms this morning. If I can say : it’s not the best Fourth of July song. Springsteen’s point with the song was that in spite of being born in the USA, many people (and especially war veterans) are having a very tough time these days.
The Grand Opera house, downtown Belfast, is gorgeous.Main picture : Belfast City Hall. Clockwise from top left : Gerry Adams of political party Sinn Fein (‘ourselves’ or ‘we ourselves’); Belfast logo seen in the city; the inside of the city hall dome; my Harp lager from the pub; beautiful stained window from inside City Hall.
We arrived in Liverpool this morning, and set out for Conway (Welsh: Conwy) castle in north Wales out after breakfast. I was thrilled to get to see some of Wales, since I have family connections on my mom’s side that come from Wales. The castle was built by King Edward I circa 1283 (!) and gives a good impression of what a real castle looked like. The castle had many rooms, some with fireplaces, the walls covered with tapestries for additional insulation, some very deep wells, kitchen, dining room, even a retreat for the king when he tired of his rowdy guests. After Conway the bus driver took us to a village called Betws-y-Coed (that’s Welsh, English for Chapel-in-the-Woods) for lunch. Then we went a little further south across the moors of Wales with the landscape dotted with sheep, and back up to Liverpool. There was still time to walk around Albert Dock, check out its nice new Maritime Museum and the Museum of Liverpool (which of course featured The Beatles, and the two English Premier League soccer teams of Liverpool and Everton).
P.S. I made a photo collage of some of the day’s highlights so that I have to upload only one picture. I hope it gives an impression of the day. The ship’s satellite internet connection is very expensive and very temperamental !
Main Picture : the view from one of the upper walls down into Conway Castle. Inset pictures clockwise from top left : a Liverpooler welcoming us as we stepped onto Albert Dock on the waterfront; a stamp with the Welsh dragon that I bought at the post office (where I heard Welsh being spoken); The Knight Shop is by the castle and sells beautiful decorative swords for £200; the Welsh dragon on a tour bus; ‘No dogs’ look very strange written in Welsh!; a Scottish black-face sheep on a mug; my souvenir coaster saying Wales / Cymru (Welsh); look for Liverpool on the left of my picture – the blue arrow points to Conway on the coast of north Wales.
We arrived at the port of Dublin early morning. The cruise ship had to be navigated into a narrow passageway to the harbour, and then manoeuvred around by almost 180 degrees to berth it for its departure Tuesday night. Our excursion for the day took us to an estate and garden called Powerscourt in the southern outskirts of the city for the morning, and then we were brought back to downtown Dublin and left to our own devices to find a pub for lunch, take in the scenery and do some shopping. It was raining on and off, but we still managed a good amount of walking around between the rain showers. I was impressed with the mix of old and new buildings. The commercial property development on the north side of the river came to an abrupt halt with the 2008 financial crises, however. Several new buildings are sitting idle and waiting for tenants. We are sailing across the Celtic Sea to the United Kingdom for an arrival at Liverpool on Wednesday.
These cute characters are artwork at a waterfront property. There are several new commercial properties, but look in the background for the ‘Offices to Let’ sign. Several of them are empty and looking for tenants.Here’s my Dublin souvenir : a mini paperweight with a three-leaf clover. It’s actually a gift meant for Irish people that have returned to the country for ‘The 2013 Gathering’ : an effort by the authorities and tourism office to lure back emigrants to come and visit and maybe even stay permanently. After 2008’s financial crisis there has been a net loss of young people every year again for the country.This is a red brick building that still stands and has surely seen many tenants over a century or two. I did not make a note of the street, but it is in downtown Dublin.It’s raining, but we can still check out the beautiful 18th century brick buildings with their brightly painted doors and window decorations from where we sit in the bus. This is downtown Dublin.The Samuel Beckett bridge over the river Liffey that runs through the city opened in 2009 and can rotate out of the way to let ships through. It is designed to look resemble a harp, one of Ireland’s national symbols.
This is early Monday morning. We are arriving at the little port town of Cobh.We are sitting on a bench in the upper garden of the castle in the town of Lismore. The brilliant red roses behind us smelled like only roses can.
Early on Monday morning, our cruise ship made its way into the little port town of Cobh (pronounce ‘Cove’, the Gaelic name does not have a ‘v’) this morning. Cobh was the most important point of emigration for Ireland right into the 1960’s, and the last port of call for the ill-fated Titanic in 1912. Cork is not far away, but the excursion that we selected for the day took us elsewhere. A big coach bus took us via the M8 motorway (freeway) to the town of Cashel to visit the ‘Rock of Cashel’, a combination castle-cathedral. Maurín (‘Maureen’) told us all about the surroundings and some Irish history on the way. We were served us a hearty lunch of vegetable soup, boiled potato, diced carrots and chicken, and then we took a winding road back to the cruise ship with stops at the towns of Lismore, Midleton. I would say the stop at Lismore and its garden was the highlight of the day.
I had a Guinness for lunch. Dark (from the roasted barley it is made of) with a thin creamy head.This is on the way to Cashel, on the M8 motorway. Plenty of meadows with cows on the roadside. The road signs are in English and Gaelic.This is the graveyard at the back of the Rock of Cashel.A view of the castle at Lismore, from the lower garden.
We left our checked luggage outside the door last night, and all 3,000 (and more) of us will be taken to the airport, or just to London. Believe it or not, there is a number of people just staying put on the ship – they are going on another cruise, on the same ship ! This ship goes up to Norway as well, so that might be the one that they are on. So there is a busride to the airport, and then our flight will leave Heathrow early afternoon and get us back to Seattle about the same time on Thursday.
