White Cliffs of Dover

The next day we head for Dover and the Carnival Legend. The weather was overcast and during the day the fog rolled in ad then rolled back out. At times we could not even see the White Cliffs of Dover. Here are a couple of pictures, but they really do not do the White Cliffs of Dover justice.

 

I am a little behind, because I have caught a cold. Between the cold and grading homework, my blog has suffered. We have already visited Copenhagen and Berlin. More about these later.

For now, I must be off!

London, England

We are off again and fly to London Heathrow airport, to catch the Carnival Legend out of Dover. Our oldest son and family are with us on this cruise.

They have arranged for a tour from an individual tour operator. He is one of six licensed tour operators and taxi drivers. We plan a trip to Stonehenge that morning.

Rexie and I have not been to Stonehenge for about 30 years. Guess what? The stones are still standing.

The next day was the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year) and they were expecting over 20,000 people to watch the sunrise. I am glad we visited when we did.

I took this shot of one of the local bobbie standing in front of the stones. Sort of the old meets the older.

Here is my son’s family as they listen to the narration of the history of Stonehenge. Rexie is still getting over her broken ankle and is saving her walking for when it is important.

As I am walking back to the van, I found this picture of a castle…

…on the side of a bus. Really different.

One of the changes we were told about is that they are going to move the highway that is next to the stones, Actually, the road bisects the entrance way to the circle from the Salisbury plains. Once the highway is removed, then they will have a visitor’s center a mile away. There, people will ride an underground electric train to the stones. As they come up from the underground, they will be able to see what Stonehenge looks like in the natural surroundings without the interference of modern technology. I can’t wait to come back in a couple of years and see how it all looks.

Next, time to check into our hotel. As we get to our hotel and ride in the elevator to our room, I spot something very different in the “lifts” in London.  If you look close, you will see that they have a negative 1 floor. Never in my life have I ever seen this in an elevator. Just goes to show that even the most insignificant thing can keep me entertained for hours.

Next we head out to get something to eat and to ride the Eye. The Eye is only a two minute walk from our hotel and we found a nice restaurant for our evening meal.

We purchase our tickets and have our pictures taken against a green screen. This is the result.

As we stand in line for our adventure, a take some shots of the Eye. As we stand underneath, you just then begin to realize how tall this “bicycle wheel” actually is. It is way up there.

As we get ever higher, Rexie (who hates heights) gets into it. There is very little swaying and the pod moves ever so slowly.

As we look over London, one of the neatest sights we see is parliament and Big Ben.

As we cross the top and begin moving down the other side, I took this picture of Rexie actually enjoying the experience with Big Ben in the background. Notice the smile.

Here is what one of the pods looks like. It can hold up to 30 people, but we only had about 15 in ours.

As we get off the eye, we find that we were some of the last people to ride the Eye that evening. They turn on their lights and finish unloading the rest of the patrons.

As we go high above London, we are able to see the sun setting over the city. Here are some shots of Sunset over London. (If you have been reading my blog very long, you know I love to take pictures of sunsets).

The next day we head to Dover to board the Carnival Legend.

I must be off!

The Victory Officers and Crew

Once again, Chef Vivek had crème brulee for us for dinner last night. It was fabulous.

We get off on Saturday. This has been a short cruise compared to others we have taken. So many crew members never get recognition even though they work extremely hard. This post is dedicated to those people that make our cruises great.

The officers of the ship have been fantastic. They always say hello when we pass on the decks and we have enjoyed spending several minutes talking with many of them. Besides the officers, there are several different crew members we want to recognize.

Obviously, our room steward, Jean Claude, is one of these people. He has been keeping the towel animals in the room and it looks like we have a zoo of towel animals growing. He works so hard and has taken care of our room so well.

Another group is the dining room staff. Our wait staff, Mario, I Putu, and Milos have been terrific. They moved to a different location for the second cruise and we asked to follow them. They have taken care of our every request at Dinner and always have a nice word for us. In addition, Myra has waited on us during breakfast many times and even says Hi when we see her on the Lido deck.

We have gotten to know the dining room hosts extremely well. Since Rexie has been in a wheelchair most of the time, they have looked out for us and always seated us in a convenient location. Aphinya was the first host we met as she was also the wedding planner the first week for the wedding. Then Jennifer and Divie began helping us. We spent many moments talking with all three of these lovely ladies.

This is Aphinya. This picture was taken at my Son's wedding. It was such a great picture that I wanted to share it.

We have met a couple of bar staff that have taken care of us for cokes drinks, etc. Komang took care of us the first week at dinner. He always had my diet coke waiting for me and sometimes gave it to me when we were waiting to get into the dining room. I never had to ask for a refill. An amazing person. I wish he had stayed with us the second cruise. However, two more wait staff have provided us excellent service, Nichima and Edwin. They always spot me and have a diet coke ready for me when I sit down. I don’t even have to tell them what I want. Nichima works in the show hall and the lobby lounge. Edwin was always at breakfast and the Punchliner comedy club. These three have been special people for us.

There is one last person I want to recognize. Krishia works in housekeeping and keeps the aft Promenade deck (5^th floor) spotless. We have never found her taking it easy. Without a doubt, she has to be the hardest worker on the ship. She always says hello when we pass. This is one person that many people would not even notice, but we see her continually and commend her for her work ethic and dedication to doing her job.

While I have mentioned these people, their attitude of customer service is not unique on this ship. Every crew member is an asset and in this short length of time we have been here, we have grown to love this ship and her crew.

Bahamas Cruise

We are off again. This time, we are doing back-to-back in the Bahamas.

The primary reason for the cruise was that our youngest son got married on the Beach at Half Moon Cay. It was a beautiful ceremony with the gorgeous water and the Carnival Victory in the background.

Our son and family left after the first cruise, but we decided to stay on because that made Rexie Diamond status.

We were treated as we expected from Carnival, fantastic. However, this second cruise has been amazing. I can’t imagine it is just because we are Diamond, but maybe because we are just great people. J

We have talked with so many of the crew this cruise and they have been so nice to us. Even the Captain allowed my son and family to visit the bridge as we left Nassau. What a treat for them. We know from past experience that taking the Behind the Fun Tour they are very security conscious and allowed our family to take pictures even though they are normally not allowed.

As we were the only guests onboard the ship between cruises, we had a chance to talk with the Head Chef for a few minutes. Once Chef ViVek found we were doing back-to-backs, he asked us if there was anything that we didn’t get on the menus because he didn’t want us to be bored with the food. We personally think that there are plenty of options, but Rexie mentioned that since this was only a five day cruise, that crème brulee was not on the menu. The chef said he would fix it for us and asked if we had ever had it with hazelnut.  He then asked if we wanted filet mingon some evening. I told him that Rexie was the steak person and she said yes immediately.

Well, the first night we had the crème brulee with hazelnut. It was the BEST (ABSOLUTE THE BEST) we ever had. The Chef then stopped by later and asked Rexie how she wanted her steak the next night.

The next night the chef sent her the fillet mingon for dinner. I am not really a steak person, but even I thought it looked fabulous. We then found a plate of strawberries and desserts in our cabin from the Chef. Not sure how we became such good friends.

The third night we thought we were done with the Chef’s gifts. Upon ordering dessert, Mario our waiter said that the Chef had a special dessert for us.  He sent us another crème brulee. WOW!

So, we can’t wait for tonight to see what the Chef has planned for us.

We are sitting on deck watching the tenders go to Half Moon Cay. They are really rocking as we have high winds and an overcast sky. The Captain mentioned that he thought the weather would be like this or worse the whole week. Yesterday we had rain and may have some today. It was good that the wedding was last week as it would be a real bummer if it was today.

More on our Chef surprises later...

I must be off!

Puerto Quertzal, Guatemala

We made it to Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. They really wanted us there as they had two signs welcoming us.

Again, no excursion because of the lack of handicap vehicles available. Since the port was not near the city, we just went into the port to look around.

As we walk off the pier, we are welcomed with a xylophone band playing some lively tunes. 

As we walk around the little shops that have been set up, we see the same type of homemade products.

At one stand, a young lady was actually loom weaving. Talk about tedious work. 

As we go back to the ship, I realize that we have scrapped the heck out of the sides of the ship as we went through the Panama Canal. Apparently, both sides need some paint now.

This shot was taken at about 5:00 pm. All passengers were to be back on board by 4:30pm, but many of the tour buses were late. There were still 5 more buses that came in between 5:00pm and 5:15pm. We heard that they had at least three different buses break down during the day.

At about 5:40pm, we had everyone on board except for two people who missed the ship. We sailed without them. From what I hear, it is not easy to get out of Puerto Quetzal as it is about 2 hours from Guatemala City. I bet they had a bad day. I never did hear if they met us in Cabo San Lucas or not.

Another port and another day closer to Long Beach.

I must be off.