Well, I'm
back, in more ways than one. In late April, we took a cruise around Hawaii on
Norwegian's Pride of America. I took notes so I could tell you all about it.
Before I could get those blogs written, we had a car accident that broke my
right arm. No typing for me for several weeks. In the meantime, late in May, we
flew to London to catch a cruise up through Scotland and the fjords of Norway.
Even a broken arm couldn't keep me from that, but I didn't get any notes taken.
And I already find my fond memories of these countries getting muddled in my
mind, so I'm going to take these trips out of order and type/post the blog on
Scotland/Norway before I go back and do the ones about Hawaii. Yes, I can type
again!
The trip
to get to the cruise ship was full of stress and worry, but that seems to be
par for the course whenever we have to fly to the ship's port. We drove to the
airport, parked our car, took the shuttle the rest of the way, checked our bag,
got our boarding passes, got through TSA... That was a chore! If I went through
the normal metal detector, my artificial knees would set it off, and I couldn't
raise my right arm to go through the round metal detector. So they sent me
through the normal detector, and then I got a thorough pat-down before we could
go on to our gate.
By the
way, TSA is now posting how long it will take you to get through the line, but
that's just to get past the agent who studies your passport and boarding pass.
You still have to get through the metal and explosives detectors.
Okay, the
pat-down was done, and we went on to our gate, where we caught our flight to
Montreal. Once there, we caught our over-night flight to London, where I had
booked a night at one of the airport hotels. First, we wanted to recover from
the flight, since we don't sleep well while flying. But also, we had to catch a
shuttle from Heathrow to the Southhampton docks. Second, the shuttles picked
people up between 9:45 and 10:45 am, but because we got in at 9:30 am, I wasn't
sure we could collect our luggage and find our way to Terminal 4 by 10:45. We
didn't, so it was a good thing I had booked our shuttle for the following day.
After
walking what seemed like miles in Heathrow, we gathered our luggage, asked
questions, had to go outside, take an elevator down to the underground level,
walk long miles to get to the ticket station, take an elevator, get on the
underground to Terminal 4, get off and take an elevator up. Luckily, just
outside that elevator was a door with a sign that said, "To Terminal 4
hotels", so that wasn't hard to find. We walked a few more miles to get to
the entrance to our hotel.
It was too
early to check in, but we did go to the cafe and grab some lunch. By then, they
had our room ready, so we went up and when we got to our room, we closed the
curtains and took a nap. Later, Hubby wanted to go and search for the place
where the shuttle would pick us up, so we walked another mile or so to find the
Hilton. Having found it, we went back to our hotel, had supper and settled in
for the night.
The
shuttle was supposed to pick us up at about 10:45. We got there about 9:30 and
tried to pass the time by watching other people get picked up by their rides.
Probably a bad idea, as by 10:30, Hubby was positive we had missed our ride.
Finally, we gathered all our stuff and moved outside (It was chilly and windy.)
Our shuttle finally arrived about 10:55, having picked other people up in
downtown London before it came to get us. At least that gave Hubby people to
talk to during the 1.5 hr trip to the ship, so he got a chance to calm down.
The trip
started out a lot chillier than we expected. Our first full day on the ship,
during which we were headed for Edinburgh, Hubby made the comment, "I
think I'm coming down with a cold." And of course he did.
We had a
shore excursion scheduled for every day except the last, because the ship
wasn't getting into Tromso (Norway) until 7 pm. And we had to get up at 4 am to
get to the airport. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The shore
excursions were lots of fun. The first week or so, I was super protective of my
broken arm, constantly worried it would get bumped too hard, or I would fall
and do more damage. So I enjoyed the bus drives, looking out the windows, but I
was too afraid to get off and explore Edinburgh Castle, because they said it
was crowded and we'd be walking on cobblestones. Eventually, I did become more
relaxed about my arm.
I did
fall, a couple of times, but did no damage to my arm. Once when I was trying to
climb onto an antique street car. The steps were really steep, especially the
top one, and the tour guide was acting as my handhold, but the step was too
deep, and I went down onto my right knee. It took both the tour guide and Hubby
to get me back on my feet so I could find a seat. But no bleeding, so I was
fine. The 2nd time was in Dublin, but I'll get to that later.
The
Sheffield Islands (Scotland) have stone rings similar to Stonehenge. The
Shetland Islands (also Scotland) have Shetland ponies, and I think that's where
we saw an archeological site of a Neolithic village on the beach. The homes
were built of stone slabs, and the furniture was made of stone, too. Plus
assorted furs for the beds. I got off the bus for that and walked to the site,
walked all around it. There was a Laird's house not far away that was open as a
museum, but as slow as I walk, I didn't figure I had time to go there, so I
went back to the bus. This was the place where the tour guide lost one of our
group. The guide had said to get back to the bus by 11, and everybody had
except one. After looking for her for 10 minutes, the guide made arrangements
for the other buses to keep an eye open for her, and then we left. A little
ways down the road, she announced that one of the other buses had collected the
wayward woman and she was safe.
Norway's
fjords are beautiful. The mountains are beautiful. At that time of year (early
June), the snows are melting, and the waterfalls and rivers are raging, which
is more interesting to see that 'stately and sedate'. The daily high was always
predicted to be 52F, but at least one day, it got up around 60F, so you never
quite knew if you would need a jacket or not. We had a great time, except for
John's cold.
Now,
remember how I said the trip there was stressful and worrisome? The trip back
was much much worse. We got up at 4am and went to the buffet for a continental
breakfast, which consisted of not much. We were supposed to meet at the Aqua
lounge at 5am, and at 5:30, they would take us out to the shuttle. We got to
the Aqua about 5:05, and they were already hurrying people out. There were 2
shuttles, and both of them were packed full. The one we got had no luggage
capacity, so our carryon had to ride inside with us.
We got
through Norway's TSA okay, which led us to Gate 32. There weren't enough chairs
in the gate lobby for everybody to sit down, so they brought in folding chairs.
The plane was supposed to take off at 8:35am. That's when the flight crew for
the charter flight arrived, however, so it was more like 10am before the plane
took off. Naturally, it got into Dublin late, and then, the luggage took over
an hour to arrive at the carousel. Consequently, by the time we had our luggage
collected, we had missed our flight to Philly. We trudged our way to the
American Airlines ticket counter to see what could be done. Us and about 100
other people who had been on that charter flight.
Luckily,
there was a cruise line representative there to help us with this problem! Over
the course of several hours, he saw that we all got booked on the next day's
flight, gave us bottles of water, sent us to the food court to grab some supper
(and keep the receipts!), got us all booked into various hotels for the night,
and arranged shuttles to get us to those hotels. It involved a lot more walking
to get to the shuttle, which was parked 3 or 4 blocks away... felt like a lot
more than that.
And now,
the time I fell in Dublin; It was while I was getting off that shuttle at the
hotel. I was on the stairs to exit, and somehow I lost my balance. I fell
backwards, against my hubby, who staggered, but didn't let me hit my head on
the driver's seat. So, no damage done, I got back up and got off the bus, and
we chatted with the driver for a moment, then went inside. Very nice hotel, but
we were exhausted and went to bed about 7pm.
In
comparison, the following day was a breeze, but it had its snags. We were
concerned when the shuttle didn't pick us up until 10:30am. We'd been thinking
we would need 4 hours to get through the airport, and the plane took off at
1:55 pm. I needed help getting through the automatic kiosk, but it seemed a lot
faster than going through the regular line. Then the kiosk printed out only one
piece of paper, which said, "You have been selected for a Traveler's Survey".
My helper told me to take it up to the bag check window, and they would help
me. The survey was apparently only 1 or 2 questions, but the guy's machine
didn't want to read our passports, so he had to enter the information manually.
Finally, we got our boarding passes and could head for our gate, except we
didn't know what gate!
We got
through Ireland's TSA, complete with pat-down for me. Then we had to go through
the US TSA, only when we found it, they sent us through a line that didn't have
anybody manning it, which was worrisome as well as a relief. Then we walked and
walked and walked until we finally found our gate, where we could sit down for
20-30 minutes. The flight was full, of course, with all those left-overs from
the day before. Hubby and I weren't sitting anywhere close to each other. And
the entertainment wasn't working. I slept for about 1.5 hrs, and hubby read his
book.
We got to
Philly and found our next gate. We had about 3 hours to wait. Eventually, we
boarded that plane and started the last leg of our journey, to Orlando. The
plane would touch down about 10:05pm.
In
Orlando, we gathered our luggage and said good-bye to the shipmates who had
made the entire trip with us. We found the pick-up location for the parking lot's
shuttle, and called to let them know we were ready. This was about 10:55 pm. We
saw lots of shuttles come and go, but not ours. At 11:20, we called them again.
And several times after that, but they either didn't answer or hung up on us.
Finally, about midnight, our shuttle arrived and was packed solid in no time.
The driver was smiling and upbeat, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. And
when I went to the office to pay for the extra day that we were stuck in
Dublin, they didn't charge me $7, like for a full day; they charged me $10!
Anyway, we
drove home, and got here about 2am on Wednesday. Here it is Sunday, and we're
still recovering.
We really
like cruising. It's the flying back and forth that drives us crazy.
