2025 Canary Islands & Bermuda Cruise

 Today we reached the last port on this cruise:  West End, Bermuda.  This port was the one of the reasons that we booked this cruise along with the Canary Islands. The Sky Princess came alongside the wharf and we were cleared to leave the ship just after 9am.  For this port we had an accompanying tugboat because of the gusty winds.  Those winds continued throughout the day.  However, it was nicely warm with temperatures being just over 70°. Based upon my research, I had determined that due to our short port stop time, it would not be possible to see much more of the island than the area around the port area unless one wanted the travel around like a chicken with its head cut off.  So after breakfast we gathered our things and scanned off the ship and walked to the nearby National Museum of Bermuda. After crossing the real moat, the entry fee for seniors to this museum was $15 for seniors and $18 for those under 65.  The museum is housed on the gro...

 Today was our final sea day.  The seas calmed substantially overnight and it got warmer outside.  Once again we allowed the light to wake us up around 8am.  After a nice breakfast, Veni gave a nice lecture on Frozen History about Pompeii, Herculaneum, the galleon in Vasa, and other objects frozen in time. William Kramer gave his  space talk on Learning to Live in Space which was about training facilities on earth used to train astronauts. We had an amazing lunch with another guest that we had met last week.  I'll call her S to guard her privacy. She was born in Taiwan, educated in the western United States, has written a historical novel in Chinese, and has just completed another novel concerning a historical event involving England and China.  It's in final editing.  We chatted about writing, history, cruising, and more.  It was fun conversation.  We got so wrapped up in this conversation that I missed the first contestant on Deal or N...

 As seems to be typical on these long trans oceanic cruises, more and more activities are packed into each day.  And today was a prime example.  We allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit before getting some breakfast.  Our first event was the "Meet the Captain" event in the Princess Theater.  This was a one on one interview between Matt, our cruise director, and Captain Tony Draper. Captain Draper is a life long mariner who initially had an interest in being a pilot.  He's been at seas for 40 years, a Captain for 20 and met his wife on a cruise ship.  He's got an engaging personality and I love hearing his voice when he gives the noon position and weather announcement.  This was followed in the next hour by a canned presentation by Matt about what it's like to be a crew member at sea.  It was very interesting and we've seen this presentation several times previously, but he added lots of personal details to flesh out the talk. We had time for a ...

 Our westward journey continued under very cloudy skies today.  Angela was up early to go to the interdenominational Bible study which she liked.  Maybe I'll try it tomorrow.  After my breakfast, my first event at 10am was a Behind the Seas interview with Matt, our CD,  interviewing the Guest Services Team.  It was a light hearted interview  It was followed by William Kramer's space talk on Creating Homo Space-iens or how humans get along in space.  We had a rather long 2 hour lunch break which Angela and I enjoyed in the Lido World Marketplace.  Veni Shykin, our Destination Specialist did another of his enrichment talks about museums "A Night at the Museum".  It was very good and featured some lesser known small museums plus he had a bonus tip on beating the lines at the Louvre in Paris.  You'll have to contact me privately for that tip.  It's a shockingly simple tip. The rest of our afternoon was free.   It was formal ni...

 We're now on the last major leg on the homestretch of this voyage back to the USA and docking at Port Canaveral.  The seas have been relatively flat, the onboard content excellent, way too much food to eat, and great times spent with friends.  The one bummer is that a day or so ago, someone stole part of our door decoration.  It wasn't an expensive item, it's just the principle of the action.   As I ponder the activity level of this segment of the cruise, I have come to the conclusion that it's been the best of the last two months (two separate trans Atlantic voyages).  The number of enrichment lectures have substantially increased over the previous cruise, and even the level of entertainment is sharply better.  The cruise line has to be making a lot of money as we are sailing completely full which for the crossing equates to around $20,000,000 in gross revenues assuming 3600 passengers at an average fare of $5,000 each (not including onboard purchase...

 This voyage we were docked at the cruise terminal which is the closest location to the city.  The ship arrived before 7am but we didn't arise until 8:30am.  After dressing, I looked out our balcony window and saw that the Holland America ship, Nieuw Amsterdam, was berthed across the harbor from us.  They are also on a trans Atlantic crossing after its European cruising season.  We've cruised on that ship around 6 weeks in total over the years including the inaugural cruise from Civitavechia to Fort Lauderdale and Boston to and around Iceland and back to Boston.    I noted to our room steward that our sink and shower were draining slowly,  After breakfast, we headed out around 9:30am to hike up the hill to the first museum.  Along the way we happened on a thrift store and went in.  Downstairs we encountered a lady who was a passenger on the Nieuw Statendam and we chatted quite a bit with her.  We didn't t end up purchasing anything,...

 As we continued our westward voyage, we allowed ourselves to be awakened by the daylight which means a wake up time of around 8:30am. After breakfast, Veni, our destination specialist, gave a great presentation on Ponta Delgada.  We've been there several times and are quite familiar with the island as well as the city.  It's still interesting to gain someone else's perspective.  Afterwards, the Food & Beverage team was interviewed by Matt as a continuing part of the Behind the Seas series of presentations.  They spent a lot of time talking about the loading issues in VIGO and also they compared 7 days of drinking on this segment with 7 days on the previous segment.  In all cases, the previous segment, composed of largely Brits, drank TWICE as much as the current segment.   Following lunch we returned to the Princess Theater for another enrichment lecture by William Kramer on Looking for Life in Strange Places.  He's a great lecturer who speak...

 It was nice to be at sea once again.  We allowed ourselves to wake up when it was light as our first event wasn't until 10am.  After our normal get up routines and breakfast, our first event of the day was an interview with the Hotel Management Team.  It was a fun and spirited interview by Matt Thompson, our Cruise Director.  Much of the interview was spent sharing about the challenges of the loading that took place the day before in VIGO, Spain.  We took on over 100 tons of provisions.  If we had not taken on that load, we would have run out of some basic staples such as butter, salt, & flour.  The officials had decided to make yesterday a customs inspection day and limit the amount of alcohol that was loaded.  The problem was that the alcohol was disbursed among all of the 40' containers and one couldn't separate regular food stuffs for loading.  In the end, all was loaded by 5pm.  There were contingency plans to send out cre...

 You know when you have been cruising for a long time.  It's when you can't remember visiting a port 9 years ago.  Sure, I remember visiting Vigo last month when on the Emerald Princess.  But I had forgotten, but was reminded when I consulted my blog from 2016, that we visited Vigo on the inaugural sailing of the Koningsdam.  On that visit, we didn't see anything in town, but ventured out of the town.  In any event, it was good to be back in Vigo.  We had an 8am arrival time (still in the dark) and our scheduled independent excursion to Santiago de Compostelo, didn't meet until 9:30am.  We ate our customary breakfast and met up with Gary & JoAnn and scanned off of the ship.  Today we were berthed back to back with the P&O Iona.  We easily found the representatives from Tours4cruisers.com and we learned that we were the only tour participants who had pre-booked this 35E transfer to Santiago de Compostelo.  And since there no ...