2025 Canary Islands & Bermuda Cruise

 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 ...

Once again we woke up at daybreak around 8:30am and enjoyed breakfast before attending the first enrichment lecture of the day.  Garrett spoke on Anger in Tennis with many video clips of negative behavior. He was followed by an interview of part of the cast by Matt Thompson, our Cruise Director. We ate a quick lunch in the International cafe on Deck 5 so we could be back in the Theater for the  Deal or No Deal game show.  The first player in the game won the $1,000 grand prize and that was the first time we've seen a grand prize winner on a ship.  The second player only won $30.   The game show was followed by an enrichment lecture by David Knight on the health benefits of hypnotism.  He was followed by Garrett's last talk which was on Doping and Match Fixing in Tennis.  I then did laps around decks 10, 11, & 12 photographing door art and getting my steps in. Gary and JoAnn joined us for dinner in the LIDO before we went to the evening show which w...