Good morning from the Dolan estate outside Frankfurt Germany . They have a very nice house and we had a good night’s sleep. David did wake up once during the night because he could not feel the ship moving, but dismissed it and went back to sleep. We had a good day visiting with Mike & Sue, and their girls. Mike cooked a nice breakfast and then we gave Maggie the First Communion presents which we had brought for folks in St Louis. Then we all went to the base for Sunday morning mass. Sue and the girls stayed afterwards for a school function while Mike brought us back to their house. Mike and David tried to fix the suitcase but it is going to take a trip to the local hardware store on Monday (not ... read more

Bonne jour from Le Harve France, where the time is an hour earlier than when you went to sleep last night. But we are comparatively young and can adjust quickly. Speaking of young, Happy (real) Birthday to Janet. We celebrated it on the ship a week ago but today is her real birthday. We did that because today is the last full day on the ship and we had a lot of things to get done today. Thanks to Ray and Mary Gillespie (one of our dinner-mates) who had excess Internet Minutes and made them available to us. When they get back home they can look at the blog and read about the remainder of our trip. Maybe someday we will run across them on another cruise – they are really nice people. This morning was ... read more

If this is Wednesday, then it must be Holyhead, or vice versa. First let us add a couple of items which were omitted from yesterday’s note. Our tour guide was named Cognac and the driver was Gilbert. They were both very good (Gilbert is also a guide when not being the driver) and probably were on equal footing with Paula from Rome (see last year’s blog). One of the things they pointed out early was all the housing units along the roadway. Until recently Scotland had more government funded housing than any other country in Europe. They refer to them as “public authorize housing for socially deprived people” – doesn’t that have a nicer ring to it than “tenement project”? Our tour this morning had to meet in the Princess Theater at 7:00 so we got ... read more

Hello from Dublin. We were not scheduled to arrive until about 10:00 this morning, so we got to sleep in and then have a nice sit-down breakfast in the dinning room. We arrived as scheduled and we got to watch “the docking” this time. The port of Dublin is a major commercial facility with the piers surrounded by large areas of containers stacked 3 or 4 high. It is far different from Cobh (not picturesque at all) where we were within easy walking distance of the shops in town. Today was definitely a long sleeve day. Yesterday’s sky was called over cast but today was definitely cloudy (more than just overcast) and there was a strong breeze blowing all day. The temperature only got to the mid 50s, so jackets were also needed for the shore ... read more

Today there were gentle rolling seas, with a temperature of 58 degrees. It is a little cool with a moderate breeze when you are outside. However the pools were open again – just nobody in them. It is our last full day of sailing without a shore excursion, so we took advantage of the opportunity to replenish our clean clothes supply. There was no shortage today, but we just didn’t want to try do washing on a day when we were off the ship much of the day. We should have enough things to wear until we get off the ship. We hope Sue and Mike don’t mind if we show up with a lot of dirty clothes. This morning was a demonstration in the Princess Theater (not the kitchen) by the Master Chef of the ... read more