June 11 - Falmouth England

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Hello from Cornwall England, specifically the town of Falmouth. We arrived in the early hours of the morning and anchored off the coast. This is a shallow water harbor, and it is greatly affected by the tides, so the ship is about 3 miles off the coast. Since it is a tender port, we did not book any excursions here. Also, we've been here previously and did not see anything new that we really wanted to do anyway.

This is the last stop on our cruise across the Atlantic. Tomorrow, we reach Southhampton where 1200 passengers are scheduled to depart. We will be with the other 800 who are staying for the second cruise. Regardless, all passengers had to go through UK Immigration this morning. It was a simple matter of bringing our passports to one of the Specialty Dining Rooms and receiving a card which said we had cleared customs. Now that has been completed.

We did have a surprise this morning when we got up and found thick fog blanketing everything. For that reason, the ship cancelled everyone's excursions today but did start running tenders to shore for those who wanted to explore on their own. Due to the distance involved and the "no wake" rules in place, the tenders were expected to take about 40 minutes one way. We declined to go ashore. Anyway, the fog lifted about 10:00 and it turned out to be a comfortable day with a light wind and temperatures in the high 60s. David even broke out his short pants to wear during the day. There were a lot of sailboats cruising in the area, with some being quite small and others being very large.

We went to the Horizon Court and completing the passport exercise and had a nice breakfast. Then we returned to our cabin. Unfortunately, they were doing some maintenance to the plumbing system and none of the toilets flushed for several hours. But that was remedied by early afternoon. Janet watched a movie called "5000 Blankets".

For lunch David went up to the Grill and got one of their Pulled Pork Sandwiches and a Cheeseburger and brought them back to the cabin. Then we had another restful afternoon as we rebuilt our strength from our mild head colds. We are improving.

Joke: Why do people tell actors to "break a leg" in a stage show? Because they are all in a cast. For dinner we met with all our tablemates this evening and had a final dinner together. We both had the scallop and shrimp salad. Janet had the surf & turf with jumbo shrimps and filet mignon. David had the bacon-wrapped meatball. For dessert we each had deep-dish apple pie. They did have the traditional parade of baked Alaska, where the junior waiters parade around with plates of baked Alaska and everyone applauds. This was banned during the Covid times and was only going to return to the ships two weeks after our 2022 Alaska cruise with all the family.

After dinner we went to the Princess Theater and watched a brand new production show. It had never been performed on this ship, so it had a couple of bugs, but it was very nice. With a little more practice they will probably make it work just fine. The name was "The Secret Silk" and had a lot of special effects like the animals in "Lion King".

Tomorrow morning will probably be very noisy in the corridors as many people are up early to eat and leave the ship. So this will be the end of today's report.

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