Blogs from Florida, United States, North America

Hi Everyone, Spent my last day in Amsterdam walking and walking and walking. It still in the 40s and mostly sunny. It was perfect for walking around weather. Started my day by walking to the Centraal Train station to find out what area of that ginormous building will be where I need to go in the morning to catch my train to the airport. Will be dragging my heavy suitcase around with me in the morning and want to walk as few steps as possible with my stuff. I ventured out into other sections of the city. Think of NYC, where you have areas like Times Square, Tribeca, Little Italy, Meatpacking district, Diamond district, etc. Amsterdam has the same type of thing. I did find the red light district! Although it is probably way more exciting ... read more

Hi Everyone, About 3:30 this morning, some crazy gal started singing at the top of her lungs on her balcony. She woke me up and it sounded like quite a few others too judging by all the yelling at her to be quiet that started up. We got into port early today but there was a group of protesters with microphones and a message they wanted to get across. My cabin was port side so that was the end of my sleep even though it was still another 90 minutes before my alarm was to go off. Finally, the police got them quieted down but it took a good hour at least. Because of the protesters, neither luggage nor people could get off the ship. It was in the 30s (Fahrenheit) but sunny so it looked ... read more

Hi Everyone, Today we docked at the Le Havre Port in France. My tour went to go Omaha Beach. Driving from the port to Omaha Beach, much of the terrain was similar to Vermont. Except there were more wider pastures and fields. We saw tons and tons of Canola plants (also known as rapeseed plant), which makes Canola oil. They are yellow flowers that turn into pods to make Canola oil. The plants are packed together tightly in the fields and were beautiful to see mile after mile of yellow fields. We caught the very tail end of lilac season here which was disappointing as I love lilacs and their smell but I got to see some of them! The beaches of Normandy go on and on. I cannot possibly imagine what it was like for ... read more

Hi Everyone, Today is our last full sea day. We get to our second port tomorrow (Bermuda was our first). The Ireland port we reach tomorrow is the last port that the Titanic left before it hit the iceberg - and the anniversary of that was yesterday. I keep watching for icebergs but I don't see anything so I think we're safe from those. Today was another relaxing day of reading and people watching. I try to find a good stop in roughly the same area on the same deck looking down over the pool. That way I can watch the ship games that are played, including the trivia game. Several times people have asked to sit with me while they play the trivia game, which makes it more fun for me as there have been ... read more

Hi Everyone, Today started out differently for me. The Cruise Critic website that I had joined for this specific sailing organized what is called a "Cabin Crawl" and they included a Poker Run. There were 8 different cabin types that people volunteered to have others come in to see what they are like. Those that wanted to participate could pay $2 to be in the Poker Run. We picked a card out of a new deck at each cabin we visited and used the best hand of 5 cards out of the 8 we received. So you aren't holding your breath reading to see how much money I won, my pair of Kings weren't even close enough to win for me to bother to register the hand as a potential winner. The probably biggest surprise to ... read more