Blogs from Atlantic, Oceans and Seas - page 71

Good morning from Bermuda. What? That wasn’t on the cruise itinerary. Actually someone had a medical emergency last night and the ship had to divert here to deliver them to the local hospital. The captain says that if we run at full speed the rest of the way, then we can still get to Ponta Delgado on time. We will just have to see if that works or not. But for the moment we got a brief view of Bermuda (from their shipping channel). Anyway, we went up to the Horizon Court for breakfast and viewing of the tip of Bermuda while we waited for the pilot boat to bring our doctor back. In the meantime we enjoyed a nice leisurely sunny morning and got a small glimpse of some place we hadn’t expected to see. ... read more

At last we have sailed. Ft Lauderdale seems to be a nice place to visit, but we have other places we wanted to see during this vacation too. Fortunately, the ship passed its tests and we sailed just after 8:00 AM this morning. We were having breakfast in the dinning room, and a small cheer went up when we started moving past the shore-side estates. One small problem in our cabin was that the batteries wore out in door lock. We reported it to the main desk and they sent someone to replace them, but for a short time there we were locked out of the cabin. I guess that was not part of the refurbishment in drydock. The cabin itself seems to be smaller than we had on the past two cruises – it has ... read more

Geo: 25.4681, -89.6539The last full day of the cruise was -- thankfully -- spent at sea. We all slept in and no one was rushing around that morning. We took in a fairly early round of team trivia after breakfast, which we won -- we named our team the Brambletonians. Anna and I won a team trivia contest on our first sea day, and this last day Katherine joined in and helped us come out on top. Speaking of winning, we also won a raffle prize earlier in the cruise, and Katherine won a free golf lesson from the on-board pro. She had a really good time, and she said hitting the balls in the cage up on the ship's top-most deck was quite something.For lunch we attended a "murder mystery" put on by the Second ... read more

April 5th, 2011 It’s been a month since my last entry. St. Helena has come and gone since last entry. The island is beautiful and I could have easily spent more time there exploring it. We got 1 ½ days off while there: one spent on a day long tour of the island which included seeing Napolean’s place of residence and tomb and other points of interest. The island is lush and green with tropical flowers, lots of flax, incredibly friendly and kind people who call themselves “saints” and they have a local language called “saints”. But their English is Britishly polite (everyone says ‘hi ‘ to each other, even drivers in cars as they pass) and most of them have warm sun-darkened skin of “islanders” with a handful of fairer-skinned Europeans. The roads are mostly ... read more

The Islands Well, we are recovering from more than a week of hectic days in port. We are now somewhere in the Atlantic, heading home...well, back to Southampton, that is. Our first island was Aruba, one of the Netherland Antilles. Hugh and I went on a semi-submersible boat ride which took us over the wreck of a German freighter as well as a beautiful coral reef. It was Hugh's first time seeing underwater and I think he liked it quite a bit. To get to the boat our bus took us past all the hotels that line the beaches...there are too many and they are too huge! On the other side of the road was every American franchise restaurant you could imagine from MacDonald's to Tony Roma's to Hooters. It would be very easy to spend ... read more