Neither Here Nor There
Well, I'mback, in more ways than one. In late April, we took a cruise around Hawaii onNorwegian's Pride of America. I took notes so I could tell you all about it.Before I could get those blogs written, we had a car accident that broke myright arm. No typing for me for several weeks. In the meantime, late in May, weflew to London to catch a cruise up through Scotland and the fjords of Norway.Even a broken arm couldn't keep me from that, but I didn't get any notes taken.And I already find my fond memories of these countries getting muddled in mymind, so I'm going to take these trips out of order and type/post the blog onScotland/Norway before I go back and do the ones about Hawaii. Yes, I can typeagain!
The tripto get to the cruise ship was full of stress and worry, but that seems to bepar for the course whenever we have to fly to the ship's port. We drove to theairport, parked our car, took the shuttle the rest of the way, checked our bag,got our boarding passes, got through TSA... That was a chore! If I went throughthe normal metal detector, my artificial knees would set it off, and I couldn'traise my right arm to go through the round metal detector. So they sent methrough the normal detector, and then I got a thorough pat-down before we couldgo on to our gate.
By theway, TSA is now posting how long it will take you to get through the line, butthat's just to get past the agent who studies your passport and boarding pass.You still have to get through the metal and explosives detectors.
Okay, thepat-down was done, and we went on to our gate, where we caught our flight toMontreal. Once there, we caught our over-night flight to London, where I hadbooked a night at one of the airport hotels. First, we wanted to recover fromthe flight, since we don't sleep well while flying. But also, we had to catch ashuttle from Heathrow to the Southhampton docks. Second, the shuttles pickedpeople up between 9:45 and 10:45 am, but because we got in at 9:30 am, I wasn'tsure we could collect our luggage and find our way to Terminal 4 by 10:45. Wedidn't, so it was a good thing I had booked our shuttle for the following day.
Afterwalking what seemed like miles in Heathrow, we gathered our luggage, askedquestions, had to go outside, take an elevator down to the underground level,walk long miles to get to the ticket station, take an elevator, get on theunderground to Terminal 4, get off and take an elevator up. Luckily, justoutside that elevator was a door with a sign that said, "To Terminal 4hotels", so that wasn't hard to find. We walked a few more miles to get tothe entrance to our hotel.
It was tooearly to check in, but we did go to the cafe and grab some lunch. By then, theyhad our room ready, so we went up and when we got to our room, we closed thecurtains and took a nap. Later, Hubby wanted to go and search for the placewhere the shuttle would pick us up, so we walked another mile or so to find theHilton. Having found it, we went back to our hotel, had supper and settled infor the night.
Theshuttle was supposed to pick us up at about 10:45. We got there about 9:30 andtried to pass the time by watching other people get picked up by their rides.Probably a bad idea, as by 10:30, Hubby was positive we had missed our ride.Finally, we gathered all our stuff and moved outside (It was chilly and windy.)Our shuttle finally arrived about 10:55, having picked other people up indowntown London before it came to get us. At least that gave Hubby people totalk to during the 1.5 hr trip to the ship, so he got a chance to calm down.
The tripstarted out a lot chillier than we expected. Our first full day on the ship,during which we were headed for Edinburgh, Hubby made the comment, "Ithink I'm coming down with a cold." And of course he did.
We had ashore excursion scheduled for every day except the last, because the shipwasn't getting into Tromso (Norway) until 7 pm. And we had to get up at 4 am toget to the airport. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The shoreexcursions were lots of fun. The first week or so, I was super protective of mybroken arm, constantly worried it would get bumped too hard, or I would falland do more damage. So I enjoyed the bus drives, looking out the windows, but Iwas too afraid to get off and explore Edinburgh Castle, because they said itwas crowded and we'd be walking on cobblestones. Eventually, I did become morerelaxed about my arm.
I didfall, a couple of times, but did no damage to my arm. Once when I was trying toclimb onto an antique street car. The steps were really steep, especially thetop one, and the tour guide was acting as my handhold, but the step was toodeep, and I went down onto my right knee. It took both the tour guide and Hubbyto get me back on my feet so I could find a seat. But no bleeding, so I wasfine. The 2nd time was in Dublin, but I'll get to that later.
TheSheffield Islands (Scotland) have stone rings similar to Stonehenge. TheShetland Islands (also Scotland) have Shetland ponies, and I think that's wherewe saw an archeological site of a Neolithic village on the beach. The homeswere built of stone slabs, and the furniture was made of stone, too. Plusassorted furs for the beds. I got off the bus for that and walked to the site,walked all around it. There was a Laird's house not far away that was open as amuseum, but as slow as I walk, I didn't figure I had time to go there, so Iwent back to the bus. This was the place where the tour guide lost one of ourgroup. The guide had said to get back to the bus by 11, and everybody hadexcept one. After looking for her for 10 minutes, the guide made arrangementsfor the other buses to keep an eye open for her, and then we left. A littleways down the road, she announced that one of the other buses had collected thewayward woman and she was safe.
Norway'sfjords are beautiful. The mountains are beautiful. At that time of year (earlyJune), the snows are melting, and the waterfalls and rivers are raging, whichis more interesting to see that 'stately and sedate'. The daily high was alwayspredicted to be 52F, but at least one day, it got up around 60F, so you neverquite knew if you would need a jacket or not. We had a great time, except forJohn's cold.
Now,remember how I said the trip there was stressful and worrisome? The trip backwas much much worse. We got up at 4am and went to the buffet for a continentalbreakfast, which consisted of not much. We were supposed to meet at the Aqualounge at 5am, and at 5:30, they would take us out to the shuttle. We got tothe Aqua about 5:05, and they were already hurrying people out. There were 2shuttles, and both of them were packed full. The one we got had no luggagecapacity, so our carryon had to ride inside with us.
We gotthrough Norway's TSA okay, which led us to Gate 32. There weren't enough chairsin the gate lobby for everybody to sit down, so they brought in folding chairs.The plane was supposed to take off at 8:35am. That's when the flight crew forthe charter flight arrived, however, so it was more like 10am before the planetook off. Naturally, it got into Dublin late, and then, the luggage took overan hour to arrive at the carousel. Consequently, by the time we had our luggagecollected, we had missed our flight to Philly. We trudged our way to theAmerican Airlines ticket counter to see what could be done. Us and about 100other people who had been on that charter flight.
Luckily,there was a cruise line representative there to help us with this problem! Overthe course of several hours, he saw that we all got booked on the next day'sflight, gave us bottles of water, sent us to the food court to grab some supper(and keep the receipts!), got us all booked into various hotels for the night,and arranged shuttles to get us to those hotels. It involved a lot more walkingto get to the shuttle, which was parked 3 or 4 blocks away... felt like a lotmore than that.
And now,the time I fell in Dublin; It was while I was getting off that shuttle at thehotel. I was on the stairs to exit, and somehow I lost my balance. I fellbackwards, against my hubby, who staggered, but didn't let me hit my head onthe driver's seat. So, no damage done, I got back up and got off the bus, andwe chatted with the driver for a moment, then went inside. Very nice hotel, butwe were exhausted and went to bed about 7pm.
Incomparison, the following day was a breeze, but it had its snags. We wereconcerned when the shuttle didn't pick us up until 10:30am. We'd been thinkingwe would need 4 hours to get through the airport, and the plane took off at1:55 pm. I needed help getting through the automatic kiosk, but it seemed a lotfaster than going through the regular line. Then the kiosk printed out only onepiece of paper, which said, "You have been selected for a Traveler's Survey".My helper told me to take it up to the bag check window, and they would helpme. The survey was apparently only 1 or 2 questions, but the guy's machinedidn't want to read our passports, so he had to enter the information manually.Finally, we got our boarding passes and could head for our gate, except wedidn't know what gate!
We gotthrough Ireland's TSA, complete with pat-down for me. Then we had to go throughthe US TSA, only when we found it, they sent us through a line that didn't haveanybody manning it, which was worrisome as well as a relief. Then we walked andwalked and walked until we finally found our gate, where we could sit down for20-30 minutes. The flight was full, of course, with all those left-overs fromthe day before. Hubby and I weren't sitting anywhere close to each other. Andthe entertainment wasn't working. I slept for about 1.5 hrs, and hubby read hisbook.
We got toPhilly and found our next gate. We had about 3 hours to wait. Eventually, weboarded that plane and started the last leg of our journey, to Orlando. Theplane would touch down about 10:05pm.
InOrlando, we gathered our luggage and said good-bye to the shipmates who hadmade the entire trip with us. We found the pick-up location for the parking lot'sshuttle, and called to let them know we were ready. This was about 10:55 pm. Wesaw lots of shuttles come and go, but not ours. At 11:20, we called them again.And several times after that, but they either didn't answer or hung up on us.Finally, about midnight, our shuttle arrived and was packed solid in no time.The driver was smiling and upbeat, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Andwhen I went to the office to pay for the extra day that we were stuck inDublin, they didn't charge me $7, like for a full day; they charged me $10!
Anyway, wedrove home, and got here about 2am on Wednesday. Here it is Sunday, and we'restill recovering.
We reallylike cruising. It's the flying back and forth that drives us crazy.
