London Times

Ok, one more post before we go home. One really surprising thing about London is how much daylight there is. Being this far north, the sun sets around 10pm and seems to be back up again around 4am. Perhaps the roots of British efficiency are in all that daylight--there sure is a lot of time to do things. On top of that, the weather is the nicest we've had in weeks.

Yesterday we went to Kew Gardens in the morning, and some of the famous sites in the afternoon (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, etc). We then had the spiciest meal I've had the entire trip at a Thai restaurant recommended by the owner of our flat. Yummy!

Today we plan to hit some museums, starting with the British Museum. We bet we will see treasures collected from many of the ports we have visited! Stops at Kensington Palace, Hyde Park, and more are possible as well. We'll try not to exhaust ourselves on this last day before we get on the plane home tomorrow, but with so much sunlight, it is tempting.

Pics: Some from Ireland since I didn't post any there--Jr at the Titanic Belfast museum; rowers on the Liffey in Dublin. London--Tower Bridge and the Egg; minding the gap on the Tube.

Ending and Beginning

The yoga mat went back in the box on Friday morning. Way back in January, Michael, the very kind yoga instructor for the Reunion Voyage, told me to keep the yoga mat I used for his class for the rest of my time on the ship. After Johana's gentle and imagery-filled yoga class on yesterday's final sea day, the happy yellow yoga mat went back into the ship's collection. It was a nice way to mark the beginning of the end of our time aboard the MV Explorer.

There were a lot of "lasts" in the past few days. I shelved my last book in the shipboard library, had my last pre-port, had my last dinner on the 5th deck, had my last diet 7-Up at the piano bar with Ingrid (the best bartender ever), and said goodbye to many, many crew, voyagers, and staff. This morning, we departed the ship in Dover, England and got on a shuttle to London. With the exception of a bit of drama when one of our suitcases was picked up by another voyager, and a lot of traffic due to a huge international soccer match in London, we survived debarkation pretty well.

The flat we are renting in London has many things we have missed on the ship:

- fast internet

- a living room

- two bedrooms

- a tiny kitchen and washer/dryer

Funny how stuff like that is a treat. Soon enough, I'll be wishing I didn't have to do laundry or grocery shop, but we are enjoying it now. For example, we bought blueberries at the grocery store down the street and could wash them in the kitchen before eating them, and yesterday evening we were able to get online to see that the Tate Modern museum is open on Saturdays until 10pm, so we went for a late evening visit.

Of course we have been thinking about our voyage in big terms the past few days. Not just where did we go, but what it has meant to us and how we have changed as a result of these experiences. Here is a list of all of our ports, in order:

San Diego, California

Ensenada, Mexico

San Diego, California*

Ensenada, Mexico*

Hilo, Hawaii

Yokohama, Japan

Kobe, Japan

Shanghai, China

Hong Kong, China

Singapore

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Yangon, Burma 

Cochin, India

Port Louis, Mauritius

Cape Town, South Africa

Takoradi, Ghana

Tema/Accra, Ghana

Casablanca, Morocco

Barcelona, Spain

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Livorno, Italy

Cadiz, Spain

Casablanca, Morocco*

Lisbon, Portugal

Le Havre, France

Antwerp, Belgium

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Leith/Edinburgh, Scotland

Belfast, Northern Ireland

Dublin, Ireland

Dover/London, Englad

*not a typo, we really did go these places twice on different segments.

We will be in London until Tuesday morning, then home. There might be a few more blog posts after we get home, or this might be the end of the blog. With regular internet access, I might have to go back to actually logging in to Facebook and Twitter instead of automatically posting. I have resisted logging in to those services just yet, so we'll keep the blog open for now. Thanks for reading!

Irish History Lesson

Today is our last day on the ship, and I have a few thoughts on that :-) But first, there was so much to think about and understand on our two stops in Irish ports.

On Tuesday, we docked in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the day. On Wednesday, the ship moved us to Dublin for two days. In Belfast, we used Pounds and were in the United Kingdom, but 90 miles away in Dublin, we used Euros and were in the independent Republic of Ireland, part of the European Union. I had to put a sign up on the library board to remind everyone (myself included) which country uses which currency! 

Remember Belfast in the 80's and early 90's news? Images of car bombs, fences between Protestant and Catholic neighbors, high unemployment, and a very gritty, coal-darkened city come to mind. Well, Belfast is still very gritty, and while the tensions between groups are still noticeable the late 90's peace agreement has led to normalcy. Belfast is now an up and coming tourist destination. We all visited the Ulster Museum which had history and artifacts from ancient to recent times, then Jr and Sr went to the brand new Titanic Belfast museum (it was built in the shipyards right next to where we docked.  Grandpa and I took a tour of "trouble murals" and neighborhoods where the "Troubles" were most prominent in years past. We wish we had longer in this fascinating place.

Dublin was a lot more like I expected Ireland to look like. On the first day, we took a trip out to County Wicklow to see the famous Irish countryside. It was green and beautiful as promised, but also full of historical clues. Part of our day was spent at the Powerscourt Estate, with a grand house and gardens and Ireland's highest waterfall. It is now a publicly accessible attraction, with many reminders of the time when a privileged few controlled most land and resources in Ireland. Yesterday, we spend the middle of the day in Dublin, visiting museums and walking around. I think my favorite was the "Dead Zoo" as the natural history museum is known by locals. It was full of taxidermied animals from an era when studying animals meant catching them and stuffing them. It sounds icky, but was actually quite interesting. Jr and Grandpa especially enjoyed identifying some of the fish species we had seen in all those aquariums. It is easier to tell what something is when it is stuffed and mounted next to its nameplate, though certainly less realistic.

There are pictures, but I'm going to save them for later. I need to finish packing, as we depart the ship tomorrow morning. If I have time after packing, I may try to blog some final thoughts before we leave the ship. Otherwise, those will happen when we get to London tomorrow. Rumor has it the flat we rented has actual internet!

Edinburgh

Our day in Scotland was really enjoyable, if short. What a weird feeling to see everything in English and know everyone you see can not only answer your questions, but also understand the observations you make to your travel companions. Boy, the pounds go quick, though. We saw Edinburgh Castle, which was very pricey, Edinburgh Museum, which was free, ate meat pies and pasties for lunch (still no low fat food about), had a pint in a cool pub Sr found online, and made it back to the ship in time to see the now-retired royal yacht Britannia docked beside us in Leith.

Off to sea for a day, then Belfast and Dublin.

pics: Edinburgh Castle gate; Jr in a British phone booth (Andrea, that one is for you since I couldn't ever get one in the library); outside the cool "Brewdog" pub.

Lost and Found

Things we found in Belgium:

- time to visit Bruges and Brussels

- chocolate, mussels, beer, bread, frites

- historic buildings

Things we didn't find:

- time to see much of Antwerp

- low fat cuisine

Things we found in Amsterdam

- tulips

- museums (science, art, and a zoo)

- Indonesian food and Belgian beer

Things we didn't find:

- time for all the museums

- sunny days

- ways to explain to Jr all the vices for sale

We have been to both Belgium and the Netherlands before on a very memorable trip about 13 years ago. It was both fun and a bit frustrating to visit again, since the stops were so short. Jr got sick the second day in Belgium as well, so we had to scuttle plans to spend the second night in Antwerp. He felt better by the time to Amsterdam, though, so we ended up having more time to explore the Netherlands.

The end of the voyage is just one week from today, but there are still four ports to visit! Tomorrow we land in Edinburgh, Scotland. Over the next few days we will also dock in Dublin, Ireland then Belfast in Northern Ireland, and finally Dover, England where we will travel by bus to London. I am really looking forward to my first visit to the United Kingdom, but I will also be quite ready to come home. Jr is ready, too, but Grandpa and Sr wish they could keep on sailing!

Pics: Sr in Brussels at brewer's mecca; Brussels garden and city view; Amsterdam's NEMO science museum (with the top of the MV Explorer to the left); a Jasper Johns painting in the spectacular Amsterdam Stedelijk modern art museum.

Atlantic: swell, France: cute, Home: soon

We had the roughest seas since January's Pacific roller coaster this week. Between Lisbon and Le Havre, things were really pitching (forward-back motion) as well as rolling (side to side). Yoga on the morning before Le Havre was a memorable experience.  I think the magnitude of the motion was unexpected by the crew, though, as things weren't secured before the rocking got intense. I ended up turning the book return cart on its side to prevent it rolling away, and securing other loose items in the library at around 1am the night we left Lisbon, and shelving books the next day required a lot of balance and core strength! Once we got closer to France on Friday, things calmed down a lot and most people returned to their normal color.

Sr, Jr, and I opted to stay in the Normandy area during the time we are docked in Le Havre. About 200 (1/3 of the total) passengers disembarked in France, and another 200 are embarking today and tomorrow, so I have had a few shipboard duties this port. We did have some time to explore, and really enjoyed a couple of laid back days in Honfleur and Le Have, two charming towns in the Normandy region. We found our own way to historic Honfleur via local bus yesterday, and today we rented bikes in Le Havre after visiting a very fine collection of impressionist paintings. Grandpa took an SAS trip to Paris and will be back tomorrow before we sail for Belgium.

I gave what was probably my last introduction to shipboard library services at tonight's welcome presentation for new voyagers. Now that we have begun the second segment of the EV, my family is in the home stretch of our adventures around the world. In just about two weeks, we will be returning home for the first time since late December. But before we do that, we have bit more work, a few more ports, a lot of sorting and packing.

Pics: impossibly cute Honfleur; mussels for lunch in Le Havre; Jr on the beachfront playground in front of the mussel restaurant.

World Aquarium Tour, Lisbon Edition

Baltimore, Camden, Monterrey, Barcelona, Osaka, Cape Town, and now Lisbon. We have become aquarium connoisseurs over the years, and Lisbon's did not disappoint. Jr said it ranked somewhere up with Osaka and Baltimore.

Continuing on the fish theme, after we watched them swim in big tanks, we ate some for lunch. Portugal's version of fish and chips is called "bacalhau" and it was yummy.

There was also a tram around the peaks of the old Alhambra section of the city, some beautiful churches, and some lovely hill street walking. We were back on the ship early for Grandpa to give a lecture on the history of jazz for the community-sourced Explorer Seminars, then Sr headed back out with an onboard friend for a quick tour of the old city evening life before we sailed at 2300 for France. We have a whole two days at sea before reaching Le Havre, in the Normandy region of France. Some people are heading for Paris, others will explore the countryside. We are splitting up to do both--Grandpa is going to Paris, the rest of us may head for Honfleur and other picturesque spots you can see in impressionist paintings.

Pics: Cool fish, pretty fish, yummy fish, and the old city tram.

Play It Again, Sam

We are back in Casablanca today after two great days in Spain. The EV is retracing the S13 steps a little bit, though the stop in Spain was Cadiz since the EV started in Barcelona.

Since we'd already been to Morocco just three weeks ago, we decided we knew enough to take a train from Casablanca to the city of Rabat today. We found the train, got to the right station in Rabat, and had a nice day exploring Morocco's capital city. Jeff and Christie, we thought about you all day. 

We had no sea days in between, so here is a report from the last port, too. Southern Spain was so different from Barcelona. Cadiz was small, beautiful, and easy to walk around. We spent a few hours at a crystal clear but cold beach, took a siesta just like the Spanish do, then explored the old city after dark. Yesterday we went on another bike tour, this time in Seville. In addition to a bunch of stylish Moorish and turn-of-the-century buildings, we saw rowers on the river (in regular racing shells this time), and ate some yummy tapas. Jr had a good time riding a bike for the first time in many months, and did some bunny hops on the folding bike he rode. That's our boy.

Tomorrow we'll visit some of the places in Casablanca we liked last time. We are almost locals ;-)

Pics: the MV Explorer docked right in downtown Cadiz, the closest we've been in any port; the beach in Cadiz, Spain; the oceanfront in Rabat, Morocco.

Food pictures from Italy

Because, really, what else is better in Italy?

Today we are going back through the Straight of Gibraltar on our way to Cadiz, Spain, then back to Morocco for two days. The past two sea days in a row are the longest stretch we will have on the EV, so the library is very busy with people making travel plans for multiple ports in a row. Jr is spending some time between the children's programs working on his typing. Hurray for Mavis Beacon!

Food pics from Livorno: Jr with a real pizza; my pizza; Jr with a lot of pasta; my pasta with lobster; Sr and Grandpa eating the local specialty of "cacciucco" which was a seafood stew with bread in the bottom. We only ate two meals in Livorno, but they were good ones.