Travels and Exploits of the Lamb and the Wolf

2012 Rome and Eastern Mediterranean Adventure Sunday October 7 th Our Mediterranean adventure began on a beautiful, sunny autumn Sunday in Seattle. Dr. Hal gave us a lift to the airport and we checked-in with British Airways in a relatively relaxed setting. We made our way to the British Airways Terraces lounge atop the South Satellite. We were doing this trip up right (Club Class) and took advantage of all of the perks that come with that. We had experienced the lounge last year when we flew Icelandair, but BA puts out a much broader range of comestibles. There were little sandwiches with a carrot-ginger spread, and ham with apricot that were quite appetizing. The lounge was relatively quiet, and although views were limited, we could still see some aircraft activity. Svetlana was one of the busy lounge staff members, and we spent some time talking with her about photography (one of her hobbies). A new addition to this trip was Dobbin, Allan’s “Angry Birds” red bird dol...

Transatlantic Journal – Entry Tertiary With the easternmost part of our journey behind us, we continued sailing westward toward Iceland. But first we must describe the Chef’s Table that occurred the night we sailed out of Torshavn. Chef’s Table While it’s not advertised anywhere, I had read on CruiseCritic.com that Princess was offering an excellent Chef’s Table on each voyage for $95/person. When we boarded, I called dining reservations and we got put on the list. A day later we received a notice that we were to report to the dining room in the morning to sign a document indicating we had no food allergies or were ill. Once that was signed, we awaited further instructions, which came two days later. [Dinner details here] – once Allan fills in this section ;-) 2 September - Day at Sea We recovered from the Chef’s Table by sleeping in on this day at sea. See the previous entry in this journal for a description of our typical day at sea. 3 September – Akureyri, Ic...

Transatlantic Journal – A Typical “At Sea” Day This trip features the most number of “at sea” days we’ve experienced: eight out of seventeen days. Now, that’s even more than the classic transatlantic sailing, which is six days from Southampton to New York. In the 1950s the United States Lines used to advertised “Only 5 Gay Days to Europe!”. That was back in the era when more people traveled transatlantic by ship rather than by plane. The ships were built to be about 10 knots per hour faster. Cunard had a huge success running the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth on alternating weekly schedules. But, as Allan has pointed out, what would we do at sea for five solid days? (Bleh! – Allan) Today (Monday, September 5, 2011, Labor Day in the U.S.) is the first of a pair of “at sea” days as we make our way from Iceland to Greenland. I thought it might be fun to just focus on a typical example of what we do. Morning Amazingly, on these days, Allan’s the first one to rise. That ...

Transatlantic Journal – Entry Secundus Thursday, 1 September 2011 – Sailing around the Faroe Islands The first three ports were on three consecutive days, and the time seemed to go by quite quickly. Here’s the recap… 30 August – Bergen, Norway As mentioned in the previous journal entry, our arrival into Bergen was delayed by nearly seven hours. The night of rough seas as we headed north finally gave way to calmer seas by morning. We sailed on for hours, passing many other ships and a fair number of oil platforms. Around 1:30PM we turned toward the Norwegian coast, picked up our pilot, and sailed down the inland waterways toward Bergen. There were colorful small houses that dotted the various islands as we passed. The increasing number of buildings signaled that we were nearing Norway’s second largest city. We sailed under several suspension bridges and as Bergen was coming into sight, the cloud layer dropped ominously lower. By the time we made fast at one of the cargo ...

Transatlantic Journal – Entry Prime Monday, 29 August 2011 Greetings from the middle of the North Sea! We’ve been aboard the Crown Princess for about 24 hours now, and we’re getting back into our usual shipboard routines of eating, napping, working out (Steve), laundry (Allan), more eating, and chocolate martinis (three guesses who). The ship sailed late from Southampton, England yesterday due to the death of one of the passengers from a coronary (Code Alpha, apparently, to the crew). The sailing was beautiful as we zig-zagged down the Solent River, past the Isle of Wight (which was very forest-y green). Alas, just as we were heading to dinner, another Code Alpha. The person was on the gurney being wheeled past us on the deck below as we made our way to the Michelangelo Dining Room.   The good news is that the person lived, the bad news being that the ship had to turn around and head back to the Isle of Wight for a medical pickup. Therefore, we are a good 6 hours behind sc...

Day 15 - Saturday, March 13, 2010: “What’s new, Buenos Aires?” [Steve writes] This morning started off via the alarm clock, but since we got our one hour back, it didn’t feel as harried as it was the previous day in Montevideo. However, today we actually had to be somewhere at a certain time, so it was shower, get ready, and head out into what promised to be another warm, sunny day. As has been the custom on this cruise, the Star Princess was docked at one of the container piers, so it was a Container City tour on the bus that took us to the terminal. We met our guide, Jessica from Buenos Tours, just before 9:00 at the rendezvous point inside the fairly modern terminal. I had found this tour company recommended by someone on cruisecritic.com, contacted them, and they set us up with a personal guide for a 7-hour tour, for US $100 per person. It was certainly worth it, as you’ll soon read. The three of us hopped into a taxi and headed toward the San Telmo neighborhood, south of central B...