25/7/2010 - New York, NY, USA - New York, New York tour.

Very early start this morning - we were told not to miss the sail in to New York as we pass by the Statue of Liberty. We were up at 5am to see the sail in, it was quite impressive!

We docked at Pier 88, Manhattan! which is right on 48th street. Interestingly we were right beside the USS Intrepid - an old Aircraft carrier which was turned into an Air, Sea and Space Museum! The view from my window included lots of military aircraft and one of the old British Airways Concords!

Our tour was a bus trip, showing us many of the major things to see in New York - our guide was excellent, he knew which rich and/or famous person lived - he also gave us his opinion on living in New York and a basic overview of how things such as Co-Ops work. We went around Central Park, saw the Apollo Theater and the Guggenheim Museum before coming to our first stop - the Rockefeller centre!

We had some great views of the city - including an excellent view of the Empire State Building and Central Park! If you visit New York - you have to go up the Rockefeller centre, it's totally worth seeing - puts the place in perspective!

This was one of the more interesting street signs I noticed!

Our tour bus had a bit of a problem with the air conditioning at that point - so we went to lunch a little early at the South Street Seaport. We bought our own lunch, it wasn't included as part of the tour - but the food was excellent so that was ok!

We passed through times square, since it was a Sunday our guide said it was quiet (to me it looked busy, but he assured us that what was saw was very tame). Next we stopped at the Wintergarden and looked at Ground Zero, our guide gave us a talk about what the area was like during the 9/11 attacks. It looks like things are starting to progress here, new buildings are going up and it felt like a positive thing that they could come back from something so horrible.

Our tour then continued down to broadway and we had a look at wall street. Our guide pointed out various movie/tv related places along the way (places where they filmed movies like Men in Black, Tv shows like Law and Order, and a host of others!).

It started raining late in the tour, another afternoon storm! We arrived back at the ship feeling a bit tired, but glad to have gotten a glimpse of the city! You could probably spend a month here and not see it all!

The sail out on the harbour was impressive, all of the buildings began lighting up as dusk approached.

New York was a lot of fun and I hope to go back at some point in the future and spend more time there!

24/7/2010 - Newport, Rode Island, USA - Newport by Land and Sea Tour

We didn't arrive in Newport until 11am - due to the ship having to go slower in the area because of migrating whales (yes, no joke, they impose a speed limit on all shipping at this time of the year!).

Today was a tender port, which is one of my least favourite things! Thankfully since we'd booked a ship's tour, we were able to get off the ship quite quickly. These little boats become sweat boxes on hot days, and with the temperature pushing 30C we were really feeling it.
Our tour stared with us driving through Newport - the main thing that Newport has is rich and famous people's homes. There are some massive places overlooking the harbour that cost ridiculous amounts of money - and apparently they were built only with the intention of using them six to eight weeks a year!

The place itself was nice and green, the streets were a little narrow, but the countryside was very nice - it reminded us a lot of home (it was very similar to the noosa/sunshine coast area back home). We drove past the oldest continually operating pub in the USA - it was started in 1673!

The second half of the tour took us out on the harbour and we got to see the other side of the homes, because of course if you're building a house overlooking the harbour, that's where you want it to look impressive! We cruised the harbour for around an hour, looking at a fort very similar to the one yesterday at Boston.
One interesting sight was this below picture - this house is built out in the middle of the harbour! it has no running water or electricity - but it has some awesome views!
I experienced my first thunderstorm while on board the ship later in the afternoon (at least a storm I could go out on a balcony and watch) - quite a large thunderstorm struck around 4pm - turning over small sailboats in the harbour, it was an impressive sight (got some good video of it!).
Dave, Marylyn and I all started feeling a little homesick after the storm - it felt so much like a summer afternoon on the sunshine coast!

23/7/2010 - Boston, MA, USA - Senic Boston and Harbour Cruise Tour

We arrived to a nice sunny day in Boston - our tour didn't start until nearly midday, which let us sleep in (very pleasant change on a tour day). Boston is a very historical city here in the US with lots of significant places/events that occurred.
The first part of the tour was the Harbour cruise. This is a good way to see a lot of the sights, as the harbour is a major focus of the city. We sailed past the place where the Boston Tea Party occurred, down to the fort that defended the harbour and the memorial. We sailed past "Old Ironsides" a ship used in the American revolution that was notorious amongst the English forces because cannonballs would bounce off it's thick wooden hull.
After the cruise we had a bus tour of the city, it's a nice comfortable place, lots of green and some very interesting buildings. There are way too many ‌interesting places that we saw to list them all - but a few of the more notable - the pub that the TV show Cheers was based on, Boston Common and Trinity church.
Boston was a good place to visit and I think I'd like to go back and spend a little more time there.

15/7/2010 - 22/7/2010 - At Sea / Crossing the Atlantic

Well since we missed Dublin we've been at sea for 8 days!

The first few days had some heavy seas, lots of people were feeling unwell - most people were really annoyed about missing Dublin, even if they didn't have anything particular planned it would have broken up the trip a little.

Dave and Marylyn kept themselves occupied with Choir in addition to the daily trivia game. I got talked into playing as well and we did reasonably well, coming in second for this segment!

Dave also decided to enter a 'build a plane' contest using only materials found onboard the ship - they had to construct a plane that would carry 4 pencils and fly the length of the pool. He spent practically every waking moment thinking/designing/testing his plane (much to Marylyn's dismay!). Dave teamed up with Bernie & Kevin (with moral support provided by Marylyn and Sue). They raided the kids play area and got some items. Unfortunately on the eve of the contest, the plane was destroyed on it's first big test flight in the vista lounge - according to the crash report it flew a few meters and then hit a pole! Interestingly enough none of the planes in the contest managed to fly at all!!

The entertainment on the ship during this time has been quite good - mostly due to the fact that the entertainers that were due to get off in Dublin (the Beatles tribute band) had to stay. Since they were stranded onboard they did several performances - including a dance party on the deck that was very popular. Marylyn and Dave were very impressed with them and went to several of their performances, including the dance party until late.
The Choir performed just before we arrived in Boston, singing American Trilogy & New York, New York. It was quite a good performance! (Below is Dave and Marylyn in their Choir outfits)

16/7/2010 - Call at Dublin CANCELLED!

Got up this morning and noticed that the ship had made a U-turn in the harbour, a little while later it was announced that the call to Dublin is being aborted for "Safety" reasons due to high winds.

So we're looking down the barrel of a week at sea! People are really annoyed - especially some people who were supposed to get off in Dublin (British Health inspectors, people who had weddings to attend in Dublin, etc).

It's hard to argue with safety as a reason - I suppose at least I've had the chance to catchup on the blog today!

Ireland looked like a nice place - at least in the binoculars!

In 7 days we'll be in Boston, USA!

14/7/2010 - Southampton, London, UK (Best of London by city drive tour)

This morning is the first day we've gotten up to overcast/drizzly skys! all in all it's a nice change - the temperature is in the low 20s today!

Southampton is a nice harbour, mostly new since WW2 - lots of Maritime Museums - the guide pointed out that this is where Titanic sailed from (Great to tell a bunch of people on a cruise!).

The drive in didn't take too long - about an hour and a half - the countryside was much like Normandy, lots of fields, everything green and lush. We travelled into London and went past a few interesting things:

Little Ben

MI6 headquarters

Then we stopped for a while at the Tower of London, had a look at the tower bridge/etc.

We drove around London for a while, seeing various sites, including Nelson's column, Waterloo Station and Buckingham Palace.
We had fish and chips for lunch at an English pub! lunch was really nice!

After lunch we stopped near Parliment and walked around looking at the various buildings

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

We drove past Scotland Yard, and then the rain began - it was quite heavy, a bunch of the people on our tour got caught out in it - thankfully we were waiting in the bus at the time!
London felt much more cramped than Paris, also the buildings were a bit strange - very little consistency. The tour itself was the worst we've done! Problems with the bus, lunch and putting a half dozen physically disabled people on same bus left us with little time to actually see the sights (when it takes ten minutes to exit the bus and you're only stopped for 15mins, it makes it difficult). This is the first tour I've seriously thought about complaining about.

13/7/2010 - Le Harve/Paris, France (Best of Paris with Cathedral of Notre Dame)

It took around 2 hours to drive from the dock in Le Harve to Paris - we got to see a lot of the Normandy countryside - it was very green and pretty, the infamous (in WW2) Normandy hedgerows have regrown and looked quite healthy. It was a fine day, temperature in the high 20s most of the day!
First stop in Paris was the Eiffel Tower for some photos, lots of people selling little Eiffel towers, etc. We then took a drive under the tower and looked at the thousands of tourists lining up to go up the tower - thankfully we weren't going up. The observation deck on Burj Kalife in Dubai is something like twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, so I don't think we missed much.
We then started our drive around the city, driving by the Military Headquarters of the French Army, followed by the National Assembly building and then the Louvre.

We had lunch in a French restaurant - to be honest it wasn't exactly a spectacular lunch, very average.
Next was Notre Dame - quite a nice Gothic style cathedral, lots of people here too - the line up to get inside was about 500m long, so we didn't bother going in.
After a break for some shopping/etc it was time to get back on the bus and we took a drive down the Champs-Elysees - the 14th of July is Bastille day, so people were setting up seating/etc for the parade - we circled the Arc De Triomphe a few times, saw yet another Obelisk stolen from Egypt! (Poor Egypt, everyone seems to have stolen things from them). The drive back to the ship was uneventful, traffic was light.

Paris was a very nice city, the buildings/etc were beautiful and the city is laid out nicely. It's easy to tell that WW2 barely touched this place, unlike most European cities everythings intact. You could probably take a month and not really see everything here!