Around the World. Week 24 Wrap Up

The term that I’ve chosen for this week is COLD! I cannot wait to get back to the warmth and sun. With that said, it has been very beautiful landscapes and lots of wildlife sightings! But if you are looking for me before Charleston, I’m probably buried in blankets, sitting on my balcony, watching the whales and dramatic cliffs as we float on by.

Schedule

• Day  162 / June 17: Cork (Cobh), Ireland

• Day 163 / June 18: Belfast, Ireland

• Day 164 / June 19: Glasgow (Greenock), United Kingdom

• Day 165 / June 20: At Sea

• Day 166 / June 21: Tórshavn (Faroe Island), Denmark At Sea

• Day 167 / June 22: At Sea

• Day 168 / June 23: Akureyri, Iceland

Day  162 / June 17: Cork (Cobh), Ireland

I flipped a fake coin this morning when I got off the ship to decide if I was going to stay in Cobh or take the train to Cork. The result was to wander in Cobh for a bit and if I ended up seeing all there was to see, then I’d take the train to Cork for lunch. Off I went into the streets of Ireland only to see a billboard immediately for the Titanic Experience.

Given it was just down the block and had timed tours, with one starting in just 5 minutes, I beelined directly there to get in line. The tour itself was fairly quick as it took you through the old ticketing station where 130-ish passengers would have passed through to board the Titanic way back when. They showed different projections on the walls of Officers and Passengers who described what it would have been like. Included in the exhibit were rooms that were examples of the 1st class and 3rd class passengers. One item of note was the 3rd class passengers had running water and electricity in their rooms where as the guide explained, they may not have even had that in their own homes in that era. My favorite room was shaped like the front of one of the lifeboats with us sitting on the benches looking outwards, watching the ship sink in front of us. It was so eerie listening to the accounts of the survivors describing what it was like in those moments as we saw the ship break in two and ultimately sink under the water. I’ve been to a few different Titanic museums and this was one of the most memorable exhibits.

Also, as you entered the museum, they gave you a ticket that looked like a boarding pass for the ship with one of the passenger’s name on it. At the end, you could look up the name to find out if the person survived. My person, even though she was a 3rd class passengers, ended up surviving and becoming a nun in Massachusetts. She ended up passing away about a year to the date before I was born, which is a bit interesting to think about as I always tend to consider Titanic era as so long ago.

After the museum, I wandered toward the Titanic Memorial Gardens. It was only supposed to be a 10 minute walk, but I strolled and listened to a book, stopping to take photos along the way, so it turned into a bit longer than that. Arriving at the gardens, it was a bit underwhelming because the plot turned out to be only about 10 ft x 40 ft. Without much to explore, I turned back. This time taking the up hills towards a beautiful cathedral.

Arriving at the church, I only took photos of the outside and wasn’t really planning on going in. That ended up being a lucky decision because apparently there was a funeral in progress and I am pretty sure that I would have been oblivious since I still had the audio book playing in my ears and I was not quite paying attention to everything around me. Instead, I turned to head even further uphill to check out a pub for lunch. Halfway up the hill, I was saved from even further climb as some other passengers were headed back down. Assuming where I was going, they informed me that the Roaring Goat was closed, which was indeed where I was going. From that point on, I leached on to that group as we checked out another (open) pub that turned out to only sell beer. Still hoping for lunch, we continued down towards the main street and found a nice bistro. (Although, there was a Mexican restaurant in town that I was really hoping to have good chips & salsa, but based on Google images, we weren’t optimistic.)

Lunch went on for a bit, ultimately deciding for me that Cork was out of the question for the day, so after splitting from the group, I wandered a bit, heading in the direction of the ship.

Day 163 / June 18: Belfast, Ireland

Some of you may know that I’ve chosen to use my Future Cruise Credits that we received due to the Itinerary reroute to see the Solar Eclipse this August, starting in Belfast. Part of that deal includes a few nights stay at a hotel before getting on the ship. I decided to maximize that offer and will be back in Belfast for 3 nights, so instead of trying to pack in all of the tourist stuff today, I went on a pub crawl with some of the other Vista passengers. They had a list of the recommended places that ranged from some of the oldest in the city to some of the more famous.

They got a head start on me though because I decided to stay onboard for most of the morning to work on a bit of a side project. However, once I caught up on that, I headed to meet up at their second stop - Kelly’s Cellars. They have a saying painted on the wall that translates to something like “When the Beer goes in, the senses go out!”

Next on the list is White’s Tavern. (Not to be confused with White’s Beer Hall; that comes later…) Here, along with beer, I got the fish & chips! They weren’t as good as the meal I had at the Bistro in Cobh, but still tasty when paired with an Irish Ale.

We were headed towards Harp bar when we found this Umbrella Alley! Unfortunately, I didn’t consider to have a photo shoot with my own bright red umbrella. Instead, we ducked into what we thought was Harp bar, but turns out it was The Duke of York. After two dimly lit pub atmospheres, we weren’t quite ready for how bright and how many mirrors the Duke had. Also, the seating was a bit small and uncomfortable, so we didn’t stay too long at this location. Instead headed to the actual Harp Bar.

The real Harp Bar’s decoration was a bit of old school, reminding me of Speakeasy lounges from the 20s or 50s with the red satin seats. However, their music playlist stayed more in the 2000s timeframe.

Continuing down the list became a bit more difficult as locals seemed to be finishing up their workdays and heading into their favorite watering holes. However, we stumbled upon another called The Morning Star. Apparently this was also a stop for two of the ship tours as we recognized many of the other patrons upon entering.

The final stop of the day was White’s Beer Hall, which happened to only be a few blocks from the port shuttle pick-up stop, so we hurried to catch the last shuttle back to the ship.

As you may imagine, a nap was definitely in order before catching the evening concert, who were the Trawlermen for their second show.

Day 164 / June 19: Glasgow (Greenock), United Kingdom

Unlike the Cobh / Cork coin flip, I decided to take the train to Glasgow first and then if there was time, finish the day exploring Greenock, which is where the ship was docked.

It seems many other passengers had the same idea as we all huddled together in the shelter, trying to stay out of the rain. Waiting for the train, we had a fun conversation with some of the locals about the accents in the region. They explained that not only was there a different dialect between the nearby towns, but they often even had different words.

At the other end of the line was Glasgow Central. A stark difference to the local stop we started at as it boasted high glass ceilings with many lines terminating in this location. They had coffee shops and restaurants adorned in deep browns to contrast the light beige steel beams supporting the roof structure. Reminded me of any train station used in the movies.

My plan for the day was to LeAnne-der (aka wander), so I started on a mission to find the statue with the orange cones on the guy’s head. You may be more familiar with this now because of the Scottish world cup shenanigans where they are putting orange cones on lots of statues in Boston. Turns out, it was only a few blocks from the train station. So checked that one of the list quite quickly.

In my research for this trip, I apparently never got around to Glasgow because I was pleasantly surprised by the city’s architecture. There were stone buildings everywhere with ornate archways and railing systems.

Eventually, I happened upon the Hop On Hop Off bus. Given that it had been raining all morning, I thought that might be a better way to see the city and stay kind of dry. The unfortunate thing is the upper deck of the bus didn’t have a full roof, so a dozen of us crammed into the smaller enclosed area. The others must have had the same thoughts as me because almost no one got off along the route, returning to the original point together.

I was tempted though to get off at the second stop, which was a massive cathedral, but what really got my attention was the Necropolis. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what the Necropolis was, but turns out it is just a fancy, historic cemetery. With the gray, rainy skies in the background, the towering gravestones looked like angry giants among the trees.

However, I decided to stay on the bus in order to stay dry with hopes that by the time the tour was over, the rain would dissipate. We learned quite a bit about the city, but as you may have figured out by now, my brain does not retain many details, especially while my head is on a swivel looking at all the buildings and people on the sidewalks.

One statue we saw was that of a Unicorn, which happens to be Scotland’s national animal!

Another story I remember is they have a theater, which reminded us all of the Sydney Opera house. The original name of this venue was Clyde Auditorium. However, because the locals only knew it as the Armadillo, they didn’t know how to give tourists directions to Clyde Auditorium, suggesting that they’d never even heard of it. This caused so much confusion, the city finally decided just to rename it to the Armadillo.

When we got back to the starting point, I had decided to walk back to the Cathedral and the Necropolis. The rain hadn’t completely stopped, but it was only a few blocks to reach the area.

While the outside of the cathedral was moody and dark gothic, the inside was bright and filled with colors from all the stained glass.

Back outside, I wandered through the Necropolis. As you can see, the graves are very old and are likely homes to many ghosts. I'm a little surprised my camera didn't capture any supernatural beings. But then again, maybe they are just shy.

After the sombering time wandering amongst the dead, I figured a little pick-me-up was in order. Luckily, right next door is the Tennents brewery! And next to the brewery is a little craft beer spot with food. Once again, I was on the hunt for lunch and this place had Haggis Bonbons! Little did I know how much I was missing from my life before I tried these little delicious morsals. Now, some say Haggis is disgusting. I mean how can somthing made from minced sheep’s offal (heart, liver, and lungs) mixed with oatmeal, onions, suet, and spices be that bad?! Okay, I agree, it's better that I didn't look this up until after I tried them, but ultimately, I did enjoy the taste and would eat them again.

After lunch, I headed back to the train station. Realizing I still had some time before the next train, I headed up to Champagne Central, which is a cute fancy bar that overlooks the main station area. Since the trains run every 30 minutes to Greenock, I only enough time to sip on one glass, but for those moments, I felt like I had slipped back in time and was a Lady or even a Dutchess sequestered away from the common masses. (Perhaps I've been reading too many of those old British murder mystery books...)

Upon arrival back in Greenock, I stopped at one more pub to take advantage of the fast WiFi. It's so nice to edit photos, create a video, and upload it within 30 minutes! But time was running short, so I needed to get back on the ship, where I spent the rest of the night working on some outstanding projects. With the trip coming to an end, I'm feeling this continuous need to actually finish many of the things that I've started, so am spending so much more time on my laptop lately!

Day 165 / June 20: At Sea

One of the projects I've been working on is to apply to become an Enrichment Speaker on Cruise ships. The major benefit of this is to be able to travel for significantly less money. Unfortunately, most of the speakers or other enrichment staff (artists, bridge instructors, etc.) don't get paid, but instead trade their services to travel much more budget friendly. Anyways, I'm trying to figure out how to do this as part of my partial retirement plan. One major item that I didn't have completed off the application check list was a demo of me speaking in front of a live audience. Therefore, today, I invited a limited number of passengers to be my guinea pigs and listen to me speak for 30 minutes so I could capture a video of myself. (Fast forwarding a few days, but to finish the story, I was able to upload everything that is required once we arrived in Iceland and now am talking with an agent about schedule!)

This little activity took up most of the sea day and naturally, after all that pressure, I took a nap. Then I started planning the road trip from Miami to Michigan. I still can't believe that we're two weeks from arriving back to where we started almost 6 months ago. Just doesn't quite seem real!

I did eventually leave my room again to go to dinner at Jacques (yum!) and to the evening entertainment. Tonight was a cover of the Beatles called Just John and Paul. You might guess why they are called that based on their photo.

Day 166 / June 21: Tórshavn (Faroe Island), Denmark At Sea

Land AHOY!!

Just kidding... As we approached the Faroe Islands, the wind was blowing too hard for us to safely enter the harbor and we were turned away. Back to sea...

And back to the projects. Today I continued to work on the Around the World Cruise Wrap Up videos where I'm consolidating all of the ports, entertainers, activities, and other various photos into one final summary video. I haven't quite finished the full concept yet, but plan to do so before New York so I can share the draft around the ship to get any comments or edits before publicly posting the final one.

Other than that, it was really a quiet sea day. For some reason, I'm in the middle of multiple books so I haven't finished any in a few days.

Then the pre-dinner show was a new guest entertainer - Charlie Cole, who is a singer & violinist, primarily playing rock music. That was a fun surprise and change of pace!

Yet another project I've been working on is sorting and organizing the Port and Segment videos so that once I have a good WiFi source I can start uploading them to YouTube and Facebook. The goal is to create a better library so they are easier to find, view, and share. Fingers crossed that I haven't bitten off more than I can chew on this one... (yes, I worked this filing system during dinner so I am thinking about food.)

The night show is another new guest entertainer - Hannah Howie. She finished her show with a Frozen song. I think most of you will know this one. It's called Let it Go! The best part of this song was when Dino, one of the stage hands, came out and tossed cut up pieces of paper at her, creating a "snow" effect.

Day 167 / June 22: At Sea

Woke up just in time for a cocktail! Yep, it must be Culinary Class day. Today's class focused on Nordic cuisine. We made Monkey Ball Bread, Haddock on a bed of capers and beetroot, and pork cutlet with a white wine cream sauce. Breakfast of champions I tell you! When I started on this little adventure, I was still waking up at 5am, so a 9:30am cooking class seemed like lunch. However, these days, I just might be waking up closer to 9:00am on sea days and getting to the kitchen just in time; even skipping coffee! Remember, ship time is really arbitrary and a "normal" schedule was thrown overboard months ago.

Now, some may call this lazy, but turns out, it was a bit of a preemptive action. I napped and lounged around most of the afternoon. It has been quite some time where I truly took an afternoon off. While it felt a bit like a guilty pleasure, I enjoyed every minute!

The reason I call it preemptive though is because tonight, we experienced the Midnight Sun in the Arctic Circle. After seeing Just John and Paul’s next show and spending some time in Horizons, I was headed to bed via Deck 14 (upper outside deck). When I stepped out, I heard voices. No not in my head… outside. Which is actually probably more of a surprise than me hearing voices because typically, after 10pm, there is no one about on the ship. Here it was almost midnight and people were not just out of their rooms, but they were outside in the cold. And, there was not just one or two, about a dozen were wandering around with their cameras, capturing the moment and hoping to capture a whale tale photo. Naturally, I detoured from my plan to go to sleep and joined them in the hunt for whale spotting.

Day 168 / June 23: Akureyri, Iceland

I’m starting the next paragraph on Day 168 because technically it was already the next day and they kind of became one in the end…

Around 1am, one of my internal voices finally convinced me that I really did need to go to sleep because I had a big excursion the next day and would need some energy. (Luckily I had napped most of the afternoon prior and was caught up on rest for the moment.)

Once back in my room, I didn’t go straight to sleep because that would have made too much sense. Instead I sorted through all the photos and posted to Social before finally getting to bed around 2am.

The meanie of the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) brain really wanted to see as we approached Akureyri by passing through the mountains and fjords, so it set an alarm for 5am. (Yes, for those who can’t math, that’s only 3 hours of sleep.) My phone started it’s morning screeching a short time after closing my eyes. Lo and behold, we were already almost to the port and I missed the area that I wanted to see. So I went back to sleep. Luckily, my tour meeting time wasn’t until 10am, so I had some more time to rest a bit longer.

Dragging from a deep slumber, my alarm performed it’s screeching opera once again and out of bed I rolled. Because today’s excursion involved getting on a boat to fish, I decided to forgo showering, but not coffee. That seemed the most reasonable in the moment.

(Side Note - I’ve reached level 14000 in my match 3 game!)

After a 40 minute bus ride, we arrived in the small fishing village called Hauganes where we got dressed in these amazingly warm red jumpsuits that doubled as life preservers in the event we fell in. Once on the boat, they explained that we were going in search of whales before we started fishing and that they spotted some across the harbor already.

Being sleep deprived and having spent all night seeing whale tales, I was not as enthusiastic about others seeing these massive creatures. However, I decided to use a large portion of my energy to climb a ladder to the upper platform, where no one else was around and I had freedom to move from side to side without blocking anyone’s photos, while also capturing some more of my own.

Finally, we were off to the fishing portion! I was very excited. It’s one of the excursions that I have been waiting for the whole 6 months. And boy did it exceed expectations!

There were only 8 fishing rods for the 16 people, so we partnered off to share one. Turned out that my partner was there for the boat and whales, so she let me fish the whole time! Because we were fishing from the boat, we just released the line to sink down. Once the line went slack, we set the break and reeled in to remove the tension from the lines, but tried to keep the lures close to the bottom. Within seconds (or maybe minutes), quite of few of us had something on our hooks and were actively reeling them in.

I officially caught two big fish and one very large vegetarian meal (sea weed). Unofficially, I caught another smaller fish, but it jumped to safety just was I was pulling it out of the water.

As we were fishing, the captain was filleting some of the good catches, letting us try fresh sushi right on the boat. The rest of the meat was saved to grill once we docked back at shore.

Because we don’t seem to be fed enough on this trip (sarcasm…), they also took us to a restaurant for beer and fish soup.

Back on the ship, I had enough time to shower before heading to Horizons for Solo Cocktail hour, followed by dinner with Peter and Jason (Cruise Director & Assistant Cruise Director), and then to the evening show, featuring both Charlie Cole and Hannah Howie. During their show, I was starting to wonder if it helps to have both names start with the same letter as an entertainer… (Yes, I am very tired. How did you guess??)

The show ended a little after 10pm, so a reasonable person would go to bed, but the sun was still up, so I went to Horizons to watch Karaoke. (The sun being up is not a great reason to stay up because it never went down again… at least not tonight.)

Finally around midnight, I excused myself to go to sleep.

You would think the night ended there, but alas, I stayed up for a bit longer because by the time I got back to my cabin, I was notified that the agency I submitted all my stuff too is interested in bringing me on and sent me some lists of upcoming opportunities!

Also, there were whales breathing outside. Who could sleep when there were whales?! The very same animals that I saw the previous night, all morning, during dinner, and now, outside my balcony door. Yes, of course, I went outside to peer through the fog to try to figure out where the pfffsshhhs were coming from. (That’s my version of a whale blow hole sound…)

Anyway, sneak peak at Week 25, specifically Day 169 - I’m finishing this entire summary around midnight after an entire day of activity, starting at 6:45 this morning. Exhausted no longer describes my state of being, so if you’re reading this and wondering about my mental health and well being, just know that I don’t have an excursion tomorrow and my only objective is to eat a hot dog. More to come on that in the next Wrap Up.

Less than two weeks to go…

#2026AroundtheWorldCruise