At the moment we are prevented from exploring the high seas but we have found the next best thing! It is the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, Lancashire. It is often described as an Art Deco (1933) masterpiece built as a curve similar to the superstructure of an ocean liner’s bow of the same time. From …
All the photographs have now been uploaded. Enjoy! Leaving the hotel at 07:30 a.m. was remarkable because instead of an aeroplane landing every minute there was silence. One could hear the birds and the wind adjacent to the runway! Terminal 5 was quiet which enabled us to get away on time on a brand new …
We boarded one of 10 coaches just after 10:30 p.m. last night. Each coach was only half full. It appeared that every one of Fort Lauderdale’s Harley Davidson police motorcycles were in use, stopping traffic and running alongside our convoy to the airport to the foot of the aircraft’s steps. We eventually got away on …
It has been another quiet day so much so that as we write after dinner at 6:30 p.m. it is silent on the ship. When the dinner tray arrived a peep along the corridor showed around 20 trays. At breakfast there were over 100. During the day, as silently as the virus arrived, passengers have …
We awoke, moored in international waters, off Florida where we waited for most of the day. The big shots said we were good to go, but it wasn’t until 5:00 p.m. that we made it into Port Everglades. We were photographing the action through the window and on TV. People living in the apartments alongside …
At daybreak we were alongside the Zaandam, off Cuba. We had stopped to transfer oxygen and a nurse. Before breakfast were on our way again. Little happened during the morning other than President Trump may be applying pressure on Florida, but no news yet. After lunch was interesting. We sighted the island of Cuba, a …
This has been another day at sea. We are heading north across the Caribbean to the gap between the Cancun Peninsula (Mexico) and Cuba. If this was our regular cruise around now we would have been calling in at a piece of the Netherlands off the coast of Venezuela, namely the islands of Aruba, Bonaire …
By 6:00 a.m. we left the Gatun lock system, where locomotives called mules use steel cables to keep the ships in the middle of the lock as there is very little room to spare. Again, all was quiet until we left the Atlantic reception area and were hit by the Beaufort 6 winds and …
We awoke to see many more cargo ships in the canal reception area. Transfer of guests continued during the morning and was completed around 13:00. We waited for news which came through at 18:30. We were commencing transit. There are strict rules attached – no one on deck, lights on balconies off, curtains closed. By …
Today turned out to be the longest day of the voyage! It started late Friday night when, after 10:00 p.m.we were informed that we had just made “The Cut” of the age of 70. We slept soundly knowing that we were likely to leave this ship. Breakfast was early, a sign that disembarkation were going …