Vigo 2 November

Since this port was an unplanned stop, there weren't a lot of planned excursions.  We just went for a walk around the parts of the city close to the docks; took a few photos and then wandered back to the ship.

And now the cruise starts - 31 October and 1 November

We managed to walk ourselves and our suitcases to the dock.  Boarding was crowded but pretty well organised. Got straight to our room and the luggage arrived quite quickly. And intact. Paul bought a small modelling kit and some paints for onboard entertainment, but we thought his suitcase would most likely end in the 'naughty room'.  But, no, that was fine.
We've already had a few minor setbacks though.  We left port more than an hour late - some passengers hadn't arrived yet and they must have booked transfers/tours through Princess, because the captain waited for them.  Then we had to wait some more because we missed our departure slot and so some cargo ships had to go first. On 1 November we were meant to be in Le Havre but at the safety drill the captain said there's bad weather coming through and it would be safest not to go there.  Instead, we're going to Vigo in Spain a day later on 2 January.  Then later in the night the captain announced that we had to divert because of a medical emergency - someone's cruise has come to a very nasty end, because they took the risk of a medical evacuation by sea.  From the cruise map it looks like we went close to Torquay or thereabouts. This has made us a few hours later than the captain wanted, so I'm not convinced that this is our last change of itinerary.
Still - I'm on board a cruise ship. so all is good!

Southampton

Spending two nights in Southampton before the cruise.  We came here on the train - unfortunately managed to strain my back a little when getting the luggage onto the train, but apart from that it was a good quick trip. 
Staying at a new hotel we haven't tried before - it's called Room2 and I'd say we'll definitely be back here next year.  If nothing else, it's air-conditioned which isn't at all guaranteed here - Canberra winters have me acclimatised to sleeping temperatures around 16 or 17 degrees and here they like to warm the rooms up far too much as far as I'm concerned.  So, the ability to cool the room is great.  And, it's also a comfortable studio suite with a little kitchenette, a nice big bathroom, a king size bed and heaps of room for the luggage etc.
Today we went to Portsmouth to see the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard again - we visited a few years ago but ran out of time to see everything we wanted to, so it was good to get back there. 
Tomorrow - 31 October - we're finally off to start our cruise.  This is the third year in a row we've been booked on this cruise and the other two had to be cancelled, so I'm really looking forward to this.

28 October - Day trip to Winchester

This is Sandy's only (mostly) "post jet-lag" day before we go to Southampton.  We thought about going to Greenwich or to see Westminster Abbey, but in the end we got on a train to Winchester.
Quite a chilly day today, it only got to 10 degrees and I'm pretty sure the apparent temperature was a lot lower.  We weren't alone in our plans to go to Winchester either - when the guard looked at our tickets he exclaimed that he had no idea why everyone was going to Winchester today!
Anyway, one of the main reasons for going was to see Winchester's Military Museums. They weren't all open, but what we did see was quite impressive - in particular the really outstanding diorama of the battle of Waterloo at the Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum.
For Adam - with our new-found enjoyment of Forged in Fire - here's a few samples:

And of course, Paul with weapons:

We didn't go into the Castle or the Great Hall, but I gather they're both worth a visit.
Of course, there's the cathedral:

And the Westgate on the way there:

There are plenty of other places that we didn't get to see - for example there's a museum in the Westgate that wasn't open today, and a city museum that we glimpsed on the way back to the train.
Lunch is worth a mention - we found the Forte Kitchen.  Once you pass the challenge of a steep and narrow staircase, the food was just excellent and a truly excellent coffee.
Overall, a beautiful old English city - glad we decided to get the train rather than drive, but it seems you could easily spend a few days seeing all there is to see.

Sandy is now in England

My flights from Canberra to London went ok.  Highlights and lowlights:

• Snack on the flight from Canberra to Melbourne - yukky huge blob of hummus and 4 small, stale crackers.  Nasty
• Melbourne Airport - I've only been here a couple of times and the first thing I see is an ad for Sydney Skytrain - I was confused.  Then I was even more confused when there were zero crowds - usually you can follow other people through the departure process but I swear there was only one other person trying to go through Border security while I was - lots of lanes for people to queue, but no queues.
• Explosives test - for the first time in ages I wasn't nabbed at Canberra.  But then of course I got nabbed at Melbourne.  And, it came up positive!!  The man then had to test himself, and then test me again, twice, before they could let me through.
• Extra leg-room seats.  Both were as promised, and well worth the money, although the first one (on the Airbus from Melbourne to Singapore) would have been less comfortable except that the seat beside me wasn't occupied.  Still, next time we come to London, I'm flying business class or I'm not travelling.
• Flights - not too bad.  Singapore Airlines look after you fairly well.  It's still a horribly long flight though, and a very long flying time in the dark.  Food was quite okay - sadly I managed to actually sleep through one of the snacks (!!)  but Paul tells me I didn't miss anything good.  I didn't have Paul's issues with flight delays - he got expedited through Singapore Airport because his connecting flight was due to leave by the time they arrived, but I had enough time to walk by myself.
• Arrival in Heathrow - as usual, a very long walk to get out of the airport.  But, for a change, I felt just a little less unwelcome in England.  Each time we've arrived here for previous visits, we've had to line up with the "Non UK and EU" people and be interrogated about our reason for visiting etc.  At least this time they have now opened up the electronic arrival gates to foreigners like me, so it's just "show you passport, have your photo taken, 6 month visitor visa granted".  Almost the quickest I've ever gotten in to the country.
• Bus to Reading - not a problem, it arrived a little late but only 5 passengers and a really smooth trip.  

Met up with Paul at the bus stop at about 10am, went and had my first coffee for 30 hours (!!) then back to the apartment where he has been staying.  Wandered around the shops later, and had a look at the ruins of Reading Abbey.  All the travel caught up with me by about 5pm but I managed to stay awake for dinner and then crashed.

And all of a sudden, the next holiday is now (for Paul at least)

Paul left Canberra on Wednesday and after the usual "three flights and more than 24 hours on planes" finally arrived at his home for the next twelve days.  
I'll leave Canberra on Saturday 26 October for the same long, long haul - from Canberra to Melbourne to Singapore to Heathrow. 
The interesting thing is that both of us have our flights booked through Princess under one ticket - the two international flights with Singapore Airlines and the Virgin flight from Canberra - Melbourne ticketed with Singapore Airlines as a code-share. 
This somewhat surprisingly meant that at the normal Virgin domestic check-in at Canberra Airport, they could check Paul's luggage through to London and gave him his boarding passes for all three flights as well.  We had assumed he would need to pick up his luggage at Melbourne and check in there with Singapore Airlines, but no need.  It was the quickest check-in I have ever seen for an international flight, and the luggage found its way to Heathrow without drama.  I hope mine goes just as smoothly next week.

Last comments about the New Zealand cruise

As usual, I was slack and didn't finish off the entry about this cruise.  All that was left was a couple of days at sea for the trip back to Sydney, and it all went really well.

Just a few general comments about the cruise...

The Ship

The Majestic Princess is a really nice ship, quite new of course compared to most of the ships they send to Australia. 
It was originally aimed at the Chinese market and you can see this in the signage for example.  Similar to the Diamond Princess these days which spends a lot of time in Japan and therefore shows that influence.  I was disappointed to hear more than one crabby comment about the amount of Chinese influence on the Majestic Princess; apparently some people believe that Princess has failed in their efforts to enter the Chinese market and so should remove all that influence from the ship.  They haven't of course, the ship goes back to China at the end of this Australian summer as I believe it has done once before.  Unlike any other place in the world though, Princess doesn't manage bookings for the ship themselves - they're all apparently done through a government run travel agency in China.

Food and Drink

We went for traditional dining as we usually do.  Like many people I'm really unhappy about the traditional dining times on Princess Cruises these days - they moved the early sitting from 6pm to 5pm which is way too early, but the late sitting is still too late for us.  And the lure of Traditional Dining - being guaranteed a table without having to wait for ages for a spot at Any Time Dining, or fight your way through the buffet - is too strong.  We still usually go to the buffet for breakfast and lunch. 
The food was pretty good overall.  A couple of high points (for me anyway)

• I never expected to be able to get nice baked beans for breakfast out of a bain-marie - but there you go, they were delicious
• There is a specialty Chinese restaurant on board called Harmony.  They obviously weren't getting too many bookings, as they were pushing it every time we went to the buffet.  We went there for dinner once and the food was quite good - not "Australian Chinese" food so I'm assuming it might have been more traditional Chinese fare.  Only one problem - it's a four course menu where you pick one item for each course, and Paul's choices for one course were badly limited by the fact that there was so much shellfish.  Still we had a very nice meal including in my case the nicest dessert I had on the whole cruise.
• Our regular "Traditional Dining" dinner companions were a couple from Adelaide, Peter and Elizabeth.  Really nice people; more conservative in their politics than we are but we still managed to have a lot of long interesting talks - Peter has worked in a lot of places and had lots of different stories to tell.  

And a couple of not so high points:

• I may have said this before! - coffee on cruise ships is not good. Americans love that sludge that you cook up on a stove-top for hours, but even the 'paid for' coffee is never that great.  Part of the problem of course is that they can't use fresh milk, it has to be long life, but also part of it is that I think that they don't take proper training in coffee making seriously
• I was extremely disappointed about the lack of Moscato on the wine list - well, actually, it was on the list, they just didn't have any on board.  Apparently Moscato has become very popular in Australia and we drank them dry.  What I don't understand about that is that Princess has a stack of ships in Australia every summer, and you'd expect them to be able to plan a bit better.  We mostly just stuck with cider, which was fine because we worked out that they had Strongbow so we didn't get caught up too badly in the whole "we want cider and they bring us soda" debacle that we've been through more than once before :-) 

Service

The cabin stewards on this ship are managed a bit differently - it used to be that the steward would track you down on the first afternoon or evening and introduce themselves.  We didn't actually catch sight of him at all until about day three, and in fact it seems that instead of a personal introduction they now rely on leaving their details in the room's information directory. Leaving that aside, our steward looked after us really well.

We did have a lot of trouble getting table service in the International Cafe area - it's always busy and was clearly understaffed.  And of course I was suffering from my usual "invisible to service people" problems anyway.   Otherwise we were really well looked after.


Next Cruise!
Now in the middle of planning for the next cruise - off to England in October to cruise from Southampton to Dubai.