APRIL 20, 2008 – ON THE VERY ROUGH SEAS.

This will probably be my last blog until after we get home. We go to LeHavre, France tomorrow where Ed has scheduled a tour of the WWII battle sites and I’ll just walk around the town and enjoy not having any agenda. Today is packing day so my job is to lay things out and get the hell out of Ed’s way. We don’t have to put our luggage out until before dinner tomorrow, but we are in port from 7 am to 7 p so that’s not a lot of fudge time. And we have to vacate our cabin by 7 am on Tuesday. Our plane doesn’t leave until mid afternoon but we have to take the transfer bus at 7:45 am from the ship.
PASSPORT CHECK: We all had to personally appear before the single UK immigration official with our passports, which we are allowed to keep this time. It turns out it was his first trip to Ireland and he was only there for 4 hours! The line went slowly and wound down the staircases.
DISEMBARCATION TALK: This was basically a review of the things you need to know to get where you’re supposed to be on the last day. We all have to vacate our cabins by 7 am (except for those transferring to the Queen Mary 2 for the trans-Atlantic cruise to New York) so that the cabin staff can get the cabins ready for the next cruise. JJ did this and it was a nice “goodbye” talk; all of the departments were represented at the end and it was a nice time to thank them for their hard work.
The next presentation was an interesting topic but we saw the speaker before and didn’t want to endure it again.
PURSER’S DESK: We had a number of tasks to do here: get Euros and Pounds; check our bill; get a report on the bracelet I lost on board (I still hope it may show up as we pack but I think the chances are slim); and get more of the colored luggage tags for our disembarkation.
We have received our Elite cards which entitle one to preferential disembarkation and other goodies but it doesn’t apply until after this cruise. Then free laundry! Yippee!
TRIVIA: The immigration process was still taking up the Pacfic Lounge; we all figured it out pretty quickly and showed up at the Casino Bar. We three who showed up, joined with another group where only 3 of their members showed up. We dubbed ourselves “The Misfits”. There were only 15 questions this time; the staff is getting fatigued with all this. We only missed one question: What was the name of Elvis Presley’s first back up band. We knew it did gospel but nothing else so we put down gospel. It was the “Jordanaires”. But WE WON! Easily….for luggage tags. One more trivia game this afternoon.
LUNCH: Today is the Sunday brunch and it was delicious and far too much food as usual. We sat with some folks we’d never met before; that’s unusual after 100+ days. Had some conversation about various things including earthquakes (I think one fellow must be in construction or architecture).
PACKING: Ed takes the brunt of this; he’d just undo it and repack if I did it anyway. So I’ve devoted my spare time this morning to writing notes and exchanging contact info with a few other folks on this cruise, getting flash cards ready to give to folks with the photos we’ve taken of them (I hope there’s enough time to get them back), and preparing “You Made A Difference” cards for the staff. This goes into their personnel files and we don’t do nearly enough of this.
Probably the one most valuable thing we brought along for this part of the trip is the luggage scale. $25 from Magellan. You heard it here.
The Captain altered our course yesterday to make for a smoother ride and it worked. This afternoon we turned into the English Channel and despite expecting rougher weather, it hasn’t been any worse, but not any better.
This afternoon the following are scheduled:
ON LANGUAGE: AN ACTOR CELEBRATES THE GLORY OF THE SPOKEN WORD: This presentation by Rita Moreno was actually quite interesting and made us look at the peculiarities of our language. It was also an appreciation of the language. During this presentation, she sang songs to us and read poems and other writings, to illustrate the points being made.
ONE OUTFIT, 12 DIFFERENT LOOKS: This was clever and went beyond what I would have thought. But I thought it was pushing it to get people to believe that you could get by with one solid black tank top and slacks with nondescript, low heeled shoes and changes in accessories. After the third day, no one would believe you were washing it out every night. Nor was there a guarantee that it would be dry overnight. But it was a nice try and if I could remember and be patient, I could probably do this.
TRIVIA: There were only 4 of us and several other groups had the same dilemma although the winning group had a full complement of members present for this last trivia. Prizes were passport cases.
CAPTAIN’S FAREWELL PARTY (it’s Formal night – double ugh). We visited with several other couples. One lady was complaining about the Seder last night. She didn’t like the seating arrangements as a starter. I kind’ve nodded nicely and smiled a lot. #1 I think complaining for some people is their national pastime, and #2 we had heard from some of the staff about the difficulties they encountered in trying to make this a good Seder. They did their best even though it wasn’t all what we’d have in our homes.
DINNER (of course): Everyone present and in their finery. Baked Alaska for dessert: Frankie said it was 1845 Calories and I don’t think he was far off. Lobster is always served for formal nights. Bonnie is glad she’s going home because she needs to seriously address her expanding figure.
ENTERTAINMENT: The “kids” have another extravaganza for us: Ports of Call. It was phenomenal! It had selections of various ports such as Barcelona, Rio, London, you get the idea. The songs and dancing were superb. JJ, the fantastic cruise director, came out in an outback Aussie outfit and did Waltzing Mathilda. Such fun.
UCLA vs. USC Department: We have been sharing photos and such with Mr. USC and his wife. When we gave them our contact information, I finished with “Go Bruins!” Now he wants us to go to the annual cross town rivalry at the Rose Bowl together this year. Uh Oh. What have we started. It

TOMORROW: Ed takes a tour of the WWII battle sites and I walk around Le Havre, France.
TUESDAY: Is disembarkation day. 1 ½ hour bus ride to Heathrow; lots of down time in between all else.

I’m doing this because I don’t know if I’ll be able to upload another blog.

APRIL 19, 2008 – COBH (Pronounced “Cove”), IRELAND

My cold was miserable during the night but the pharmacy I have helped. Ed and I both woke up around 3 am and couldn’t go back to sleep so we talked about the kids and such. Eventually we both dozed off after clearing the sinuses and such. We had turned on the heat last night but it’s still chilly in the room. Ed thinks the demand for heat is so great the ship can’t cope. I don’t mind a cold room to sleep in but if the ears and nose have icicles, I have trouble sleeping.
The weather was horrendous. We were thrown all over the bed and the wind near the patio door was ferocious. Further, it leaks around the seals and so the drapes flutter with cold air all night long. That part isn’t so bad.
OFFICIAL WELCOME TO IRELAND: Cead Mile Failte ( a hundred thousand welcomes ) to Ireland: We got our first official and authentic welcome to Ireland via email from Father Sean who is from Cork! It was a good start to the day.
We can tell by the motion of the ship that we were coming into quieter waters. Cork has the largest natural harbor in the Northern Hemisphere, or so they say. The little tugs kept us kissing the pier until the lines were secure. We have a broken up CNN; still no BBC – and no newspapers in the library.
We called Lisa and spoke with Adrian and Lisa. Anniken is doing well after nose surgery; we don’t have the details as the phone connection was breaking up.
I uploaded what blog I had prepared and a few emails before we left.
CRONIN TRANSPORT: Our busses were from a company named Cronin, so we knew we were in good hands. We had a woman about our age as tour guide and she was a delight. The weather was blustery and combined with the wind and +/- 50 F temp, it was pretty cold. We both layered and we looked like we had never endured cold weather before. In a way, that’s not far from the truth considering that less than a week ago we were in Egypt.
CHARLES FORT: This was a photo op for a 17th century fortification (it seems there are lots of them in Ireland).
KINSALE: This is an historic old fishing village. We had an hour here and we bought a 6 pack of cokes, did some window shopping (there are no bargains anywhere given the Euro ratio to the USD), and had a hot drink in a pub along with several other non-shoppers on the busses (there were 4 bus loads of folks on this tour called “Best of Ireland”).
Along the way we saw parts of Cork and the River Lee; we saw many hedgerows in the countryside and the flowers are all blooming in spite of the inclement weather so we were lucky. We passed several castles along the way and a few “follies”. The latter are miniature castles erected on property where one might go to listen to music, read, write, paint, whatever. Seems a fitting name. Some are quite cute.
LUNCH: We were served beer or soft drinks, hearty heavy Irish bread, a bowl of Irish (lamb) stew which was quite good and a creamy confection for dessert. While all this was going on, we were entertained by an Irish group called the Irish Weavers. Phyllis said they appear on QVC every St. Patrick’s Day. They had many original songs, many sing alongs, and lots of audience participation whether by singing or by clapping. Many of the songs were played on old Irish instruments, and sometimes in Irish styles which are dying out, such as whistling a song; the latter was quite beautiful.
Irish dancers were a part of the entertainment too. Three Irish lasses and a fellow, all of whom were very good and had gorgeous costumes on. This whole experience was totally Irish and absolutely delightful.
Well, this experience put us all in a great mood for our next stop.
BLARNEY CASTLE AND THE BLARNEY STONE: Yep, we did it and we have photos to prove it. Better watch out for us now. While I had recently learned that you have to hang upside down in order to kiss the stone, no one said how many stairs you have to climb to get there. This stone is at the very top of a very tall castle. The steps are old stones that wind around a central core. They are tall, tiny, and steep. There is a rope in some areas to help you keep your balance. Other times a metal bar is available. There wasn’t a problem going up. There were so many of us doing this that the line just crept along. So it took a long long time to get to the top but the good news is that you didn’t get tired and you visited with everyone else and took photos out the gun holes and other aperatures. We also took a lot of photos of each other, that is, other couples at various heights along the way. I would have said you wouldn’t be able to do this if you were grossly overweight but there was one among us who fits that description and he squeezed his way through God Bless him.
So finally you arrive. There is an Irish fellow there who helps you (there’s a tip box there). You sit on a plastic sheet, scoot forward, drop down and then kiss the stone. If you’re not able to pull yourself back up, this fellow helps you. While all of this is going on, they have a camera that takes photos of you which you will then pay 10 Euro for as you exit the castle. If you want to have a photo taken with your own camera, it must be done from the right hand side which is where the “helper” is so it’s almost impossible for anyone to get a shot of you.
Local rumor has it that the locals urinate on it as a trick on the tourists. As a result, supposedly, the “helper” cleans the rock periodically. Some things it’s better left to faith.
So then you wind you way through the castle which is really a ruin with signs here and there telling you what the various rooms were originally used for. The kitchen is the most amusing. It’s on one of the high floors and believe me when I tell you that it would be nigh onto impossible to haul everything up to that level to make any kind of a meal. Perhaps they had pulleys and such but still, having the kitchen at that level is very odd.
So then we went to look around the Blarney Woolen Mills store. As I said, no bargains here and nothing to tempt us. We stopped to have a coke and then got on the bus for the return to our ship again going through the countryside. All 4 busses showed up just as 5:30 p was bonging; the tour staff from the ship, along with the security staff were blue with the cold and wind.
There was a folkloric show this afternoon but we missed it as our tour got back just in the nick of time. Fortunately, you never have to worry if you’re on a ship sponsored tour as they’ll wait for you as we had to do earlier this week.
SEDER: We have a female rabbi on board and so there was a Seder. I’ll relate some of the back story to you in person if you’d like the gossip, but basically it was a very nice experience albeit longer than I’d care for but isn’t that always the case? We saw with a non-Jewish couple who were guests of other passengers. There were about 50 people for this, many of not most of whom were guests.
ENTERTAINMENT: “Diva of the high C’s”. Ed went; I didn’t. I’m sick and I couldn’t deal with a screamer today. I organized some stuff, downloaded photos, and recharged the cameras.
OH NO! We have to give that hour back that we got earlier. Darn. This is rough at this point.

APRIL 18, 2008 – ON VERY ROUGH SEAS: continuation of truncated blog.

BOOK CLUB: I went to this where John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was discussed. Almost all of us had read this in school but one appreciates it much more in the re reading as an adult. There were 3 of us from Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma and we recounted our experiences of the dust storms when we were children. You couldn’t see the fences around your house no matter how close; you didn’t set the table until ready to eat because the dishes would be full of dirt. And so on.
While there I looked around and the missing Economist was there. I explained to Amber why I was taking it. I’ll assume whomever purloined it did so innocently.
I missed “Dressing for your Body Shape/Accessories” but if I was really going to follow that, I would buy a book and get serious about it. I would have found it interesting though.
TRIVIA: We didn’t win and other than that, since I’m writing this blog a day later, I don’t recall specifics except that the composition of our team varies depending on who is available. We joined with 3 of the “4 nations” group, and in honor of our colleagues “Nice People” we dubbed ourselves the “Nice Dweebs”.
DINNER: Just Twyla Dave and us. Usual discussions and we shared how much fun we had with each other and how lucky we felt in getting such compatible dinner mates.
ENTERTAINMENT: It was Norm Crosby and I would have enjoyed seeing him but I felt lousy we stayed in, finished up some stuff, Ed did his Sudoku and I did my solitaire on my Treo.