Famille Du Pentium

Our last port before we disembark was LeHavre, in Normandy.  We chose the Princess tour to Paris, which included a brief city tour as well as a guided tour of the Louvre, then lunch at the Eiffel Tower.  It’s pretty hard to say you didn’t experience Paris, after you’ve eaten lunch at the Eiffel Tower.  The Louvre was not surprisingly crowded, but surprisingly hot, which made it difficult to keep  the kids engaged.  But we did see the Venus De Milo, Winged Victory, and of course the Mona Lisa.

Mona Lisa was interesting. This is a piece of art that many humanities and art teachers refer to, to demonstrate the introduction of “point perspective” – that is to say, oversimplified, that artwork began to use visual angles to give the appearance of perspective.  All boiled down, you’re supposed to view Mona Lisa from various different angles, and no matter where you view her, her eyes are always “looking at you” – not forward, but toward you.  But you can’t.  There are ropes keeping you surprisingly far away (I would have expected to be able to get just a bit closer – it still required a bit of optical zoom on the camera to get a good shot) and getting to the front of the rope isn’t managed at all – just a big muddle of people jockeying.  Moving from one side at the ropes to the other side of the room, still at the ropes, would have required an iron constitution.  A queue would do a lot of good here.

The Louvre tour was expectantly short, only about an hour, then we made our way back to the bus and toward the Eiffel Tower for lunch.  You can’t help but be a bit overwhelmed, eating lunch in a fine dining restaurant on the first level of the Eiffel Tower.

After lunch, we were a bit pressed for time and the elevators going back down were all full, so we had to take the stairs down.  Yes, there are stairs.  Back on the ground, we made our way back to the bus, and then started the long (2.5 hours) drive back to the ship at LeHavre.

It was a great experience for everyone, albeit a bit crowded and hot.  Not sure I’d do it again, but I’m glad we did it this trip.

Some picture commentary: First, we made our way from LeHavre to Paris, and arrived at the Louvre around DSC03648.  Mona Lisa at DSC03669.  Then, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower, arriving about DSC03686.  Then, we started making our way back to LeHavre about DSC03694.

DSC03703 forward shows some pictures from the last day on the ship, like the Baked Alaska celebration after dinner on the last night, and Flat Stanley at our room.  Then the IMAGXXXX photos are Marla’s, starting back at the beginning and working forward again.  Worth a look through those, as she got better pictures of Mona Lisa.

SLR long & wide lens pictures are HERE.

Tomorrow, we disembark 🙁 but we’ve got one more day in London before we go home, and we took a Jack The Ripper walking tour, which I’ll talk about.  Then, I’ll do some reviews of the ship, excursions, and hotels that we stayed at.

My original plan was to celebrate our anniversary by renewing our vows on this, the second, sea day.  But the captain’s schedule didn’t work out for it, so our renewal of vows was on our first sea day. No big deal, but it left us without any real solid plans for Sea Day 2.  Which was fine, because at this point we needed to rest up.

The kids spent most of the day at their “clubs” – these were great activity centers for the kids that kept them busy in the evenings and on sea days while we relaxed, went to shows, and played in the casino.

That said, we were invited to visit the captain on the bridge on Sea Day 2, and we took some great pictures.  Enjoy!

Still with us?  Hard to keep up?  Imagine actually being there.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved our vacation, but it was very busy, as you can see.  That’s OK, only three more ports, one more day at sea, and one more day in London before we’re done!

Port 8 brought us to South Queensferry, the port town for Edinburgh, Scotland.  I’ve always wanted to see Edinburgh, so I was looking forward to this.  Upon our arrival arrival at the port (this was a “tender” for the ship, meaning they anchored at sea and sent little boats with passengers to shore.  Don’t worry, you’ll see pictures later) we were told by Princess staff that there was no shuttle, and we should make our way from South Queensferry to Edinburgh by taxi.  A few steps outside the port, and there were plentiful private shuttle services to Edinburgh on air conditioned, comfortable buses for five quid each person, each way.  Too bad Princess doesn’t want to run a shuttle anymore; I guess they need to sell more shore excursions.

Anyway, to the point: Edinburgh is exactly like London.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful city and all, but not much different than touring London.  We had two disappointing experiences in Edinburgh: one, a bigoted highlander running a tartan shop didn’t want to talk to us about Clan Maxwell tartans because, as she said, “Maxwells were not a Clan, they were a family, and they didn’t have a tartan.”  Sheesh.  Second, all the restaurants along the shopping and tourist streets were little cafes with limited seating, and our lunch-hungry family of five ended up eating at a TGI Friday’s because it was the only place that had enough seats for us.

The first couple of pictures you see are the view of the South Queensferry Bridge from our tender.  We dubbed this “Lego Bridge” because they have covering over part of the bridge for painting, which makes the bridge look like it’s made of Legos.  After that, pictures of us touring Edinburgh on our own.

Oh yeah, I guess you want the pictures link.  Here it is.  Tomorrow: Day 2 at Sea, and then… Paris!

Here’s a quick break from the July UK Cruise posts.  This summer, Aaron has been participating in a gardening club at his school, McCracken.  Yesterday was the last day, and they were harvesting their garden.  Most of the food went to a food pantry, but the kids got to take home some veggies.  So Aaron came home with two tomatoes, a jalapeno, and some basil as well as some other stuff.  So I’m sitting at the kitchen table, looking at these potentially delicious fresh veggies, thinking what kind of sandwich I would make with them.  Then it dawned on me – something snapped, and I decided that I *really* wanted some Salsa.  With no cilantro, I had to Google “salsa no cilantro” and came up with some great recipes, which included basil instead of cilantro.

The only problem was lack of onions, and the recipe I decided on called for Balsamic vinegar.  I figured I could cheat a bit, and went to the store and bought a red onion and some Balsamic vinegar.  Came home, stuck everything in the blender, and then refrigerated for an hour, and – Viola! – I had Salsa, with (nearly) 100% ingredients grown by Aaron at McCracken.

Aaron tried it, and approves.  The recipe is after the jump.

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I’m not sure that Princess would stop here, were it not for the infamous lake (loch) and even more infamous critter living somewhere in its waters.  The only problem was, I couldn’t get the lyrics to The Police song Synchronicity II out of my head.

We took the Princess tour to Loch Ness at this port.  After the obligatory long bus ride, we arrived at Urquhart Castle, supposedly where Nessie hangs out.  Compared to the other tours, though, this one was a little oppressive.  All the tour buses showed up at the same time – so thousands of passengers descended upon the castle at the same time.  Some parts of the castle (i.e. the main tower and infamous basement, where Nessie hangs out) were one set of narrow spiraling stairs – for going up and down.  Of course, you can’t do anything about how the castle was built one thousand years ago, but you can do something about the crowds that all show up at the same time.

We (well, Justin and Ethan and Dad) went all the way up the stairs.  The problem wasn’t getting up, it was coming down.  With railings only on one side, Justin really needed the rails to go down.  The problem was that people coming up hugged the rails, and Justin froze when he couldn’t hold the rails.  This pretty much stopped traffic movement in either direction, until someone above me, who saw what was going on, yelled down “let the kid have the rail!”

Eventually we made it back down, and made a b-line to the souvenir stand and bus.  Pictures of our Loch Ness adventure have been put up, enjoy.

As I said before, on our first (and much needed) day at sea, we slept late, relaxed, walked very little, and oh yeah… Marla and I got married again.  The ceremony was officiated by the captain, so it’s all legal-schmegal.

The whole story is HERE.  The pictures are HERE.

I’ll resume new posts tomorrow, starting with Invergordon and Loch Ness, after a much needed break from posting. 😉

As I previously posted, at Glasgow (port of Greenock), we had a private tour waiting to take us to Caerlaverock Castle, which has some family (Maxwell) history.

The original post is here, and the pictures (P-A-S, 35MM) are also posted.

Six days, six ports – and the next day is a sea day (finally!) and our renewal of vows ceremony.

Our fifth port of call was at Belfast, Northern Ireland.  My readers old enough to remember the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland will recognize that this was an interesting city to visit, to say the least.  While Belfast is a beautiful and historical city, it was also – at one time – a war zone, and they do a pretty good job of presenting both sides of the city.

I’m not just going to refer you to the pictures and let you sort them out yourself… this post will be somewhat guided.  So open the pictures of Belfast in a separate window or tab, and follow along here.

First, we took a shuttle from the boat / pier to the center of town, and walked a very short distance to our Hop-on, Hop-off bus pick-up point.  This was at a shopping mall called Victoria Square, so we killed time in the mall until our bus came.  In the mall, we found an interestingly named store, to say the least – DSC03308.  After getting on the HoHo, it took us sort of back toward the dock, because that area is actually a tourist attraction now – the shipyards where the Titanic was built.  They don’t build ships there anymore, but some of the old shipyard structures are still visible.  See DSC03314 through DSC03317.

Next, we made our way to the Northern Ireland parliament building, called Stormont (DSC03320 through DSC03322).  This building is striking because, unlike the British house of parliament, it’s somewhat isolated on a huge estate.  There is, of course, a lot of security, but the grounds are large and somewhat breathtaking, in the middle of this busy city.

The next few pictures are some city scenes as we make our way to the “Troubles” area – the first sign of “Troubles” being DSC03332, which was a prison where fighters were kept during the troubled years.  We make our way now to Shankill Road, a sort of ground zero for the troubles.  The Shankill area is a predominantly Protestant working class area, bordering the Falls Road area which is predominantly Catholic.  Pictures of this neighborhood start around DSC03335.  I’ve included pictures of some of the murals and fenced off war zone areas, leading up to DSC03339, the wall that separates the Protestants neighborhood from the Catholic neighborhood.  Pictures of the wall continue up to DSC03343, where we start to see some of the bombed out houses from the troubles.

What is interesting is, rather than try to hide the effects of The Troubles, tourism in Belfast actually shows it off.  As you can see above, some of the bombed out buildings sit today the same way they were during the Troubles.  Tour buses take tourists through the area.  We have a lot to learn from this conflict, and Belfast isn’t going to hide it from us.

Murals resume about DSC03348, and continue until about DSC03353 (Marla also has some pictures, perhaps different pictures from a different perspective, later in the picture series.) Then, poof – we’re back in “beautiful” Belfast, touring a city that looks like any other ancient city.  Some murals continue after this, notably from DSC03357 forward.  Note the ads intermixed with the political murals.  Also note the Sinn Fein office at DSC03366.  After that, again, back to “beautiful” Belfast again, as we make our way back to Victoria Square mall and our shuttle bus and boat.

I felt that, even though it was a “hop-on, hop-off” bus, this tour gave us a lot better view of this infamous and historic city than any of the Princess tours could have.  It was strange and eerie to drive through what is still effectively a war zone, and see the effects of urban war on a working class neighborhood.

Our fourth (we’re getting tired too!) port in four days was Liverpool, England where we opted for the Princess tour “Wales, Steam Train, Chirk Castle”.  This tour was a bit more relaxed, although a bit long bus ride.  Wales is beautiful, and we chose this tour because both families have some tenuous connection to Wales.  However, at about this point we began to realize that all the Princess tours involved very long bus rides from the port city to see “something interesting.”  A tour on our own would have probably sent us to the Beatles museum and the Titanic museum, but the only tours offered by Princess were way out in the countryside, hours away.

That said, again, the countryside was great and we thoroughly enjoyed this tour.   First we made our way to Wales, then stopped at the required tourist shoppe to grab souvenirs.    Then, we caught a steam train through the Wales countryside, then back to our bus to make our way to Chirk Castle.  Since they staggered the train rides, our various tours arrived at Chirk Castle at different times and found the place not crowded and great to look around.  Our kids had plenty of time to talk to the in-character “Archer”, who told them how ancient Welsh warriors would have dressed and fought.

All of this is documented pictorially, with the usual caveats and so forth.

***UPDATE: I have added 35mm SLR long and wide lens pictures from Liverpool, Wales & Chirk Castle.

Once again on our own in Dublin, we took the 1916 Rebellion Walking Tour, which was very entertaining and took us to various sites around Dublin where the 1916 Rebellion had an impact.  The 1916 Rebellion, also called the 1916 Rising or 1916 Uprising, was the precursor to the Irish Wars of Independence. Lorcan, the tour guide, was 100% entertaining, if not a bit manic.  But he’s written the book on Irish independence, so he’s definitely  entitled to his passion.

The photos cover the sites we visited on our tour, and then some Irish river dancing on board the ship after the tour.  Remember, first are my pictures, then Marla’s, so there is some duplication.