Copenhagen to Boston 2026

Day 4 at sea started like all of the other days: no alarm and we were awake shortly after 7. It had rained overnight and the bridge camera was Ladies, look at your husband first question right now what did I say?qobscured by the rain drops on it. Today's schedule is a bit more full than the previous three days.  There are 4 enrichment type lectures during the day starting at 9am with Kez' talk on Halifax.  It was actually pretty good and it was followed by Dr. Colon in the Explorer's lounge who did talk number 2 on the development of surgery techniques. Once again it was fascinating.  For me I took a long lunch break while Angela had a Pop Choir practice.   After lunch there was a presentation in the theater about the bridge and the ship by a 2nd Officer and a Cadet.  That presentation went long and was followed immediately by Dr. Colon giving his first presentation on ancient plagues which was fascinating in how it aided in dynasty changes due to the weakening ...

  It was really nice to sleep in with no alarm.  Shortly after we had awakened, the Captain came on the PA system with an emergency announcement that blood donors were needed for a passenger that needed a transfusion.  Volunteers with specified blood types were encouraged to report to the Crown Grill with their blood donors cards.  We heard nothing further the rest of the day.  For the patient, it's got to be a bit scary to be half way between Europe and Canada and needing the transfusion.  There's literally no external help available within hundreds if not thousands of miles.  For these crossings we typically do not see another ship until we are closer to the end of the crossing.  It's just the big blue ocean with its waves, wind, and critters that we see. After breakfast we attended the Life at Sea interview with 1/2 of the cast of singers and dancers along with Allwyn our cruise director.  We've attended these type interviews and there was...

Once again it was nice to once again wake up a bit later without an alarm going off.  The nights have been restful without virtually any motion from the ocean. Our first event was at. 10am and was a Princess Insider talk on Sydney & Halifax. I didn't find it especially helpful as Angela (not my Angela) ended up spending too much time selling Princess excursions and too little time on real port information.  Since we've been to these ports, I have more than a trivial amount of knowledge of them. The Princess Patter (daily printed newsletter) is filled with all sorts of activities most of which are somehow related to selling some item or service. There are also many trivia events and various sporting activities.   At 2pm there were competing enrichment type events so we split up and I attended Dr. Angel Colon's "Translational Science" lecture.  He's a professor emeritus at Georgetown University and adjunct professor at Rutgers.  He lectures very well and tod...

  We like sea days on long cruises.  On this first sea day on our way to Sidney, Nova Scotia, we chose to sleep in as we didn't have an event until 9am.  Kez gave her enrichment talk on 5 spices.  While all of these spices are nice and we use many of them on a daily basis, they were all the source of conflict back in the day.  Each one provoked power trips by the desiring country, oppression of those doing the farming and growing, and immense pleasure by those enjoying them.  The five spices that she covered were pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla. It was an interesting and engaging presentation.  For the rest of the morning, I just chilled out and worked on my blog and enjoyed watching the ocean pass by at about 20 miles per hour.  After all of these years of cruising, I still find it so amazing that we cover such immense distances at such a slow rate of speed.   Angela had her daily pop choir rehearsal at 12:15pm like will be ever...

This morning we had a later arrival than normal into Cobh (Cove) just before 10am.  There was a lengthy delay in receiving clearance from the local authorities for guests to go ashore.  So we just waited it out.  Once clearance was given, we scanned off of the ship and made our way along the waterfront to the ferry pier for our excursion to Spike Island. Spike Island is located just off of Cobh in the harbor.  It was established as a military fort, the walls and many of the structures exist until today.  Later it was converted to use as a prison and then back to a fort during WWII, and then back to a prison.  In 1985 on my birthday, there was a major 2 day riot and it wasn't long after that the prison was eventually closed.  It's now a museum documenting the history of of its use. To reach Spike Island, one must purchase a ticket which I did online the previous evening.  All we had to do was check in and get a thermal printed receipt to show at th...

Once again, after an over night transit we arrived into Liverpool quite early and we were in no hurry to get off the ship.  We had our customary LIDO breakfast and met our friends, Kevin & Kathleen at 8:30am in the Crooner's lounge on deck #7.  We scanned off of the ship and walked along the River Mercy waterfront to the Beatles statute where we took the obligatory pictures.  Later in the day this area gets quite crowded, so being there early was nice. We easily found our taxi touring company nearby,  John Murphy was our driver and his Big Beatles Taxi Tour Peugeot van.  While it would hold 6 people, Kevin only arranged for a 4 person tour.  There were 3 seats facing each other and we took turns swapping seats.  I really don't like facing backwards when driving or riding on busses or trains, but I could contort my body to look forward most of the time when it was my turn in the rear facing seats.   John took us to all of the Beatles growing up...

It was a nice day in Belfast when we woke up this morning.  I was scheduled to lead the interdenominational church service in the Explorer's Lounge at 8am which sort of coincided with our arrival.  Because of this conflict the attendance was down, but the service went well although it was interrupted twice by going ashore messages over the PA system.   After the service, we went up to the LIDO to have breakfast and watched the passenger traffic as they were loaded on double decker busses and shuttled to the center of town.  The shuttle was $20/person round trip and we took it when we were here three years ago on the Regal Princess.  Today, our plan was to stay onboard as it's a Sunday and lots of things are closed and we've seen many of the major tourist items on previous visits.   We did make a trip off the ship to visit the little port shopping area and purchased a couple of T-shirts.  But we came right back on board and I found a nice table in the L...