Yes, to the complete and total surprise of the town, we remained docked overnight. According to several passengers who partied on shore, several of the pubs stayed open past their normal 10 pm closing time in order to accommodate both passengers and crew. The drinkers assured them that our ship was not the Titanic and it was bound for Amsterdam.

I am not sure that the pub really cared as long as the Euros kept flowing.

I wandered off early and came back just about the same. The wind wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but the seas picked up immediately after we left the harbor.

White Lines Pier

Looking at town as we sail out

It is official and planned. Today will be our last day at sea in this run. Tomorrow morning we will dock in Cobh and leave there on Wednesday 1600. Yep, overnight. Dublin is completely a non-starter unless someone wants to take the train up on Tues and come back late the same day or the following day prior to sailing.

I don’t really care, but a lot of people really, really want to put foot in Irish soil. Most especially, I am assuming, the two Irish Immigration officers who boarded in the Azores. I don’t think that Amsterdam is in their plans.

Spent the afternoon sitting and relaxing with Carmen while we both did needlework.

I had been planning on using the second meal on my BOGO tonight. Mentioned it to Carmen and Stu, they decided to join me since they have OBC to burn. When I went to round them up in the Colony Club we added two more people to the party. Amazing that I received no pushback from the restaurant going from solo to three to five.  Lovely run dinner and I just made it back to the cabin.

Having been to Cobh before, I am going to avoid the mad rush off the ship and head off late morning. This is a stop with a couple of small museums, several nice hotels which serve tea, and a grocery store with yarn tucked up in bags over the dairy case.

This is a sea day. But what I meant to say is that there are a lot of reasons why people fail to maintain their weight or lose weight on a cruise. Now, if the food is horrible, this is not an issue. If it is your first cruise with a particular line, your lack of status usually means that you are spared various offering of food and drink delivered directly to your cabin.

I might have already mentioned being happily surprised when the room service person came back with a number of bottles of water to replace the bottle of wine (sparkling?) that I had politely but firmly refused about the second day of the cruise.

Since then there have been various deliveries of

• plates of small snacky things

• plates of canapes

a cheese plate

Today was the crowning glory –

no need for dinner

Just in case you can’t tell – there is a dark chocolate shell, caramel sauce, a chocolate dipped strawberry with almond. Inside the shell is a coffee flavored mouse with a dusting of expresso on top nestled on a bed of chocolate cake crumb.

and yes, the strawberry went first

I can sit in the cabin, stitch, relax and pretend that I am not a little old grey haired lady!

me – 14 April

Or Pinnacle Lunch if I am being polite. Which, in this case, I am not.

I received the invitation several days ago to a luncheon for the Pinnacles on board for 1200 in one of the specialty restaurants. Now, I don’t have much, if anything at all in common other than status level in Royal Caribbean’s program. But a free lunch is s free lunch.

Right?

Well…. my first error of the morning was closing my eyes for a few minutes which led to waking in a panick shortly after noon. Hustling down to the meeting place, I skidded in just as everyone was settling in for lunch. There were name cards.

At first I thought it was great luck to be seated on the end. Then the “gentleman” next to me started talking. He was loud, intrusive and seemed inclined to think we all wanted his opinions and stories.

I suffered through lunch. As an aside, the food in the Windjammer has been most excellent. Much better than this, beautifully plated but meh. The service was strange with one side of the rable receiving their meals 15 minutes before the second side. Fleeing the scene as soon as it was polite to do so, I rate the ship high on effort but well beliw the Explorer, Serenade, Splendour or Legend in execution.

Back into my cubby without voices ringing in my ears. Thank you very much

Imagine my surprise late this afternoon when I received yet another knock on the cabin door. Room service had attempted earlier to gift me with a bottle of something. Probably sparkling wine since that was the size and shape of the bottle. I have learned through bitter experience that their “non-alcoholic” wine is totally undrinkable. No one could drink it. Mad Dog 20/20 or Boones Farm Apple from high school days are high end compared to this stuff. I don’t know what it is about attempts to create “non-alcoholic” equivalents, but I strongly suggest that turning them all down is in much better taste let alone healthier. Now – there is some sparkling grape juice which isn’t half bad – but that starts with a decent quality of white grape juice….

Never mind. Anyway, the young person was back, and brought me bottles of water! He had asked if there was something else I would rather have. Water was my reply, thinking that if I am drinking some to most of my calories it was going to be in the form of lattes, not sodas.

1/2 my water delivery

and there you see it – my portable water supply!

It might be a lovely city to visit, and I have done that, with nice weather and friendly people it is NOT, repeat NOT a place to change planes if you are flying Southwest. Since I am headed to Tampa, it was obvious that I was going to have to change planes somewhere. It is easy as pie to walk to my local bus stop and admire my neighbors fence while waiting for the bus –
 

which kind of takes away the pain of finding you have missed the 65 which heads down the hill every 20 minutes in the middle of the day by about… oh, let us say … 5 minutes which results in a rather long wait. Once on the bus, getting to Berkeley and BART to Oakland Airport is easy. Being gifted again with TSA pre-check, I sailed through security and had plenty of time to fix my lack of coffee while waiting in the terminal. Boarding – no problem.

And then there is San Diego. Gates 1 & 2 are physically separated from the rest of the gates used by Southwest. And by separated I mean you go OUT past security and baggage claim, past the checkin counters and have to run the gauntlet of TSA once again to reach Gate 6. There is no short cut, there is no pass by (which is routine at most airports where you have to go from one quasi-connected terminal to another). Even Frankfurt deals with this. Heathrow? Just one more of the reasons that I avoid Heathrow at all costs.

But where was I? Oh yes, going through security once again and hoping that I wasn’t going to miss my boarding position.

Then onwards to Tampa where I rounded up my luggage, finally tracked down the hotel shuttle (how was I to know that RED had both an area 1 and and area 2 pickup zone?) and checked in to the hotel. I felt like I had lived through each and every minute of those missing three hours of time zone change. Exhausted, I crawled into bed. Then couldn’t fall asleep……

On approach

It was one of those exhausting days where you wind up deciding that not much has been accomplished. Not anyway in comparisson to the number of hours devoted to hanging and waiting.

It was a high speed pack this morning followed by hours at the VA where I managed to get most, but not all of an eye exam accomplished. I will skip the part about hiking afterwards down 19th toward BART with only those lousy rollup plastic shades for protection on what turned out to be sunny. Sunglasses? Of course, and forgotten at home.

I killed time at the airport. Managed the flight in the Southwest sardine can. Didn’t win any friends with the guy whi managed to wedge himself in the middle seat as the last paasenger on the plane when I insisted that the arm rest remain down.

So I was just recovering after picking up my rental car and heading out in the dark. Well, duh. It is night. But still no reason why the flipping GPS insisted on taking me the long way to thr freeway. A route which included a complete tour of parking lots, the cell phone lot and every single last one of the terminals. Argh.

And it was off again in the buses. Short boat ride after another one of the forever explorations of bumpy roads where passing was close to impossible and took dexterity and skill. Obviously only the survivors are drivers…

Anyway – we went across to an island in the middle of a fresh water lake (update with proper names when I get the sheets back out of my suitcase at the end of the trip). The ruins were interesting, but nothing as large or impressive as the day before. OTOH – there really wasn’t anyone else there which counts for a lot.

I became more interested in a small bit of park ranger humor –

and the howler monkeys who decided both that yelling at us and each other was in order followed by a lot of movement between trees.

and if you want full frontal on the boys – I can provide that as well….

the evening: most of the Cal Alumni group got together for dinner. I ignored the repetitive directions of the tour host and a slide show of photos contributed by the group.

Bags out and a planned wake up of 0500

This was our last morning on the ship. Immediately after breakfast it was tender to the shore and off to Flores Airport for our charter flight off into the wilds of Guatemala. No jets here, small airport and we were divided into three small (think propeller with a max carrying capacity of 40 pax)

1/3

The flight wasn’t all that long, but significantly bumpy. The landscape along our route from what I could see from my seat in the very last row of the aircraft was extremely rolling hills as was the airspace above it compounded by clouds. Lots and lots of clouds.

Lunch was much appreciated followed by almost an hour ride to our hotel – Camino Real Tikal. The final choice in the afternoon was bird walk or boat ride. I went for the boat. One of the guys decided he needed some exercise so he went with the birders. I just chuckled. He came back shaking his head – “we walked 15 feet then stood around. Then we walked not even a block more and stood around for twice the length of time as the previous stop.” Hello? This is a bird WALK it is a BIRD walk…

Dinner was a lovely buffet. First decent dinner in days.