Canterbury is a small medieval village located in the southern part of England near Dover . It’s believed that this area has been continuously inhabited since “prehistoric times”. Today, as a tourist destination, Canterbury is one of the most visited cities in the United Kingdom; probably because of the Canterbury Cathedral and the popularity of Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century collection of stories, The Canterbury Tales. Continue reading →
When you read the cruise and travel blogs, it seems that a lot of folks believe that the quality of the food aboard cruise ships has declined over the past few years. Many people complain about the overall quality, but when you really drill down to the specifics, it’s not clear what they mean.
During this cruise we’ve had a lot of time to give this some thought and have made a couple of observations. And of course, we’ve formed a couple of opinions about the quality of the food that we would like to share here.
First, we should make some qualifying statements so you can better understand why we have the opinions we have about cruise ship food. Not long ago, we entered into a weight loss program. More of an overall fitness and wellness program really, but part of the philosophy in our weight loss program was that, since we were going to significantly restrict the quantity of our food intake, we would concentrate on overall food quality to help make up for the lack of volume. It’s been working for us, but we’ve made some changes to our diets as a result and certain kinds of foods are not part of our normal routine anymore. Continue reading →
Ponta Delgada is a small city of around 70,000 people located on the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores. Situated west of Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean, this area has been continuously inhabited since at least 1444, when small fishing villages were established around the islands. In the early part of the 19th century, Ponta Delgada was of significant economic importance to Portugal and at one point was actually considered the third largest city based on economic strength and population. The farm land surrounding the city at one point had a major citrus industry, trading extensively with the United Kingdom. Continue reading →
One of the things we’ve quickly grown accustomed to in the 21st century is the ability to communicate with just about any person, any time. We’ve also grew used to the idea that whatever information we want is at our fingertips pretty much instantly. Our cell phones have more computing power than the computers that landed the Apollo capsules on the moon, and we take that for granted. Continue reading →
For many people, a cruise is a trip of a lifetime. It’s something folks dream about for years. For a large number of people taking cruises, it’s not something they do on a casual basis. They plan and save until they have enough to make the trip. Continue reading →
As an introduction to this week’s series of blog entries, we thought we would start by explaining what’s to come. We’re on a cruise ship that left Miami Florida yesterday evening. We were scheduled to leave at around 5:00 PM, but the ship actually left the dock at around 7:15PM. We were loading supplies until that time. Not to worry though. We’re crossing the Atlantic and there’s plenty of time to make up our lost couple of hours before our first stop in Ponta Delgada, the Azores. Continue reading →
We’re on board the Norwegian star at the port of Miami. This was by far the easiest boarding we’ve ever done on a cruise ship. We dropped our luggage off this morning at 11 AM and took car rental car back to the airport. We then boarded a shuttle bus and came back to the cruise terminal. Once back at the cruise terminal it only took 20 minutes to board the ship including check in.
Today we’re scheduled to board the Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Star for an Atlantic Crossing re-positioning cruise. we’re in Miami at the moment and will leave here at around 5:00 PM.
Our first stop will be several days from now in the Azores, a small island group in the Atlantic Ocean east of Portugal. From there we’ll stop in England, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and Finland, but not in that order. From there we’ll leave the ship and travel to London where we’ll pick up a car and drive up to Scotland.
Internet is both expensive and slow aboard the ship, but we’ll post as often as we can about what we find. Once we’re back on dry land, we should be able to put up new articles about our brief stops on the cruise and of course the great things we’re hoping to see in Scotland too.
