British Isles Tour - Day Three Setting Sail from Harwich, England

After eating a marvelous breakfast at the hotel (those European hotels really have a wonderful breakfast choice--so much better than just the cereal and sweet roll choices that many American hotels provide), we checked out.

We were really going to miss our fantastic little hotel we stayed in the last two nights.

Our tour director had arranged for a transit van to take us to Harwich, England, (about an hour and a half away) where our cruise would begin.

Carrying around our passports became a common occurrence.

Going aboard the cruise ship.  

 Here we are--ready to begin a fantastic trip of a lifetime together--The Six Musketeers.  We couldn't get into our rooms yet, so we went to the Oceanview Cafe for the first of our many lunches there.

Soon, we were able to get into our cozy rooms which would be our home away from home for the next 12 days.

We got everything unpacked and put in the closets and drawers.  Then went out on the deck to watch us pull away.

As we were leaving the port, we enjoyed the first of many bagpipers we would see on this trip.

Time to relax and enjoy the scenery as we left the port.

That evening, after our dinner meal in the Trellis Restaurant, we went to see a variety show in the Celebrity Theater.  We loved to go to the nightly shows and never missed one.  


 They were all fantastic!  The only one that was a little sub-par was a group of Beatle impersonators--but then, maybe we were overly harsh on them growing up on their music like we did!

 Probably our favorite entertainer was this young woman from UK, Claire Maidin.  Absolutely fantastic singer/piano player.

 During the entire time we were on the ship, we only had two days at sea.  That was great by us.  We all love to go to new places and see new things.  However, we did have fun on the two days we were at sea.  One day we watched the master cake decorator decorate a beautiful cake.

 

At the nightly dinner, our servers were very thorough.  After being on the ship for 12 days, we definitely got to know them pretty well.

Sometime the meals were very surprising!

Always very decorative!

And always very delicious!

The very first night, Joyce had an idea to have a discussion subject for the group which we took turns deciding on.  It turned out so great--some nights we were laughing hysterically, some nights crying, but all nights we were learning a little more about each other's lives and feelings.

There were two formal evenings on the ship.  It is always fun to dress up for these special times.

The buffet luncheon that they have one day each cruise is always fantastic--so creative and delicious!

I took this for all the grand kids.  Who doesn't like Shrek?  Isn't it amazing that he is cut out of a watermelon?

The beautiful thing about a cruise is that no matter where you go during the daytime you have a wonderful dinner to come "home" to and a great place to sleep where you don't have to keep packing your suitcase for!

Another beautiful thing--all the homemade ice cream you could want!  If I ate all of that, I would have gained 50 pounds on this cruise!  But, George was in heaven and hardly gained a pound!  So not fair!

Another favorite activitie:  Each night, after the show, we would hurry upstairs to get to the ice cream counter before it closed at 10:00 or to get some hot chocolate.  Then we would sit around and just have an enjoyable time talking before going to our rooms for the evening.  

Yes, the days on board were great!  But, now on to the tours!

Tomorrow:  Normandy, France