Reality Bites

I must start with an apology to all my faithful readers who have been patiently awaiting this final post from our great trip. It's been slightly over 2 weeks since we got home from Boston and we have been very busy in the interim. Our first few days at home were occupied getting settled in to our old routines and adjusting to our new old reality. Making our own meals, making our own beds, putting the napkins in our own laps,waking up in the morning still in the same place you were the night before..... What hardship! We then had 9+ days at the cottage with the 4 grandchildren and no opportunity to catch up then. So at long last here it is.

When we signed up for this cruise they called it a Voyage. Well it ended up being an "Adventure". And what an adventure it was. We outran a big storm, missed ports due to bad weather, saw some incredible places with stunning scenery that not many people in this world have ever or will ever see, spent extra time in ports that was unexpected, made many new friends, and basically had one absolute terrific time. We were often overwhelmed by what we saw.


We knew before the cruise started that there were going to be a number of people who had done this Voyage before albeit with some different ports. At first I was skeptical about the attraction of doing this cruise a second or third time. At that point we had seen only one port ,missed a second one, and were in the process of outrunning the storm. But now having done it I can see why there are so many repeat customers.

This was also the first time Deen and I had travelled by ourselves on a cruise so we were a bit apprehensive about that. But over the course of the 5 weeks we became quite close to a number of fellow passengers from both Canada and the US and also getting to know crew members from the US, Phillipines, and Indonesia. Too many to name here and you all know who you are. People were quite friendly and we enjoyed meeting so many. We have so many invites when we go to Vancouver in August 2013 for an Alaska cruise with our family, that we will need to another 10 days to the trip so we can see our new friends (and old friends too).

I had never been a big fan of sea days and usually just found ways to make them pass. Deen on the other hand loves them. I ,however, came to enjoy them after a while. HAL had arranged an interesting series of speakers throughout the trip and I rarely missed any. I also went to drink mixing classes, some computer classes, the gym, some movies, and just plain old hanging about.

Using the Internet on board was a challenge. It was expensive (about 40 cents a minute for the the package I bought) and slow and would often drop the connection. However I managed my 1115 minutes so that by the end of the trip I had 5 minutes left. I would regularly supplement my time by free wi-fi in many ports using either my iPhone or the iPad. It was usually pretty easy to find free wi-fi.... Just look for crew members huddled about somewhere or go in to a bar or coffee shop.

I took over 2200 pictures so will have to spend some time in the coming weeks editing them down to something more presentable. I'll put some on my Facebook page and others on an easily accessible website. I also plan to re-edit this set of blog posts,add some more pictures, and create a soft cover book as a memento.

One last note. When we were at our first port, Corner Brook, I bought some local wine called The Funky Puffin. This bottle of wine made the rest of the trip with us, came home and even went to the cottage. Well I finally drank it at the cottage. This wine was advertised as a blueberry-rhubarb sweet wine and that it was. So here I am actually having some of it. I will keep the bottle and the label for my own wine making efforts.


Well I hope you all have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Maybe the next one will be our Alaska trip in 2013. Bye.

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Location:Stittsville ,On