Cruise Day...or Was it?

It was cruise day! This was our itinerary crossing the Atlantic and ending in Fort Lauderdale.

Welcome to Southampton! We had been hearing rumours of a pending storm, but it became a reality when we arrived at the cruise terminal and were told that we would most likely be staying in Southampton for the next three days and missing our first three ports.

At least we were on the ship! They had a shuttle running back and forth to town to try to amuse the passengers while we waited for the storm to arrive, and pass. We decided to check out the mall.

We did a little Christmas shopping in a very nice mall. We stopped to hear this group perform. It was kind of interesting that they were celebrating black history, but there was only one black person in the group.

With our shopping done, we got in the long line to get back on the shuttle bus. This turned out to be a small line compared to the one to get back on the ship. As it was Sunday, there was only one x-ray machine operating, and they were inspecting every passenger as if we had just returned from a covert mission in the Middle East rather than from the mall. It took well over an hour to get through the line and back on the ship. The passengers were not happy campers!

The storm passed, but because we were very sheltered in the port, it was almost like a non-event. We did learn from the news that it was a very strong storm.

At last we were on our way...the captain still wasn’t telling us where we were going first, but at least we were moving.

There were many cruise ships in port, some who waited the storm out and some who left for Le Havre, France. We found out we were definitely not going there so our flowers and the visit to Granddad's grave were going to have to wait. So disappointing.

Bye to Southampton…

We passed Southampton Castle. I was thinking it looked to be in pretty good condition and then read that most of the medieval castle has been built over.

And a rainbow. Maybe this was the start of our good luck.

Beautiful church…

Here was our progress so far. Once we got out of the shelter of the port, the winds hit and our first night was very rough.

We had a lovely sunrise with rolling seas…

The Captain finally announced our itinerary. We were going to stop in Lisbon, Portugal and stay overnight, but that was it until Bermuda. We would miss the ports of Le Havre, France; Vigo, Spain and the Azores. That's the chance you take at this time of year.

First formal night...we keep threatening to ditch formal nights. It would certainly cut down the weight of the suitcases, but it hasn't happened yet.

Tomorrow, we'll be in Lisbon...