London

I have to admit that I was looking forward to my business class seat to London just as much as the rest of the cruise.  Actually, I was looking forward to the lie-flat aspect of that seat, and was kind of wishing the flight was even longer so I could sleep longer. 

I had started shifting my body clock ahead a few days before we left home. It was brutal waking up at 4am, 3am, 2am when the house was dark and chilly, but by the time we boarded the plane, it was past my new bedtime and I was quickly asleep, passing on the dinner offerings (not hard to do since our first stop at the airport was the lounge). 

The Clermont Victoria is located next to Victoria Rail Station in London, and our original plan was to just take the Underground from Heathrow to Victoria Rail Station. But a closer look revealed that we would have to change trains and when we added a third checked bag, we decided to book a private transfer through Britway transfers. (Our three suitcases weighed 35 pounds each, which is about the max I’m willing to lift these days). 

I had purchased a 5G digital eSIM for Europe through Airalo for my iPhone 15 Pro, just to use for maps and texting while in ports. Britway emailed me our driver info including his What’s App contact information and I texted him when we were through passport control at Heathrow, which is now totally automated and much faster than it used to be. We arrived at our hotel just before 3pm, walked over to the train station to grab a quick dinner and fell asleep early that night. 

We had two primary goals for our first day in London:  to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and to visit the Churchill War Rooms. We walked from our hotel to Buckingham Palace, and that really was a nearly impossible situation. I can’t imagine the crowds in the summer. The lady standing behind me said she was going back to her hotel to watch it on YouTube and I think she had the right idea. We had to choose:  see the band arriving from St James Palace, see the band arriving from Wellington Barracks or see what was happening in the front courtyard of the palace. We chose the courtyard but got no good pics as we were watching over and between people. It was warm and very sunny (really) and way too people-y for my personal comfort. 

Afterwards, we boarded a Golden Tours HOHO bus (we had booked a 2-day ticket just before we left home) and took it the short distance to the war rooms. Touring the rooms fit right in with what we’d been researching about WW2 and Operation Overlord and it was very worthwhile in all the ways that the Changing of the Guard was not. 

We were wearing down but re-boarded a HOHO bus for a long tour around London, and it was on this bus, as we approached the Tower of London that I felt gut punched as I recalled that Mom and I had toured the tower, and I have a wonderful photo of her with a beefeater there. It was a feeling I’ve managed to avoid for over a year, because since I’ve returned from Ohio after her funeral, I haven’t been anyplace where I’d expect see her (and I have purposely avoided returning to Toledo for that reason). Saint Paul’s Cathedral had the same effect, and left me with a wistfulness similar to one of those “first” events (ie Mothers Day). 

St. Paul’s Cathedrsl

Tower Bridge


Palace of Westminster 

The lobby of The Clermont Victoria 

We were too tired to do anything more than grab some takeaway at the Victoria Rail Station and collapse into bed. 

We were slow to get moving the next day, but took a narrated boat tour down the Thames to the Tower of London, and then caught a bus back to our hotel. We wanted fish and chips in a pub, and the Victoria Tavern across the street was a possibility, but we didn’t want a bunch of tourists not talking to each other while they dined. When we walked by the tavern, loud crowds were spilling into the street and it gave us hope that this might be a real British pub experience. We found two leather chairs in a back corner and settled in. 

It turned out this was a regimental reunion and these guys had come from all over England and knew how to party. We were swept right up into their fun and stayed far longer (and drank far more) than we had intended. But here’s the thing:  we were sitting there and G looked at me and said that he just felt my mom’s presence next to us. And I hadn’t mentioned my own feeling the day before, sensing that she was everyplace we had been together decades earlier. I never suspected I’d have to go to London to reconnect with Mom, but she made sure to join us on this trip. 

At least the land portion. Mom got seasick in a bathtub so it’s impossible to imagine her on the cruise with us right now. 😉

We stumbled back to our hotel, being quite relieved that we didn’t have to go any further than across the street to get there. We re-arranged the contents of our suitcases a bit to ease unpacking on the ship and fell asleep early. We had two busy days in a row coming up, and were already feeling very jet lagged. 

Catching up

I promised some catch up posts once I had a chance to write them, and these sea days are exactly what I need to do that. First, I want to thank those readers who have kindly emailed me since I’ve started blogging four days ago. Y’all took me literally when I mentioned last fall that I needed to use up some FCCs by the end of this year. It was inevitable that I’d have to get on a ship again at some point, although some people know how close I came to not blogging any longer. I truly blogged for years primarily to keep Mom informed of our whereabouts and that need, sadly, no longer exists. 

We actually booked this Regal Princess transatlantic cruise back in March (I think). It wasn’t just a matter of going somewhere to use up FCCs; we really wanted to see Normandy and have been doing some preparatory research to get ready for that visit for months. I’m sure G is well over hearing me say, “I want to go someplace NEW!”, and I understand it’s very much a first world problem to even get to say that, but it is true. I am pretty much past the point of cruising just to be on a cruise, not that there’s anything wrong with doing that either. My husband is still there; I am not. But the draw of a visit to Normandy was definitely enough to have me excited about this one. 

We originally booked an inside cabin and then watched fares drop and drop and drop again, and when the price of a balcony relative to an inside made that an attractive option, we rebooked in a balcony. And still the price dropped until we were paying far less than our original inside cabin fare. 

Our original plan had been to spend two nights pre-cruise in London and I booked the same hotel close to the Victoria Coach Station that we had stayed at in 2018. But I kept checking EZ Air fares, and noticed that if we spent three nights in London, we could get United Polaris seats for less than half the price as on any other day. We actually saved enough that we upgraded our hotel to the historic Clermont Victoria on Buckingham Palace Rd. and reserved a Deluxe room to boot (which gave us enough floor space to walk around our suitcases). 

Meanwhile, our lives at home pretty much mirrored our lives at home any other year. 2024 has definitely had its highs and lows.  The year started in a big way when Michigan won the Rose Bowl on January 1 and then the National Football Championship a week later (and on my birthday). We waited a long, long time for that, which made it all the sweeter a victory.  

Life kind of settled down into familiar patterns the rest of the year. G continued to cruise close to home while I was just not feeling it. Realistically, there were a few things that needed to be done to settle Mom’s estate and we are almost through that process. It would have been tough to be on a ship when things needed to be discussed and signed. But we made it through the year  of “firsts” (first Christmas, birthday, Mothers Day, etc) without Mom, and I thought that was going to be that (stay tuned). 

G completed his (doing the math here) 37th Vail Hill Climb in July. Every year I ask him if he wants me to book a hotel again for that event and every year he says he does. One year he’s going to tell me that he thinks his running up mountains days are behind him, and that’s going to be very sad day for both of us. He likes to say that he finishes in the top three in his age group…but the number of competitors in his age group gets smaller every year.  I am pretty darn proud of this guy (and wish that some of his healthy habits would rub off on me). 

The twins (good grief!  I haven’t called them that for years and they would die if they knew I did just now) celebrated their 21st birthday a couple of weeks ago. I am so lucky that we are still so close, and stay in touch mostly on the weekends as they are both insanely busy during the week at school. McGuy will be graduating a year early in May (I already have my flight and hotel booked) and then using the fourth year of his scholarship to get his Masters degree. McGee is somehow managing to run 100 miles a week plus take a heavy load of classes and do military training. He is studying things so advanced that I’m not even sure what they are. The days of me helping with math homework are far, far behind us, though I do still get tapped for occasional essay and letter input. 

I’m racking my brain trying to remember if there are any other stand out events from this year. If I recall anything, I’ll mention it later. But when I was debating blogging at all, especially when we have so many sea days on this itinerary, a few friends (blame them) said I should just use stories as filler, which I think means that the times when I go off on tangents are more interesting then when I limit the scope of my discussion to travel. As always, it’s my diary, not a travel journal, but I’ll give warnings when I digress so you can skip over the parts that hold little interest. 

Also, I’m preparing all these blog posts on my iPhone, using “slide to type”, which is fast and easy but oh so dangerous. Buckle up for some startling autocorrects. 

Cruise #1: 21-night Transatlantic on the Regal Princess

Hi there!  

Guess where I’m sitting!  Yes, it’s obvious I’m on the Regal, but where on the Regal?  Our muster check in was in Crooners, so that should give you a big hint. 

My first Baccarat

It won’t be my last!

I have a lot to fill you in on, but it wasn’t until right this minute that I convinced myself to blog about our trip. This had been an astoundingly emotional journey, which caught me quite unawares, but some of y’all are very persuasive.  We’ve been in London for three days and took the Princess transfer to Southampton, arriving on the ship at 1:30pm. 

The suitcases remain unpacked, I’m wearing the same clothes I flew in on Wednesday, but I’ve watched listened to the safety video and so I’m legal and the piano music and alcohol here in Crooners drew me in. I may camp here until dinner.

I do hope you’ll follow along on my return to cruising.  So many unknowns, even to me:

1. Will I find this cruise too people-y?
2. Will my social battery completely burn out (my capacity is about 33% of what it was pre-COVID, and I’m not mad about that)?
3. Will I stay well?
4. Will my knee /back/foot that I broke six weeks ago hold up?
5. And, most importantly, how long will I stay on the ship?

I will go back and fill you in on life recently, relate our London fun, and then let you know how tomorrow’s excursion (to the D-Day beaches, our primary reason for booking this cruise) goes. I’m starting out woefully behind, but will do my best to catch up. While these first few days (flying to London, sightseeing, getting to Southampton, boarding the ship and then porting in Le Havre the next day) are fairly brutal, things should slow down a little after that.

Thanks for being here!

A test post to determine if photos will “stick”

I had so much trouble with photos in my Alaska blog posts disappearing (three times!) and apparently I wasn’t the only one having these issues with the BlogTouch app. The app developer acknowledged it, but seemed to indicate it was really a Google issue. We’re getting ready to cruise, and I have been ambivalent about blogging again. If these photos stick for three weeks, I probably will. If they disappear, I may not. 🤞🏼🤞🏼

Just some photos from our summer…

Catching up

Well, hello there!  I ended my blog posts from our Sapphire Princess cruise with a large unknown, and thought I would publish an update when I cruised this fall, but things happened and plans changed and right now I don’t know when I might next step on a cruise ship. I mean, anything is possible so I’m not ruling out a quick cruise or three in January through March, but there is nothing booked, and it really just depends on how our winter weather treats us.

It’s been only three and a half months since our Alaska cruises, but they’ve had some big impacts. When I last left you, my mom’s health was in a decline, though she still had plenty of good days and we had no idea how long things might stay like that. Since I had tested positive for COVID our last night on the Sapphire Princess, I decided to wait a couple of weeks to fly back to Ohio, ultimately using flights I’d booked months earlier, to spend four days with Mom over what would have been her 72nd wedding anniversary. 

While she texted me two days before my arrival to tell me she couldn’t wait to see me, Mom declined very rapidly, almost overnight, and entered hospice care my first full day there. We’d taken so many wonderful trips together over the years; I think she was just waiting for me to be with her on one final journey.  She spent nine days on hospice care before she passed away. I’ll just copy the post I made on Facebook when that happened. It was raw and heartfelt and though I was exhausted and grief stricken when I wrote it, I really don’t think I can say it any better now. 

“My mom passed tonight about 10:45pm. We had a week longer with her than hospice originally thought, and I was able to be with her the entire time (except for one night when I finally had to leave to get some sleep). 

While initially unresponsive since last Tuesday, she awoke Sunday while I was washing her face and said “I love you” three times in a row. We had her with us that day and the next before her pain finally required medication Tuesday morning. Those hours she was aware are a gift I will always treasure. Being with her when she passed was a blessing beyond words. 

My mom, quite simply, was love.”

Sigh. The ache has lessened but I still find myself, once or twice a week, thinking, “I have to tell Mom about that when I talk to her this evening” (I used to have to carefully time my calls…after the local weather and before Wheel of Fortune came on). I wouldn’t take anything in the world for the last call she made to me, while we were in Glacier Bay on the Sapphire Princess.  She just wanted to tell me she loved me (made possible by Starlink Internet). It’s a wonderful world. 

Of course, time keeps on spinning. My four day trip stretched to weeks, and while I was sooo happy to return home in September, we immediately started looking at cruises for the fall. Our cruises to Alaska had been pure relaxation, just what we needed after our tornado clean up, and more of the same sounded pretty good right about then. I initially tried to re-book the Sapphire Princess cruises to the South Pacific, South America and Antarctica that I had cancelled when things were still so up in the air with Mom, but the cabin locations we like were gone, and cabin location is very important to us. And, G more so than I, really was not keen to undertake long flights right now. The simple cruises out of Galveston that he did on repeat last winter sounded pretty appealing to him. 

Well, all I can say is thank God for Princess Platinum Vacation protection with its 100% back Cancel For Any Reason coverage and for Southwest’s fully refundable flights. I’ve saved points miserly for years, and they have really came in handy this year. At one point in October, I had all of the following flights booked.

I had watched McGee run in a cross country meet in early October.  His second place finish (out of more than 100 runners) positioned him well to compete (as a sophomore!) in the conference championship in late October, but we (and he) didn’t know for sure he’d made the team until the week before. 

A friend’s daughter was getting married in early November and I didn’t want to miss that. Then McGee made the NCAA Regional and National Cross Country Championship teams.  Next year we’ll know to plan for these meets but this year was more tentative (and we’re so proud of him!). 

Then my best friend’s mom passed away and we had gotten very close while she was on hospice care, and her funeral was this week, and finally (I hope!) a dear friend who lives alone fell and broke her hip and just arrived home from rehab on Thanksgiving Day and is really going to need some extra help with driving and meals for awhile. 

No, cruising is not going to work for me this fall, but I’m fine with that. I’ve said before that my heart is not quite in it like it was, but also I just feel far more connected to people and events at home than I was able to be when we traveled for months at a time. And I’m enjoying this level of involvement immensely. Still I can see us booking something last minute during the winter, and I’ll have Future Cruise Credits to use up within a year. Check back in a few months. 

And finally, today was The Game, the Michigan v. Ohio State game, and I’ve had a bad tummy just thinking about it for a week. In the end, the right team won what turned out to be a great game so all’s well in my world. But I want to share one final Mom memory with you, because I’ve sure thought about it all day today. 

Toledo, Ohio, where I grew up, is the epicenter of the intense Michigan-Ohio State rivalry, but my family was solidly on the Ohio State side. Then I went to the University of Michigan for graduate school, and, honestly, the earth would have shifted less on its axis if I had married a Rastafarian.  It’s always made this weekend in November an interesting one, and I was glad when The Game was played the weekend after Thanksgiving instead of the weekend before, as it was for years. The holiday dinner became a lot less testy when the outcome was still unknown. 

On this day last year, my Apple Watch buzzed that I had received a text message from Mom while I was still in bed. That wasn’t unusual; she always texted me when she got up and she always woke up very early. I opened one eye and saw that she had sent me a GIF of a Michigan football player.  I thought she was being sweet like she always was, like a “Good luck, let’s hope it’s a great game” kind of thing. Once I got up and looked at the text on my iPhone, I could see that the Michigan football player was a receiver, and that receiver was dropping a pass. And we were off. 

For the next several hours, the GIFs flew fast and furiously between us, until we had certainly exhausted all of them that were available. Not a word was exchanged, and we never talked about it afterward, but it was, quite frankly, one of my favorite memories of my mom. That she was in her 90s, understood football as well as any ref, and could still throw such shade…I missed that today, but that memory will make me smile forever. 

Life will always be good, because she was my mom. :-)

World’s best mom and a huge Ohio State Fan

Better luck next year, Mom  💙💛