And the winner of the contest for "Name That Destination," which nobody got right, is....
Base map attribution: https://freevectormaps.com/canada/CA-EPS-01-0004?ref=atr
Don't feel bad if you didn't guess right. After all, I was a little bit sneaky in leaving the correct direction off the previous map! Not to mention that few if any people would think of flying from Toronto to Kelowna BC to begin a trip to England.
By
the way, if you have no idea what this introduction is all about, go
back and read the previous post, and all will be explained.
The flight from Vancouver to London is a bit of a gruelathon. It only lasts 8½ hours, but in that time you cross no less than eight time zones. This is what comes of flying across the narrowest part of the world -- the polar regions -- enroute from Point A to Point B. I'm probably going to be jetlagged for close to a week.
I always love watching the moving map on a flight. This one from the start of the trip gives a perfect illustration of what would be the straightest line direct route from Vancouver to London.
In this second one, taken when we were almost at our destination, you see clearly that the designated flyways across the Atlantic often do not correspond to the most direct route. Part of this is the need for twin-engine long-range aircraft like the Boeing 787-9 to keep within safe flying distance of suitable airports with long enough runways in case of an engine failure. The rest is the need to keep the flights to designated flight tracks to avoid collisions in the busy North Atlantic air corridor.
The good news was that when I staggered off the plane at noon in London, everything happened very quickly indeed. It's a long hike from the Air Canada gate in Terminal 2 at Heathrow to the immigration and customs area, but passing through the checks is very quick and civilized indeed. Holders of certain passports (including Canadians) are allowed to use the quick kiosks. You scan your passport, the machine takes your picture, and after a moment the gate pops open and you're through. After you pick up your bags (mine was already on the carousel, as usual at Heathrow), you simply walk through the "Green Channel" and out -- unless you have goods to declare which are going to remain in the U.K.
It then takes about 4 more minutes to hike across the outdoor but covered access area, past the lifts, and across six rows of parking spaces in the garage. You then enter the hotel, walk up a short ramp and arrive at the check-in desk. The best? Even though it was still only 1230, my room was ready. The Hilton Garden Inn Heathrow Terminal 2/3 asks you at check-in what time you expect to leave, and the housekeeping crew is on the job as soon as you go, freeing the rooms up for early arrivals. Pretty awesome.
So was the view from my room on the 13th floor. Of course, I've been in love with airports and airplanes ever since I was a kid.
The tall tail with red/green/black flashes on it is an Airbus A380 of Emirates Airlines. Emirates had two of these 600-passenger monsters leaving London within a couple of hours of each other. Crazy -- I've been on cruise ships that held less people! It's a weird sensation watching an A380 taking off. Because of its sheer size and bulk, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere close to flying speed when it lifts off the runway into the air.
This second pic was taken a few hours later and just after sunset (and after I'd caught up on some lost sleep). Here, I caught two planes silhouetted against the colours of the sky.
I had a decent dinner in the Apron Restaurant on the first floor, where I got a good chuckle from this description of one of the wines on offer. Perhaps this less-than-technical description was meant to get you past the fact that it was the most expensive white wine on the list, by a wide margin.
I went with the pinot grigio, and after dinner had another one in the Runway Bar on the top floor, which gives awesome night views over the airport. This is where I watched that A380 taking off.
The next morning, after breakfast, I went back to the airport and found the transfer service. Presently, I boarded a coach and after a 2¼ hour drive found myself arriving at my real destination, in the south coast port city of Southampton. And here we go -- Princess Cruise Lines' Emerald Princess.
Princess Cruises photo
Say hello to my home for the next two weeks and a bit. Emerald Princess is one of a class of nine broadly similar (but not identical) ships built for Princess Cruises and sister company P & O Cruises over a period of a decade or so, beginning in 1998. Princess refers to them as the "Grand Class" after the first of the group, Grand Princess. I've been on 3 other ships of this class previously. These vessels carry different numbers in the range of 2600-3100 passengers. At the time of construction in 1998, Grand Princess was the world's largest cruise ship. These days, the Grand Class are looking more and more like mid-sizers!
Oh, the cruise? Sixteen days from Southampton to Fort Lauderdale. The real attraction of this trip for me was getting a whole series of destinations that I'd never seen before. That's the best kind of cruising -- you get to sample a wide range of places, and decide which ones merit more detailed visiting at a later date.
As we were driving into Southampton, we passed a couple of historic buildings along the waterfront of this historic commercial port. Here's the Southampton Harbour Board headquarters.
This building, whose identity I haven't been able to determine (although it may have been the Southampton offices of White Star Line), is the site on the lawn outside of a memorial plaque to White Star's most famous ship, RMS Titanic, whose home port was in Southampton.
Indeed, the Titanic and many other great liners in the golden age of Atlantic sea travel used the Oceanic Dock, now the Ocean Cruise Terminal, which is where our ship, Emerald Princess, was moored. Here's the first look I got.
Boarding was very quick and efficient indeed -- 17 minutes from coach to cabin. The big luggage was sent down from London by separate truck, and was a bit slower, but still arrived at my cabin before the ship sailed which was all I asked!
Q: How do you know you are on a cruise ship?
A: As the afternoon moves towards evening, the internet service gets slower and slower and slower....
(mainly because of all the people trying to stream and share video, I'd guess)
From my cabin, on the port side, I had a view of two Isle of Wight ferries docked in an adjacent slip -- I think that was a repair or service facility, as the main ferry terminal was on our ship's other side.
It was already dark when we sailed at 5:00 pm, but here you can see the unmistakable diagonal slant of the Oceanic Dock, which you can compare to any number of online photos of classic ocean liners moored here. I saw one beauty which I wanted to use, but the $69 license fee was too steep for my budget to take. Just Google "White Star Line Southampton" and you'll find them, no trouble.
In this picture, a brilliantly illuminated cruise ship at the Queen Elizabeth 2 Cruise Terminal poses a huge contrast to the much more decorous Emerald Princess. Looks like a very new and flashy vessel from Aida, a cruise line which, despite its name (suggestive of Italian opera), is actually German. German is the working language of all staff on Aida cruises, which helps to explain why they aren't marketed in North America. Aida, like Princess, belongs to Carnival Corp.
It felt absolutely awesome to be setting out to sea again on a Princess ship, for the first time in over three years. Nowhere did I feel it more than the three-storey atrium midships called the Piazza, seen here from above...
...and from below.
Our first port of call was Cherbourg. Like its near neighbour of Le Havre, Cherbourg had a long association with the great Atlantic liners. Many ships, leaving Southampton or European ports, would stop to pick up passengers from France here. Today, it's more of a commercial port, although it also serves several ferry routes to and from Spain, England, and Ireland.
It was on the night crossing from Southampton to Cherbourg that my jetlag and lack of sleep caught up with me, and I slept off and on for eleven hours. That caused me to miss my early morning tour to Bayeux, to visit the famous Bayeux tapestry, so that will have to wait for another time. So will a separate pilgrimage to the Normandy beaches from the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, all of which are quite close to here.
Instead, I stayed aboard, going for a big breakfast in the buffet, a good brisk walk around the promenade deck, a light lunch in the Piazza -- a hot sandwich and to-die-for cappuccino from the International Cafe, the ship's 24-hour food and drink outlet.
Since then, I've been working away in my cabin at this blog post, while also grabbing another nap. So, to close out, here are a few pictures I took during my walk.
Cherbourg is an artificial harbour, enclosed by breakwaters. The breakwaters are marked by numerous forts and castles, which shows that the builders of this port definitely meant business.
A view of part of the city is centred on the Holy Trinity Basilica, its square tower looking surprisingly Church-of-England for a French Catholic basilica.
To the west of the port, a marina shows that recreational sailing is big business here.
The cruise terminal building looks plainly as if it dates back to the golden age of the Atlantic liners.
Later in the afternoon, the mix of sun and rain clouds gave way to clear skies, and we could see the rain clouds departing to the east.
And finally, to wrap up, a last picture on board the ship. I sat down for a breather mid-point of my walk, right opposite one of the lifebuoys on the promenade. It's a sight that always makes me laugh, but you have to have been there to know why. The "Hamilton" named as the port of registry is the capital of Bermuda. It's laughable because Hamilton Harbour is only accessible through a tight gap called Two Rock Passage, or even smaller passages between other islands in the Great Sound. Emerald Princess is so large that, like all fleetmates in the Grand Class, entry to Hamilton Harbour is an impossibility. This ship can never visit the port where it is registered. Seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment