Well, this time we not only made it to the country of departure, we made it onto the boat/ship/vessel, whatever the correct name is. Last nights hotel didn’t provide breakfast, so our only option was MacDonalds.

We were picked up by Uber and driven to the QE2 terminal where the Sun Princess was waiting for us. Boarding wasn’t too painful, a little bit of a line up to get through security and then it time to board.

We had an hour to waste before our cabin was ready so grabbed a quick drink, then went up to the buffet for a snack. We followed that with a trip to our muster station, which was a requirement. Following that, we headed down to the cabin. Although there had been no announcement, the cabin was ready, just no baggage. We then realized we had a couple of bottles of wine in the cases which we should have transferred to our carry on, plus a hair dryer for use later on in the trip. I suspect our bags are in a “sin bin” somewhere.

We’re still docked in Southampton where we have contrasting views from the balcony

Then we saw a tug appear, closely followed by a container ship, closely followed by a tug all tied together! I guess the container ship had a propulsion problem as there was no propellor wake behind it

We’re on the move, and both our bags have arrived without going to the “sin bin”.We left Southampton, turned left into the English channel heading towards the North Sea. Trying to get a meal tonight was pretty futile. We had a pre-dinner drink and went to a restaurant around 7:30. Normally around this time it’s easy to get a table, unfortunately we forgot to factor in that there a re large number of Brits on board who tend to eat later. The line up were quite long. Hopefully this was a first night issue, otherwise we may have to change our eating habits. We finished up in the buffet, the food was fine, the ambience not so! After food we settled down in one of the bars with a guitarist and listened to songs and music while enjoying a few drinks.

After Christening our brand new UK passports, which gave us some cause for concern a couple of months ago (most of you know the story behind that, if you don’t and want to leave a message!) we emerged from terminal looking for bus stop #12 to get the hotel shuttle. Of course the UK chose today to be part of its heatwave (28C), and of course bus stop # 12 had to be the furthest away at around 1km! Anyway we made it there and the shuttle was only about 10 minutes in arriving AND it had aircon! We arrived at the hotel and got settled, and rested! After dinner we managed to watch TV for an hour or so before the eye lids decided to succumb to gravity.

Eleven hours later we came back to life, got ready and headed down to the dining room for breakfast. I have to say it was the best hotel buffet breakfast ever. Pretty much a Full English, eggs, sausage, bacon, beans, mushrooms, potato and no black pudding thankfully (not sure if that is part of a Full English or not!). Even the croissants were light and flaky. Struggled back to the room and got ready to depart on the shuttle. It was back to the airport to catch, obviously, a train. We were heading down to Southampton to a hotel for the night before boarding the cruise tomorrow. The train journey was a little chaotic, we had to change trains once and it was at this station where things went a little off track (sorry!!). Beyond this station there was a trackside fire that was affecting train services throughout the south of the UK because of its location on one of the main lines. Some trains from the station were being reroute or canceled, ours was continually delayed and the poor computer was having a hard time displaying the correct info on the TV screens. We finally boarded the train, which had become very crowded with rerouted passengers. Halfway into the journey the driver announced that they had originally planned to cancel this service, but had just confirmed with him that it would run all the way to Southampton. As he put it we will arrive in Southampton, I just don’t know when!!

Well he was right, we made it with no further drama. Unfortunately the lift at the station was dead, so it was up and down stairs with the suitcases. I offered to carry Lyn’s case for her, but Lyn being Lyn said no. Some kind girl saw her and carried the case, most impressed!

We took an Uber to the hotel, it seems Southampton are short of Ubers as it took about 30 minutes to book one. Of course the location of the hotel may have been part of the problem as it is located in a motorway service area. I booked the hotel here as one, it was free (points) and two Southampton hotels appear to partake in mass price gouging the night before a cruise departs. Rooms normally costing around £150 suddenly shot up to £400 or more. Any way we’re here now, all we have to do is get back to Southampton tomorrow morning! Again, no lift at the hotel, so again Lyn decided she would carry the case, and again a kind lady helped her. Turns out she is going on the same cruise as us.

Just to prove (to myself) I can still add pictures here are a couple taken around the hotel, looks like I compressed the first one too much.

This is a multi purpose trip, 50 years ago in June I graduated from Air the Traffic Control College , so we decided a reunion was in order, it seemed a waste of an opportunity just to visit the UK, so we booked a cruise to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. If that wasn’t enough we decided we’d stop off in Iceland on the way home.

Well, after last years disaster, this trip is not shaping up too well!! A few months ago we were advised of a schedule change, this change would have given us a 55 minute connection in Toronto. The airline insisted this was perfectly doable. We changed flights despite their assurances, today we proved we were right and they were wrong. Fast forward to a few weeks ago we got notice of another schedule change caused by a flight cancellation. This time they proactively switched us to a new flight. Unfortunately the new flight left Toronto for Ottawa 3 hours BEFORE the flight from Iceland to Toronto landed. They didn’t seem to realise that this was problematic! There was a flight with a different airline that left within 5 minutes of the cancelled one, but there was no way they wer going to book us on that. They offered a flight 24 hour later as the best solution! After 3 or 4 phone call arguing the stupidity of their solution solving they came up with a new flight. Iceland to Calgary to Ottawa. Twice the distance and twice the time. Enough was enough, I cancelled the last leg, booked a new one myself, and with the refund money made about $200 profit and still flew Business class!

Fast forward to Toronto airport, cleared security and ready to go to the lounge, whoops one boarding pass missing. I left Lyn to check in to the lounge with her pass and I went back to security as I thought I’d lost it there. Wrong, not there. Mybe it got put in my backpack after security, unusual as I always keep my pass in my passport. Back to the lounge, sweet talk my way in as I had no boarding pass. Found Lyn andstarted hunting boarding passes. I checked the pssport I had…. it was Lyns. Checked the other passport, it was mine with my boarding pass! Lyn had managed to get into the lounge on my pass.

OK what to do about the missing pass, couldn’t easily go to the airline desk as it was back through immigration which would be a pain to try. Had an old age brainwave, what would happen if I re-checked in on the phone? Well, it worked and gave us electronic boarding passes. Problem solved. Now we have to wait as the flight has been delayed by an hour. Let’s hope this is only a one hour delay this time.

Well we have arrived in Iceland, cool and damp! It’s a bit of an odd layout here, and coupled with the new EU rules with entry/exit tracking we were expecting delays. Before we left the aircraft we were told that passengers connecting to the UK or Ireland should stay in the D gate area and would not need to go through passport control…. bonus!! However when we go to the terminal we were tod that the lounge was in the A gate area and if we wanted to use it we would have to clear passport control. As we had a three hour layover we decided to risk it. We got to the passport control and there must have been 2 hundred automatic machines there, together with 6 passport officers in case of problems. There were 200 problems, not one of the machines was in service. It wasn’t too bad and we made it to the lounge. That’s enough for today, the next entry should be from the UK and hopefully the end of my negativity!!!

Just making sure I remember how to post!!

Well I guess the title was a little premature! The plan was to leave Ottawa Sunday evening to fly to Toronto, then catch a flight to Hong Kong at 2AM the next morning. We’d arrive in Hong Kong around 4AM (local time) the next day then catch an 8AM flight to Tokyo and spend the night in a hotel before boarding the cruise at 3PM.

Reality: We got to Toronto, went to the lounge then down to board the flight, departure time came and went. We then suffered through a number of announcements that basically said we don’t know whats going on, we’ll make another announcement in 30 minutes. Finally at 530AM they canceled the flight! We had to then go to baggage, pickup our bags and trek through most of Toronto airport to get vouchers for hotels and food. I tried in vain to make changes over the phone with Cathay Pacific only to be told to contact staff at the airport. These staff had either gone home or had conveniently disappeared from sight.

We checked into the hotel, and tried to get some rest, but my brain was whirring at supersonic speed trying to work out alternate plans. Just before 10AM I got a message saying that the flight would depart at 1030PM. That was sort of good news, BUT we’d lost our 24 hour buffer in Japan. We would arrive at the airport, about an hour before the cruise departed! This wouldn’t work as it was an hour from the airport to the cruise terminal. There were no earlier flights available.

So, what do we do? Scrap the whole thing, go home and hope the insurance pays out OR find some cunning plan to rescue the vacation. I contacted our cruise agent and she suggested that we could possibly forgo the first night of the cruise and meet the ship at the first port of call. This would at least salvage most of the trip. The first port is about 4 hours from the airport by train, so rather than get depressed about the whole thing maybe we could turn it into an adventure.

Well the previous paragraph was written about 7 hours ago, we still have had no response from Princess on whether we are allowed to join the ship at the next port. The problem seems to be that the port in question uses tenders rather than the ship mooring to a dock. A number of requests have been eMailed by Princess to the ship, but so far no response.

We are now at the point where we have about an hour to make the decision whether to fly or not. If we don’t receive a positive response from Princess in that time frame, it’s back home!

I finally managed to get a little more information from Princess. There was a reason that they had not received the go-ahead for our pickup. Someone planted a large typhoon off the coast of Japan. It was quite possible that sea conditions would not be safe for tender operations to and from the shore. In addition, there was doubt that the ship would follow it’s original itinerary if the typhoon got in the way!!

With all that had been going against us so far the the typhoon was the final nail in the coffin, some one somewhere was telling us not to go!! Cruise was canceled, flights were canceled and we bought ticket back to Ottawa!

The only silver lining so far is that I have trip interruption / cancellation insurance, and after talking to the broker we will likely get a refund on both the cruise and the flights PLUS we should also get $1000 each in compensation from the airline, as it was a technical fault on the aircraft that caused the problem. That cause is specifically mentioned in Cathay’s Terms and Conditions as a valid reason for compensation! We’ll wait and see on that one!

All things being equal,we’ll be heading off to Scandinavia and England in June.

This is a combined couple of days as I managed to fall behind with all the hectic social engagements.

Yesterday we headed off (in the rain, again) to an area that neither Lyn nor I had been before. The destination town was Pitlochry, with a stop at a power dam and a Nature area at Killie Crankie (I did NOT invent that name) Although wet at times, the weather would clear revealing some stunning scenery. As usual, mostly pictures to follow

On our way home we stopped at another dam at Loch Laggan. This dam was built almost 100 years ago by the British Aluminium Company. The water from the dam is sent 5 miles through underground tunnels to another holding loch. From there it is sent via a 30 mile tunnel through the mountains to the Aluminium plant in Fort William. The pipes you can see in the picture are the overflow pipes should the loch get too full of water.

Our next stop was the grave yard at Cille Choirill, where Lyn’s parents are buried. We were greeted at the entrance by a herd of “Heeland Coos”

We then headed back to the house for our final night.

Today we took a scenic drive up to Inverness to meet up with Lyn’s brother and to do some final shopping. It was then off to the airport hotel in preparation for an early morning flight to Amsterdam, then home to Canada.

WRAP UP

For a number of reasons this was not one of our more successful trips. I was sick before we left, and was still pretty weak. Lyn was also sick and had a cough that would not go away. The week on the boat was good (almost!), but unfortunately the tours were nowhere as good as the last Danube trip we had. We got the feeling they were always scrambling to find something to show us. What we did see was mostly a rebuild of the area after the fall of communism. The trips weren’t a total disaster, but had we done this trip first, it may well have put us off doing the other part of the Danube. The last couple of days of the cruise were a disaster for me, which again left me pretty weak for travelling to Scotland.

In Scotland we were greeted with rain and the message that for the last 3 weeks it had been dry, sunny and warm and that the rain was much needed. Lyn still had the cough, although both of us have recovered quite a bit by now. We should be fine when we get home!!!!

The next trip in October will be a cruise around Japan.

PLEASE

If you have managed to read this far, could you either drop me an email at travels.winch.cc or leave a comment on the blog. I am not sure if anyone (other than you Robert) is reading this or not. It takes a fair bit of time to put together, so if there is no interest I can spend more time relaxing!!!!

The Final Insult

With a 4:30AM start we had an early night last night. Two hours into our sleep we were woken by a very loud alarm. We must have been in a deep sleep as we had no idea what is was, I tried stopping it with my watch, the cell phone, the room phone….. finally twigged it was the fire alarm. Everyone outside, no real information other than the fire alarm indicates there is a potential fire!! Can’t go back into the building until the fire officer gives the OK. 20 minutes later still no fire service! After 25 minutes the alarm switches itself off and everybody goes inside. Never did see or hear the fire service. Evidently this happened earlier in the week……. not impressed. We’re still waiting for our wake up call!

The Final Final Problem

We got home without any problem, only to find a note on the door saying that during our absence our gas meter was replaced. Because no one was home at the time they were not allowed to turn the gas back on! Result…. no heat, no hot water!!

Today we just stayed local, and went to a few of the local sites. After yesterday we didn’t want to stray too far from home!

Again, mainly photos rather than words. Our first stop was a store to stock up on Cadbury’s chocolate and some British biscuits (cookies). We also grabbed some goodies for lunch and headed out to Neptunes Staircase. This is a series of 8 locks on the Caledonian Canal, lifts (or drops) boats 20m (64ft). If you look at a map of Scotland, you will see the North is actually separated from the South by water. It is possible to sail from the North Sea through to the Atlantic.

The scenery is ever changing here at the whim of the weather, the 2 pictures below were taken 10 minutes apart

We headed off to a small marina with some smaller locks and birds.

We then headed back to the house, our hearts dropped as we approached the main road back to Spean Bridge as there was an electronic sign with an Accident Alert on it! Fortunately the accident was on a road about 20 miles beyond our destination.

We decided to take a trip to the coastal town of Oban, although we had been there many years ago, we figured it was time for another visit.

The Day started off fine (for this part of the world, I define “fine” as bucketing down with rain, but not to the extent that you can’t see the car in front of you).

We have a Renault Hybrid rental, I didn’t realise it was a hybrid when we picked it up, so I spent 10 minutes trying to start the engine!! I HATE this car, it may be better if we had an instruction book. It plays sounds with no explanation, it tries to keep you in lane with its auto steering, but fails. When you steer manually to keep the car on the road it flashes messages to you saying KEEP CONTROL OF THE CAR!!…. any way back to the blog.

We wandered around Oban for a while and had lunch. Above Oban is McCaig’s folly, a reproduction of the Colosseum in Rome.

The scenery here is fantastic, unfortunately (my) pictures don’t do it justice, but I’ll put a few below.

As we left Oban, there was a traffic sign saying there was an accident close to Spean Bridge with a delay of 20 minutes. We figured we were a couple of hours away, so it shouldn’t be an issue. The GPS gave us an alternate route as we got closer, but it only took us through Fort William High Street, by-passing the bypass!!. We got onto the main road, a ten minute drive to Spean Bridge.We left Fort William at 3PM. Although it was slow, all was OK until we got to a round-a-bout, after exiting there was a sign ROAD CLOSED. Why put it after the round-a-bout when there was no where to go?? No diversion signs ….nothing. Lyn knew of a possible country road (track) route, so we tried that. To cut a very long story short, the road was single track with passing places. With coaches, large trucks and no police to help out it was carnage. This was made worse when a lorry (truck) went off the road and closed it as well!!

The 10 minute journey took 4 hours!!! Apart from lack of any official help in controlling the traffic, the main issue was the fact that the local police did not have the authority to investigate an accident if there were injuries. A special unit had to drive in, and they were 2 hours away, assuming they were available. The main road was closed for over six hours.

The only good part was the scenery again.

We even caught a rare glimpse of the elusive “Ben Nevis”. This is the highest Mountain in the UK at 4003ft.

The evening finished with a “few” drinks for birthday celebrations.

Finally managed to get back to some form of normality, still a weak but improving. Just a quick entry, as many of you know Lyn was born in the Highlands of Scotland. This is where we are now. Just a few pictures to show the area.

Above is the house where Lyn grew up, built in the early 1800’s, the part on the right was divided off as a shop.

Above is the house again, this time with the “new” shop on the left. This shop was built about 50 years ago. The shop is still owned by the family but is leased out to the Spar company.

Across the driveway from the shop is the other main building in the village, the Woollen Mill.

The name of the Village is Spean Bridge, here are a few pictures from the bridge.

Below is the Railway Station, it is still in use but the building is now a good restaurant

Well after 36 hours of pumping my bilge is well and truly empty! After 60 hours I finally plucked up the courage to start refilling. Amazingly in those two and a half days without food I didn’t feel hungry. I just wished I had a set of scales, I am sure I must have lost some weight!! The main downside for my is tiredness at the moment. For Lyn, she still has this nagging cough that won’t go away. Any way we managed it to Scotland with no major incidents, and I managed a piece of toast this morning.

It was Lyn’s Sister in laws 80th birthday party, and there was gathering of the family. I pecked my way through lunch with no ill-effects. This week there may be a couple of blogs as Lyn has a couple of idea for places to visit, otherwise we are just spending time with family,