Live - Emerald Princess - July 8-20 British Isles

[MissP22]

Has the buffet returned to self service?

[alibabacruisers]

Has the Tiki_Koro finished the cruise?  It has been awhile since his last post.  I hope we hear about the conclusion.

[BuckeyeMark]

13 hours ago, MissP22 said:

Has the buffet returned to self service?

Was on the Emerald June 26-July 9.  Yes, World Marketplace has self-service.

[Malleykatt]

Emerald Princess in Queensferry  for Edinburgh today. Hope it's going ok. We're heading for a heatwave further south.

[wowzz]

8 minutes ago, Malleykatt said:

Emerald Princess in Queensferry  for Edinburgh today. Hope it's going ok. We're heading for a heatwave further south.

Heatwave is probably an understatement!

[Tiki_Koro]

Hello, everyone. I’ve tried to post 3 or 4 times with a quick update, but they haven’t gone through. I hope I am successful this time. The issue is the weak WiFi. It’s fine for sending iMessages and checking email, but it does not allow me to upload pictures or, apparently, submit posts to this forum. I am trying this from our lunch location in Edinburgh using the pub’s WiFi.

 

Cruise is going well. I’m writing draft reports to post as soon as I return home, with lots of pictures! 

[insidecabin]

On 7/16/2022 at 12:24 PM, MissP22 said:

Has the buffet returned to self service?

Was self service for most things  on the 14 June cruise, we are  2 on from that

[MissP22]

1 hour ago, insidecabin said:

Was self service for most things  on the 14 June cruise, we are  2 on from that

It really sound promising that it might change for our next Enchanted trip.

It requires much less crew to run the buffet. 

[nini]

On 7/14/2022 at 6:15 AM, SweetD323 said:

My hubs and I will be on the Sept. 5 cruise.  Hope the run into you!

If you both have not et both joined your Roll Call, then maybe you would "run into" each other.

[durangokid]

1 hour ago, nini said:

If you both have not et both joined your Roll Call, then maybe you would "run into" each other.

Hubby and I are on the roll call.  🙂

[nini]

25 minutes ago, durangokid said:

Hubby and I are on the roll call.  🙂

Cool.

[1emerald1]

If you have the chance, could you please post a pic of the Officer's on board?

[rabin1]

Please would you try to find out what will be happening in the dry dock in October??

Thank you very much

[wowzz]

2 hours ago, rabin1 said:

Please would you try to find out what will be happening in the dry dock in October??

Thank you very much

The hull is being cleaned and inspected.

Edited July 17, 2022 by wowzz

[rabin1]

Just now, wowzz said:

The hull is being cleaned and inspected.

That is all nothing inside??? Thank you.............

[wowzz]

1 minute ago, rabin1 said:

That is all nothing inside??? Thank you.............

I don't know that, and I'm guessing very few of the crew know either.

Some new carpets perhaps? 

Edited July 17, 2022 by wowzz

[rabin1]

1 hour ago, wowzz said:

I don't know that, and I'm guessing very few of the crew know either.

Some new carpets perhaps? 

Are you on the ship maybe you could ask?

Thank you

[Tiki_Koro]

Well, we made it home late last night, and wait until I get to the story about our harrowing experience at Heathrow! My goal is to post two or three days at a time starting tomorrow. I am currently organizing my photos and videos and getting them backed up into the cloud now that I have decent internet. I apologize for not keeping to my plan of a live report, but, as my report will reveal, traveling rarely goes as expected. For the most part, however, we accomplished our planned itinerary and were flexible enough to make plenty of lemonade out of lemons!

[jc foster]

On 7/17/2022 at 3:59 AM, wowzz said:

Heatwave is probably an understatement!

Its got to be tough in the Uk for those without A/C.  Its been 109f here the last two days with most temps well over 100 F for the last several weeks.

[Billish]

4 hours ago, jc foster said:

with most temps well over 100 F for the last several weeks

The UK heatwave lasted all of two days !

[junglejane]

@Tiki_Koro As someone on the cruise now, who is flying out of Heathrow on disembarkation day 8/1, I’m nervously waiting to hear about your “harrowing experience.”

[Alcairns]

18 minutes ago, Billish said:

The UK heatwave lasted all of two days !

To clarify both  comments - The record 100 degree temperatures lasted 2 days. There has been a heat wave in the U.K. for the last two weeks with temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees. The heatwave continues now for the drought!

[Billish]

18 minutes ago, Alcairns said:

To clarify both  comments - The record 100 degree temperatures lasted 2 days. There has been a heat wave in the U.K. for the last two weeks with temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees. The heatwave continues now for the drought!

I must have missed the last two weeks, because it never reached much over 80, let alone 90 up here in the North, apart from Monday and Tuesday.

And yesterday, the temperature never went over 72!  I don't consider that to be a heatwave.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Billish

[Alcairns]

2 hours ago, Billish said:

I must have missed the last two weeks, because it never reached much over 80, let alone 90 up here in the North, apart from Monday and Tuesday.

And yesterday, the temperature never went over 72!  I don't consider that to be a heatwave.

It would seem to suggest the more north you get the colder it gets. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Alcairns
Clarity

[Tiki_Koro]

Day Two in London

 

I must begin this report with some negative comments about our hotel. My first impression was it was decent, and though it lacked some of the creature comforts we take for granted in America such as air-conditioning and larger bathrooms, it seemed to be what we expected based on our previous experiences in Europe. When I lived in London for five months (August-December), I did not have air conditioning at my flat or at the school campus, and I was fine with it. This building, however, is next to another building, and there was neither a breeze nor air circulation in our room even with the window open. I was also disappointed with the breakfast. I was hoping for a traditional fry-up, but what we got was a continental buffet of boiled eggs, croissants, yogurt cups, and cold cuts.

 

Still, these disappointments were nothing compared to an unfortunate incident we had with the staff that just did not sit well with us. After our first day in London, my father and brother took showers before going to bed. The hotel seems to be family-operated, and the young lady who checked us in earlier knocked on our door after my father and brother took their showers. She asked if there was standing water on the floor of the bathroom. The only thing we noticed was a little water that was incidental to stepping out of the shower while drying off. It certainly was not a puddle. She said that water was leaking underneath our room into the front desk area. She asked us to keep a towel on the floor in case it was coming from our bathroom.

 

During the night and the following morning, we could hear what sounded like water flowing from a hose through the wall behind our bathroom. It was not constant, but periodic. When we went down to the breakfast room, an older lady we assumed to be the young lady’s mother approached us and told us that our shower must be flooding our bathroom and told us we need to be more careful and perhaps turn the water off between lathering and rinsing! We told her there was no water on the bathroom floor, and she insisted that we were flooding the bathroom because they never had a leak in the front office before we came. This was without her or a plumber inspecting the situation, and while I do not doubt they had a leak that was causing damage to their hotel (we could hear the odd water sounds behind the wall and told her so), it was not our problem and not our fault! At almost $300 a night, we expected to be treated with better hospitality than that, and so I cannot recommend the St. George’s Hotel in Pimlico. I can, however, highly recommend the Pimlico area. It is quiet, safe, clean, and close enough to the main attractions without being crowded. We stayed in Pimlico in 2019, and these are the reasons we chose Pimlico again this time.

 

Now, on to something more positive. We hit the ground running (well, walking briskly and climbing lots of stairs!) for a very long and satisfying day of sightseeing covering every period of London history! On our planned itinerary, I left the first part of this morning open in case we needed to catch up with the Rick Steves audio walking tour of Westminster that was planned for the day before. Because our delayed flight caused us to skip doing the tour on our first day, this plan worked out well, so we started the morning off at Parliament and walked down Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. Rick Steves recommends about 90 minutes to do this tour, but we completed it in just over an hour.

 

 

 

 

 

When we got to Downing Street, we peered through the gate and saw some commotion. We found out that some of Boris Johnson’s cabinet were resigning, and there was mounting pressure for the Prime Minister to resign. As the world now knows, he announced his resignation the following day, but what made this so funny to us is the last time we did this very walking tour in 2019, when we got to Downing Street we saw similar commotion and found out Theresa May was about to announce her resignation! So, we are now 2 for 2 when it comes to prime ministers resigning when we are touring London; I hope they let us come back!

 

The top photo is from 2019 when Theresa May was about to resign, and the bottom photo is from this trip when Boris Johnson's cabinet members were about to resign. 

 

After we finished this tour, we hurried to the St. James Park Underground Station to catch the Royal London walking tour by London Walks. We wanted to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but based on our research, we knew it can be difficult to get a good view without arriving early and waiting for hours. On our last trip, we found this tour, and it was the perfect combination of learning some history around the Buckingham Palace area and seeing multiple units of guards and bands marching in the ceremony. We had the same tour guide this time as last time, Jan, and she is wonderful! She used to work for Prince Charles and has plenty of insider knowledge about Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family. London Walks tours are great because you can either reserve a space ahead of time or just show up. You can also book virtual tours to watch live from home, if you want to get a taste of what they offer or get a fix of London. Go to www.LondonWalks.com.

 

 

 

 

Next, we tried to stop by the Red Lion pub for lunch on Whitehall, a Winston Churchill favorite, but we could not get a table. So, we went to The Westminster Arms pub near Westminster Abbey and got right in. I had my favorite pub meal – bangers and mash – with a delicious cask ale at a slightly warmer temperature than we typically drink them in America, which is the proper temperature for English cask ales.

 

 

After lunch, we had a 1pm entry time for touring Westminster Abbey. If we could pre-book a sight, we did because this is usually a good way to skip long ticketing lines. But, Westminster Abbey did not honor our timed entry and made us wait in the regular line with everyone else. Had we known this, we would have tried going earlier than our scheduled time. There was no benefit to prebooking Westminster Abbey. This tip did pay off at other attractions, as I will report on later.

 

 

Westminster Abbey is such a fascinating place. It is a holy place for both Catholics and Protestants because of its pre-reformation and post-reformation significance. It is the burial and memorial place of so many historic figures. Any one of them would make it a pilgrimage site, but all of them in the same place makes it overwhelming to the point of taking them for granted! We also did the separately ticketed Queen’s Gallery in the upper level, and that was worth doing just for the view looking down into the nave (take the lift unless you are missing your Stairmaster and need a legs workout!). We completed the tour in about 90 minutes.

 

 

 

We followed Westminster Abbey with the Churchill War Rooms, again with a timed-entry ticket for 3:30pm. This time, we bypassed the regular line. Besides the War Rooms and bunkers, there is also a Winston Churchill museum that is part of the tour. We went through everything in about 90 minutes, but there was so much to see that a Churchill fan could spend much more time digging into everything the museum section had to offer. It was a great mix of artifacts, displays, and video presentations.

 

 

We were ahead of schedule on our itinerary, so we decided to knock off a couple of our plans for the next day and headed to Leadenhall Market. This trip is my brother’s first time overseas, and he is interested in seeing things related to the Harry Potter series. Leadenhall Market was the filming location for Diagon Alley in the first movie, and we found the storefront that served as the Leaky Cauldron entrance.

 

 

 

After snapping a couple of pictures, we headed a few blocks down to St. Michael’s Alley, a winding alley that led to the area described by Charles Dickens as the location of Scrooge’s counting house in A Christmas Carol. With so many modern buildings now around the historic City area of London, these little alleys are remnants of Victorian London we all hold in our imaginations.

 

 

Speaking of Victorian London, our final event of the day was another London Walks tour, this time the Jack the Ripper walking tour. First, though, we grabbed dinner at a pub near the Tower of London called Hung, Drawn, and Quartered, so named because of its proximity to Tower Hill where executions took place. Executions were such a big public event that we get our term “gala” from the merrymaking that took place at the gallows.

 

We met our tour guide, Justin, at the Tower Hill Underground Station and began our tour. Justin began by showing us a remnant of the Roman wall that surrounded Londinium, circa 50 AD. This wall is just outside the Tower Hill Underground Station and is very easy to find.

 

 

 

 

The Jack the Ripper tour was fantastic! Justin cut through the myths and explained the facts and significance of the hysteria surrounding the murders. We saw three murder sites, with the other two begin too far of a distance for the walking tour. One of the murder sites is on a street that has been remarkably preserved as it was in the 19^th century, while the rest have been modernized.

 

 

 

 

Following this tour, we were exhausted and returned to our hotel for a good, albeit brief, night’s sleep. According to my Apple Fitness app, I walked 25,636 steps (10.5 miles) and climbed 18 flights of stairs!