Day 15 Caribbean Vacation Xmas 2009

This morning we woke up at 7.00am as the Celebrity Mercury was docking at the pier in the Port of Baltimore. In an hour or so we will disembark from the ship.

We went up to the Palm Springs Cafe for our final breakfast onboard. What did we have ?? Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream of course.

Our car is somewhere out there in the parking lot. No one is lounging in the deck chairs.

We grabbed our carry on bags and headed down the gangway to the terminal where we were met by the Customs Agents and answered a couple of questions. It took a few minutes for me to find our large suitcases, but once found we were out of the terminal and into our car and heading home by 9:15am

The weather in NY and ON does not look too good tomorrow so I am going to do the drive home in one shot today. It is about 500 miles and that will take 10 to 12 hours to complete.

Driving through Pennsylvania was good, the roads were dry.

Entering New York we started encountering light snow flurries.

There was a delay at the bridge crossing over the Niagara River onto Grand Island NY.

Also another delay at Canada Customs and as you can see, it is snowing harder.

By the time we got through customs, it was dark but we are now in Ontario.

The snow let up again just north of St Catherines and the roads were fine all the way to Perkinsfield where we then found snow covered roads the last few miles to the house.

We arrived home at 9:15pm, 12 hours after leaving Baltimore.

We had a wonderful cruise, a relaxing vacation, and now we are starting to think about and make plans for where we will be travelling this coming summer.

I didn't take very many photos today, but if you wish to see the ones that I took, please click on this link to my FLICKR site.

Day 14 Caribbean Vacation Xmas 2009

Today is our final full day at sea. 7am tomorrow morning we should be docked in Baltimore and stepping off the ship. We will then begin our drive back to Ontario so that we can start back to work on Monday.

Today is a cloudy overcast, cold day. The outside temperature is about 50 degrees, warm by Canadian standards for this time of year, but cold when you have just spent the last week or so in a warm tropical climate.

Karen got brave and went outside on deck 6 to capture this photo of a passing container ship.

Things are winding down on the ship after last nights New Years Eve Celebrations… there are some last day sales in the shops, a few seminars, but nothing that interests us. Pretty much a relax and read type of day.

We were presented with a questionnaire about the cruise and asked to rate our experiences. I have had several complaints, which I have let the staff know about as I noticed things, and I also filled out the questionnaire with my comments.

Number one complaint, although not a biggie, is that there are no towel animals each night on our bed. On our Alaska Cruise, it was always something that we looked for as we opened our stateroom each evening after returning from dinner, to see what new towel animal was waiting for us. I was told by a ships crew member early on in the cruise that she would bring this to the attention of our room attendant, but we never saw a towel animal the whole cruise.

Number two complaint is the lack of labelling on the food indicating what it is and what the ingredients are. As one with severe food allergies, it is important for me to know what I am eating before I eat it. I had to shy away from a lot of the selections because there were no signs, and because when I inquired, no one really could give me a definitive answer as to what was in it. I even spoke to the Food Manager, I took him around to the different food selections and asked him what it was and what was in it. Guess what.. he didn’t know… or he was just guessing… and he is the food manager. If he doesn’t know, how am I or other passengers with allergies supposed to know. The Alaska Cruise, the food was well marked and described.

Number three complaint and frustration was with the internet access. I bought a $99.00 internet package the evening that we boarded. That package entitled me to 235 minutes of internet usage. If you use up your 235 minutes you can buy more minutes. There were 4 occasions when I had to go to the internet office to get a refund on our shipboard account, because the system was charging me and adding the charges to our shipboard account for internet use and not applying the use to the minutes that I had already purchased. One of the internet staff checked my laptop to make sure the settings were correct and she determined that indeed the settings were correct and even wrote me a note and signed it stating that she had checked my laptop and all was well, and that the problem was with the shipboard system. I don’t know how many times I heard after that, that some manager or some staff member tried to suggest that it was my laptop that was causing the problem and not their system. I am glad that I have the letter stating that my laptop is fine and that indeed the problem is with their system. I hate when people are so insistent that it is never their system or fault or problem and won’t take responsibility for their errors or faults within their systems. Anyways after a lot of time and effort, all the additional charges that were added, have been removed. I have not been online for the last 2 days because I have used up my 235 minutes and rather than buy an additional 60 minutes for the last 2 days of the cruise, I don’t want to have to go back down to that internet office and go through the whole process again of asking for refunds for something they should never be billing me for in the first place. There were no billing issues with the internet on the Alaska Cruise.

We had lunch in the Palm Springs Cafe.

We had dinner in the Palm Springs Cafe.

Tonight we are packing up our suitcases, they have to be outside our door by 11pm so that they can be off loaded tomorrow.

Nighty Night, see you tomorrow in Baltimore Maryland.

Day 13 Caribbean Vacation Xmas 2009

Slept in this morning till 9:30am and then got ready because we had signed up for a 10:00am digital camera seminar today. The seminar was about the history and development of the digital camera, and an explanation of the terminology associated with cameras, such as aperture, image sensors, ISO and a whole bunch of other terms that I had heard of but never knew what they meant. There was also a little bit about how to shoot better photos in different lighting conditions and adjustments to make to your camera settings to get the best photos.

After the seminar we went to the Caribbean Brunch Buffet that was set up in the Manhattan Restaurant. A very extravagant affair, with several ice sculptures and elegant displays of foods, desserts and table settings. There was a chocolate fountain which Karen dipped fresh fruit into.

Some of the ice sculptures.

Some of the dessert settings.

After the brunch it was time for more resting and relaxing until our Formal Night New Years Eve Dinner.

Our table mates Phil and Penny from England joined us for dinner this evening. We were all dressed out in our Sunday Best.

Happy New Years from Karen and I to all of our friends and family who enjoy reading our Travel Blog.

Day 12 Caribbean Vacation Xmas 2009

At sea. We are on our way back to Baltimore Maryland. We have 3 days to rest and relax onboard after leaving the Eastern Caribbean. I don’t anticipate any thing exciting to happen that would be really news worthy of putting in the blog, but I will post a little something about each day till we get back home and end our Xmas 2009 Vacation.

Today the ocean is quite rough. The captain insists that the seas are slight to moderate. I think he tends to downplay the conditions, hoping that the passengers will believe him. To my way of thinking, when the ship is pounding and shuddering every time we hit a wave, that tells me that the waves are more than slight to moderate.. more like moderate to rough. We hear some loud banging and scraping noises on the particularly larger waves and I suspect it is the anchor shifting as it hangs from the bow of the ship. Everyone is walking around the ship like drunken sailors.

These photos were taken up on deck 6 out by the railing. In one shot the spray reaches above the deck 6 railing.

In our room near the bow on deck 4, we are getting a more up close and personal view of the large waves through our window.

Karen enjoyed sitting in the windows and saying ohh and ahh at each wave that passed.

We had lunch and dinner in the Palm Springs Cafe and went out on deck to watch the sun set over the ocean. The outside temperature is progressively getting cooler and cooler as we head further and further Northwest to Baltimore.

Our sunset photos for this evening.

Day 11 Caribbean Vacation Xmas 2009

Our final port of call is Philipsburg St Maarten. We set our alarm clock to wake us up at 6:30am. Our intentions were to have an early breakfast, get off the ship at 8:00am and do some shopping in Philipsburg and then get ready for our shore excursion. Things did not work out as planned though.

We had breakfast and took some photos of the sun rising.

While we were eating breakfast the captain made several attempts at docking the ship. The sea swells at the pier were too large and after 5 or 6 attempts and several broken ropes, he determined that it was not safe to dock the ship and made the announcement that we would be anchoring in the harbour instead of tying up at the pier. Once at anchor we would then be tendered ashore in the ships lifeboats. It was a good plan in theory, but the reality was a fine example of disorganized confusion. Without going into a big long story, we finally stepped foot on shore at noon, almost 4 hours later than the scheduled arrival time, and barely moments to spare before our shore excursion began. A lot of the passengers missed their shore excursions, at least we managed to get to our excursion.

The lifeboats take us to shore.

Our shore excursion today is the 12 Meter Challenge. A simulated, shortened version of the America’s Cup sailing race, aboard 2 very famous America’s Cup sailboats, Stars & Stripes and Canada II.

Here in these photos that I took from the ship, we watched Stars & Stripes and Canada II sailing in the harbour while they waited patiently for us to get to shore.

At the 12 Meter Challenge office and store, we were given a brief history of the America’s Cup and then the teams were chosen as to which boat you got to sail on. There is no preference given, so just because we were Canadians and would have preferred to sail on Canada II, as luck (or bad luck) would have it we were assigned to the American boat Stars and Stripes. There are 18 people on each boat and everyone is given a duty to perform onboard. Karen was assigned to be the time keeper and I was assigned to be one of the two main grinders.

All onboard were given quick instructions as to what they were required to do.

Myself and another guy were assigned to be the main grinders, we sat opposite to each other so we could each have our hands on the grinder. My assignment as ”main grinder” was to turn (grind) the winch handles that pulled in the rope (main sheet) that controls the boom. There are 3 different gear settings and the captain would call out which gear to use and how fast he wanted us to grind (pull in the main sheet)

As time keeper, Karen’s job was to keep track of and count down the minutes and the seconds to the start of the race. We didn’t want to cross the start line too early, so her responsibility was to verbally communicate to the captain and make sure that the captain knew exactly how many seconds remained to the start of the race. The final 30 seconds before the start, she had to call out every second as the clock ticked down to zero.

The winds were light, which was probably a good thing for Karen’s sake as she has never been on a sailboat before. I would have preferred much stronger winds, but we still had a great time. It would have been a great experience and really exciting to get the rail under but I may have never convinced Karen to ever go sailing again if that were to have happened.

We trailed behind Canada II throughout the whole race by several boat lengths.

I was pretty much convinced that there was no way we were going to catch them, but on the last leg of the race, the captain of Canada II made a tactical error and tacked way too early and did not have a good enough line to get across the finish line, he was going to have to tack again… we on the other hand, held off a bit longer before making our final tack, so we were in position now to sail straight to the finish line. We also caught a bit of a lift in the wind which gave us better boat speed and as you can see in these photos.. we slowly overtook Canada II and won the race.

We all cheered and congratulated our captain (in the red shirt) for the win, then the beer and other drinks were brought out to celebrate our win.

I am glad that we won because there was some mention (jokingly) from the captain, that if we would have lost, he was going to blame the loss on Karen and I, as we were the only Canadians onboard. His excuse for losing was going to be that we had somehow sabotaged the American boat and caused him the loss.

A great day was had by all, winners and losers, lots of drinks onboard and back on shore. So even though we did not get to sail on Canada II, we at least got to sail on the winning boat this day, and what an opportunity to be able to sail on an America’s Cup boat.

After the race, Karen and I did a quick dash in and out of a couple of the shops near the pier, buying some souvenirs and then we boarded the tender for the ride back out to the ship. Once back onboard we had a very late lunch.

We watched the sun set.

We changed into our smart casual attire and went for dinner in the Manhattan Restaurant.

We raised anchor at 7:30pm and set sail for Baltimore, some 1400 miles and 3 days away. We have had a small taste of the Caribbean and I am sure that we will return in the near future.