2024 Europe and Westbound Transatlantic

 2024  Europe and Westbound Transatlantic
October 4 - November 2

This will be another long trip!  We are starting in Orlando, because the flights on Norse Atlantic (which doesn't fly from Chicago) were so much less than any other airline going to London.  Of course, this added several days to our trip, so even with saving hundreds on all seven of our airline tickets we probably only break even in the end!  Then we will fly to London, spend 2 nights in Canterbury before boarding the MSC Preziosa for a week.  That cruise will take us to Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands.  Not necessarily in that order!  We've been so busy at home that it's been hard to even think about this trip.  Anyway, after that cruise we spend two nights in Southampton before sailing on the Disney Dream for a 13 night cruise which makes stops in Spain, Portugal and the Bahamas before ending back in Florida.

Hello! In case you've never read our blog before, this is Kyrie. I'm the picture taker and Marc is the blogger. I love looking back at our trips and being able to remember more details thanks to recording it like this. We're feeling very blessed as usual to take this great trip with all of our "kids." Jacob (19) and Max (18) are both doing college online. Ella (15), Zoe (13), and Zach (11) homeschool with Marc's guidance. This certainly could be the last time we can take a trip like this with all of us together.

Day 1 - Chicago to Orlando, Trying to unwind

I wasn't kidding when I said that we've been too busy to think about this trip.  We've had construction going on at our house all summer, we are trying to start construction at Kyrie's chiropractic office, we've had two new employees start new positions for expansion over the past two months, plus we've had a lot of side projects going on with the kids' homeschooling and college.  We always keep ourselves very busy, but this has been extra even for us and it lasted right up through the day before the trip. 

 Yesterday at 5:30am Kyrie was leaving for work and I noticed leaking in our garage which is right under one of the bathrooms that we've just about finished construction on.  I didn't even tell Kyrie because I didn't want her to stress about it while she was at work.  Thankfully our amazing contractor came right over when I told him (I waited until 8am) and figured out the problem and the plumber came right out and fixed it.  It turned out that it was an old drain pipe that didn't even get touched during the construction.  There were several small issues during the day to keep me on my toes, but nothing too major.  I thought we were finally ready to get into vacation mode, but then Kyrie called from the car wash on her way home from work because after she vacuumed the car it wouldn't start.  I drove over there with a portable jump starter, but it didn't help so we called a tow truck.  They came right out and luckily were able to jump the car with a more heavy duty jump starter.  Still not sure what the problem really was, the car isn't that old, but I guess that's a problem for when we get back.  This process ate up two precious hours though. Still, at least my car is at home at the end. 

So, this morning it was hard for me to even feel like we were on vacation even when we were on the way to the airport, but gradually throughout the day I have started to settle in.  Same!

One thing we did differently this time was park at the CTA lot in Rosemont.  It was $8 per day which is at least $4/day cheaper than other off-site parking in the area and it was really convenient.  I dropped everyone else off at the airport first, then parked the car and took the blue line which ends right in the airport.

Our flight was uneventful and we made it to Orlando by 3:00pm.  We are staying at Universal's Cabana Bay resort which is one of our favorites.  I love its 50's theme.  We unpacked then spent the afternoon at the pool. It was 5pm by the time we got to the pool, but 4pm on our internal clocks. We swam a little but mostly hung out and ate dinner poolside.

The kids and I (minus Zach) walked over to Universal's Citywalk to check out the Epic Universe Preview Center to see what the newest Universal park is going to look like.  It looks pretty great, but maybe not enough rides?  Hard to tell and I guess the other parks don't really have that many rides either.

They left after 8pm to do this which is definitely the time I get ready  to go to sleep. Zach was already in his PJs when the others left too. 

By the way, if anyone is still following along who was with us on our first transatlantic cruise (2016) where you were all making fun of my laundry troubles...I have already done one load of laundry!  Luckily we're still in America and I know how to work the machines here!  

Day 2 - Islands of Adventure and Magic Kingdom

We went to early entry at Islands of Adventure this morning.  Most of the group went to the Hagrid's coaster first, but Zach wasn't ready for that yet this morning so he and I went on the Hippogryph coaster instead.  We all went on the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey ride together and then had breakfast at the Three Broomsticks.  The breakfast was decent, but the best part was that all the meals came with Butterbeer - my favorite!  It was a smaller size than they sell at the carts, but that was just right.

Then we went on the High in the Sky Trolley Ride and finished with Spiderman.  Our group split up after this.  Some of us had Disney Annual Passes that haven't quite expired yet, so we went to Magic Kingdom.  Kyrie and Zach went to the pool at the hotel.  And Jacob met up with one of his friends who is working at Disney and spent the day with .her

At Magic Kingdom, several big rides were closed:  Space Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and the Jungle Cruise.  This made the lines for the other rides extra long.  It was also very hot and humid.  We tried to go on the Tiana replacement for Splash Mountain since we haven't been on that yet, but weren't able to get the morning virtual queue and our afternoon virtual queue number seemed unlikely to be called before late at night if at all.  We did enjoy the updated Country Bears Jamboree though.  In some ways it's a shame to lose the original version, but Disney did a decent job of making Country Bear versions of some traditional Disney songs which I'm sure appeals a lot more to the younger crowd.  

We had lunch at Pecos Bill Cafe where they have a new menu.  The food was better than before, but still very unimpressive.  However, I did have an amazing dessert there - Corn Mousse.  It may end up being my favorite food from the trip!  Get it while you can because on the menu it just looks like a cob of corn with cheese and chili pepper on it, so I'm guessing most people skip right over it if they are looking for dessert.  It's actually some kind of Mousse that they shape to look like a corn cob and it has white chocolate and maybe cinnamon on top.  It's really good and hard to describe the taste.  Very sweet though, it won't appeal to everyone.

We didn't stay all that long after that.  Went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Tea Cups, and watched the Carousel of Progress and then headed back to the hotel.

Zach and I checked out the Epic Universe preview center that the others visited last night. It was pretty cool to see the big model of the park if you used the app along with it to visualize the rides. We went to both pools at our resort. The lazy river at the farther pool is nice, but otherwise the pool near us with the slide is bigger and better. Zach mostly ate his lunch, and took a nap wrapped up head to toe in towels. I love sun and summer pool weather and this seems like it could be the last of the year as clouds and rain roll into Orlando before the next hurricane!

We met up with Kyrie and Zach for dinner at a restaurant "across the street" at Sapphire Falls, another Universal hotel.  Amatista Cookhouse. It was not an easy walk to get to.  They don't put a crosswalk at the most obvious place between the entrances to the two hotels so you have to walk pretty far out of the way to a bridge that crosses the road.  The dinner was very good though.  Kyrie and I split the Rotisserie chicken and sides, Zach and Ella had pizza/flatbread and Zoe had chicken sliders.  Everyone seemed to like the food. 

After we got back to the hotel Kyrie and I had a drink at the lobby bar which is Halloween themed.  I had a Halloween themed drink with whiskey and pumpkin puree which was quite good.  

I think we're pretty well into vacation mode now. 

Day 3 - Universal Studios & Halloween Horror Nights

Well, as Kyrie mentioned, there is a hurricane headed our way.  It isn't supposed to make landfall until Wednesday, but our flight doesn't leave for England until Tuesday night.  That's cutting it pretty close and it's making us a little nervous.  We checked with the airline (Norse Atlantic), but they won't let us change our flight without paying the difference in fare which at this point would be more than $4,000 extra for the seven of us.  So we're taking our chances and hoping for the best.  

 Jacob went to visit some of his Disney College Program friends last night and didn't get back until 12:30am which meant I didn't get to sleep until then either.  Plus, we knew we would be out late tonight, so most of us slept in this morning. 

Eventually, we all headed to Universal Studios and went on some rides.  We hadn't been on the new Minion's Villain Con ride.  The line was really fun with lots of good gags from the movies.  The ride itself was pretty boring though.  

We had an early dinner at Cowfish which is one of our favorites (except Kyrie).  After dinner Kyrie and Zachary went back to the hotel while the rest of us went to Halloween Horror Nights.  I want to like it as much as they do. Maybe I'm not ordering the right thing. I got the bento box with a mini burger and vegetarian sushi. The sweet potato fries were cold and there was too much edamame. It was fine, but not great.

It was a bit rainy all day and that kept the crowds to a minimum.  This is our third year in a row going to HHN and it was the first time that we made it into all 10 houses.  The rain was annoying, but it was nice to not have to stand in long lines all night and it wasn't hot and humid like it often is.

The first house we went into was Ghostbusters.  That was enough for Ella.  She realized that she wasn't up for it this time around.  She went with us last year and went through all the houses with the rest of us, but even then I asked at the end of the night who wanted to go again next year and her and Max weren't sure.  This year Max seemed to really like it, but Ella joined Kyrie and Zachary at the hotel.

The next house was based on the movie The Quiet Place.  I haven't seen it, but that was the scariest house for me.  There was one point where it was just completely dark and I didn't want to touch the walls or anything because who knows what's there, so I just grabbed the backpack of the stranger in front of me and let them lead us through.  Once we could finally see again it wasn't much better.  It was just a creepy concept.  

We all agreed that our favorite house was The Goblin's Feast.  The costumes and sets were very good and it wasn't so scary that I just felt like I was trying to get through like it was with some of the others.

We ended up making it through all 10 houses, watched the stage show, and even went on a few rides before we left at midnight.  I would rate it as the best of the 3 years we went so far even though we had to deal with some rain.

Day 4 - More Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure

Today, Kyrie, Jacob and Ella headed to the parks early while the rest of us slept in.  When everyone else woke up and took Zach and Zoe to meet up with the others and then I went back to the hotel to catch up on some work and laundry.  I've had plenty of the parks already for now.

Max has been spending most of his time getting his schoolwork finished.  We will have wifi on the cruise ships, but hopefully he can get most of his school done beforehand.

I tried again to see if the airline would let us switch flights today without charging extra, but they wouldn't.  Kind of a dumb policy since they could move us to the empty seats tonight and then have extra seats available to move people to tomorrow from the Wednesday and Thursday flights that they will probably have to cancel.

Anyway, at this point the projections show the storm force winds hitting Orlando around midday on Wednesday, so hopefully we will be long gone by then. The Orlando airport has announced they are closing Wednesday at 8am. This actually makes me a bit less nervous. I've been praying for the hurricane to slow down and in fact the timeline has pushed back about 12 hours. Nevertheless, it feels like we're just waiting to get to England vs. being on vacation already...not to complain...really we realize how fortunate we are and just hope we get out as planned.

We had dinner tonight at Bigfire.  I think everyone enjoyed their food. 

The laundry challenge today was trying to dry shoes.  Still in progress, we'll see how it goes.

Day 5 - A little more Universal and then off to England

Our flight to London doesn't leave until 8:35pm, so we spent the morning at Universal.  It seemed like every ride we got in line for broke down while we were in line, but we still had a good time.  Mostly we are just anxious to get on with the rest of our trip. 

This was actually our best group time together. Everyone made it to early entry. We wanted to be tired enough to sleep on our flight since we land at around 10am local time and can't check in until at least 4pm. There is a 5 hour time difference from Florida to London. Other than rides breaking down, the wait times were minimal and we rode the most rides today. I was extra patient today which is not my norm, just knowing the only ride that mattered was our flight out which was looking more and more certain.

Our stay at Cabana Bay was pretty great.  We got connecting Family rooms with the exterior entry and it was really convenient.  Each room had a sitting area and kitchenette.  We had plenty of room.  The bus service was outstanding.  There was always a bus waiting for us in both directions and it is only about 10 minutes from the park.  We also walked it a couple times and it was a nice 15-20 minute walk.  I would consider Cabana Bay to be the equivalent to a Disney Moderate Resort.   

The hurricane has been upgraded to a category 5 and then downgraded to category 4 after it hit Mexico briefly.  Fortunately for us it isn't expected to make landfall until Wednesday night or early Thursday, so I think our flight should be good.  I was relieved when I saw that the plan from London took off and is expected here on time at 6:30pm.  The airport is closing at 8:00am tomorrow and a lot of flights on the board are cancelled.

Unfortunately, it looks like the hurricane will be pretty bad for Central Florida since it's path takes it straight across the state.  Without much land to go over, the hurricane may remain quite strong even inland.  Hopefully, everyone will be alright.  While preparations were being made around the hotel, it didn't seem like people were evacuating the area or anything. 

I'm writing this from the airport because we got here so early.  Just didn't want to leave anything to chance. We were uncertain whether Uber/Lyft drivers would be plentiful or not and whether roads would be jammed up, but everything seemed to be as usual. The airport was super calm too. I did get a sinking feeling seeing delayed and canceled flights. That would be rough. Hotels are fully booked and locals looking to shelter inland were filling the lobby as we left.

We are flying on Norse Atlantic, which has one flight per day from Orlando.  It's a low cost airline, but the premium tickets to London were quite a bit cheaper than even the regular seats on other airlines.  It definitely won't be the same as first class, but should still be better than regular economy.  It's an 8 hour flight, so I'll take all the room I can get.

Day 6 - Flight to London, Driving in England, Pooh Corner, VRBO near Canterbury

Our flight to London went very well.  No delays and we probably even arrived a little early.  I think we got in about half an hour early. The pilot stated we had "strong tail winds" which makes sense. 

I was really impressed with the premium class service on this airline.  Considering how much it cost even compared to regular economy on other airlines I figured that at best it would be like Economy Plus, but with some food included.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  The seats were like other airlines first class seats.  They weren't the lay flat kind that is typical of overseas flights, but they were very roomy seats with plenty of legroom.  We bought the Premium Light version, so it didn't include checked bags and certain snacks and drinks.  But it did include most drinks and both dinner and breakfast.  The meals weren't great and they weren't served on real dishes or anything, but they were sufficient and for the price it more than made up for it.  I would absolutely recommend Norse for anyone traveling to one of their cities.  It's basically (almost) first class for the price of economy.

We fly into London-Gatwick airport which was perfect for our itinerary and I felt was more convenient than the other London airports which are much closer to downtown.  Obviously, if we were going into the city that might have made a difference.  After a very quick passport process we went to Alamo to pick up our car rental.  Prior to the trip, I was kind of panicking because we pack a carry on bag and backpack for each person and I was worried that they wouldn't fit into the minivans in Europe which are smaller than the ones in the US.  I even did research to see how much smaller their "boot space" was (room in the trunk).  It wasn't so much different, but even still I was concerned that we wouldn't fit everything.  So, when Alamo listed a full size passenger van for rent I went for it.  We have a large conversion van at home, so I wasn't concerned about driving a large vehicle and figured this was a solution to our problem.  Well, I definitely made a mistake there.  England's country roads were clearly all built during the time of horse and buggies and are extremely narrow.  In most cases, they have no shoulder and have very dense hedges on each side.  So there is NO wiggle room whatsoever when traffic is coming both ways (which was most of the time today).  Before the trip, I was worried about having to drive on the left side of the road (which was very challenging), but the width of the vehicle was definitely a problem.  Usually, I prefer country roads, but today I was so happy the few times we were actually on a highway.

Sleep deprived and sitting to the far left of the van - like really squished to the side with two seats to the left of the drive's seat- I was the most annoying passenger but I couldn't help it. I tried closing my eyes, but maybe this was my version of a haunted house. It was bad with my eyes open, but worse with my eyes shut. Other than the riding experience, this was a wonderful day!

We had a really nice afternoon in the area where A.A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh.  We started at Pooh Corner which is a Tea Shop/Winnie the Pooh museum in the building where the real Christopher Robin used to buy sweets.  We had lunch and tea there and briefly looked in the museum.  Then we continued on to the 100 Acre Woods where we eventually found Pooh Bridge after a long, but nice walk through the woods.  It was really good family time and everyone enjoyed themselves.

The food and tea was SO good! The small gift shop had cute, well priced souvenirs. I'd wished I'd known a baby or toddler so I could buy something for them.

The forest is beautiful and it was a cool sunny day. The walk was a little muddy. It also turned out to be a pretty long hike especially after drinking like five cups of tea.

Then it was back to the car for more nervous driving to the VRBO we rented near Canterbury.  It's very nice and has so much room that we feel spoiled.  Kyrie and Jacob went to the restaurant next door for dinner.  The rest of us didn't feel like going out so Max and I picked up a few groceries at the store.

We arrived to our VRBO at around 5pm. It's a very unique property, a six bedroom, seven bathroom "Bed and Breakfast." Since we are renting the whole house, there is no breakfast included. We get to use the whole kitchen instead. Of course, I took pictures of everything before we moved our luggage into the rooms and began settling in. 

Every bedroom has it's own Nespresso machine and kettle along with an assortment of Nespresso capsules, tea, and condiments. There are also robes and nice thick towels. This place was a bit of a splurge, but sounded so good to spread out and get a good couple nights' sleep while we get used to the time change. And honestly I feel like I adapted right away, I went to sleep at 10pm and woke up naturally at 5am but stayed in bed until 6am.I think my "super power" is having an internal clock that wakes up at 5am no matter the time zone.

Marc's super powers include patience not only for me but also for all of our mini-mes and being happy living in constant work mode taking care of us. He started laundry right away and went to the store. Five of them just wanted to stay in for dinner. My "lunch" was two delicious scones, but I was ready for some real food. Plus I had researched good restaurants in this area and Tyler's Kiln came highly recommended and is right next door. 

Jacob and I ate at Tyler's Kiln. Chef's Pie for me and Sausage and Mash for Jacob. We split a Apple Crumble with a runny custard sauce. It was just okay but added that little bit more to satisfy our hunger. The atmosphere was very British. 

Allister who owns this VRBO property offered the use of a "private spa" on this property during our stay for an additional fee of 120 pounds/ It took awhile to work out the payment due to various obstacles but  eventually we agreed we would just leave cash. Receiving access around 8pm, Jacob, Zach and I spent a couple hours in the sauna and hot tub. Marc joined us for a bit at the end too. Finally my legs aren't sore from all the theme park walking even though we had a long hike today, so I think the sauna and hot tub get credit. 

This was really a wonderful day!

Day 7 - Canterbury, towns along the coast, and more about driving in England

After a really good night's sleep, we spent a good part of the day in Canterbury.  All I knew about Canterbury before coming here was reading Canterbury Tales in high school.  I remember it being a really difficult book to read since it was written so long ago.  Seeing the real place was kind of cool though.  The Canterbury Cathedral is great.  It is similar to other cathedrals we've visited over the years.  The most interesting things to me were the stories about Saint Thomas Beckett and the odd helm that was displayed over the Black Knight's tomb.  It has a rather large lion or leopard or something on top and it looked like it would be really hard to wear.  It was only ceremonial, they also had his battle helm which was more reasonable.

Outside of the cathedral is a really nice shopping area filled with very medieval looking buildings which were probably built hundreds of years ago.  We ate lunch at The Pound which is an old jail inside the city gates.  Our table was in Cell #5.  It was fun and the food was good.  Then we got a free museum tour of the tower.  

After we left Canterbury, we drove to a couple of the towns along the southern(ish) coast.  I can't think of the names at the moment.  Whistable and Ramsgate. It was rather chilly today (mid 50's), so we found an indoor place to stop and have some hot cocoa  where we  could still watch the ocean.  Then later we had dinner at an Italian restaurant which was quite good.

Driving was better today, mainly because I didn't have nearly as many "Hedge roads" (as I would call them) to deal with.  There were still plenty of tricky spots, but not like yesterday.  Another thing that is interesting are the number of roundabouts.  At home we only just got our first roundabouts a few years ago, but here they seem to be at every intersection and most have 2 lanes.  I still don't really know the proper etiquette for dealing with the 2 lanes, but mostly these go okay for me.  At home, I am sure I would have been honked at a lot by now.  Driving on the "wrong" side of the road hasn't been quite as bad as I thought.  I still have to actively think about every turn I make to be sure that I stay in the proper lane and I often have to convince myself that it really is correct to be driving on that side of the road.  

 Day 8 – MSC PREZIOSA

We drove to Southampton this morning and thankfully dropped off our rental van.  Somehow, we got it there in one piece!  Boarding the ship was pretty easy since they board people at each port instead of all at the same time.

While initially planning, I’d hoped to go to Sandwich, Kent, England. It’s the namesake of my hometown in Illinois. It also was the one time home of Thomas Paine who had a role in the American Revolution, wrote the pamphlet The Rights of Man, and coined the phrase “The United States of America.” This excursion would have added about 90 minutes to our overall driving time though which was the biggest deterrent even more than delaying our happily anticipated embarkation.

We took an MSC cruise last summer for just three nights in the Bahamas and the ship was terribly dirty.  That’s not the case at all with the Preziosa.  It’s very clean and well taken care of.  Our rooms are typical of a cruise ship.  One queen bed and in this case a double size pull out couch.  Most of the cruise ships we’ve been on had two separate single beds for the kids – either bunks or a trundle bed, which I’m sure they would prefer.  The rooms are probably about the size of other cruise lines we’ve been on.

I’m not complaining, especially because I get my own bed in our room for three with the girls. I do have to say though, that there is less storage in this cabin than any other I remember.  The shower walls collapse in by design to make more room in the tiny bathroom. The shower itself is decent sized. Part of the issue of the cabin seeming/being extra small is that our cabin steward prefers to leave the sofa bed made up as a bed all day instead of giving us sitting/moving space. We even requested at embarkation that he make it back into a couch each day, but that has not happened yet. Currently we are folding it back up ourselves hoping he catches on. Pretty sure this is just how it’s going to go the whole week.

On previous cruises both on MSC and other cruise lines, they’ve been able to open the partition between our adjacent balconies to allow us to get into each other’s rooms. Our cabin steward says this is only allowed while at port now, then opened it for the last 30 minutes of our port day. We’ve barely used the balconies anyway as it’s been too cold. But we have no way to access each other’s cabins as they also cannot make us an extra key. Oh, well.

We’ve been on Disney and Royal Caribbean.  I would say the MSC ship layout isn’t as interesting as either of the other lines.  Basically, there are 2 guest areas – the pool deck and a deck around level 6 and 7.  Deck 5 is the lowest level of the atrium which has a lot of seating and a bar too. Technically, there are parts that go on a few of the other floors, but most of the action takes place on just a few decks.  Most of the lounges and restaurants are in the mid levels of the ship.  The pools and kids clubs are on the upper decks.  One thing that Preziosa has, which we haven’t had on other lines is an indoor pool area.  Considering the weather is going to be in the 50’s the whole week, that is definitely a plus.  However, based on the size of this ship, that pool will be very crowded if it’s the only one anyone uses.  The pools on every cruise ship ever are too crowded.I think MSC has more lounge areas than either DCL or RCCL, but whatever. The only thing I miss is being able to be on the open-air decks as it’s been too windy, often wet, and cold.

The kids’ clubs are pretty basic.  Ella and Zoe aren’t interested at all (even though they basically lived in the kids’ club on the Disney ship).  Zach still likes his club, but the hours are kind of sporadic and it’s a little disorganized as far as where the kids will be at any one time.  My biggest complaint is that kids under 16 cannot connect to the chat feature of the MSC app, so we have no way to communicate with them.  That makes them hard to find if we split up.

Food – we’ve only had one buffet and one dinner so far, so it’s too soon to make much of a judgement on this.  I’ll write about it as we continue on.  My dinner was pretty boring (Turkey and vegetables), but it tasted fine and I’m holding out hope of better things to come.

Entertainment – We didn’t go to the main show.  The kids tried to do karaoke, but it was total chaos.  Everyone basically pushed and shoved their way to the DJ booth to put in their song requests, so even though the kids got there early it took a while before they could pick a song.  Zoe and Jacob picked out a song, but their microphones wouldn’t work for about half the song, so they didn’t really have a good time.

Apparently my first impressions are a lot better than Marc’s. lunch buffet on embarkation day is always too chaotic on every ship, so no thoughts about that. Buffets aren’t my thing anyway. MSC is known for excellent pizza and freshly made pasta. My dinner the first night was pasta which was excellent.

I was most impressed and relieved though about the way the head waiter is taking care of satisfying Max’s dietary requests. They made him a specially prepared steak and sides the first night and gave him the lunch and dinner menus for the next day so that he could indicate his order and it can be specially prepared for him.

Day 9 – At Sea

My favorite part of the day was the Port lecture about Hamburg, even though I fell asleep.  It was a really interesting talk about the ancient history of the North Sea (it was once land) and about the city of Hamburg.  However, the rocking of the ship and something about the way the lecturer spoke worked together to put me right to sleep.

Other than that, I was shocked to find every seat taken at breakfast considering how huge the buffet is here.  Zach and I ate outside.  Kyrie and the other boys went to breakfast at the main dining room.  Not sure what the girls did.

I had some time to relax today (not just during the port lecture), so that was nice.  The weather is pretty cold.  They have blankets on deck, but there isn’t much to do out there anyway, so I found an indoor place to read my book.  We had lunch in the main dining room because the chef in that dining room is making sure that they always has something for Max.  He has a bunch of unusual food sensitivities and MSC is doing an amazing job of accommodating him – much better than I do!

My dinner tonight was lasagna.  Still not impressed, but there is plenty of other food available around the ship.

Max caught up on some of his schoolwork today.  The other kids did some trivia and they are going to try out the karaoke again tonight.

 

Day 10 – Hamburg, Germany

We spent the morning in Hamburg, Germany.  For some reason, this MSC cruise comes here every Sunday even though most things are closed.  If they shifted the cruise to be one day different they would spend Sunday at sea and not have this problem.  Anyway, we still had a reasonably good time exploring some bits of the city.

The highlights were the outside of City Hall.  It’s an interesting looking building and has a fountain in the courtyard.  We walked to the train station, because it was one of the only places that had stores that were open.  We spent A LOT of time in the grocery store looking for unique treats.  Then we walked to the Warehouse District which was kind of interesting with canals and some sort of interesting buildings. 

There really didn’t seem to be much to do in Hamburg even if we would have arrived on a day that it was open.  Unlike most cities we have visited, there didn’t seem to be anything truly unique about it.  I might have just been put off by the cold, rainy weather.  Hoping that we enjoy the other ports more.

Hamburg seemed like a pretty clean city and the street we walked from the Rathouse (City Hall) to the train station had dining tables and umbrellas like other European cities we’ve visited. I’m sure it would have been hopping Monday through Saturday. There were many retail stores, cafes, bars, etc.

The ONLY stores open in the whole city on a Sunday are at the train station, so that was the main thing for me. I want to buy an assortment of food gifts and other items to give as gifts for Christmas. Seven of us trying to not block aisles is my biggest concern and it slows me down. We should probably split up.

The Ubers back to the ship were the most interesting thing today. Jacob, Ella, Zoe, and I got the first Uber that was supposed to be a Mercedes Benz while Marc’s Uber was a Kia and arriving after ours. Well, this weird looking taxi pulled up and said they were our ride and verified his name and Jacob’s, so we got in. Sazan explained that he had been in an accident recently, so he is driving a different car. This was foreshadowing for craziness of our ride for sure.

When traffic was backed up due to the Elbe tunnel being closed, he zoomed around looking for other streets with moving traffic getting further and further of course. He got up to 100km/hour at times which I’m not sure what that is in mph, but considering the speed limit was 60, it was too fast! Anyway, we arrived back to the cruise terminal 10 minutes after Marc, Max. and Zach even though their car didn’t pick them up until 20 minutes after ours! I just prayed for our safety and everyone else’s the whole time.

Our Uber driver was apparently the opposite.  He managed to get past very long lines of cars several times and got us to the port very quickly.

Back onboard we had lunch in the dining room and then spent the afternoon in various ways.  Zoe took a nap because she was starting to get a cold.  I’m sure that walking all morning in the cold and wet didn’t help, but we didn’t know she wasn’t feeling well until we were in town.  I can’t really remember what I did the rest of the afternoon (I’m writing this a day later).  I do know that I’ve been wanting to spend some time reading a book, but never seem to find time for this during the day.  The kids did some trivia.

My dinner still wasn’t great, but I blame myself this time.  I chose a beet risotto, which was really a questionable choice.  The steaks that some of the others had, looked pretty decent.

After dinner Zach went to the kid’s club.  He really enjoys that even though he is probably the oldest kid in his category and many of the kids don’t speak English.  He plays some video games and foosball (they said he was the King of foosball) and always participates in whatever they have going on.  He basically wants to be there whenever it is open (which is sporadic and hard to figure out).

Kyrie and I hung out in the lounge for a while and the kids went to watch some shows.  They were disappointed in the ABBA tribute because there wasn’t a live bank doing it.

Last night, the boys and I were delighted to find the German toast character on the TV.  We watched one episode of it over and over on our first MSC cruise when we went to Norway.  It was funny even though we couldn’t understand any German.