Got up about 8.30 this morning and looked out of our balcony doors at a grey choppy sea and a grey cloudy sky. Didn’t think we would spend much time out on deck today! We had been looking forward to our visit to Belgium as we had planned to get the train from Zeebrugge to…
At some point during the night we had woken up to see that the Arcadia was on the move again, making her way back along the North Sea canal. It was a pity we weren’t in Amsterdam again today, but we had a nice relaxing day at sea to look forward to instead. 🙂 In…
BOXING DAY Starry, starry nightFlaming flowers that brightly blazeSwirling clouds in violet hazeReflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue ‘Vincent’ – Don McLean So we’d made it into Amsterdam; that was good. This is because, prior to leaving home, we’d purchased tickets online for entry into the Van Gogh museum at 3.30pm and we certainly…
CHRISTMAS DAY Well, this was a first for us – we’ve never spent Christmas day anywhere else in our lives but at home. Here we were, in the North Sea en route to Amsterdam, and we wondered what delights P&O Cruises had in store for us. We hated to say it, but so far our…
CHRISTMAS EVE Didn’t sleep all that well last night; I’d started a tickly throat a couple of days ago that I had put down to the very dry air around the ship, but during the night it had turned into the sniffles – a cold. The first thing I did when we got up was…
Woke up to the happy anticipation of wandering the charming streets of Denmark, and perhaps partaking of a Carlsberg (what else?) or two. 😊 Looking out from our balcony, we noticed that the CitySightseeing hop-on-hop-off bus was parked up, so we decided that would be what we’d do for today. We breakfasted as usual in…
WINTER SOLSTICE When the days are short and the nights are dark and cold, many people welcome the Winter Solstice (the “shortest day of the year”) as the sign that the sun is on its way back again. We got up with morning at 8.30am; I would like to have said that we had an…
We got up around 8.30am this morning (which felt like 7.30 because of the lost hour). Going out onto our balcony, it wasn’t freezing cold, but the sky and the sea were a dull grey and there was a lot of moisture in the air. The balcony contained a small table and couple of deckchairs…
A mere 24 days after we disembarked Queen Victoria, we once again found ourselves waking up at the unearthly hour of 3.45am in order to get ourselves ready and pack up all those last minute things like toiletries, cosmetics and electronic device chargers, ready for another cruise! 😊 Yes! Once again we had to make…
Woke up this morning to find that the Arcadia was docked in Zeebrugge, Belgium. Trevor and I worked out that it was nearly 10 years (December 2007) since we’d last visited this port, which is the gateway to the medieval city of Bruges. On that day, it was bitterly cold with an icy wind blowing,…
