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Norwegian.

Cruises like this are what the industry calls "Repositioning Cruises." Most of 14 days or longer. I think we may do a 21 day cruise like this next and do the Mediterranean to include Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, etc...

Not sure on that one. Probably some story behind it though.

By the way... Contrary to what people may tell you, the Europeans (Maybe not the Germans) are still thankful to the US for helping out in WWII.

Yes it does. All the architecture was really incredible. I was most impressed with the Dutch. I had no idea that they have reclaimed that much land from the sea. I know they had reclaimed some, but not on the scale that they have. It's really a Civil Engineering marvel that should put the US Army Corps of Engineers to shame.

And then there's the huge cathedrals which I assumed were built without steel reinforced concrete, but apparently they were using it as far back as 1225. Read here:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...d-cathedralsnot-just-concrete-180953849/

The sea days were actually some of the best. There is always something to do on the ship. We downloaded a bunch of movies to our hard drive and a bunch of books to our Kindle's and never really needed any of them. There was just too much stuff to do, when we wanted to do something. A lot of the time we relaxed in one of the hot tubs, ate, drank, socialized with new friends we met on the ship, took nice naps, etc... it was great.

Next cruise I hope we have a sea day in between every port.

Thanks y'all. It was indeed an amazing trip. During the trip they offered a cruise credit package for $1000 worth of future cruise dollars and when you bought it, you instantly got back $500 to spend on this cruise. We jumped on that so we will definitely be doing another one soon.

The things we liked about it is that it's basically all-inclusive if you pay for all that stuff up front. The whole trip cost us about $5k.

That included all the airfare from Atlanta to New York and back from London to Atlanta. We always stay piggyback nights at the Atlanta Airport Hilton or Marriott on our international trips and just leave the car parked there. Usually it's an early flight leaving and a late flight coming back and it's nice not to worry about driving home right when you get back from travelling all day.

Of course that also included a balcony room that had a king sized bed, all meals including some fancy meals at the higher end restaurants on board that aren't included in everyone's package. Great food all around.

It also included the drink package for both of us that included good booze like Tito's, Bulliet, and Buffalo Trace, etc...

it also included all the ground transportation to and from the airports and all the ports of call.

Our package also included some kind of tour or transportation at all the ports during the cruise.

What got me starting to look at these types of cruises is that we had planned a trip to Scotland and Ireland with our travel buddies Dennis and Donna, but this cruise was actually cheaper than just paying for air flights from Atlanta to London and Edinburgh. So we booked this and were just going to meet them in London, but they had to cancel because their daughter and son in law both work for the state department and they are getting stationed in some shithole African country and they wanted to spend some time with them before they left.

If it wasn't for that and for us scheduling a week at the beach when we got back for our grandson's birthday party we would still be over there.

I've never had any interest in doing a cruise, but this looks to be one i'd really enjoy. The history aspect is amazing. Please keep the story going, i may be booking before long. Thanks for the play by play.

I looked back through this a realized I never posted anything about our stop in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This is a sort of sad, but interesting portion of the trip. if you don't know much about Norther Ireland there has been "The Troubles" going on there since the 1960's. There's long standing resentment between the Irish and the British over basically turning Ireland into a plantation for rich British guys for hundreds of years. Most of Ireland is an independent nation now, but Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom.

Unlike the fun and frivolity of Dublin, was a stark reminder in Belfast of just how divided Ireland still is. For hundreds of years there has been a bleeding of Ireland by the British, much like the British have done of many of their former colonies. Like many former colonies Ireland stood up against it and fought for home rule. Northern Ireland is still a divided place. There are the predominantly Protestant Unionists who favor remaining in the United Kingdom and the predominantly Catholic nationalists who favor all of Ireland being one country. There have been many years of conflict and senseless deaths over these long simmering issues. Our visit was a sobering realization of this.

Belfast is almost like a prison city in a lot of ways with security and walls protecting inmates on both sides. It has stunted the cultural and economic development of the city. We talked to an Irishman today who didn't even know what pizza was when he was growing up during "The Troubles." He said you couldn't even go to a movie. Blast resistant walls are still in existence in front of important buildings. There are huge walls that still separate large portions of the city. Catholic Nationalists on one side and Protestant Unionists on the other. Schools are separated too. Protestant and Catholic.

The ironic thing is that actual religion has little to do with it, it's more Identity politics than anything. Most of the Unionists are more like conservative Americans and support causes like Zionist Israel and most Nationalists are more like Liberal Americans and support things like the Palestinian cause. It's also ironic that most Unionists seem to be even more "British" than the British themselves.

The parliament of Northern Ireland. They are semi-autonomous. Strangely enough a Sinn Fein gal was recently elected as the First Minister. Most Irish folks I talked to think that in the next 10 years Ireland will be united. The demographics simply favor the Irish nationalists.



Looking back toward downtown Belfast...



Famous pub...



Queens university in Belfast. Liam Neeson went to school here. he was kicked out for focusing too much on his acting career.


Well... I'll be back. Flickr just crashed.