Time once more for a quick catch-up with our travelling experiences, our future travel plans, and what you almost certainly have missed on the website since the last time I wrote one of these very almost nearly regular posts.
Let’s start with recent additions to the site and it won’t take up much space or time because there have only been two of them. Not only that, but they’re both from the same day and at the final port stop on our September/October 2021 UK cruise on Sky Princess, which happened to be Liverpool.
First up is what we did ashore. Now, Liverpool is a city we’ve visited before as a couple, and it’s also the city in which I went to university. Note that I didn’t say “studied” at university because, quite frankly, that aspect of it was pushed aside in favour of the fabulous nightlife and people I met. And that’s the story of how I dropped out of university after two years covered. Anyway, we did pop along to the Albert Dock, we did go and see the fantastic Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Tate, we did treat ourselves to some drinks in local pubs, and we did walk past a lot of wonderful artwork and monuments along the Liverpool waterfront.
The second post from Liverpool covers our departure aboard Sky Princess and therefore is mainly pictures and some videos of the Liverpool skyline from the Mersey with a number of buildings pointed out if you’re at all interested in some of the historic sights there.
That’s the posts on the site covered, so let’s talk about what we’ve been up to since the last of these updates.
We’re now a fortnight back from our most recent cruise and, like the cruise a month before it and like the cruise from 2021 that included that Liverpool port stop in the posts above, this was again on Sky Princess. Anyone would think we like the ship. We do, but, actually, it’s far simpler than that; we’ve been extra cautious about booking anything that has required a flight because the state of the world with respect to travelling is still not entirely settled, so we’ve restricted ourselves to cruises of interest out of Southampton only, and this has been the result.
Where did we go? Thanks for asking; I was just getting to that. The first half of the cruise was to the Norwegian fjords. Of three port stops, only one was one we’d been to before, and despite it being a popular and easy cruise destination from the UK, this was only our second visit to the fjords. We’ve wanted to explore further afield in the meantime, but, really, we should consider it more often; Norway’s fjords are just spectacular, and we got really lucky with the weather. We had some absolutely wonderful evening views under a sun that barely set. A taster photo from the fjords (because it’s going to be ages before I write up about it; I am so far behind it’s not funny).
The second half of the cruise featured the north coast of Iceland. We’d been to Iceland a couple of times before (you can read about our trips here: Iceland 2015 and Iceland 2018) and of the four port stops here it was only Reykjavík that we’d been to before. We got to cross into the Arctic Circle briefly and experienced an entire day without the sun setting, and we found some fantastic museums that will be receiving some top recommendations from us (eventually). We also had pretty decent weather for the most part too, despite all the forecasts ahead of the trip. Another taster image for your delectation.
We had a wonderful time on Sky Princess cruising to Norway and Iceland. There were issues with boarding (that we made the most of), there were lots of issues with the technology, but everything else was just great. We saw dolphins, whales, and seals, and cruised through so much fog you wouldn’t believe it. We also met up with another family of cruise travellers and bloggers and got on famously with Francesca, Rob, and Jacqui, combining forces to win numerous prizes in various trivia competitions and downing enough Prosecco to make the Ship Champagne almost drinkable. You’ll be able to catch glimpses of our cruise exploits far, far sooner than I get around to writing up about them by checking out Gluten Free Horizons now.
Stop dwelling on the past, Mark! That’s good advice.
We’ve been busy booking a few things to tide us over.
We already had a cruise booked for late September on Island Princess but we wanted some intervening things to look forward to so in August we’ve got a weekend away in Oxford now set up and an afternoon’s cruise on a steamship in the Solent too.
We’ve visited Oxford before, but only very briefly, so we’ll now get a chance to hunt down more of its sights and see what else there is to see and do in the area. Marie’s cousin lives in nearby Abingdon so we’re hoping to go see their boat on the Thames on the way back home at the end of the short break.
The afternoon cruise on the Solent will be aboard the Steamship Shieldhall. We should be able to visit the Bridge, the Engine Room, and the Boiler Room, all while steaming past the cruise ships in Southampton as they head off as the evening approaches. And there’s a licenced bar! Bonus! Really looking forward to this.
Jumping further forward in time brings us to next July where we’ve now booked a cruise with Holland America Line in Alaska. This will be a first time visiting Alaska and a first time with HAL, plus a first (albeit fleeting) footstep in Canada for me. We’re only going to have a week on the cruise, deciding not to go with the land tour options available as they ramp up the price quite significantly. There were some two-weeker cruise-only trips available but we like the idea of saving annual leave for something else later in 2023 (more on that in a minute). We had been looking at the possibility of an August or September cruise in Alaska before a couple of (pretty famous now, but don’t tell them that or it goes to their heads) cruise blogger friends let us know that they were doing the July Alaska land and cruise tour, so we chopped and changed our tentative plans, and now we’ll be joining them aboard. We’re very much looking forward to our time on Koningsdam with good company and surrounded by spectacular landscapes. As I don’t think they’ve announced they’re going on that cruise yet I won’t mention who they are.
Later in 2023 is still all up-in-the-air at the moment. We’ve got a couple of weeks we can take off, and we’re looking at something in the September, October, or November period (i.e. the “no children” period) with an ideal date that includes Halloween as it will be our 15th wedding anniversary, although we’re not fixated on that. What we’d really like to do is hit the Panama Canal, but present itineraries from the lines we’d be interested in don’t have much on offer. We haven’t decided on whether a full transit would be preferable to a partial that includes more new countries. Hopefully, more itineraries will be announced fairly soon or our plans are going to have to shift a bit, with a return to South America looking more likely than a return to Asia right now. We are also coming around more to the Caribbean as a destination, but that’s still fairly low down our destinations of choice. We shall wait and see what the world offers us.
Okay. That will do for this update. Next to come on the website will be the concluding part of the Sky Princess cruise around the UK in 2021, to be followed up by the final cruise of that year which was the very enjoyable trip to the Canary Islands on P&O’s Ventura. Just think! By the end of our next cruise I might have started writing up about the cruises from this year! It’s not looking very likely, if I’m totally honest, but perhaps I should set that as a goal.