Fleeing Sean

November 10, 2011

Thursday we were originally supposed to leave at 3:30 and be back on the boat at 3. We saw that the storm had been named Sean and was now a hurricane or tropical storm and Bermuda was under Hurricane watch.

So they changed the time of leaving to 1300 and we had to be back at 1230

Ferry from the ship 2011

Fast ferry from the ship 2011

Dockyard marina from the ship 2011

Bob's brother's group (which numbers about 26 counting us) all eat together at adjacent tables and one of them mentioned that they saw my name up in the computer/library room as having won a raffle. It is good that they mentioned it as otherwise I might not have known about it.

We got off the boat about 9:15 to walk/scooter around the Dockyard area and maybe do some shopping. The sidewalk on the other side of the street from the ship had no cut-outs, and the waves were coming across the sea wall over the sidewalk at the bow of the ship on the near side, so I had to cross the street to avoid getting wet. We had to lift the scooter up over the curb.

Waves blowing water across the sidewalk at the bow

The little train going around the dockyard was operating.

Dockyard train

We also could have bought bus/ferry passes right at the ship, but they no longer have 2 day passes - only one and three day.

People waiting to rent scooters or pedal bikes

We looked at the three masted ship which Duke had told us was built for local youth to serve some time on.

Three masted ship

and went past the ferry dock

Ferry gangway 2011

We passed the line handling boat PRINCETON which had helped us tie up - it was up on blocks as this was the last cruise of the season.

Princeton line handling boat

We passed the yellow Segway tour bus (a bus parked which rented Segways),

Yellow segway bus

and the Marine and Port Services shops.

Pottery is on the right of these buildings

I decided to go in and see what there was in Bermuda Clayworks,

Storefront of Bermuda Clayworks

and bought my daughter a house number for her anniversary.

Blue vases and plates

Coffee cups and pitchers

I bought several of the house numbers and asked for them to be shipped, but they did not survive shipping very well, and all but one of the children moved from the address which I had ordered the numbers for.

Bob's photo of me

Then we headed for the Clocktower Mall but were caught in a rainstorm. We didn't have our raincoats, but I put my sweatshirt over the camera and kept going. In the Clocktower Mall we saw that the Cafe Amici was still there.

Statue outside Cafe Amici

A S Cooper

Davidson

Davidson's still had the troll outside the door although the sign no longer says that he bites.

Troll outside davidsons in 2011 - no longer bites

Fairtrade Bermuda

Calypso

We could also have bought Cuban cigars,

Cuban Cigars and Bermuda sweatshirts

Bob's photo of me

We went past the old North Rock Beacon

Lattice tower in 2011

Top of the 1960 marker

sign about the light

- this beacon was built originally in 1912 and rebuilt in 1960 and 1990, and this was the foundation of the 1960 beacon. I had to go thru the Victualing Yard to get to the Bermuda Arts Center. The path was widely separated concrete blocks. The joints were jolting on the scooter

Path through the VIctualing yard

Victualing Yard

so I went around the edge on a very rutted and puddley road of part coral sand and part cobblestones. I still had to go on the grass some.

Bermuda Arts Center sign - side of the Cooperage

Street by the side of the craft market/cooperage

Side door of the Craft Market

Best of Bermuda 2011 award jellies

One of the display racks in the Craft center

artwork

Christmas ornaments and dolls

handmade jewelry

Bermuda preserves and rum cake

I did some shopping but when I went to pay I couldn't find my credit card. So Bob used his and he was annoyed and told me to look for mine. But I couldn't find it so he said we should go back to the ship or we would get caught in the rain again. We had the same problem with the curb as before.

Returning to the ship

Entry was much easier today as not everyone was trying to get on at once.

I got off and walked thru the magnet archway and I think my watch beeped but they were too occupied with getting the scooter thru to notice. We went to the room and put our stuff out to dry and then I took everything out of all my pockets and bags, but could not find the credit card.

If we had looked at our phone, we would have seen that we had a message that someone picked the card up on the gangway and turned it in - it must have fallen out of my stuff when I got my passport and my room key out to check back onto the ship. But we didn't look at the blinking phone.

So I tried to call Navy Federal CU (which issued the card) and I could not use the 800#s so I had to use the 703# and reverse the charges. The phone company still charged my phone roaming. It took me 3 or 4 tries on the phone to get to the person I needed. She asked if we didn't want to just put a hold on the card but Bob said no. So we deleted the card and have to have a new one sent, and we won't get it until we get home.

The problem is that Verizon (cell and landline) and the internet are all on that credit card. One of the first emails I got after I got back to the room was one for the Verizon landline bill. Bob insisted that I come down to the Customer Service desk to explain what had happened. That's when we found that the card had been turned in. I also found that I could have called from there without paying any charges. Due to the fact that I have a credit for owning stock, and they refunded our port fees and one day of the cruise, we actually had a credit on our bill, and we switched it to another card.

We had lunch, up in the Lido - it makes my back hurt to think of it.

Bob's lunch

Man with tea, coffee, water and lemonade in Lido

They do have trays, but I have no way to get close enough to serve myself and no place to put the tray if I did. I went to the International section and got some things to eat and Bob went to the National section. I think I should have gone to the Deli section and that's what we did on the next cruise.

Mermaid on the ceiling of the Lido

The buffet is actually called the Mermaid Cafe and has mermaids all over the ceiling which I took photos of. People were in the hot tubs.

Davids from Mermaid area of Lido

Mesh over the pool

We went up on deck 10 to see the sail-away. They had all but one gangway taken away.

Last gangway

We saw the pilot come on board. Line handlers were waiting at various stations, and the line would be slacked and they would remove it from the bollard and it would be reeled in.

Leaving shore

Since the wind had us pinned up against the dock, the lines weren't really doing anything for us anyway. Finally the engines started churning up the water and we moved very very slowly away from the dock.

Being pulled from the pier

Watching the Tug Powerful

I went over to the other side and saw the tug POWERFUL pulling as hard as it could on the bow.

Tugboat POWERFUL - 2011 approaching storm Sean

We got far enough out so that we wouldn't run into the jetties and the tug disengaged and went back, and I took the last photos of the Commissioner's house.

Statue on the ship

We went down to the library and found the computer manager

Library /computer room door

and he said I had won 500 free minutes on the internet. I had been rationing myself, and had gotten extra minutes for signing up on the first day etc, so I had 83 minutes left off my package I had bought of 250 minutes and now I have a lot more to use up.

I went all around outside on deck 3 and took photos and then I took a couple of pictures of Bob going thru the cabin door to show how tight it was

Bob taking the scooter in the door of our cabin

and saw that the arm rests stuck out farther than the wheels of the scooter, and the wheels have only about 2" clearance on each side. If the plastic columns on each side were taken out, the door would probably be wider and if all of them were removed the ship would probably be 1000 lbs lighter.

Photography set up for a family

Carnival Crystal Eagle

We went to dinner - I had

Asparagus vichyssoise

Oysters Rockefeller

I liked both but some people reported that they got bad oysters that weren't cooked. I'm not sure that not cooked = bad, but I don't know. Bob had

chicken noodle soup?

Bob's dinner

and I had a filet mignon and short ribs.

Petit filet mignon

Waiter

The waiters do a little dance every night but it doesn't interfere too much with dinner. One of the group said it was the best show on the ship.

Waiters starting to dance

We all had apple pie for dessert. One lady we met today said that she was on the Pride in April and the food was much better then - they have changed the menus and apparently not for the better. Someone also suggested that the waiters were the rejects from other ships.

Boy leaving the dining room

As we left dinner I saw a cute little boy playing some kind of game on a small cell-phone like device - I took a picture of him coming past a giant nude. Our towel animal was a frog and he had the mint in his mouth.

Towel animal frog with a mint in his mouth

Selfie

The ship was doing about max speed - 22 knots - to get ahead of the hurricane. After the ship got into the high pressure (wind from the north) the track turned west, and then south and the speed was reduced. There were white caps and it was colder outside.

They have a stern camera which apparently has a lot of salt and stuff on the lens as it is cloudy, and a bow camera which isn't much better, but at least they are on a dedicated channel. There is also a channel that shows the ship direction and wind direction and shifts to closer or farther away, but other than the wind speed and direction there is no other information and the graphics are crappy.

Chart which says nothing

They update the weather at 9 and 4 and at no other times. Weather changes faster than that. I should be able to wake up and see what the weather is before 9 a.m

Sea Day- November 11th

Not much is happening.

In the morning, I had cream of wheat which came with milk and a cheese omelet which was OK.

Cheese omelet with bacon - they also had ham an cheese or plain

Bob added prunes to breakfast instead of yogurt. I asked to ride in the glass atrium elevators and I took a picture of the statue of David up at David's steakhouse.

David's steak house (extra price)

They had a big US flag hung across the lobby for Veteran's Day.

Flag in atrium for Veterans Day - from glass elevator

For lunch we all asked for cream of spinach soup. And we got the Carnival cube and a tomato type soup - so we complained that it didn't look like spinach and they finally brought the right soup.

and then I had chicken parmesan

and Bob had some salmon thing which didn't have much salmon.

Bob's salmon Paillard

.
For dessert, he had an

Eclair

and we both had

Pina colada cake

Someone asked if we were going to afternoon tea which we had not even noticed on the schedule as it didn't seem like a really Carnival type thing. We turned up in the upper dining room at 3:30 and everyone filed in and filled up the tables. They came around with a box of tea to pick from, and then a cart with cheese cake, a chocolate cookie sandwich with fudge in the middle, chocolate pudding, a cheesecake and some strawberries, plus something which I had and was good but I don't know the name of it.

Afternoon tea

This carried us over until dinner.

Snails - very salty

Delice of the ocean

Chateaubriand with Bearnaise sauce

Baked alaska

Passengers and waiters dancing at dinner

Sea Day- November 12th

This morning, I asked for oatmeal and poached eggs on toast.

Poached eggs on toast, bacon and hash brown potatoes

This time the oatmeal came with brown sugar and raisins and milk (last time I just got the raisins). I had to ask a second time for the eggs as they were not brought right away. So I think that there is something to the untrained waiter thing.

Pan fried king clip - because I wanted to know what king clip was

Bob walking ahead of me

I've used up some of the minutes I won by putting photos up on facebook.

New England crab cake

Norwegian Salmon

Prime rib

Cappuccino pie

November 13th

The ship has spent the last day just fooling around off Cape Hatteras.

Bob with the remote

November 14, 2011

When we looked at the bow camera at 0700 on Sunday, we were coming into Baltimore. We had breakfast and I saw for the first time the Captain's dining room area. There were stewards in there folding napkins.

Inside the Captains Club - napkin folding at lunch

Table for waiters to put their trays on, and to dance on at dinner

All the chairs in the atrium had signs on them saying that it was not a waiting room.

About 10:30 they called and said they were ready for us. Apparently the other 3 people on the B2B had gone into town, so it was just the two of us. They took us down the ramp past all the people and thru customs and then back up the ramp and took our new photos.

On deck after coming back aboard on B2B - spa inside window

I asked to go up to the Lido to see what was up there without people in it, and they were cleaning.

Lido cleaning crew (walking toward me - Bob is walking away from me)

Sweeping the floor

They had kind of a street sweeper machine which was cleaning the hard surface floors.

Tile sweeper in the Lido (Mermaid cafe)

Tile sweeper

Cleaning crew on the pool deck

Water slide

Adult area

Pool before passengers arrive

Top of the atrium elevator

Mural near the statue of David

Looking through the door of a veranda room

Fruit basket we got at beginning of second cruise

When we got back to our room there was a fruit basket and a bottle of wine there that said it came from the Hospitality Manager.

Bon voyage card

Eventually the Lido opened and we went back up and I got a pastrami sandwich and a piece of cake and some lemonade. There was a thing in the schedule that said the M&M (Meet & Mingle) for Cruise Critic was at 1430, but no one else was there, and it would have been silly to have it then because not everyone was on yet.