Antwerp, land of the Severed Hand and the Cut Diamonds

Wednesday – 12 June 2013 – Antwerp, Belgium

Antwerp is 25 miles from the sea. The arrival up the Schelde River makes approaching Antwerp by ship very much like arriving by riverboat. We docked right downtown where the very impressive cathedral (what, a European city with huge cathedral?) looms over the main town square. A very ornate town hall (what, a European city with a very ornate town hall?) has a curious statue in front. Antwerp's name is derived from a Norse expression meaning, "The City of the Severed Hand", based on a legend about, uh, a severed hand apparently. The one in the town square squirts water, not blood. Just as well.

We walked the extremely lovely business district streets to one of the most impressive rail stations I've ever been to, just to gawk. (what, a European city with....well you get it). I didn't want to go anywhere, but it would have been fun to find out what that lady I had words with in the morning had spent on her tour today--just for my our amusement. 

We then explored the nearby diamond district. Antwerp is diamond central for the world. Many different dialects--of Yiddish--are spoken in the small but very intense few blocks of this district, as the industry is dominated by Orthodox Jews. We visited the Diamondland exhibition to see a few diamond cutters at work and many more retail salesmen at work and returned to Silver Cloud for lunch as the drizzle started. Our only stop on the way back to the ship was to check out an old fort guarding the harbor and its adjacent statue of a man with crotch itch.

Ghent Pictures

From Oostende: A Tale of Two Cities or the Beast and Beauty – Bruges (pictures immediately below) and Ghent

Tuesday - 11 June 2013 – Oostende, Belgium

Oostende is a beach resort, although like many European cities I suppose it has its charms including yet another cathedral, canals with locks, and other features common to the "low countries".  The view of the expansive white sand beach as we sailed into the little but busy harbor was striking. So was the nearby railway station with its gigantic collection of commuters' bicycles. Red sideways mark the bike paths and pedestrians are best advised to avoid venturing into any pavement in Europe that is colored red to avoid the way of bikes.

Barbara and I avoided the $99 per person, "Bruges On Your Own", bus transfer sold by the ship by going directly to the train station and purchasing two four euro train tickets. We were in Bruges in 15 minutes, saving $190 before we were in Oostende a half hour.

Bruges, Belgium

I had visited Bruges in the mid-1990s and found the town very charming if a bit touristy. In the almost 20 years since then Bruges has become very touristy and just a little bit charm remained. That is, the town hall is still pretty, but it's a museum now and the toilets are locked. Just saying. The streets are pretty if you avoid the endless string of overpriced lace shops, tourist souvenir shops, and especially the very overpriced chocolate shops. One shop was selling "fine Belgium chocolates" molded into male and female body parts. (No circumcision jokes please.) A bunch of Japanese tourists were finding this store most amusing. Instead Barbara and fought our way through the throngs of people milling about and worked our way back to the train station via the very lovely canals filled with many dozens of old tourists being hollered at by loud speakers. A few scenes on the walk were quite lovely—as most of Bruges used to be.

Ghent, Belgium

For an additional six euro each we continued on the fast train line to Ghent, avoiding another $129 per person ship's tour. A 1½ mile "less than one mile, the sign at the station said" walk to get to the very nifty main town square was interesting. Ghent is a real city with lots of medieval and typical old European architecture. We enjoyed a few hours strolling about the downtown as well as a nice lunch of smoked salmon with real Stella Artois beer, not the overly sweet imitation sold in the US and then took a modern tram back to the station for the 35 minute ride back to Oostende and Silver Cloud.

The savings of almost $400 by using the very efficient and comfortable local train service was a topic of discussion between me and a fellow passenger who had purchased the ship's tour. She was not amused when I told her what we had done. A matter of fact, she sought me out the next morning to accuse me of "doing the sort of thing that causes ship's tours to be cancelled for lack of interest." I asked her what her point was. Made my morning.

Quirky Honfleur and Quirkier Eric Satie's House

Monday – 10 June 2013 – Honfleur, France

Yesterday, we took a cab from the Premier Inn, West Quay—Premier means mid-priced and West Quay is a shopping center near the cruise terminal—to the Silver Cloud at 11am. The "no early boarding" policy appeared relaxed for us as Barbara and I were on the double secret "Early Boarding List" at Security at the cruise terminal, Security inside the cruise terminal, and at the ship's gangway. Better to be on the secret non-existent list if it's to your advantage, I say. We also found that our suite was ready for us at this early hour, and we enjoyed a very nice lunch in the dining room of the ship.

I should mention that since we were last on Silver Cloud, the almost 20 year old original ship of Silversea Cruise Line, has undergone a "soft renovation". That means that all the carpets, bedding, actually the whole beds, upholstery of all the public and suite furnishing, and especially the guest bathrooms, have been replaced, and a many of the public areas have been completely redecorated. Particularly stunning is the rebuild main bar and the showroom. Very nice work indeed, and most of all the WiFi coverage in the room is provided by an ensuite access point. No need to open the door to use the Wifi. They have even provided free streaming TV channels on iPhones and personal laptops or tablets (which works quite well) and free subscriptions to many world newspapers (which works not at all). Nice touches, kinda. Best of all for many, the air conditioning system which had failed on the ship for a number of cruises before dry dock was said to be replaced. (We later found out on the one or two warm evenings of this cruise that the a/c work was not quite completed.)

We met a few folks who were on the "World Cruise" longer than our mere 50 days in January and February, gluttons for punishment that we all are, and like us are back on this ship for this one. Nice to see them, of course. I realized that despite the gluton free/lactose free screw-ups of our Caribbean cruise on this ship of a few years ago, the Silver Cloud has now gotten that as well as most of the other service issues resolved and instantly reminded me that Cloud was  really my favorite ship on the line. More on that later.

We sailed up the Bouche de la Seine this morning and tied up alongside in the town of Honfleur, a lovely old (and oddly enough intact) town in Normandy. Today is the southernmost point of our 27 day cruise at just under 50 degrees North Latitude. 

Honfleur—not a French word but a corruption of Norse meaning "mouth of a big river", the Norse not missing a trick—is a very touristy 900 year old town that escaped the bombardments of WWII. There are lots of very old buildings, pretty winding streets, a lovely waterfront, and narrow sidewalks full of merde du chien, a French national tradition. A carousel plays Bolero. That sort of place. 

After my first day's bespoke lactose-free pastries, Barbara and I took the 9:30am ship's shuttle bus the mile or so ride to the center of town and walked a couple of miles exploring this nice low-key first stop of the cruise. Having successfully dodged the sidewalk excrement, we made our way to the Eric Satie House, where the quirky composer lived for much of his life. That is, when he wasn't begging free meals and hanging out with the likes of Picasso, John Cage, and the other turn of the century drunks and stoners. The Maison Satie is as quirky as the composer/painter/poet and a must see for those of us who love quirky, obscure museums. 

We came back to Silver Cloud for lunch and a nap. A great first day on the cruise.

Tomorrow the ship spends the day at Oostende, Belgium. We plan to, of course, see nearby Bruges and probably continue on the train to Ghent.

The Unfriendly and Friendly Skies of United Airlines and West Sussex, Respectively

Thursday to Friday mid-day  - 6 ,7 June 2013 - Boulder to London

My friend and cruise agent extraordinaire Jim has mentioned that he is finding that it's the air travel that has become the strongest negative to luxury cruise marketing. Cost saving efforts by the cruise lines make booking the flight arrangements through them difficult due to awkward routing and forced last minute arrivals to the port of embarkation. But one way open jaw itineraries, especially to distant end points, require that the special fares available to the cruise lines are often necessary. The airlines have added to the difficulties because their increased load factors make flexibility because of weather or maintenance delays impossible. 

Barbara and I have increased our "luck" traveling overseas by being defensive. (That means expensive.) We book multi-hour layovers to change planes and usually leave one or two days at the destination before our ships sail. Of course, such luck is expensive and usually boring. When it comes to flying commercially, luck isn't what it used to be.

Neither is United Airlines. The friendly skies have been replaced with the sullen skies and the gloomy delay congested gate areas. The Economy Plus seats are now filled with paid upgrades as only the highest status flyers get automatic seating in the better seas. And all aircraft seem to be "every full" (sometimes as bad as "extremely full") as the flight attendant say numerous times when you are lucky enough to finally board.

As reported in my Facebook posts in great frustrated detail, our ten hour, twenty-five minute flight times from Denver to London was closer to eighteen hours, for a record twenty-six hours total home to our Southampton hotel. United's crack maintenance delays were the cause, with the overseas flight's almost five hour delay coming in 10 minute increments with threats to cancel the flight with each new "decision time". 

They didn't cancel the flight as it happened, but United Airlines somehow did destroy our booking from Copenhagen to Denver at the end of the cruise to add injury to insult. All was fixed due to my almost fifty years of flight experience and a bunch of iPhone apps and purchasing Internet access at the Southampton hotel and having the couple of hours to spare on the phone with United and SAS to re-establish the lost flight details. Thanks be to Skype Out.

Friday afternoon through Saturday -7, 8 June 2013 – Southampton, UK

After an almost four month "shore excursion" back in Colorado, preparation for another cruise proceeded apace. Despite the lengthy and stress ridden flights to London, we were most happy to see that English weather, at least in West Sussex, had changed from cold and wet to cloudless skies and 70 degree plus temperatures. I mentioned this to the Brits at our hotel in Southampton, and they agreed that we should come frequently to the UK and not bring any rain protection, certainly not ever needing to pack an umbrella again.  They even smiled when they gave this advice. Most unusual for English folks.

We actually enjoyed our planned 2½ day stay in Southampton quite a bit, the weather certainly contributing to our getting the most of the reduced time and enhanced jet lag due to the stress of modern travel afforded by United Airlines most gracious efforts to ruin the trip. Southampton is a large modern city but with a marvelous history going back hundreds of years. There are many remnants of the city walls, each carefully documented with neat (highly over documented to tell the truth) signs, and the sea-faring past hangs over the city. The old White Star Headquarters building radiates anxiety to this day as the site where relatives of the rich and famous lost on the Titantic waited for word of the fate of their inheritances—I mean relatives. 

We took a ferry ride to make a short visit to nearby Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. The brand spanking new Royal Princess cruise ship was docked awaiting the Duchess of York to officially christen this floating emporium of climbing walls and inside atrium balcony facing rooms, and the Queen Mary 2, the new but last ocean liner called during our stay. As did about a half dozen other cruise ships. Elderly, shopping bagged couples wandered the streets and the shopping centers and came and went throughout the day. But Southampton is really a glorified but pleasant cruise port. To tell the truth, we liked Southampton quite a bit and some day hope to spend less time there.

The last long cruise for a while(?), but what a boat ride.

Very soon Barbara and I will fly to London to embark the less than 300 guest Silver Cloud* a couple of days later at Southampton for a 7,300 mile cruise.

The first segment of this two segment cruise will be a riverboat like port a day exploration of the great cities of the North Sea coast of Europe. We will stop at Honfleur in Normandy, Oostende for Bruge and Gent and then Antwerp in Belgium, then a day in Amsterdam. We hope to take the high speed train from Hamburg to for a  day visit to Berlin. We will transit the Kiel Canal. I'm told that the Kiel Canal provides a kind of a land voyage similar to transiting the Suez Canal but with cows in pastures on either side of the ship instead of anti-Israel slogans in the desert. After emerging from the Kiel Canal we stop in former East Germany's Warnemunde to see Rostok, and then after a short stop in Sweden arrive in Copenhagen for a 24 hour visit.

The second and longer part of the cruise will depart Copenhagen for the North Sea, with stops in Bergen and then in and out of many Norwegian fjords, around the most northern Europe mainland North Cape at 71.5 North Latitude, and then into the Barents and White Seas to call at three ports in very Northern Russia, then returning to Copenhagen via a bunch of additional Norwegian stops.

Much of the Norwegian and Russian portion of the cruise will be above the Arctic Circle in 24 hour sunlight. There will be lots of opportunities to eat herring and observe wildlife, which is better than the other way around I believe.

After 50 days in the South Pacific earlier this year, we do not plan more long cruises for a while. I also didn't plan to catch a cold or buy a new TV set.

*Silver Cloud looks like a lifeboat for the merely mid-sized mass market Emerald Princess. I took the picture above in 2009 when we were across the dock in Granada in the southeastern Caribbean. The 113,561 gross ton Emerald Princess carries a maximum of 3599 guests and 1200 crew members. By comparison, the 16,000 ton Silver Cloud sails with a maximum of 296 guests and 222 crew members. The largest cruise ships nowadays hold roughly twice as many guests as the Emerald Princess, very roughly indeed. The Silver Cloud next to one of these ships would look like a dingy.