Day 3: All Aboard

Today we got up at 9am, packed our bags and ubered to the cruise port to board the Sky Princess. We board at 11:30am and find place in the bar for appy's, drinks, and meet and greet. Our rooms our ready at 1pm, we unpack and meet back up at 4pm for the Sailaway presentation on the sky deck. We push off around 6pm, grab some more drinks, watch the the sunset, tour the boat, then grab some dinner at one of the buffets. Yolanda is not feeling well and missed the festivities this evening, hopefully she will be well by the morning. We are now at sea cruising at 19.2kts. The boat is 1028' long, 128' wide and has 18 decks. It is my first cruise and Yoli's first big boat cruise. And it is huge. We finished off the night with a comedy show and Jazz singer in the bar. I bring Yoli some ginger ale and croissant in hopes to ease her pain. The boat is certainly swaying and rolling in the waves, I can feel it under my feet and make for a drunk sailor walk about for sure down the halls.

Day 2: Rest Day

We all slept in pas 10am for some well needed sleep at the Moxy Hotel. We missed breakfast so we loaded up on Coffee and went for a walk about town for some need accessories and forgotten items. Pincy and Arlene get to the Hotel round 1pm and join Tom, Nan, and Alan Yoli for some more pub time and dinner. We head back to the Duke of Wellington to hang with the locals for another pint or two then make our way back to the hotel bar for a night cap. It's about 45 degrees out so not the warmest of weather for sure with some light rain now and then. We did a get a spurt of sun and a rainbow. For dinner we head to Zizzi's for some good Italian food and wine. We finished the night with a full belly and early bed time to get up in the morning for the pack and short cab ride to the cruise port.

Bargate Castle Remains

Downtown Rainbow

Day 1: Southampton

 

Our flight left DFW at 4:30pm and landed at 7am at London Heathrow airport. This was a 8 hour flight with a 6 hour time change, it was an official red eye flight. We did not get any sleep so a nap was in order when we arrived at our hotel. Only problem was that our hotel was in Southampton which was still a two hour bus ride. We depart LHR at 9am and arrive around 11:30am to the bus station then a quick 5 min Uber to the hotel. Once at the hotel, our rooms won't be ready for a couple hours so we grab a bite at ThaiKhun then hang at the hotel bar until we can get checked in. We sleep from 2-5ish and then decide to hit some pubs. We do the Red Lion and Duke of Wellington where we end up getting dinner at the bar for some good shepards pie, wine, and of course beer on tap. After hob knobing with the locals we call it a night and crash at the hotel for some deep sleep we all need badly. We sleep until past 10am the next day!

Lunch at ThaiKhun

Moxy Hotel

WestQuay Shopping Center Cinema

Pub Girls @ the Red Lion

Sharing a Pint at the Duke of Wellington

Titanic Pub

Hanging with the locals at the Pub

First AlanYoli Cruise

We are packed and ready to head out for our first AlanYoli Cruise. We fly to London today to catch a Princess Trans-Atlantic cruise from Southhampton UK to Fort Lauderdale FL. We make stops in the Azores, Antiqua, St. Maarten, San Juan, and Grand Turk along the way. Alan has never been on cruise and Yoli only one, so this will be a first for both on a big ship the Sky Princess which is only a couple years now in service. The cruise is 15 days long with excursions at each port. Can't wait to go on our first cruise!

Gina comes to town

 

Gina came to town on a layover through Dallas on her way to Portland. So lets go downtown Grapevine for Eats and Drinks at Wine Fusion. We meetup with Nick that we play pickle ball with for a group photo and good times.

Downtown Big D

Yoli had to get her passport updated for our up and coming international travels so we headed downtown Dallas to get it renewed. While she was at the Passport office, I did an early morning walk about downtown.

Pizza Party!

 

We have been gone so long this summer, we thought we would have a Pizza party with friends to catch up on everyone's adventures. It was just before halloween so some showed up in costumes. I got to showcase my new pizza oven cabinets I just built this week and also tried baking chocolate chip cookies in the oven. All turned out great. Fun times were had by all.

new cabinets for pizza prep