Category Archives: Transit

Our final day is a full day at sea.  The ship has been hauling a$$ all night based on the rocking that lulled us to sleep. We awoke refreshed and ready to grab breakfast and hit the spa.  I headed up to the spa for my 10 am appointment only to be told that I was an hour early.  The ship had set the clocks back an hour over night but since we hadn’t actually crossed a time zone yet, my iPhone didn’t pick up on it so my Apple watch was an hour fast.  It would remain so until about 3 in the afternoon when we actually crossed whatever invisible line marked Finland time from Germany time.

So I relaxed on deck with my book for a while and showed up at their version of 10am for a massage, body scrub, body mask, facial and steam shower.  90 minutes of relaxing bliss.  Frank had a massage and facial appointment not long after mine and appeared an hour later looking calm and smelling vaguely of curry.  I, on the other hand, smelled vaguely of pine trees.

Our morning thus spent pampering, we headed for lunch and enjoyed one of the last of our multi-course, full bottle of wine extravaganzas.  This was followed by more book time and a nap.  Then it was time to start packing, play cards and dress for dinner. We had our last dinner with the table and the last of our wine package happened to be a bottle of champagne which was enjoyed by all.  I said good bye to “my” waiter who took such good care of me this week. We sat and listened to music for a little while longer before heading off to an early bed.  This relaxing stuff is exhausting! It certainly wasn’t the 8,371 steps that wore us out!

When I used to go on cruises with my parents in my youth, days at sea were a blessing. No schedule, few rules. I could play in the pool with my new found friends and eat ice cream all day as long as I was in the cabin in time to shower and dress for dinner. It’s a bit different this trip as the weather is not conducive to splashing about the pool for anyone over 12 – sunny and upper 60s is a lovely break from the heat and thunderstorms of the midwest summer but it does mean that the default leisure activities need to be reassessed.

Life aboard this ship has been very entertaining so far. My experiences in the past have all been on ships that sailed from the US and therefore catered to Americans. Not so for this trip. There is a variety of Europeans aboard – we like playing “guess the language/accent” as we wander about the ship – and people seemed genuinely surprised that we chose to fly to Europe just for this cruise. (We don’t bother to explain that we would be flying over the Atlantic anyway to see family. That’s TMI for most casual conversations.) Because there is no majority population on the ship, the language requirements are pretty impressive. Every major announcement is done in at least 6 languages: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Menus, printed signs, order forms… everything in multiple languages. Bingo by the pool takes forever! There are some things written in Greek and Russian as well. I haven’t yet figured out what the default language for greetings should be. On one hand, we sailed from Germany so it might be “Morgen” but the cruise line is Italian so maybe it should be “Ciao”. Of course, the staff are very international: our cabin steward and most of the bar/wait staff are Filipino but the majority of the photographers and tour staff seem to be Ukrainian. As a result, English seems to be common denominator and there is nothing more entertaining that watching two non-native English speakers hold a conversation (or an argument!) in English.

For example, I was sitting on deck reading my book after breakfast this morning when a woman asked to join me at my table. If I had to guess, I would say she was probably Italian from the few words we exchanged. She had a plate full of food from the buffet and had brought it outside to sit in the sunshine. A waiter came by and she ordered peach juice (?!?) and a bottle of water. He was from the Philippines according to his name tag. He delivered it and then gave her the bill. An animated exchange then ensued as to whether or not the package she had purchased for the trip included peach juice from the bar during breakfast hours. It was all I could do to not put my Kindle down and watch the drama unfold before me. (BTW, she apparently won the argument although “the manager” had to be informed.)

It has been a while since we have been on a cruise. Okay, it’s been 10 years. Therefore, I can’t say that I am an expert in these things but given that I have had many experiences with all-inclusive travel, I can compare things with other such types of trips. While I am completely sympathetic to the idea that having things somewhat a la carte allows one to choose what to pay for, it does make life a little more awkward. We opted not to get the “all you can drink” package – try not to be too shocked! – because I didn’t want to feel that we needed to consume more than the $90 daily charge in alcohol every day. For this, I was happy to be able to be selective. We did by the “we are semi-serious about wine” package so we get a more than decent bottle of wine with dinner every night. Apparently, that part is reflected on our cruise card – the onboard card that is required for pretty much everything you want to do -but it doesn’t include wine by the glass. No problem – we know that and expect to pay for what we drink. When we ordered a glass of Bordeaux with lunch today, the waiter asked for our card and scrutinized a code somewhere, looked at us quizzically, conferred with another waiter, and then returned to our table looking downcast and explained that it wasn’t included in our package. When we told him we knew that and would be happy to pay by the glass (about $5), he looked confused. It seemed to me that it would have been easier for the staff and passengers alike if there was just the ability to order without requiring consultation with an accountant. And I know that not everyone drinks so therefore it’s not fair to charge the non-drinkers for what we alcoholics consume but that’s a moot point here. Even the water costs money – a bottle of mineral water is about $2.50 and Pepsi is $1.50 a can. The prices are very reasonable by hotel/travel standards but it is still a lot of nickel and diming IMHO.

What is included – for the most part – is the food. You can’t possibly go hungry on board even if you might be thirsty. There are multiple options for eating and you can eat 24/7 while on board. The cafeteria/buffet serves food continuously from 6am until 10:30pm, for example. There are also two restaurant style options. We have first dinner seating (6pm) for one of the formal dining rooms and our table for 10 has an assortment of Americans: a retired couple, a mother/daughter pair, and a family of four. Given the predominance of Europeans, I wonder if we are the only such table. Our companions are very amiable and well traveled. The family and the mother/daughter are military and stationed in Germany and the retired couple is retired from the military and they spend half the year in Germany and the other half in Florida. So we are the only ones at the table who did not get the military discount that the cruise line apparently offers.

I am also the only one at the table with food issues so that makes things more entertaining. The reason we chose this cruise line (MSC) is because they advertise that the work with the Celiac Society of Italy to accommodate folks like me. And they have done a great job so far. I have my own waiter at every meal. At dinner its’ Lieuv from Romania who reminds me of a less flamboyant Romanian Harvey Fierstien. He brings me my special menu, my gluten free roll, and surprises me with desert each night. (Saturday night was an excellent pistachio cake, last night was a somewhat heavy chocolate and marzipan baked thing that I don’t know that I would call a cake, tonight lemon cake with Nutella ice cream!) I can have multiple courses like everyone else but they aren’t always the same courses. It is by far more food than I need. There is a catch though: they only offer gluten free options in the restaurants and NOT in the cafeteria. So if I’m desperately hungry at 3pm, I have to choose from whatever they are offering to everyone else. Generally this is fine. We made up an antipasti plate yesterday from the buffet (cheese, olives and salami) and purchased some gluten free snacks from the “gluten free bar” – I don’t mind paying $3 for a bag of GF pretzels under the circumstances – and took those to the room with our wine to sit and watch the ship sail out of Copenhagen harbor.

So far we have been quite pleased and spent the day relaxing – even taking a nap after lunch! The step count reflects that too: just 10,600 today and that’s because we have taken the stairs every time we go anywhere just to get some exercise in. I did manage to get in some yoga today; there’s exactly enough floor space for my travel mat! I haven’t managed to drag myself to the gym yet. The treadmills are strategically placed at the front of the ship so that you have a great view of the open ocean but it will be hard to escape the fact that you are still on a treadmill. And it seems that every time I venture into the gym, there is actually a queue for the equipment.

Maybe there isn’t enough (quality?) entertainment on board so people feel the need to go to the gym. While I had no delusions about what the ship board shows would (or would not) be, tonight’s entertainment was nearly indescribable. Billed as “The Catwoman”, it tried to something of a Cirque de Soliel show: part acrobats, part dancing, part singing, part I-don’t-know-what. All done by “entertainers” in ripoff Batman, Catwoman, Penguin, and Joker costumes. I honestly can’t believe there wasn’t multiple violations of intellectual property laws – including music from the Batman TV show as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean (WTF?) Maybe I’m not European enough for such things because I couldn’t stop laughing. With the exception of a handful of people who walked out midway through, the rest of the audience seemed to really like the show. I can’t possibly explain it – maybe I’m just tired and it will make sense in the morning…. but don’t hold your breath.

Here’s how we planned it:  We would leave KCI for Newark, kill an hour and a half before our flight to London – the flight that I spend ages on the phone with the United agent getting the seat assignments right and ensuring I had a special meal ordered.  Then a short time to change planes in Heathrow (my biggest worry) before landing in Hamburg before lunch giving us plenty of time to get to Kiel, wander about the town and generally feel like we were on vacation.

Here’s how it started out: Flight out of KCI leaves 2 hours late due to air traffic control in Newark. Miss the London connection and the carefully planned flight.  Get rebooked on another flight to London where we will have 4 hours to kill before our British Airways (note: forshadowing) flight to Hamburg which should still arrive in time for us to get to Kiel for a late dinner. Assured by the United agent in Newark that our bags would follow us.

Here’s how it went: London flight was uneventful – we actually had seats together and they were able to cobble together something that I could actually eat since there was no special meal for me on the rebooked flight. We even managed to get an hour or two of sleep.  Landed in Heathrow Terminal 2 and had to change to terminal 5.  No problem – we had 4 hours to get this taken care of.  Took the 10 minute bus ride (?!?) to Terminal 5, got through security, and managed to have a hot meal for the first time in 24 hours. I now consider Wetherspoons to be my savior – GF cottage pie and tea was exactly what I needed!  And then we wait.  And wait. And wait.  Heathrow is a nightmare for travelers like me.  I don’t want to shop; I want to sit quietly at the gate and read my book until it’s time to get on the plane.  But here, they don’t announce the gate until about 45 minutes before departure so you have no choice but to sit in the shopping mall part of the terminal for hours on end or prowl through the Prada and Hermes shops.  We sat among the masses and watched as our departure time slowly got pushed back due to late arriving aircraft: 10 minutes, 17 minutes, 25 minutes.  Finally 10 minutes before we were scheduled to depart, they posted a gate number where were supposed to leave 45 minutes late.

We got in line to board and…. I was “not accepted”.  WTF?  She scanned my boarding pass but the system said my boarding was denied.  Frank’s was fine but not me.  After everyone else boarded, two British Airways gate agents made frantic phone calls, wrestled with the boarding software, and after about 15 finally managed to get me officially on the flight. Apparently, the rebooking between United and British Airways didn’t quite work right for my ticket and they needed to brute force things before I could board.   We expected to have the entire plane hate us for making them late except that it wasn’t our fault: the captain had apparently announced that there was some mechanical difficulties that had to be taken care of before we could depart.  So with Frank in seat 7F and me in 13B, we sat for another 45 minutes before finally departing.

We land in Hamburg 10 hours later than we had planned to find…. you guessed it, no luggage. And no clear understanding of how to find it because our luggage claim checks were United tags but we had landed on a British Airways flight – not one of United’s partner airlines.  There was one other couple who had the same problem; they had come in on the exact same flights as us. But they were staying in Hamburg and we were leaving to get to Kiel for a cruise that would be leaving in less than 24 hours.  The baggage agent told us he didn’t see anyway we would get the bags before we left but he *might* be able to get them to the first stop at Copenhagen if he could find them at all.

After filling out all the paperwork, we caught the bus to Kiel and driving through the rain, we tried to use the pitiful wifi to figure out how we were going to manage to last two weeks with just the items we had in our carry on luggage.  And eat some cheese.  Now the cheese and crackers that had gotten Frank in trouble with the TSA in KC was a Godsend! We finally got to the hotel at about 11pm, exhausted and somewhat odorous. We dumped the bags and headed out for something to eat.  It turns out that this is Sommerfest in Hamburg so there were bands playing in open air music venues and lots of people out.  We found a local brew pub where Frank quaffed a few of their specialties and enjoyed the daily special: currywurst!  I managed to get by with a few glasses of wine since I had recently consumed the better part of a pound of Port Salud. We are on vacation dammit!

Twenty-nine hours after the Uber truck picked us up, we finally got to sleep in a bed.  We hope to wake up to news of our luggage.  Keep your fingers crossed!

A smooth on-time departure from the house was about the highlight of the journey so far.  Completely packed and convinced we had remembered everything, we summoned the Uber car and had an uneventful ride in an F-150 King Cab (?!?) to the airport, arriving the requisite 2 hours before we were due to depart.

And then the fun began.

When we went to check our bags, the automated kiosk demanded to see the passport for Isiah Cannon.  What?  Who?  I double checked all the documents and everything was in my name or Frank’s name. No misspellings or errors that we could see.  The agent took our paperwork and informed us that Isiah was listed as the infant that I would be carrying on my lap.  What?  Who?  I explained that there was no Isiah, at least not traveling with us and so the keyboard tapping began, foreshadowing the travails to come.

So we grabbed a drink and some lunch outside of security and headed to the non-existent line where Frank was promptly pulled out of line for secondary inspection.  Apparently, they didn’t like the large bag of cheese and crackers I had packed in his carry on.  Or maybe it was the ice pack – can’t let the Port Salud or goat cheese get warm now can we? Then to the bar outside our gate where we enjoyed a couple pints of Strongbow while we watched our flight get delayed later and later and later.  It finally left about 1 hour and 45 minutes late which meant, of course, that we missed our connection in Newark.

As did dozens of other people.  The customer service line was 50 deep and took an hour and a half to get through.  I managed to get through on the phone before making it to the counter and got re-booked on the delayed 9:10 flight – which of course means that we will miss the connection in LHR so that took more re-booking (and more frantic keyboard tapping).  We now have new pieces of paper saying we will land in London at 11am (when we should have been landing in Hamburg) and that we can take off for Hamburg 4 hours later.  We should arrive just in time to get the last bus to Kiel where we will hopefully still have a hotel reservation.

So now I sit in Newark airport tapping at my own keyboard.  Keep your fingers crossed – we might actually be boarding soon!

If I disliked writing the “last day” post, I really hate writing the “now we are home” post.  But it has to be done. Travel today went really quite smoothly: slept in until 7 (or would have if there wasn’t a school group leaving our floor of the hotel at 6 – noisily!) Walked the 50 meters across the road to check in with no problem.  No lines at security which gave us plenty of time for a final brekkie (fried eggs, bacon and beans for me – yum) before heading out.  One minor burp:  Frank dropped his green card going through security and got called back over the PA system.  That’s enough to make your heart stop.

Uninteresting flight other than it was an old 757 which is not the best plane for an 8+ hour flight.  We paid extra for our seats which I thought gave us extra leg room but apparently just gave us the ability to board earlier to sit longer in our cramped seats.  Grrr.  Overhead screens and no choice in movie made my kids cranky but I didn’t hear much about it since we couldn’t all get seats together. Landed 20 minutes early – only good thing I can say about USAirways today – then through customs and passport control.  Big thumbs up for Philadelphia airport though – efficient and speedy so we had plenty of time to sit at the gate for our commuter flight to DC.  Unfortunately, it was an oversold prop plane that left late because they couldn’t get the cabin temperature down.  Luckily we only landed about 10 minutes late and the bags followed fairly quickly. Then we were met by Jay of Jay’s Sedan Service whom I had emailed a few days prior.  Big thumbs up for Jay – prompt, comfy car and cold water for us and a uneventful ride home.

So now it’s laundry and unpacking and just a short stay for me since I’m off on a business trip tomorrow.  But here are some final stats:

Steps: 176, 808 in Italy and 158, 915 in Scotland for a whopping 335, 723 steps! This translates roughly too 76.2 miles in Italy, 63 miles in Scotland (adjusting for the bad conversion for the Goat Fell climb) for a total of 139.2 miles over 18 days!

Hours awake today: 18

Bottles of wine consumed: stopped counting.

Nuns: Eh, don’t care any more.

Pounds gained: not calculating that right now.

Number of wooly jumpers procured: 3 – same as number of pairs of shoes and works of original art.

Number of bottles of whiskey brought back: 2 – same as the number of bottles of Italian wine.

Sunny days: 18

Rainy days: 0

Days with any raindrops at all: 1 in Italy, and ZERO in Scotland!

Best trip ever?  Maybe if only because it’s the last we are likely to take as a nuclear family.  I’ve enjoyed the time spent with my amazing family including my wonderful (adult!) children, in-laws, nieces, nephews, great aunts and uncles, and other family who are dear to me even if the relationship math is hard to do (second cousins, maybe twice removed?).

And so the countdown begins to the next adventure – say 370 days and counting.

Thanks for following along.