At sea for four days

Rock and Roll! Winds up to force 8 and 18 foot seas. I didn’t walk or run outside on deck this morning. It is all I can do to walk straight. Yesterday we saw snow flurries at three different times. We also saw massive flower arrangements, people and many dishes crash to the floor. We changed course a bit to head into the wind and are faring better today. We won the culinary trivia competition and received two umbrellas. That is a good thing since we packed for a bit of warmer weather and may need them.

St Johns

We could see this lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor we could see from Signal Hill. There was a lovely stone building and park on Signal Hill and you could see forever!

The city of St Johns is sustained by supporting oil drilling since cod has been over fished. There are wonderful old churches and buildings.

Some streets have row houses that look like San Francisco. Fun place.

The last two days we have visited very rocky landscapes and even more so today. It is a wonder people can survive here with such little topsoil covering the rocks. As you can see, the trees are stunted.

We saw an iceberg just off shore. This is the closest town to the Titanic disaster. Our course will take us right past it. I'm so glad we have modern equipment to spot the icebergs.

This harbor entrance to this fishing village was blocked last year by an iceberg.

Cape Spear is the easternmost point of land of North America. It had two lighthouses to visit.

The active light has a green lens. Very unusual.

St Pierre French Territory

St Pierre, French Territory – Very colorful, very quaint and very foggy. The houses are pink, yellow, red, orange and all very bright. They must be making up for the grey weather. We were able to see one great lighthouse. It was about a mile to town from the ship and we took the tender one way hoping to see lighthouses. We saw some through the thick fog, but not well enough to identify. We walked back. Good thing, since it got so foggy that one tender had to stop and just sat there until it cleared enough to continue. Based on that experience, HAL has decided to add more equipment to the tenders.

Halifax

This is a great little city. So much history and more than its share of tragedy. The terrain is very rocky because glaciers of the past scraped the soil away down to the basalt layer.

We visited a museum devoted to the explosion 90+ years ago that destroyed the town and to the Titanic disaster. Halifax was the main recovery city for Titanic and also an airplane crash 20+ years ago. The weather and flora reminded me of home. We saw two lens at the Maritime Museum today and six lighthouses in the area or as we sailed in and out of Halifax.

Peggys Cove was an amazing fishing village with evidence of glacier activity on the rocks. You can see deep gouges in the rock.

We enjoyed the hospitality and friendly people of Halifax. They even sent us off in style with a salute of bagpipes and drum.

We are getting to know our table-mates on board. There is one couple from Holland, one from Australia and another from New York. Nice people.

Cruise to Europe - first day NYC

This is Times Square and was the least impressive of the things we saw.

We could have spent days. So many things to see and a great place to visit. Every square inch is used, width, depth and height.

The volume of noise and people is overwhelming. We were up early walking in the area and soaking up as much as we could in just a few hours.

Grand Central station is indeed grand with many levels, shops, buses, trains, taxis, etc. The NYC subway system was originally many independantly operated lines. But, the different owners could agree on a central station so most lines either go through here or end here. The concourses are lined with every kind of bakeries and eateries and the smells as you pass are delicious. What a great place to people watch.

It is hard to get photo from the ground, but I got this one of the Chrysler Building reflected in the glass of the next building. We visited the beautiful lobby with inlaid ceiling. This is just one of the mosaics of an airplane.

I'm not sure about cab drivers. We got in a cab and had to get out because his meter wouldn't work. Then we got a cab, but the fare was twice as much as expected since we went on a street with many blocks of construction. Hmm..... We must have looked like tourists.

We boarded the Rotterdam a 1,360 passenger cruise ship by Holland America and wandered the ship checking out our new home for almost six weeks. Our bags arrived quickly so we took the time before sailing to get settled. Then it was out to the deck as we left NYC and sailed past Ellis Island, the Lightship Nantucket and the Statue of Liberty.

New York City

The first day was exciting. We had an early flight to NYC, successfully negotiated the trains with our luggage and made it into Manhatten. I knew Manhatten was busy, but the sheer mass of people is amazing. However, the low numbers of personal cars is also striking. I was amazed at the cabs. Whole streets 4-5 lanes wide, 6 deep filled with yellow cabs and all heading your way!! Jump quick because they don't appear to give way to pedestrians. They looked like lemmings and they drive like crazy, pulling over four lanes if they see a fare. This picture doesn't do justice to the skyline. What look to be small buildings are actually massive.

We saw our first lighthouse (Statue of Liberty) from the train. We had dinner and enjoyed a pair of jazz musicians. Then we walked over to the Empire State bldg for a night time visit. We got the headsets that gave narration about the sights you were seeing. It would have been better for learning in the daylight, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lights at night. We could see the Brooklyn Bridge and out to Staten Island. Tomorrow we want to visit more sites before we board the ship. The adventure has begun!