We finished our first 2 weeks of our cruise. I didn’t blog as we spent a lot of days on the sea and we were busy when we were in the port.   I am reenergized as one of our friends, Bob blogged everyday. 

Our sea days were filled with eating, eating, and more eating. We did get in duplicate bridge each sea day. I decided to play with Nana and we actually did great on 3 of the days, taking first on the last day. This earned me some master points, my first ones !  I learned a lot from Nana as she is a lifetime master. Nana is very good at bridge strategy and knowing her partner.

Nana attended Mass every day and she cantered most of the time. Mass was very well attended daily, 70 people and they had to move it on the weekend to accommodate everyone. we has 180 and 120 on the third and fourth weekends of Easter! Haleylujja was our song. 

I was able to program the trains most days. I finished the programs for the Nunes layout, the Eperthener inside layout, and the Battle Creek layout. The next 2 weeks, I will put all the programs on the Raspberry pi for each layout and upgrade or install the computers on all of the layouts I am working on.

We met some wonderful people the first two weeks, some via our Notre Dame connections and some via Atlanta connections. We ended up have breakfast and dinner most days with our new found friends. Lots of interesting discussions. 

We did some great excursions in the first two weeks. In Bermuda we took a Segway tour around the island. In Dover England we visited any interesting medieval town. At Guernsey we took a bicycle tour around the island. In France I took a tour of the D-Day landing beaches, Nana took a tour of Claude Monet’s house. Today we took a tour of Windmills in Rotterdam. See the pictures at the bottom of some of our visits.

Our visit in Cobh Ireland was especially fun as met up with our son in law’s Aunt Eileen and Uncle Tom. The Fannons were great and we had a wonderful walk around town and the an Irish lunch at their house. In laws add so much fun to life ! We stopped at Kelly’s Bar and each got a free Guiness. Tom enjoyed the local brew Murphy’s ale from County Cork.

Nana has especially enjoyed our cabin as we have a large corner deck and she has been entertaining non stop. She order food in the afternoon and we invite people over to enjoy the view. 

I have continued my weight workouts and do this every other day. We end the workout with a dip in the thermal suite hot tub. I am sore but building muscle. Nana has been also attending Abs classes while Papa is enjoying his coffee in the morning.

Some of our friends left today and some are continuing on. We have some great stops coming up.  We are on the ship for another 2 weeks.  About 400 of the 2,100 people have continued on so a lot of new people boarding.  Mostly Dutch people as this cruise goes from Rotterdam back to Rotterdam.  The good news is the Captain is talking more, the bad news is that he does all announcements in both English and Dutch which I tend to find annoying.

This morning we had a protest on the dock where are ship came into.  The protest delayed our leaving a little but they quickly got everying in control.  Amsterdam has stopped most cruise ships from coming into their port.  They say that the cruise tourists are not what they want.  It is interesting in that some ports are shunning cruise ships while others are promoting the cruise ships coming. Cobh Ireland really wants more people to visit their city.  Other places are saying no.  I guess when a 7,000 people cruise ship, it just overwhelms some of the smaller ports.   Or there are some organizations that keep people riled up and to protest causes.  It seems that there are more coordinated protests against cruise ships and not just local groups. This will be an update daily as we visit the 9 ports on this half of our cruise.