2024 winter cruise
Sun Princess
New (2024), big (4K passengers),
Current journey (16 days, from London to FLL)
Passengers—- over 90% old and weak, average age in the upper 60s, more female than male, mostly in poor health, walkers and wheelchairs a common sight, practically no kids in sight, and people younger than 40 are exclusively service personnels.
9-23-2024
Due to flight delays, we arrived in London Heather airport 2 hrs late, couldn’t find the cruise ship transfer representative, raced to the Southampton terminal by taxi and missed the boat by 20 minutes. With the boat remaining in sight but fading away in the horizon, we were lost and disgusted. By now the taxi driver, already our trusted friend, became our savior.
Mark drove us in the dark in nonstop rain for almost 2 hours to the next port on the boat route schedule in Portland, England. He ran in and out of the taxi cab, soaking wet, talking to the security guy at the gate to the terminal and finding a nearby hotel for us. Unfortunately, hotel “The Aqua” we are in happens to be in lousy condition or just too British for us. First of all, it has no elevator. Mom had to drag the luggages up and down the narrow stairway to and from our room on the second floor. The room has practically nothing other than a bed, not even a bar of soap. Nevertheless we had a place to lay down for the night. Up in the morning, the British breakfast as provided was simply not my cup of tea. My complaints about the food overall could not be heard because, as expected, the manager was no where to be found. Unexpectedly, the cook came out of the kitchen and showed up at the office. Somehow she appeared to be a much better manager than a cook. She picked up the phone sweet-talking a taxi driver coming from quite a distance away to give us a ride for no more than 5 minutes to go to the sea port nearby. We were thereby able to catch up and finally boarded the boat.
9-24
While waiting for the boat to set sail, we took a free shuttle at the terminal to the city center and back in a pleasant drive through the English countryside.
Smart British ways: Few traffic lights, more round-about with better traffic flow.
Annoying British ways: Left-hand drive and narrow roads.
9-25 Vigo, Spain
Nice little sea port known for oyster markets.
Landmark in the background
Even a Chinese super market.
Oyster market
Oyster Bars
9-29. Madeira, Funchal, Portugal
Huge port city. Has everything! We got on top of a Hop-on Hop-off bus driving around town for hour and a half. Had a good view of the nice outlook of the city as well as many ugly and dirty rooftops.
Birdseye view of the city
A full load of passengers on top of the Hop-on and Hop-off.
Cloud Watching

Disintegrating of Trump and his lies
Lucky number, well- located table, and fantastic food
Dining Hall

Entertainment

Gary Lovini

Emergency evacuation

10-9
We are supposedly to arrive in FLL today but due to the threat of Hurricane Milton the ship turned south and heading to Cuba.
The ship is not really going to land in Cuba. Milton is bad but Cuba is not much less evil.
10-11
The boat returned to FLL and we disembarked at the terminal. Immediately we were directed to board a bus driving south to Miami airport. Our flight from MIA back to NOLA was late at midnight. Somehow, we got stand by tickets on an earlier flight, and we finally flied and reached home before midnight.