We awoke early since we had set our clocks back an hour the night before. We were docked in Southampton. This was the end of the British Isles cruise and the start of the repositioning cruise so the elevators and the Piazza were crowded and a little chaotic.
I got coffee and croissants for Donnie at the International Cafe and coffee and a bagel for myself in the buffet but we ate them in our stateroom. Most of the rest of the ship was jammed with people leaving or coming onboard.
We went to the Hollywood Conservatory to chill until the chaos subsided.
We went to see the early show of the comedian Hal Cruttenden who turned out to be very funny.
After the show we hung out for a while in Bellini’s bar. It's a fairly comfortable place to sit, but usually the seats are all taken. It's also right in the atrium above the Piazza so if there's a loud event there (they're all loud) it's not quiet. Later we went down and sat in the Piazza to listen to some Irish music being played in O'Malley's pub which is also right adjacent to the Piazza.
As you may have guessed, today was pretty much a "down" day. We expected that since it was what the ship's crew calls a "turnaround day" when one cruise ends and another begins, with all the concomitant chaos.
We had to set our clocks ahead again because we were heading back to Europe. Traveling on a ship means that the Jet Lag is stretched out over several days. That's much better than experiencing it all at once.
We were in the North Sea. The ship was rocking somewhat. There was a mixture of clouds and sun outside. It was a day at Sea, so there wasn’t a lot to report...
There was a partly cloudy morning. We had an early breakfast in the buffet. I actually got some crispy bacon. In fact, the server gave me too much! Crispy bacon was very hard to get. I wondered why.
Stavanger was a pretty modern city. It reminded me that Norway is a very colorful country. Anywhere you look you can see at least a thousand shades of gray. Maybe even a little dark green.
We walked through the old town which had a lot of older wooden houses, all white. and, of course the sun vanished because I had my camera out. Then we walked through the newer part of town with many shops. Not much was photogenic, especially given the weather.
After we got back to the ship and dropped our stuff in our stateroom, we went up to the buffet for a snack and, since my camera was in the closet in our stateroom, the clouds vanished, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day with gorgeous light.
After the snack we had the brilliant idea to head up to the Hollywood Conservatory to grab some seats so we could get a good view of the sail out of the fjord. We had assumed that the conservatory wouldn’t be too crowded since many people would still be in Stavanger. We were wrong. We did find some seats and after a while a couple abandoned two seats right at the front window.
The afternoon light was gorgeous and Donnie had generously gotten my camera from our stateroom (she mainly went there to get her coat because it was chilly in the conservatory), so I went out on the Sun Deck (not really appropriately named for this cruise) and took some pictures.
It was very overcast. So overcast that I decided to not take my camera with me. Even when the sun peeked out a few times, there wasn’t anything worth photographing.
We avoided the long uphill walk to town by taking a shuttle bus. We walked the main pedestrian shopping street. It wasn’t very impressive.
We stopped at a bakery for coffee and delicious, fresh Norwegian pastries.
Haugesund was not a very attractive place - certainly not photogenic.
After lunch we were going to hang out in the Hollywood conservatory but, like the day before, it was freezing cold there. We’re pretty certain that they had the A/C on in there. One wondered why. We sat there for five minutes and then decided to go back to our stateroom instead. On the way there, Donnie stopped for free ice cream. That should have warmed her up.
Big Notice!
At 4:00 the captain made an announcement that due to some very bad weather in the Atlantic, we would be forced to bypass Skjolden and Reykjavik and go to Belfast instead. We each get $100 onboard credit - hurray! Actually - not hurray. We were really looking forward to sailing through the fjord to Skjolden and revisiting Reykjavik.
At 4:30 we went to the usual Captain’s Circle free food event. Since most of the food onboard is free anyway, it’s kind of weird. We had some tiny snacks and didn’t stay long. We went down to the Piazza to listen to music and have drinks.
It’s yet another day at sea. We had to get used to it. There was a cloudy morning but the sun peeked out occasionally. The stateroom was creaking a little but not enough to be annoying. We went up to a buffet for breakfast and found that the creaking was everywhere. The sea outside seemed fairly calm but the ship was rocking a bit.
We went to a destination lecture on Belfast. In my opinion, there wasn’t much of interest to see in Belfast, at least to my taste. The big attraction that was touted everywhere was the Titanic Museum. The Titanic was built in Belfast. Evidently the Titanic is such a major part of their history that they even have a whole area called the Titanic Quarter. The museum is supposedly very modern, interactive, and well done, but neither of us wanted to go. We're not disaster history buffs, and somehow learning all about the Titanic disaster just before taking a cruise ship across the Atlantic wasn't appealing.
We went back up to the pool deck and got burgers which we took into the buffet because it was extremely windy and cold outside and after lunch we went back down to the Piazza to minimize the ship’s motion again. We got some not-free tea from the International Cafe.
Ironically, the weather was beautiful. Ah yes, a Sea Day - nothing to photograph.
At 7:00 we went to the theater to watch a comedian/magician, Ben Woodward. He was very funny. His magic act was primitive but his humor more than made up for that.
We had a quick dinner in the buffet so we could make it to the Vista Lounge in time for the comedy show and we got there early enough to hear the house band playing Big Band music. They were very good.
Then we saw the comedian John Ryan. We was also very funny. All the comedians we have seen on this cruise have been very good. The music acts, not so much, with some exceptions.
We had to set our clocks back one hour again. This was going to be a continuing thing since we were sailing all the way across the Atlantic.
We got another very late start. We took the free shuttle bus to town center (which normally was not free, but the Cruise Director Jody said she had borrowed the Captain's credit card and arranged things).
We walked around. We stumbled upon Victoria Square, a modern multi-level, semi-outdoor shopping mall. We found an Apple Store where Donnie wanted to go in to see the new iPhone Duo, which it turned out wasn’t in stores yet, so instead we had a long conversation with one of the employees who was very talkative and gave us some pointers on what to see. He directed us to a real Irish pub, The Duke of York. We tried following his directions, but got a little lost, so we used Apple Maps to find the pub, where I had some real local red ale and Donnie had a real local Coca Cola.
The outside had no sign telling you what it was. The inside was completely covered with genuine old advertising signs for various alcoholic beverages, memorabilia and other things. It was a photographic gem.
As we were leaving, Donnie joked with the dour looking Irish gentleman outside the pub who suddenly became friendly and showed us a little hidden courtyard across from the pub filled with murals and poems and told us to take as many pictures as we wanted. There was even a couple taking wedding pictures there. On some of the walls were wood carvings of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” - figures atop horses heads projecting out of the wall, labeled Death, Famine, Pestilence and War. The four figures were Putin, Kim Jong Il, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Trump - how appropriate.
We were tired so we walked back to the shuttle stop and took the bus back to the ship.
We had been told that there would be previously unscheduled performances of traditional Irish music and dance in the Piazza at 4:00 and 6:00 so we got two of few remaining seats in the Piazza and got some sandwiches from the nearby International Cafe. The Piazza and the entire atrium filled up just before the performance began.
The music was great and the young Irish dancers were very talented. When the performance ended many people left so we grabbed some better seats before the 6:00 show.
The Uilleann pipe player was amazing. The whole performance was really good. Between The Duke of York and the Irish folk performance, I was now happy that we went back to Belfast.
It was overcast. What else? There was not much of interest on the schedule of events for today. This description may be repeated five more times.
After the usual buffet breakfast, we went down to the Piazza which is now our hangout of choice since, because it is low down and in the midship, is the place with the least movement.
At 10:30 the Captain was giving a talk about navigating in bad weather, which seemed somewhat relevant. Donnie went to the talk and I decided to hold some seats in the Piazza and write this.
We had a light lunch from the International Cafe, so we didn’t have to give up our Piazza seats. Then the house band came to do a set in the Piazza - a trumpeter, a saxophonist, a trombonist, a guitarist, a pianist, and a drummer, and they were really good, playing mostly Big Band music and Jazz.
Later we went up to the Hollywood Conservatory just to see if it was comfortable. It was too rocky and too cold, and despite that it was crowded so we went to our stateroom where we saw some dolphins off the port side.
After a while we felt the movement too much so we went down to Bellini’s Bar where the movement was less noticeable.
Speaking of the buffet, which I wasn’t, one interesting thing we noticed that every night they had a different ethnic food theme, which was nice, but the unusual thing was that every night they had beef stew.
On various nights there was…
and even…
There were even some attempts at disguise via creative labeling, e.g.
and every night, somewhere else in the buffet, there was always
Notably, they all looked the same, and the ones we tried all tasted the same.
Another Fun Food Fact - the Munster cheese. In the buffet there was a cheese selection in the evening with various different cheeses available. On a few nights, one of the cheeses was labeled ‘Munster Cheese”. The only problem was that it was not even close to Munster Cheese. It was, in fact, very runny, pungent Camembert. Fortunately, I really like runny, pungent Camembert cheese, so I was pleased. Nobody ever noticed, complained about, or fixed the mislabeling. That was fine by me. I suspect that most of the passengers thought that it was Munster cheese that had gone very, very bad. On the nights it was available, there wasn’t much eaten, except by me.
At 5:00 we went to another Captain’s Circle special event to which we had been invited again. We got free drinks again. This time we got two canapés. They use this event to “reward” the loyal cruisers (big spenders). The couple who had the most days cruising with Princess had been cruising for over 2000 days. We did a quick calculation and figured they had spent about 1.6 million dollars on Princess cruises - very loyal indeed.
When they threw us out of the Vista Lounge we walked past the Crown Grill bar and I noticed a pair of empty seats, so we grabbed them and listened to some nice piano music.
Overcast. What else? Again, there was not much of interest on the schedule of events for today. This description may be repeated four more times.
There was a little movement of the ship in the morning but it wasn’t too bad. The sun made brief appearances occasionally. The morning was spent in the now familiar, somewhat boring manner - breakfast in the buffet, back up to the stateroom to clean up (some of us are very messy eaters), down to the Piazza to try and grab seats in the most stable part of the ship, etc. etc. yadda, yadda, yadda.
This morning the Piazza was unusually quiet because they had set up tables and given passengers materials so they could paint watercolor pictures. They weren’t noisy painters. The crew did cover the tables with plastic. The laundromats may be busy later. Basically, we read, wrote this stuff and zoned out. The onboard activities schedule was not exactly to our taste. It included…
I just mention it to fill up this page. It doesn’t bother me anymore, I just ignore it. The one that still annoys me is the fake art auction stuff. I’ve ranted about it before so I’ll stop now.
Sunny, then overcast. What else? Not much of interest on the schedule of events for today. This description may be repeated three more times.
Sunny, then overcast. What else? Not much of interest on the schedule of events for today. This description may be repeated two more times.
The Captain announced that we were sailing into a storm but the weather would improve by the evening - good news, I supposed.
Another sea day, what can I say>
We were feeling lousy so we didn't do much except get quick meals and watch the poor onboard TV. My apologies.
We awoke to hear our old friend Mr. Foghorn.
Donnie's cajoling - oops, I mean recommendation finally convinced me so we went to the Medical Center - We have the FLU!! We must stay in our stateroom for at least 24 hours - bummer.
We had to order lunch from the very limited room service menu so we both ordered hamburgers. They were very dry and hard and we couldn’t finish them.
We spent the rest of the day killing time in our stateroom. Ah, the joys of travel.
We had to have something to eat before taking our medicine in the evening but neither of us was hungry so we ordered one PB&J sandwich to share. It was inedible - very, very stale white toast with a little bit of dry peanut butter and a tiny bit of jam. Yuck!
It was overcast again - nothing new. We had to wait for a phone call from medical center to find out if we were allowed out of our stateroom. The phone call was promised for between eight and nine AM. By 9:15 it hadn't come.
Finally, Donnie got tired of waiting and called the medical center. They said that they were very busy and would call us later. We were still under isolation and had to stay in our stateroom. Bah! We ordered room service breakfast. Watery yogurt. Weak coffee with no sugar. Just as it arrived we got the phone call releasing us from isolation. Fifteen minutes earlier and we could have had a decent breakfast.
We even had trouble actually getting off the ship. We were stopped by security guards who said we were still in isolation. They had to call the medical center to find out that we had been released from prison.
We escaped and walked along the waterfront boardwalk which was very nice. It had nice shops and restaurants, street art, sculptures, a nice view of the harbour (Canada - remember).
One of the welcoming volunteers recommended two places to try - one, a chocolate shop owned by Syrian refugees - she particularly recommended the dark chocolate with wild Nova Scotia blueberries and the second, supposedly the best ice cream in Canada, Cow’s Ice Cream.We walked and found the chocolate shop and brought a bar of the dark chocolate with blueberries and went almost to the end of the boardwalk. (Spoiler - we had the chocolate after we got home - it was great!)
We had lunch at a restaurant that had been recommended to Donnie called "The Bicycle Thief". It was sort of a seafood place with an Italian theme. It was a little weird hearing the waiters saying things like buongiorno, and arrivederci in a Canadian accent.
I wasn't very hungry so I just had soup - lobster chowder and Donnie had crab ravioli with Lemoncello cream sauce. The food was, of course, much better than onboard the ship.
Afterwards, Donnie tried the Cows ice cream. She wasn’t bowled over.
We then went back to the ship for some needed rest.
The ship’s departure was delayed because of “technical issues”. We finally left about an hour and a half late. I won't say that this cruise is cursed, but it seems to have more than it's share of problems.
There was beautiful weather, and a calm sea this morning - too bad we never had weather like this on land. Donnie went to a cooking demonstration and galley tour. I rested.
Later we did some dreaded final packing.
The hated alarm woke us at 4:00 AM. We had set it that early because we were sailing into New York Harbor (note American spelling) and were supposed to arrive at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal at 6:30 AM.
We went up on the Sun Deck to watch the ship sail under the Verrazano bridge and past the Statue of Liberty. It was fun. We were slightly disappointed however that the ship docked in lower Brooklyn so most of the Manhattan skyline was not really visible.
We, as usual, had to be out of our stateroom by eight AM, so we had a long wait in the lounge set aside for us Elite/Platinum mucky-mucks. It was way too small and a lot of people ended up sitting on the floor. Smarten up Princess!
The disembarkation process in the terminal was very screwed up and chaotic. I won't even bother to describe it. We hadn't experienced anything like it on previous cruises. Once we finally got outside we contacted our limo driver and he picked us up pretty quickly.
The weather was beautiful and, to cap off the whole amazing journey, on our way home we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge - way to go!
This overly long tract is called "Searching for Northern Sun" - so, the big question is, did we find it?. The answer is - not really. There were very few sunny days when we were in London or in a cruise port. The most sunny days were when we were at sea, with not much to see. Still, we sort of anticipated that this might be the case since we were going to Northern Europe and crossing the North Atlantic in September. We probably won't do that again. May or June would be a better time. We did have fun (but not when we had the flu).Copyright © 2026 by Jeff Kravitz