By this Author: greatgrandmaR

On 8 June 1959- 60 years ago, I graduated from Oberlin College

Bob and me after graduation

I got married on 5 June. In those days, the colleges acted "in loco parentis" for girls. My father had to write to the Dean of Women, Dean Dolliver to get permission for me to get married before I graduated. Dean Dolliver called me into her office and showed me the letter my father had written and said it was not satisfactory. My father had listed our names, but he had not said that he approved of the marriage. He needed to write another letter saying that he was happy about it. My father was pissed, but he wrote another letter.

Bob graduated on the 3rd,

Bob kissing me after his graduation

we got married on the 5th (a Friday)

5 June 1959

and we drove as fast as we could to get back to Oberlin before noon on the 6th because we had to pick up the graduation tickets. No one could pick them up for me - had to be me in person. Bob and I and our parents stayed at the Oberlin Inn. My sister stayed in my dorm room.

My children did a 25th anniversary party in 1984 and then they did

a 40th anniversary party in 1999

a 50th anniversary party in 2009

This year for the 60th, they decided on a short cruise to Bermuda for us and all four of our children. So after we got back from the Christmas/New Years cruise to the Caribbean we prepared for Bermuda

There were 11 of us. Me and Bob, our son and daughter-in-law, our oldest daughter (who brought her bike and spent some time biking the railroad trail in Bermuda), our second daughter and her husband, and our third daughter and her husband and her two younger children (One 18 and going to be a Freshman at Stephen F. Austin next fall and the other age 13). The rest of our grandchildren are all older and couldn't get away as they were doing things like working, taking exams or having babies.

Lynde got me packed on Sunday, and then did not come again until Friday to finish up. I went to swim therapy Monday Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon Polly cut my hair. Bob mowed the lawn Thursday and got the rest of the tree down in the back yard taken care of. Friday the Tri-County Aire man came to install a part. Friday he went to the dump and did a last wash.

I asked for the mail and the WSJ stopped on Saturday and the Washington Post stopped on Sunday.

8 June 2019

I set the sat receiver to record the Belmont. I finished up and packed up the computer a little early (turned off and unplugged the modem) and went downstairs to read the paper, but the Post had not been delivered. We left at about 9:30 - a little earlier than the 10:00 time we had planned to leave. Bob has forgotten his hat.

As we drove up through Charles, and Prince George's Counties we ran into another 100 mile bike ride - riders with flashing red lights on the back of their bikes.

Oxon Hill 100 bike riders

We ran into a bike ride the last time we drove up this way. When we got into PG county there were signs along the road about the bike ride. There was even a little boy on a child's bike peddling hard to get up the hill (followed by his mother). Our daughter said it was the Oxon Hill 100 and that she wanted to do that.

We were making good time until we got to Anne Arundel county and were getting onto I-97. Our daughter texted us that the Hanover Street bridge was closed and Bob said "Oh Shit". So we had to go up to I-495 and go west, and then get off on 295 (the BW Parkway) and then we were to get on I-95 east. But we missed the turn. So we did a series of right turns (Wicomico, Bush and Russell streets) and ended up back on 295 going through Westport again. We missed the turn a second time, so this time we went on past the Ravens stadium and got on I-395 and this time we managed to get to the cruise terminal about 11:30

Grandeur of the Seas from outside the fence

We got a green parking pass and unloaded our two bags and then Bob put me off with the scooter and the carry-on luggage and went to park. I took some photos while I was waiting.

Police car outside the bollards

Taxicab rates posted

But he had not paid for the parking yet, so he had to drive back and pay and THEN park. After we joined up, we went to register and get our sea-pass cards - Our daughter was already there with her bike, and so were the rest of them.

She wheeled her bike and I followed with the scooter up, and up and up and around and up some more. (They wanted me to go in the assisted level on deck 1, but the scooter can do the ramp). They absolutely refused to let us in our rooms before 1:00. Bob and I went up to the Windjammer for something to eat, but the rest of them waited until they could go into their rooms - there was no room for the bike in the Windjammer. There wasn't much room for the scooter.

Windjammer cafe

Hotdog, hamburger and pasta for lunch

My problem with the buffet is that all the labels are so high and so far back that I absolutely can NOT see what they are. I can see that there is bread or fruit, but what kind of soup is it? I can reach some of the lower levels of food, but not the upper ones, and even when I get food, I have to run the scooter with one hand, so I can't get something to drink. Of course on embarkation day, because the regular restaurant (the Great Gatsby dining room) is not open (like it is on some nicer ships), so everyone is at the buffet.

We went to our room which was roomy. We had a refrigerator. We got a plate of cookies and an invitation to the Platinum and above meeting.

But the bed was situated opposite the TV so that I had to sleep on the left side in order to get to the bathroom quickly and I have slept for over 40 years on the right side of the bed. I kept trying to get up into the middle of the bed. I would be pulling the covers to get my foot out and pull all the covers off Bob (who generally slept through it).

Dresser and closets

It would have been better if the bed was where the couch was and vice versa. Then someone could sit on the couch and watch TV and someone in bed wouldn't have to watch it. But to do that, the person on the left side of the bed would have to leap over the end of the bed to get to the bathroom because there is no room between the end of the bed and the dresser - that's the way all the Royal Caribbean staterooms are. Normally we make the beds into twins to avoid that problem.

Before we went up to the Drill and I made a reservation for dinner at 5 in Anytime Dining for all 11 of us. I didn't know all the room numbers, but I told him the names and he looked them up. Then we went to the drill, which seemed very haphazard in the way they were taking attendance. There was a guy in a wheelchair and they put me in front of him, so of course he could not see. But at least we were both sitting down. Some lines do the handicapped people inside in a more comfortable location.

After the drill I tried to notify everyone about dinner. The phone was all the way over on the desk, but it had a really long cord on it so it would reach to the bed. We got our suitcases and unpacked. We ran the extension cord over the couch and I plugged a power strip into it, and then the computer and Bob's hearing aid were plugged into the power strip.

Couch from the bed

At some point I went up to the computer room to figure out how to log on and logged on with my phone. I thought I had bought the internet package, but there was no record of it on the ship. My children said I needed to keep my phone on and we had an ongoing chat. But when I wanted to use the computer I had to log the phone off and log the computer on and it was day 4 before I could do that reliably. The ship had the worst internet I have ever had on a cruise ship.

The table for 11 was a round table and was really good.

Bob, daughter and son-in-law

Daughter and son-in-law

Son and daughter-in-law

Son on left and son-in-law

Unfortunately we could never get that table (or any round table) again. They gave it to another group, and when we would get there at 5 - as soon as the dining room was open -- they were already seated.

Anyway the allergy people all sat together.

Allergy people - Gluten, Nuts, and Lactose

When the photographer came around we had a group photo taken.

Family group photo

For dinner, I had the

Sauted Maryland Style crab cake

Prime rib

Key lime pie

Bob had the shrimp cocktail and

Fish

Apple pie a la mode

My son's T-shirt "Warning! I bought the Drink Package

My son and daughter-in-law and one daughter and son-in-law had bought the drinks package. You pay something like $15/day each and you can drink all you want.

Evening sky

One of our daughters brought a set of dominoes for us to play We tried to find a table big enough, but the ones in the library and the bars are too tiny. Eventually we found a place in the Solarium where we could put two tables together and played Mexican train dominoes. They had to teach me the rules. We had a lot of fun and we also got to watch the lifeguard practice. Then I went back to the room and to bed.

Last night I had a severe case of reflux. It went all the way up into my sinuses

We ate breakfast in the dining room with a woman and her brother. Bob went and got himself a grapefruit from the central buffet. (grumbling as usual about how they cut or don't cut the sections) He brought a grapefruit knife so he could correct their error which I think is mostly due to having to do a whole bunch in a short period of time) I had

Spinach and egg quiche (with the mandatory tomato)

And then I added grits, but only ate half of them. Bob had oatmeal with brown sugar.

It was foggy and sort of damp outside so everyone was in the

Atrium

instead of being out by the pool where they should have been. I did not see that there was a lot of motion in the ocean, but some people apparently were affected. One of our daughters has a problem this way but she seemed to be OK. We joined the family for trivia.

Schooner's Bar where we had trivia

We got 12 right - but we did not know the Disney movie that starred Bette Midler as a witch or what was Arabian wine (coffee) or how many stars there were on the Brazilian flag or what city had the first medical school (Philadelphia)

Entrance to Giovanni's table from the Schooner bar

We stayed for Pictionary - which we won. I don't think we actually won any type of prize.

At lunch I went for the "tutti" salad

Small chopped salad

and the soup of the day which was

Zucchini

(and both were good). I tried to persuade Bob to go for the shrimp but he did not.

Bob's lunch

He had the turkey burger with no bun. He had ice cream for dessert, and I had

Apple parcel a la mode

The rest of the group ate in the Windjammer.

I rode around the ship and looked at the photos that were taken on the first night. I decided that one of the group was good and we should get it and our daughter-in-law said that the ones of us were cute and we should get them too. After a certain amount of arguing with the photo guy, we agreed to get 10 photos. In the group photo, everyone was good except one daughter had her eyes closed in one of them. So I ordered four of the good one and one of the one with her eyes closed to make 10. When we actually got the photos, they had done it the wrong way. 4 with her eyes closed and one with her eyes open.

Ben and Jerry's

I went to the Starbucks/Ben & Jerry and took some photos, but did not buy anything. In addition to the ice cream they had

Little sandwiches and cupcakes

In the afternoon was Family Feud. Because the weather was wet outside, everyone was in the atrium and the guy running Family Feud lost complete control of the situation. Instead of letting people play in families, he had people put a piece of paper in a hat and he drew 12 names to play. I got picked, but on the scooter I was not very mobile and so I was the 6th person on what should have been a team of five.

The last question was something like "What would you save if the boat was sinking". One of the answers was "Life preserver". But that makes no sense whatever - you don't save a life preserver - it saves you. Our team won and we should have all had gold medals, but I didn't get one because there were only 5 medals.

We then played another round of trivia. We got 10 right and it should have been 12. I didn't take Bob's answer for the color in the middle of the standard dart board (red) because I thought it was a trick question. But I did know that Scooby Do was a Great Dane and that Alex Fleming discovered penicillin, and I guessed that John Lennon was the first one of the Beetles crossing the road on the Abbey Road Album cover. It was a complete guess, but I figured I had a one in four chance to get that correct.

I went back to the computer room with my computer to find out how to log on with it. The wi-fi kicked me off so often that I was never sure whether I had logged off with the computer and could log on with the phone or not. Although the ship people kept saying how terrific their wi-fi was - it was not. It was no better (and sometimes worse) than the wi-fi internet that I had on the NCL Crown in 2004. I couldn't get that wi-fi in the cabin - I had to go to the computer room, but I usually could find the network there even if it was slow. On this cruise, I sometimes could not even find the network.

One of our son-in-laws suggested that we go to one of the extra price restaurants one night, so our daughter made reservations for the 11 of us. It was formal night, so we got dressed up and went to Chops for dinner. Our son-in-law was saying that he did not know that there was a formal night and was protesting getting dressed, but he cleaned up pretty good. Again we had all the allergy people seated together. Bob and I sat in the middle of one side of the table and all the kids sat around us with the in-laws on the outer edges.

Daughter and granddaughters

First was the appetizers - Bob had the

Shrimp cocktail

There were several shrimp cocktails being passed around. Bob did not think that the shrimp cocktail yesterday had the appropriate amount of horse radish in the sauce, but this time it met his expectations. I had the

Charred beef carpaccio

which was good.

The soup/salad course I think the gluten/lactose allergy people had the Goat Cheese salad. They apparently can eat cheese if it is not cow cheese. I had the

Wedge of iceberg lettuce

Another daughter had her usual Caesar salad with no dressing and no cheese and no croutons. Basically just the lettuce.

They gave us all the 'sides' as family style - down the middle of the table. These were
Gruyere cheese tater tots
Creamed spinach (but without the cheese cracker that they have on HAL)
Grilled jumbo asparagus
Mac & cheese
Yukon gold mashed potatoes
Sauteed mushrooms (we got a second helping of these - they were good)
Truffle French Fries
Salted baked potato

I had the

New Zealand rack of lamb (with some of the mushroom sides

and it was good but I had filled up on appetizers and sides and could not eat it all.

They brought us a little slice of

Red velvet cake

with a candle on it and sang "Happy Anniversary" to us. One daughter had the

Warm chocolate cake

which looked really good. I have a photo of the

Apple pie a la mode

so I think either Bob or I had that. I was afraid I had eaten too much and would have reflux again, but this time I did not.

Some of the group went to the comedy show, but Bob and I just went back to our room. We had a towel animal (a monkey?) with a notice to set our clocks back an hour.

Monkey? towel animal alerting us to the time change

Today we drove from the tip of the fish-hook on the left all the way to the other end of Bermuda and back again

Map of Bermuda at Gibbs Lighthouse

10 June 2019

We went up to the Great Gatsby dining room and I had the RCCI version of huevos rancheros.

Huervos rancheros

This consisted of a tortilla with beans, avocado and rice on it and two fried eggs on top of that. I like Carnival's version better.

We went to morning trivia. We got 11 right - we did not know Walt Disney's middle name (Elias) or Marco Polo's home town (I knew it was Italy but not that it was Venice) and we should have known the Hungarian word for pepper (paprika) but we did not. They said that the Prince rescued Cinderella and we all thought it was the fairy godmother.

There was no Cruise Critics meeting on this cruise, but we had to leave at 10:30 to go to the "Top Tier" party - there were more staff there than passengers. They gave some guy that worked there a 20 year pin. All the heads of the departments introduced themselves and we could have had free drinks.

I wanted to be up on the top deck or the Promenade deck when we came in which we were scheduled to do at 2. I thought we might be early and we were. My oldest child and I had a discussion about whether the Captain took the long way around in October. I said we left from the same place in Baltimore, and we did not get to the dock until 4 (well we were scheduled for 4 and we would have docked at 4 if the Disney ship hadn't been late leaving). And this time we left Baltimore and got to the dock by one. I said I did not think the distance had changed. She didn't argue with me any more but I am not sure she was convinced.

Son-in-law and daughter

Since I didn't want to eat in the Windjammer, we ate with our daughter's family in the Great Gatsby.

Bob studying the menu at lunch

I persuaded them to have the chopped salad from the buffet, but we were too far from the buffet for me to get there easily with the scooter, so I had something from the main menu (I can't remember what it was, but I didn't care much for it).

My lunch

Bob had salmon. Then I had

Brazo de Mercedes

for dessert. This was a pastry roll filled with cream sauce sort of like a round Mexican eclair. It was good.

We were out on the promenade deck before 1:00 watching them come into the dock.

Calico Jack's pirate ship

Then they said that only those people with excursions could get off - the ship was not cleared for non-excursion people to get off. That was ridiculous.

Taxis and buses waiting for passengers

I got away from them and went ashore, but then we had to wait for our daughter's family to be freed to join us. Our daughter with the bike also had to wait. The other two couples were on the Crystal Caves excursion so they could get off with the rest of the excursion people.

I had booked a 5 hour van tour of the island with Lewis Foggo ($70/hour) - we have had a tour with him before. We had a private tour in 2011 with Duke, but Duke died before the next time we went so in 2013 we went with Lewis and did a dozen cemeteries - Lewis told Bill that some of the cemeteries we went to, he had not know were there. So last October when I went to Bermuda with my sister, I did a tour with Lewis, and we did one with him this time too.

Motorcycle on the other side of the road

Mangrove Bay

Boat pulled up on shore with sun graphic on the bow (upside down)

Moon gate at Cambridge resort

He showed us the blue waters (we saw a turtle)

Blue sky, blue water

Turtle feeding

Old railroad bridge abutments - ‘Turtle Alert’ sign advising boaters to slow down in areas where heavy boating activity and turtle foraging overlap

and St. James church

St James Church

He took us to a blue collar area with modest houses and asked us how much we thought the houses would sell for? I guessed $350K, and our daughter guessed $120K and Bob guessed the highest ($1 million) and he was right.

Blue collar area house

Then we went to Fort Scaur. I had tried to do this fort with my sister and I knew the scooter couldn't do it so I stayed in the van. The rest of them got out and went up the hill for a view

Lewis taking a photo of our daughter's family

Water catchment area

and then climbed around on the fort.

Sign saying you are welcome to use the fort for a picnic

Fort Scaur

History of Fort Scaur

Fort Scaur has a disappearing gun - when we went to Fort Monroe in 2000 we saw the old movie of how the disappearing gun works. It's located below the ramparts and the soldiers load it, and then it is hoisted up to the top of the wall and fired and the comes back down to be loaded. It means the people doing the loading are not as exposed

Moncrieff Disappearing Gun Mount

64 pounder Rifled Muzzle Loader Gun

Early Bermuda Weather Stone

We saw some of the little two person electric cars which are the only kind of cars you can rent in Bermuda.

Electric rental car for 2

We stopped at the smallest bridge and Lewis had some bread to feed the fish. He said the bridge is no longer operational because it stopped traffic too long.

Somerset Bridge

Feeding the fish at the Somerset drawbridge

Next we went up to Gibbs lighthouse. I got out here.

Gibbs Lighthouse

Keep Bermuda Beautiful trash can

View from above

Cruise ships from Gibbs lighthouse

Water catchment at Gibbs Lighthouse

Daughter's family at Gibbs lighthouse

Sign at Gibbs Lighthouse pointing the way down the stairs to the #7 bus

Stairs from Gibbs Lighthouse down to the bus

Gibbs Lighthouse

Flags spell out GIBS L H

Bob was able to read the signal flags which spelled out G.I.B.B.S.L.H. (Gibbs Light House). Our son-in-law saw our daughter with her bicycle on the railroad trail next to the road, and waved. She has a camera on her bike so she posted some video of it later - she met some school children and they wanted her to hi-five them. She managed that without falling off.

He took them to Hamilton and they got out and walked around but I don't think they were too impressed,

City Hall in Hamilton

After we saw the buildings like the City Hall, the Perot Post Office and the Library,

Central bus station in Hamilton

Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity

He took us to the more modest parts of town. We drove through the Flats

Fish in the Flats

BAMZ (Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo) with a fish sculpture out front made from roof tiles

and then we went out to St. George.

Statue of Sir George Somers

Street in St. George

Unfortunately, everything in St. George was closed - St. Peters and the Town Hall and the Historic Society House were all closed.

Town hall in St. George

St Peter's sign - open Monday to Friday 10 to 4

St Peters with daughter's family

I knew I could not get up the steps to St. Peters, but I also knew that I could go in the back. I did not know the church was closed. So I scootered around the back and through the cemetery

Grave of Thomas J. Sterling, Surgeon. Died 1846 on board the mail Boat Roseway off St. George Aged 32 years

John Till 1781-1829

and took a photo from the top of the steps

Bob taking a photo of St Peters

St Peters with me peeking around the corner

When I figured out that it was not open, I went around to the Historical Society Museum, but that wasn't open either.

St George's Historical Society Museum Welcoming Arms Stairs

Buckingham and the Old State House

Bermuda National Trust Museum

They went in the White Horse and tried a Rum Swizzle which my son-in-law liked but my daughter and granddaughter did not care for the rum in it.

White horse tavern

Our granddaughter got herself a custom lemonade. which she liked. We went out to Ft. St. Catherine via the

Unfinished Church

Lewis said that this church was to replace St. Peters, but they were building the cathedral in town and there was a fire. So they took the money that was for this church and rebuilt the cathedral - they decided that St. Peters was 'good enough'

Tobacco Bay

We went by the huge horrible hotel which was bigger than it was in October when I was here. I didn't take a photo of it. We saw the memorial to the Sea Venture (the original boat that was shipwrecked) which I had not seen before.

Memorial to the Sea Venture

Lewis said that the Sea Venture was taking on water and they were bailing 24/7 to stay afloat, so that when they came to Bermuda, they deliberately beached the ship. They were able to get everyone and all the provisions and things like the mast and spars and rigging off the ship. Having the mast and spars would definitely have helped them in building a new ship so they could get off the island.

We went back to the ship along the south shore so our youngest granddaughter could see the pink sand beaches. She didn't want to climb down to the beach and she wasn't that impressed.

Pink sand beach from the road

Although I said Bob should sit back with me, our daughter was sitting in the back with me. I think the twists and turns in the road were starting to give her a problem.

We got held up for about a half hour by an accident - a tourist who ran his moped into a car and got a bunch of road rash. Lewis said he would not charge us for that time. He said no Americans should rent scooters because they were not accustomed to driving on the left. But our daughter and son-in-law who have toured in the US on their motorcycles and they also lived three years in Okinawa where they drive on the left said that they were going to come back to Bermuda (on an airplane) and rent scooters and they did not think they would have any problem.

The other two couples had an evening catamaran sail but they were back in time for dinner

At dinner I had the

Short Ribs

(which I had before and knew would be good) and for dessert.

Lemon tart

I took a photo of this dessert but neglected to make a note of what it was called

A dessert on the menu which I didn't get

This morning was Chocolate morning in the Great Gatsby dining room. In October I had a delicious piece of moist chocolate bread, so I ordered it again

Chocolate bread

and I had

Chocolate waffle

This time the bread was dry - although since it was chocolate it was still OK.

I had intended to go back to the National Museum (formerly the Martime Museum) but I saw on the internet (while I was looking for something else) that there was a free re-enactment walk of the Dockyard area at 9:30. So we got off and I went looking for where this would start. I scootered off the dock, and asked at the taxi drivers area and they didn't know so I went to the Visitor's Center (which I think is primarily to arrange tours) and they pointed out where the tour was to start - by the Moon gate.

A real watergate

We got there just in time. There was a lady in costume waiting there and she started out by saying that her husband had gone off without his breakfast so she was going to look for him and we could come along.

Our guide

Then we met a man in the red coat uniform with the big bearskin hat - he was a hoot. He explained about the fort and showed us the arrows which marked the fort as British property (he said prisoners all had the same arrow on their arms). He said WD stood for War Department.

Explaining the Arrow and WD 40

They said that after the end of the Revolution, the British needed someplace in the Atlantic that they could re supply war ships so that they could still control the seas. Bermuda lacked two things that the ships needed - salt (to preserve food) and alcohol (to preserve water as water in a cask will go bad after about a week). Although they are surrounded by salt water they couldn't just get salt from the ocean because it was too humid and the water wouldn't evaporate out of it. It would just be a nasty brine.

Bermuda is not tropical so they couldn't grow the sugar cane and had to import the rum from the West Indies - and they also imported slaves from there. The Africans in Bermuda didn't come direct from Africa.

Following the footprints

Originally the dockyard area, which is on Ireland Island, was a farm owned by a man named John Ireland. So not named after the country of Ireland. It was hilly, and they had to level it off to make the Dockyard. Some of the walls of the fort are the original limestone - they cut down to get to level land, but rather than leveling everything off and then building a wall, they just left enough of the stone to serve as the bottom of the wall.

Looking at the fort walls

British officer

In order to build the dockyard they needed labor. So they had indentured servants who were to serve a term of 7 years. But there were too many servants and not enough masters, so they extended the indentured term to 99 years. They also used convicts who were imported from England - England didn't have enough of them, so they made a bunch of new rules so as to get more convicts (like anyone that complained about the Irish potato famine had committed treason). The convicts were housed on old ships and they wore leg irons all the time. A lot of them died of course. England asked Bermuda did they want to keep the convicts and Bermuda said they did not want to be a penal colony, so all the convicts that survived were shipped back to England and may have ended up in Australia.

Old lady from the past

He's making a face

She told us to the Victualling Yard which was where they slaughtered the animals and salted the meat. (She said it did not smell good) There was an old lady re-enacter there and she had some interchanges with the British officer guy.

Then we met a Cooper.

Cooper

He explained why barrels had a belly (that is they are bigger in the middle than on the ends). It is so you can roll them and steer even around a corner. He explained how they made the barrels and said there were three kinds. Dry vented (so that things inside could get some air), Dry Tight and Wet Tight.

Barracks/prison

Our guide pointed out a big building on the hill and she said that was the barracks for the soldiers in the fort. She said it had a very thick roof - from the top of the second story windows to the top of the roof - that what appeared to be a third story set of windows was just for decoration. There are really only two ways in past the reefs. One was the way the cruise ships come in, and that way was protected by the Dockyard fort. But there was another smaller way on the other side of the island - the barracks protected that side - that's why the barracks are so far from the fort. She said the workers could walk along the wall from the barracks to the fort.

The building was then used as a prison, but the conditions were too bad even for prisoners so they built a max-security prison and the building is now being renovated for archeology interns and people like that to use.

At some point we were interrupted by a big travel lift that was bringing a boat out of the water, so we moved all the way over to the clocktower mall.

Clock tower mall

She said that originally the mechanism to run the hands of the clock was too weak to actually run the clock but that the America's cup people fixed the clock so that it actually runs now. And I noticed that the tide clock also appeared to be operational.

Tide clock

She explained that there had been actual people like the British officer and her husband Thomas. Thomas was the dockyard artist. Since they didn't have cameras, you would have someone draw an item so you would have a record of what it looked like. But the little old lady and the cooper were nat based on actual individuals but were just a representation of people that would have been there at the time.

At the end of the tour I went into the Clocktower Mall just to see what was there - I did not really intend to buy anything. But I saw some little pink sand lockets that were kind of cute so I bought one for my granddaughter so she could see how pink the sand was up close. And Bob bought some rum cake as gifts for Lynde and Jean (the cat sitter)

Shop in the clocktower mall

Our daughter's family did the National Museum, and the others did the Hidden Highlights tour which involved cliff jumping and some other fun activities. They mistakenly thought (due to the tour write-up) that there was no snorkeling so they failed to bring their snorkeling gear. Which was too bad because they had brought the gear with them.

We went back to the ship and had to eat in the Windjammer as the main dining room was not open. I had a couple of hot dogs - I always want hot dogs at home, and we never have them so I figured I should eat them where I could find them on the buffet.

The ship left at 2. We went to Trivia and we missed the first planet to be discovered with a telescope and we missed the name of the country that meant Lion Mountain (Sierra Leone) and the Star Wars actor that was in American Graffiti. There were two questions that they did not understand or hear the question correctly. They all thought the country with the longest monarchy was England because they mistakenly thought that it was the longest ruling monarch (which would probably have been Victoria) I knew it was Japan but they would not listen to me. There was also a question which asked what Great Lakes state you were in if you were in Hell, and they totally missed that it had to be one of the Great Lakes states and said Mississippi when I knew it was probably Michigan. (and it was)

After trivia was dinner. We had a long table which was not very satisfactory. I had the

Caprese salad

and I am not sure what else I ate. My son had the extra price lobster. Bob and I went back to the room where we had a towel animal and a note to put our clocks forward.

Towel animal

I think the rest of them went to Conference Room B (which I told my daughter about) and played dominos.

I did not take many photos of the last day - we had breakfast in the dining room and I had the

Eggs Benedict without the ham

We had lunch in the main dining room and Bob had just a big plate of shrimp

Bob's lunch

and ice cream. I had a nice

Lunch casserole

and a little bit of salad that I put some shrimp on

Chopped salad with shrimp

and a chocolate pudding/cookie bar (I didn't write down what they called it)

Lunch dessert

At dinner I had the

Coconut shrimp appetizer

and for dessert,

Bread pudding with coffee ice cream

but I don't remember what I had as the main course. Then my daughter actually reserved Conference room B and we went and played Mexican train dominoes.

Granddaughter's photo of Mexican train dominoes in Conference room B

I got an email that I would have my OBC for owning stock applied to my account but I did not get the credit.

We got our luggage tags and were #1 - why I do not know as we had no deadline to meet. We got the disembarkation instructions which were that we were to go to deck 6 and wait for our time to be called, but I was not going to do that - it is too hard to get and elevator at disembarkation. So about 7, we loaded all our hand luggage on the scooter with me, and we went to breakfast (on deck 4). Our daughters families got there first and so when we got there we went to the table where they had saved us a place. I had an omelet. Service was pretty slow.

Our daughter had packed her room key card in the jeans she was wearing yesterday so she did not have a card to show. She went to guest services and they said it was too late to get another card, to just get off without it.

The dis-embarkation screen on the TVs was totally and completely confusing. It had a listing of all the numbers and projected times, and then there was a box at the bottom which said it was the numbers that had been called. On Wednesday night, the night before we got to the port, they listed all the numbers as having been called. If you had not looked at the screen until Thursday morning, you would think that all the numbers had been called and you could get off. But that was not true.... on the 19th, my granddaughter A. set off for France