Green Team, Blue Team, Bruges Team

London day 2: After more baked beans for breakfast, we were off for a short excursion before heading to the ship. Paul and Juliet made a short trip to Westminster Abbey and then caught the bus to the ship. The Grafes and Cremins headed to the Tate Modern, a new museum housed in an old power station across the Millennium Bridge. Rebecca’s favorite piece was a cool Anish Kapoor sculpture (he’s the guy who did Chicago’s bean statue). We split into the blue and the green team (aka boys and girls teams). The Green Team headed to the hotel to pick up the suitcases and head to the train station. The blue team went to the Globe Theatre and squeezed in a trip to the shoe store . These expert shoppers were able to make it from the Tube to buy shoes and make it back to the Tube in 15 minutes – no small feat. Guess who was on each team? The teams met up at Waterloo (please sing along) with at least 10 minutes to spare and made it onto the train a whole 3 minutes before departure. Dennis’ blood pressure may have been a teensy bit elevated, although it must be noted that the blue team made it within time parameters by the skin of their teeth. They did concede victory to the Green Team. Go, green!
After a delightful train trip with sandwiches and wine, we arrived at the Southampton station and were whisked away in a taxi to the ship. After a quick embarking for Dennis and Rebecca and a lengthy wait for others, we met up for the martini of the day at the sailaway. Everyone likes their cabins. Dennis and Rebecca are in the crew zone this time, behind the forbidden doors. But they have a window! No more trying to guess if it’s day or night when they wake up. Dennis has desk hours two hours a day and lectures just on sea days. So just twice. Pretty sweet.
All 8 of us dined at table 20, making full use of all the menu offerings and closing down the dining room. After a very brisk and windy and hence short walk on the promenade deck, it was off to sleep.

Today we visited Bruges in Belgium, a lovely medieval town with horse-pulled carriages and boat canals and chocolate shops beyond your imagination. Divide and conquer was the theme with some of the group attending mass and visiting a museum and the other group checking out the chocolate shops and taking a lovely canal cruise. We met up for lunch at a restaurant with 400 beers! We only needed to try 50 beers each to make it through the selections. Just 49 more each to go! Then the boys rode bikes around the canals, and the rest of the group wandered and finished up shopping.

Then it was back to the boat for desk duty (Dennis), laundry (Julie, Juliet and Rebecca) and now the blog. Jennifer and Kim are doing who knows what. We suspect napping. We are sitting in the gorgeous sun (did we mention that it was in the 70s and beautifully sunny today?), listening to Mamma Mia as we type on Luther’s laptop awaiting the delivery of the drink of the day. Gotta love technology. Dinner is at 8. We’ll see if we can close the place down again! Tomorrow is a day at sea and then it’s Copenhagen.