a 16 day cruise and a week in London
By: Norman J. Olson
on May 3, 2024, we left our home on McKnight Road in Maplewood, Minnesota and walked about 5 blocks to the bus stop on Nokomis Street and Stillwater Road… we caught the 74 bus to the 46th Street train station in Minneapolis to get the Blue Line train from there to the airport (MSP)… there we got the late flight that got into Fort Lauderdale at about midnight… the airport shuttle of our favorite Fort Lauderdale dive hotel was supposed to stop at 11 pm, but I thought I would call the hotel anyway and see if by chance the shuttle could pick us up… I have often said that the hardest part of travel is getting good information… the internet is a source of information but one problem with the internet is that for it to be useful to a traveler, the information has to be up to date… keeping information up to date requires someone to either enter the new data and erase the old or at least to inform the ai machine that such an action needs to be taken…
as in the case of our favorite pre-cruise dive hotel… so, it turned out that when I called the hotel, the front desk told me that the shuttle actually ran until midnight and they would be by to pick us up… which proved to be the case… this hotel has a great free shuttle both from the airport to the hotel and for the next day from the hotel to the cruise port, Port Everglades… this hotel is a bit seedy but the shuttle is great… we always try to arrive at least a day early for any ocean voyage because the ships do not delay their departure to wait for passengers and if there is anything we have learned from these years of travel, it is that air travel is always a bit of a crap shoot… flights are delayed and cancelled, weather can mess things up, the planes are very complex machines and any of a million things can get out of whack mechanically, flight crews can be delayed… etc. etc…
so, in this case, there was an easy flight the evening before the ship left, so we took it… since we did not get to the hotel until after midnight, it was too late to sign up for the shuttle to Port Everglades… so, the next morning, we grabbed an Uber and got to the ship around 11 am… the ship was a beautiful white cruise liner which held about 3140 passengers and another 1200 crew… in the winter this ship, like many others does cruises around the Caribbean from Florida… in the summer, the ship moves to Europe to do European cruises… this move is called a “repositioning” cruise… in our case, the crossing took 16 days with stops at the Azores, Cork Ireland, Falmouth England, Portland England and LeHavre France, before landing at the old British ocean liner port of Southhampton…
I am not a spokesperson for or apologist for the cruise industry and indeed, I do not know much about the industry… but if you want to see the deep ocean without joining the Navy and cannot afford a private yacht, this is about the only way I know of to do it…
so we boarded the ship and had a great meal at the buffet, which is always on one of the top decks, usually called, “the Lido Deck”… and stowed our belongings in our cabin… the cabins in these ships are small by shoreside standards, but we had a small balcony this time so a slightly larger cabin than usual, fairly high on the ship on deck 12… two decks below the Lido…
during the regular cruise season, these ships seldom go more than one day without stopping at a port… during a repositioning cruise, there are no ports to stop at between Florida and the Azores, so we had six at sea days in a row to start the cruise… I love the ocean… it is so big and so blue… and something stirs the old romantic in me to hear the captain announce that the closest land is North Africa, 1400 miles away… we were lucky these first six days and had gorgeous weather… the sea was calm and the immense sky was blue with a warm sun and a cool breeze… this ship had a deck closer to the water called the Promenade Deck, which is the deck just below the lifeboats which passengers use to walk… on some of these ships, you can walk all the way around the ship and on many, you can only go part way around… there is also a jogging track way at the top of the ship for those who are energetic… while at sea, as when I am on land, I try to walk 40 minutes every day… on the ship that was about 4 times around the Promenade deck… when not doing my walk, I like to sit in a deck chair on the Promenade deck… I usually have a novel with and my little drawing board, so I can sit and look out at the ocean while working on a drawing or reading my book betwixt and between… when it is calm like this, the ocean is like a vast blue bowl, with the waves growing smaller with perspective until the bright razor edge where the sea ends and the sky starts… we saw very few ships on this crossing… an occasional container ship piled impossibly high with containers stacked so you can barely see the superstructure of the ship… or an equally massive oil tanker riding low in the water like a black stripe on the blue… we did see one sail yacht about halfway across and I wondered who was on the yacht… and how long it had taken them to get to where we saw them…
and so, we made our way across the Atlantic Ocean to Punta Delgada, and Island that is part of Portugal, in the middle of the Atlantic… we have been here several times before and in the past have taken tours to most of the “points of interest” so, we decided to just walk around the lovely little city, have a look at the shop windows and get coffee and soda at a small sidewalk restaurant… the restaurant we chose was on a square with a lovely garden/park in the middle… there was a green lawn with benches and banks of brightly colored flowers, mostly red and yellow… the sidewalk is made of small squares of tile which are kind of uneven so, us old people have to be careful walking… we had thoroughly enjoyed the six days at sea, but it was also good to be on land again for a while…
a typical day at sea would start with me going up to the buffet and getting two cups of coffee for Mary… I would then make another trip up to the buffet to get myself a cup of decaf coffee and breakfast… Mary does not have a meal usually until lunch… normally, I do not drink coffee… at home, I usually start the day with a soda… on the ship, coffee is free while there is a charge for soda, so I opt for the coffee… because I am very sensitive to caffeine, I would get decaf… the coffee seemed very strong to me, so I would fill a coffee cup one fourth way with coffee, add hot water and milk to fill the cup the rest of the way… then I would gather breakfast… the rolls and croissants were fresh and delicious and so, I would usually get a roll or croissant with some butter and raspberry jam, a fried egg and two pieces of bacon, and that would make a great breakfast… I would bring that down to our stateroom and we would then go out on the balcony for breakfast… the ocean stretched in a circle from our perch 12 stories up and every day, there was a warm morning sun along with a cool breeze to make a very nice setting for breakfast… then, after breakfast, I would find a place on the promenade deck in a deck chair to sit and read or draw… this deck which is much closer to the water, featured a long row of wooden deck chairs and a constant stream of people walking by, getting their daily walk in… the lifeboats usually hang just above the promenade deck on these ships, so it is a shady spot when the sun gets warm… I liked to sit toward the front of the ship where the rolling crash of the ship through the North Atlantic swells was the background sound…
Mary would either join me in a deck chair to read or listen to an audio book or leave to attend one of the activities going on… they often have retired college professors on these cruises to give talks on various subjects of interest, for example, and Mary enjoys those “enrichment” lectures… then at about 3:00 PM, I would do my forty minute daily walk… then for an hour, Mary and I would find a sheltered space on the pool deck to play the board game she loves to play… then we would get ready and go to dinner at 5:00 PM… the dinners on this ship were really good and we would be at a table with from six to ten other people, for shared dining and conversation… our fellow passengers were mostly retired persons from all over the USA plus, a lot of Canadians… many of the retirees were from Florida, people who had lived in the colder areas of the USA, but had moved to get away from the cold winters… I found it continuingly amazing that we had such good conversations with so many people from so many varied backgrounds… it is great to be reminded that the things that bind us together as humans are far more numerous and important than our differences… as one would guess, there was lots of talk of grandchildren at these tables… of course, we all worked to avoid political discussions or indeed arguments and disagreements generally…
from Punta Delgada, we sailed three more days at sea to Cork, Ireland… these sea days were a bit different as the days were cooler than they had been and more importantly, according to the ships captain, an area of low pressure was before us… at sea, low pressure almost always means bad weather… in this case, the sea got much rougher and the days were cold and rainy… but for us, it did not matter as I have a medication that I take constantly to prevent seasickness and the ship is large with large public areas and lounges where we could still sit and read or draw while looking out the windows at the larger swells and waves, the grey skies and the squalls of rain and wind… the ship had steered around the worst of the bad weather so we were about half a day late getting into Cork… so instead of a whole day to explore the city, we just had a few hours… where the ship was docked was actually a half hour train ride from the city of Cork proper… the weather had cleared so it was sunny but cool when we got on the train to Cork… we did not have much time there, but we enjoyed seeing the lush green Irish countryside during the train ride… we walked around the town a bit again enjoying having dry land underfoot… we found a small sidewalk café where we stopped so Mary could get a coffee and I a soda… we enjoyed the sun and the amazing accents of the people chattering away around us… then we walked back to the station and made our way back to the ship…
our next port was Falmouth which is in Cornwall… we walked around the town on a beautiful sunny day… there was one long main street lined with shops, coffee places and restaurants… we visited the local library which was on a square just off the main street and a nearby bookstore where I bought a used book, a memoir of a WWI soldier who was in the battle of the Somme… we changed in some of our dollars for pounds at the local post office and as usual, found a lovely coffee shop were we could sit for a while and people watch…
from Falmouth, we went to the town of Portland… Portland is located on a small island and is a short bus ride from the much larger town of Weymouth… so we took the bus to Weymouth… the bus let us off in a quaint square a couple blocks from the river Wey… there we found a small holiday tram which consisted of a four or five cars pulled by a tractor like vehicle decorated to look like a train that you might find in a theme park… we took this train for a tour around the town and got off at the beach… the beach stretched a long way around a semicircle of the bay with a busy street fronting on the beach… there were some bars and restaurants set up on the beach side and along the other side of the street were restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops… it was warm and sunny so there were lots of people on the beach, many families with little children… we found a nice spot for a coffee and soda on a patio looking out over the beach and enjoyed the view of the parents and children… then we looked at the shops and spent some time looking at the fishing boats tied up at the bank of the river… eventually we made our way back to the ship…
the next day we were at Le Havre, France… Le Havre is on the Normandy coast… many of the passengers took tours from Le Havre to Paris or to the d-day beaches of Normandy, a few hours away… we have been to Le Havre before and it is a pleasant French town… we did not take the tour to Paris because that would involve a long train ride and not enough time in Paris to really do much… we did not go to the d-day memorials because that seemed like such a sad and frustrating experience… I really hate everything about war and the fact that many people killed each other at that spot was for me a cause of great sadness and not celebration… there is a modern church in Le Havre and in that church, we saw some pictures of the city absolutely flattened at the end of World War II and even after all these years the city still has, I think a psychic scar, observable in the ugly 1950s architecture, of being so terribly wounded… and still today, the people on this planet have not learned to live together in peace… it all seems very sad to me…
so, in Le Havre, we took a city bus to the top of a high hill and walked down through a park they call the hanging gardens… actually the only part of the hanging gardens we saw was the rose garden at the top, as we walked on a path that went down almost to the beach through a woods… the woods was lovely with birdsong and tangles of green underbrush and big trees, and an easy walk… when we got to the end of the park, we still had like six blocks of steep streets to get down to the beach… we then walked a mile or so along the beach, enjoying another warm sunny day… there are small restaurants in canvas tents all along the beach specializing in crepes and other luncheon food… we stopped frequently to enjoy the sun and watch the people walking along the promenade or enjoying themselves on the beach…
the next day, we got off the ship at Southampton and walked to the local bus station… I had booked tickets on a National Express bus for 12:30 pm so we got to the station about an hour early… the station was a madhouse with lots of people from the ship trying to get the direct bus to Heathrow… our bus to London’s Victoria Coach Station was about two thirds full… after a few pleasant hours on the bus, enjoying the English countryside, we got to London… the drive through London was interesting as we got to see neighborhoods well away from the famous center of London were the tourist stuff is…
from Victoria, we took the tube (subway) to Paddington Station which was close to our hotel… the room was very small with a tiny little shower that us big fat Americans barely fit into… but I chose it because from Paddington, we had terrific bus and subway service… there were lots of inexpensive restaurants across the street from Paddington, where I could get the full English breakfasts that I love… (the full English breakfast consists of two fried eggs, canned pork and beans, sauted mushrooms, a banger sausage and two pieces of English bacon along with toast and jam… Mary loves the coffee served in these restaurants, so was able to get a start on her day with an Americano Flat White…
our routine in London is to go to museums during the day and to a West End play every evening… the city is very easy to get around by tube and bus… that first day, we went to the National Gallery to see my favorite painting, an enigmatic piece by the mannerist painter Bronzino as well as many famous paintings by the great masters of European painting, with names like Velazquez, Vermeer, Caravagio, Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, and a host of others around every corner… l love feasting my eyes on all these amazing works… I don’t actually know if this art has any real value or message for the modern person, but there were crowds of people in the museum, if that is any indication… oddly, people seemed to want to take their own photos of the paintings, even though these paintings have been photographed perfectly by master photographers and detailed images are easily available on line… I first knew most of these paintings from books back when I was a teen and young adult and so to me a visit to this museum, which I have visited many times is a reunion with many old friends… I wish that I could visit the museum with a step ladder, so I could take a close up look at the brush work, etc. on some of these amazing works of art… but, I have to be content with seeing only the bottom few inches close up…
that evening we went to a play… the West End theaters are old and wonderful with creaky carpeted steps up to the balcony were our cheap seats would be located… the dancing, singing, acting, etc. is of the best and every way, I think, equivalent to Broadway, except at a much lower price… so we went to four different plays on the four days we were in London…
the next day, we went to a show of Michelangelo’s late drawings at the British Museum… it was a wonderful show for someone like me who has known all of these drawings intimately for many years and it is always a treat for me to see actual work from the hand of this artist who I love and admire so intensely and who has been such a big part of my life for so long… it was sad to see the very last drawings when that great artist was losing control of his hand and his line took on the shakiness of extreme old age… and to see him still struggling with the same image making that had obsessed him all of his long life was fascinating… to somebody like myself who has spent a lifetime attempting to draw the nude figure, it is wonderful to see how perfectly Michelangelo could do that and yet how he struggled even to the last days of his life to get that perfect image down that was so illusive and that perhaps revealed itself in a whole new dimension with his aging hand and eye…
that evening, we went to another play and the next day made a trip to the Guildhall gallery to see one of my favorite Rossetti paintings… and again to a play in the evening… the next day we went to the Tate Britian to see the Pre-Raphaelite paintings which were as lovely as always, although the Watts paintings did not seem to be on display which was a bit of a disappointment… the Tate Briton fancies itself an “modern” art museum, and I think they are not very invested in the wonderful collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings that they have… so, the exhibition space devoted to them is small and some of them are hung high so as to be almost impossible to see in any detail… while they usually have vast galleries filled with some contemporary installation of humming idiocy, I think this time is was cardboard figures… well, the world has certainly passed me by artistically and in the world of computer, AI generated art, so called conceptual installations, videos and photography, old fashioned painted images are very much a thing of the past… but then, I am also a thing of the past, and there is a reason why all of my old fashioned figurative paintings are piled in my garage and not on the walls of some museum… oh well… I am just glad that these paintings and drawings that I love so much are still on display and still have an audience.
the next day, we walked from our hotel across Hyde Park… it was another lovely sunny day and Hyde Park is a huge grassy/woodsy park in the middle of the city… the only complaint about Hyde Park is a dearth of park benches, so, we walked across the entire park before we found a place to sit and watch the world go by… the path we took across Hyde Park ended at the Victoria and Albert Museum so, we took the opportunity to visit another of my favorite Rossetti paintings, with a glance at some of their nice collection of William Blake paintings… then one more play and our trip was over…
the next day, we took the tube to Heathrow and got on a big airbus to Boston… we did not get on our flight to MSP, so we spent a night in Boston and the next day, May 25, 2024, made it home… a few days after we got home, Mary started having chest pains again and needed another cardiac procedure… so we are back to doctors and doctors appointments… we were glad and lucky to get our big trip in before the health problems cropped up and hopefully, we have been fixed up now so we can look forward at least to the summer without any more health scares….
three poems related to this story….
Flight from Heathrow to Logan
By: Norman J. Olson
the huge white Airbus
lifted off the runway at Heathrow…
from the air England looked cool and
green until we slipped
into the heavy clouds… soon we were
reborn from the clouds into a
new world of painfully blue skies and
bright sunshine… above a white
floor of clouds…
the big Rolls Royce engines droned
on powering us across the Atlantic
five miles up at 500 miles per hour…
the miracle of human flight has been
achieved not by mystics and dreamers,
but by aeronautical engineers and pilots…
Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be proud, I think…
I looked out the window for a while, but
the clouds were too bright, so I closed the
shade and watched an old Star Wars movie
and fell asleep until the big plane
touched down, with a thump and a roar
of reverse thrust, coming in to Boston over
the rippling sea….
Sailing into Cobh Harbor
By: Norman J. Olson
picture a lighthouse… I know lighthouses
are of no use to modern sea captains who
have computerized gps and radar systems
to tell them where they are… but
just humor me and
picture a smallish white lighthouse
on a spit of land… next to the lighthouse is
the lighthouse keeper’s dwelling, a small
white washed house with a few outbuildings
silhouetted in sunlight against the
burning blue of the sea…
picture green squares of fields up the hillside landward
from the lighthouse and a few
small boats…
picture me, elderly working class American
with artistic pretentions,
leaning on the railing of the huge white cruise
liner… as the ship slowly slips past the lighthouse,
its Azipods barely rippling the sea, followed by a heavy duty
red and yellow tug boat…
picture an achingly blue sky above the well rained,
green hills of Ireland, and you will see what
I saw as we sailed into Cobh, bound for a
brief stroll around the city of Cork…
Poetic Musings on the Deck of a Cruise Ship
By: Norman J. Olson
the huge ship churns the North Atlantic swells
into curling waves of foam and
turquoise… beyond the foaming bow wave,
the ocean is as vast and untroubled as
the void of the universe, except painted blue…
we walk around the deck, obsessed with our
minutia… talking about lunch or politics…
looking for flying fish… hoping against hope to
see a whale or a dolphin… I pause to lean on the railing…
I think of Hart Crane, whose poetry is as obscure
as the stars in the sky… he said, “goodbye” and jumped
over a railing much like the one I am leaning
on… he was a friend of Allen Tate, who was a teacher
at the university of Minnesota when I was there… I knew
he was there, and Berryman too… real poets, while
I was stomping around the campus with thick glasses and a
worn overcoat… failing half my classes, trying to write
immortal sonnets and paint renaissance masterpieces…
I was jealous that they were
poets while I could only be described as a sad
and unpromising failure… I remember when Berryman
jumped over a railing on the Washington Avenue
bridge… apparently being a college professor and
a real poet was not enough for him… I was just starting a
20 year career as a factory worker… I thought of approaching
one of them, “see! here! my sonnets! I am a poet too”
but I never got up the courage…
my failure as a poet is now 60 years old…
it is a long story how I wound up here, in the mid Atlantic,
gazing at the ocean from the deck of a huge opulent
cruise liner… still writing crappy poetry… still, in spite
of my success in this world, a “hollow man…”
they say these ships are always followed by
sharks on the lookout for fish the propellers turn
up… so I resisted the urge to do a high dive…