Port 1 - Portland Maine October 2, 2010

When we woke up Saturday morning, we were docked in Portland Maine. I had ordered room service & we had coffee & ice tea and sweet rolls on our balcony overlooking the city.

Me & Bev as we get off the ship.

A view of our ship from a bridge. It is Large!

We asked a local person as we got off the ship of a good place for breakfast. He pointed us towards Becky's Diner which was Wonderful. A local place, jammed with people & with Great food! We walked along the waterfront probably 3/4 mile to get there.

After breakfast we walked towards town. Thought this sign was funny!

Loved this metal cover. Figured I could use it in my journal somehow. :-)

Downtown

Pretty Trim. I can see using this as a background for something in my art work. Or maybe carving a stamp. :-)

We were about 2 weeks early for the color, but every here & there we saw some colorful trees.

I took a bus excursion in the afternoon to Portland Head Light. I LOVE lighthouses. I was a little disappointed I couldn't get to more of them, and the ones I could were "excursions", which mostly means a long bus ride & maybe 15 minutes at the destination point. This lighthouse did not have a Fresnel Lense which I asked about. Impressed our guide. LOL It is a working lighthouse however and quite pretty.

This is a working light of some sort and I have forgotten what our guide told us about it. It is the last functional one...........whatever it is. LOL Looks like an inland lighthouse to me. I'll have to google it & find out again what it was.

In restrospect, we probably should have checked out the area closer to the ship.....we didn't get back to this area until quite a bit later in the day. There were several very cute streets with shops and restaurants. We never did stop for lunch so we missed the chowder and lobster rolls. But we did get some time to walk around & shop a bit.

Leaving Portland. I tried & tried to get good pictures of the lighthouses as we set sail. For my birthday last week, Dave got me a Digital SLR camera!!! How I Wish I had had it on the ship. Next time. :-) I did get some ok pix though. This is Portland Head Light from the ship.

There were 2 Small lighthouses near the port....this might be Bug Light.

Pictures are out of order again. Someday I'll learn how to get these in, in the right order!!! Meanwhile, backing up, here is Bev on our Balcony watching as we set sail from Portland.

We head up to watch the sunset tonight. The weather was Beautiful today, and the sunset should be very pretty.

Leaving New York & Heading To Sea

Thursday, September 30 we left the Hampton Inn in Manhattan and headed to the ship. We set sail at 5 PM tonight. Here are Sally & Bev, waiting for our transfer bus, which took quite some time to get there. We had 2 buses, but only 1 showed up on time. But eventually we got moving..........only to spend well over an hour waiting in a line of buses at the port to be able to get off & board the ship.

But Finally we are let off the bus and check to be sure our luggage made it, which it did. :-) Then we move through the lines to turn in our medical forms, show our passports and get our Sail Pass that we Live by for the next 10 days.

We set sail on time and head out of Port Liberty. There is a big storm coming in to hit the New York area tonight and for the next couple of days, so the view is pretty fogged in and it is starting to rain. The first day at sail we had some rock & roll times due to the storm & high seas. Fun! :-)

With all of the delays, we are Starving, so we head to the Windjammer for lunch around 2:30. Our dinner time is 5:30 so we Think we are going to eat lightly......best laid plans.

Oops, pictures out of order. Here is our ship, Explorer of the Seas.

More pictures On the ship....the upper decks & one pool area, one of the pool bars, some pix of the Promenade, Bev up top to watch as we leave New York.

Our first night dinner in the dining room, table 322. Several of us had shared table 300 on the cruise to Mexico, and Jaci was able to get us together at a table again. That was Fun!

Here is Barbara and Stephanie with our main server, Kenyata. I was able to remember his name as I've been following Zenyatta, the winning race horse! Kenyata knew of Zenyatta also. I liked Kenyata. He took very good care of us and was very enjoyable.

Ahhh, names.........I Might have this right.......this is Maryann (who Won the Free Cruise next year!!!), Sarah? and Barbara who are travelling together.

Just loved these pages in the drink menu. :-)

Here is Susan, Me and Bev. Then Bev & I after we stopped laughing & started behaving LOL.

Here are Stephanie and Andrea who kept us laughing much of the time. :-)

OK, I take food pictures. LOL First night I had a caeser salad and a shrimp & scallop skewer over a potato cake with vegies & sauce. This was probably the best meal I had on the cruise. For everything that was Wonderful on the cruise....one thing that wasn't was the food. :-( This was only my second cruise, but on the cruise to Mexico, the food was Amazing! Even in the Windjammer........I couldn't wait to see what they would have the next day. Our dinner in the dining room on this cruise was less than 1/2 the quality of Mexico. And the Windjammer........ahhhh, exactly the same thing every single day. It wasn't good the first day and it never got to be good. It was basically maintenance food. Not the Amazing food I was looking forward to from Mexico. We actually ended up not going to the dining room several evenings. However.......that had quite a bit to do with my Loving Sunsets and not wanting to be sitting in the dining room for 2 hours & missing every sunset! It's too bad it takes SO Long to have dinner! It's 1/2 hour between getting a menu, then ordering, then getting the first dish.....it just drags On & On & On. I just can't sit that long, even though I totally enjoyed the company! I apologize to my table..............I just couldn't sit inside with the Spectacular sunsets that were going on outside. Next year........I may just resign myself to not eating in the dining room at all. It is just Too Early and takes Too Long. We need to figure out somewhere to meet next year other than dinner in the dining room table. :-) At least some of the time?

Friday we were at sea and I was in Group 1. We had our class in the morning this day. Tim Never disappoints and we made a Wonderful journal to use along the way on the cruise! First is Karen (keychain) bringing Tim's journal around for us all to see.

There were 80 people in each class, but Tim and his crew had everything set up so it was easy to see, all supplies were set out on the tables, we didn't need to bring Anything as Always with Tim. :-)

And here is my journal. I loved the way we could pick up postcards, punch them and add them to the journal after the fact. I haven't actually added anything further to my journal yet, but certainly Hope I still Will. Especially since I have a bag that probably weights 10 pounds full of Stuff I collected to put in a journal! LOL!