Sea Day Shenanigans and a Port Call at Falmouth, UK

Here's some of the activities of the last few sea days designed to keep the passengers entertained.

Cake Day:

Picture by Martha

Picture by Martha

Towel Animal Day, where one could learn how to craft said creatures.  We didn't attend, just viewed the results.

Picture by Martha

Design and build your ship day, Martha attended the showing:

Picture by Martha

Picture by Martha

Picture by Martha

I know, I know, pretty exciting stuff right.  But given the Gray Tsunami demographics for this cruise line....it's what you get.  Much more preferable to the frenetic fun seeking action on Carnival Cruise Lines I'm sure.

Today, Wednesday, April 16

Our first port call in the UK, and the only one where one has to take a ship's tender to get to shore.  Falmouth's harbor, while the third deepest in the world would not accommodate our ship.  Probably due to her large size.

Pendennis Castle from our ship cabin

Ship's Tenders

Immigration checks by the UK Border Force progressed quite smoothly under the ship's management as was the shuttling of passengers onto the ship's tenders.  I believe the ship launched at least five of its tenders and hired a couple more commercial ones to ferry people to/from the ship.

The immigration checks were only for passengers, not the crew.

I was feeling a bit crabby due to an annoying passenger we were next to while awaiting immigration, so Martha steered us to a pub soon after we got off the shuttle bus from the port.

It also probably didn't help we were packed into the ship tenders like sardines for the 30 minute ride to the city from the ship.

Re-centering my Qi

Yep, I was day drinking but I checked with 

the bartender and he said it was fine.  :)

Picture by Martha

Though there was public wifi provided by the city of Falmouth, it was a bit spotty.  So we used the wifi at the pub to catch up on texts and resolve some banking glitches we'd experienced aboard ship.

We wandered about the city's main or High Street.  Some of the things that caught our eyes:

This Landing Ship Dock "Cardigan Bay"

We ate lunch (Fish and Chips) by the water

Picture by Martha

Picture by Martha

We checked out the Parish Church.  Martha spotted this print on cloth picture of the church from back in the day.  

Then we went and found the same view:

I mentioned we had Fish and Chips for lunch, the shop we got it at claimed Best in the Country honors for their Fish and Chips.  We found the fish good but couldn't eat more than say half of the enormous amount of fries or "chips" that were included!

After lunch and some light shopping by Martha, we returned to the dock where we caught a returning tender with minimal waiting.

Inside Tender #20

A look under the pier....

One more view of the Pendennis Castle from the window of the ship's tender that returned us back to the ship:

 

I'm happy to report the return trip back to the ship was in a barely half filled ship's tender.  

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting up.  The city had gotten quite crowded with people in the later morning.  It was apparently a school break week so there were families out enjoying the sunny weather.  Add them to the crowds from the cruise ship and I'm sure we got on the nerves of the locals.

Tomorrow, we have a port call in Weymouth, UK.

Note:  Took me a while but finally connected the fact that so many English towns' name end in mouth because they are sited at the mouth of a river.  The river Fal runs into the bay at Falmouth, Weymouth is at the mouth of the Wey River and so on.