Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Catch-Up Day - Tuesday, 22 May 2012

We're back home in San Diego after a very long day traveling from Oslo to London to San Diego to Chula Vista.  Genea-Musings will soon return to its regular programming!

I will add daily summaries of our vacation to The Geneaholic blog (www.geneaholic.com) and link the posts to my daily "What I think we're doing" posts here on Genea-Musings so that interested readers can see what we did without adding a lot of personal posts to Genea-Musings.

Some observations:

*  British Airways 777 aircraft were not wonderful as far as traveling in economy is concerned.  The San Diego to and from London flights were full, cramped, the food was poor (a dinner meal and a snack later), and the entertainment system sucked.  We had to pay to reserve seats before the flight.  At least they didn't charge extra for Linda's walker that we checked.

*  The weather was pretty good once we got out of Oslo.  The Friday (11 May) was very gray and damp, but we had a great time with geneablogger Torill Johnsen (see her blog post about the visit at http://www.disnorge.no/cms/lederblogg/geneablogger-p-bes-k).  It rained a bit in Paris also, but was dry after that.

*  The Vision of the Seas cruise ship was pretty nice - well organized and efficient (Royal Caribbean International is a Norwegian company!).  We ate breakfasts and lunches in the Windjammer Cafe on Deck 9.  The outdoor swimming pool on Deck 9 was not used at all due to the cool weather.  Linda really enjoyed the indoor pool and hot tubs on Deck 9 in the Solarium.  Our cabin was 3006, near the bow on the port side, right over the maneuvering engines used to position the ship in ports.  The cabin had two twin beds put together to form a king bed, a desk, a couch, a closet and a bathroom with a small shower (like 5 square feet!).

*  Dinner was in the Aquarius Dining Room on Deck 4 mid-ship.  The Legacy Family Tree group had the early 6 p.m. seating and sat at Tables 18 through 44.  We were encouraged to move around and meet people.  Linda and I stayed at Table 32 because the waiter was very sensitive to Linda's allergy problems and we needed that.  It was fun to meet and share meals and stories with the other Legacy cruisers.

*  The Legacy Family Tree staff (Ken, Dave, Luc and Geoff, and their spouses) and travel agent (Christy and spouse Steve, who took many photos!) were very friendly and helpful and fun to be with.  We had a meet and greet on the day we boarded, and everybody got a Legacy name tag with a pouch for key cards, a pen, etc.  There were at least three other genea-bloggers on the cruise - Geoff Rasmussen (Legacy News), Donna Peterson (Hanging from the Family Tree) and Kay Haden (Leaves of the Tree).  A number of the Legacy group said that they were Genea-Musings readers also, and it was great to put faces with names.

*  The Legacy genealogy classes had good attendance (about 100 of the Legacy group of 170 were genealogists) and were well presented.  The first and third days of classes were in a conference room with seats and some tables for laptops, but the second day of classes (morning and afternoon) were in a lounge where most of the attendees were far away from the screen across the dance floor.  The afternoon session was delayed by the cruise ship Bingo games running long, which made us all late for the second formal dinner.  I missed the classes on the first day (slept in without checking the schedule), but made the rest of them.  Judy Wight did a great job with her four classes on English, Irish and Scottish research.  I gave two talks on the third class day - "The Genealogical Proof Standard" and "Searching Ancestry.com Effectively."

*  The shore excursions were fairly expensive and ran on time, and the ones we took had good guides.  However, the ones we took were on a bus with all of the boarding problems.  Linda was able to sit in the front row on the buses and the drivers were happy to get her walker out at each stop.  We went on the Paris Sightseeing with Lunch and Boat Ride tour, the Leisurely Dublin Panoramic tour, and the Liverpool Beatles tour. We did not go on a tour in Cherbourg or Edinburgh.

*  The only exercise I got was walking the stairs and decks (which was good for me...but my feet hurt) and playing shuffleboard on Deck 10 twice with Geoff and Luc.  They let me play, and I was almost as good as they were.  The first time was while we were at sea - the ship was going 20 knots, the wind was about 20 knots, so we had 40 knots over the deck that curved the pucks some and occasionally blew them sideways.  Plus the air temperature was about 50 F (10 C) - we were in jackets.   The second time I played was while docked in Liverpool and it was calmer!  I shot worse the second time.

*  Believe it or not, Ken and Diane got Linda and I on the dance floor on Friday night, and we had a great time with them and several other couples.

*  Nine days on a cruise ship seems like enough...but we signed up for the next Legacy Family Tree cruise from San Diego through the Panama Canal to Fort Lauderdale in September 2013.  It's a 16 day cruise!

*  Thank you to Ken, Dave, Luc, Geoff and Christy for arranging a wonderful and fun cruise with genealogy highlights.  It's a lot of fun to share a cruise experience with genealogy friends and to come back knowing a lot more people.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/05/catch-up-day-tuesday-22-may-2012.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

7 comments:

VacaGrammy said...

Welcome home... Hope you and Linda get a chance to get over the "Jet Lag" which seems to accompany long distance travel!

DearMYRTLE said...

WELCOME back, Randy! We missed you, but know that you've to must have had a wonderful time.

GeniAus said...

Missed you, Randy. Welcome home.
Pleased that you enjoyed your cruise - I am going on my first geneacruise next February from Sydney when I hope to have similar fun.

Elizabeth Saunders said...

Welcome back, Randy. So Glad you got to go on this voyage!

Geolover said...

Great you had such a good time -- I'd need a couple more days catchup sleep time!

Minibulletin -- Ancestry is running a webcast tomorrow, May 23, on search tips/tricks in NewSearch. Announcement here (where maybe 5 people will see it):

http://boards.ancestry.com/2010-Search-Beta/123/mb.ashx

Charles said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Charles said...

Great you had a good time, nice explanation of the whole cruse also.
I did not miss you as I was away from my computer for several days also, but back home now also