England and Iberia in 2026

Three days in London, then a 14-night round-trip cruise from Southampton through Portugal and Spain

Posted by Brian Hart on August 16, 2026 · 188 mins read

Contents

England and Iberia Day 1

A delay, a tight connection, and a red-eye

  • Start of day: Home in North Carolina
  • End of day: Somewhere over the Atlantic

And so it begins.

Four packed roller suitcases staged together on the hardwood floor of a kitchen at home — a black softside bag with a luggage tag, a dark hardside spinner, a tan patterned bag with a yellow pineapple tag, and a large navy softside bag — with bar stools, a stainless refrigerator, and white cabinetry in the background

Our first flight, RDU to Atlanta, was delayed until 8:45pm. We learned this moments after our Uber pulled into the driveway to take us to the airport, so off we went anyway. The ride was fine; the driver didn’t help unload the luggage, though.

Zero wait at TSA PreCheck, with one exception: Sherri tried to take a bottle of water through and was escorted back out to the exit to try again.

Selfie in the Raleigh-Durham International Airport terminal, wearing a navy and white striped polo with a backpack strap over one shoulder, standing beneath the terminal's curved wooden roof beams and spiked metal sculpture, with a colorful 'Raleigh — Home of the NC State Wolfpack' mural and other travelers with luggage in the background

We hit the Club after that.

Interior of an airport lounge at RDU showing a curved granite bar with a stone-tiled wall behind it, three tapered pendant lights, recessed ceiling lighting, and wall-mounted televisions. A woman in black stands at the bar and a man in a striped shirt sits on a metal bar stool with a bag at his feet

As mentioned, the flight to Atlanta was delayed by at least 90 minutes, which left us without much time to connect in ATL.

RDU departures information board photographed at the airport, with a hand-drawn red circle marking the top two Atlanta Delta flights: DL 2621 at 7:59 PM from gate D3 showing a delayed status of 9:10 PM, and DL 1552 at 5:10 AM from gate D1 showing On Time. Additional departures to Boston, Charlotte, Chicago O'Hare, Austin, and Dallas/Ft Worth are listed below

Once we landed, we crossed from Terminal T to Terminal E with about 15 minutes before boarding started. We didn’t run, or even speed walk, but we certainly didn’t dally either. There were four direct ATL to LHR flights the next day, so I knew we had options if it came to that. Making this flight was clearly the best outcome.

I’ve become spoiled by my solo trips and Premium Select (or better) tickets. Truly. The economy seat on this flight had me head-bobbing the entire way across the Atlantic. Had we been in a more comfortable cabin, I would’ve taken a sleepy-time pill and time-travelled instead.

Part of the England and Iberia 2026 trip.

England and Iberia Day 2

Heathrow to Bankside, and 20,000 steps on no sleep

  • Start of day: Somewhere over the Atlantic
  • End of day: London, England

We landed from our flight that took off on July 29.

Delta seatback entertainment screen photographed from a darkened aircraft cabin, showing the My Flight page with an illustration of a Delta jet against a sunset sky, a distance of 4377 miles, an estimated arrival of 7 hours 47 minutes, and a red 'Track Your Flight' button. Overhead cabin lighting and the curved blue seatback of the row ahead are visible above the screen

Once we hit Heathrow, clearing customs and immigration was easy and automatic. We waited maybe one minute. There are automated gates that scan your passport and send you on your way. I assume it would’ve been more of a production had we not applied for and received our travel authorisations beforehand.

Selfie in a London Heathrow Airport corridor after landing, wearing a navy and white striped polo, standing beneath a yellow overhead sign reading 'Arrivals Baggage reclaim' with an up arrow and a purple sign for flight connections. A long empty white-walled walkway with a no-smoking notice and a red fire alarm point stretches into the background

From Heathrow we opted to take the train into central London. The signage getting over to the Elizabeth line was great! It’s a little twisty/turny, narrow in places, all clearly marked. We rode Elizabeth line to Farringdon, about half an hour, intending to connect to Thameslink. Once you’re actually at Farringdon there are a few Thameslink signs at the beginning, unfortunately not where they matter. We managed to figure it out. After a red-eye with no sleep I wasn’t in the mood for wrong trains.

Overhead electronic departure board at Farringdon station showing the first train at 14:17 to Sutton via Wimbledon in 5 minutes, calling at City Thameslink, London Blackfriars, Elephant and Castle, Loughborough Junction, Herne Hill, and Tulse Hill, with a note that the train is currently at London St Pancras. Later trains listed include Horsham at 14:19, Brighton via Gatwick Airport at 14:24, and Rainham in Kent at 14:37. A cancelled notice is partly visible on the adjacent screen

A white and blue Thameslink train stopped alongside a platform at Farringdon station, seen from the yellow platform edge line. The station has a curved glass and red steel roof over yellow brick walls with arched windows, and passengers are visible through the train windows with a worker in a hi-vis vest further down the platform

The Thamaeslink segment was only two stops, exiting at Blackfriars and then making a ~10 minute walk to the hotel.

We stayed at the Hilton London Bankside, and the main reason is worth calling out: they sell two connecting rooms as a single reservation, which means you’re guaranteed your connecting rooms rather than the ‘best effort’ style of most hotels.

Empty hotel guest room corridor with pale oak door surrounds and recessed ceiling lighting, receding in one-point perspective toward a distant green exit sign. Room numbers are mounted beside each door and a grey and teal patterned carpet runner runs down the center of the tiled floor

One of the two rooms was ready. We grabbed that key, stashed our stuff, and toured around the neighborhood for an hour to get our bearings. We walked down to the Thames, which was lively, then split up so Sher and Siena could grab a croissant.

Back at the hotel and settled into both rooms, we all went downstairs to the pool. It’s on basement level 2 and looks quite fancy.

Indoor hotel swimming pool on a basement level at the Hilton London Bankside, lit pale blue from underwater lights, with a stainless steel handrail and ladder at the near corner. Wicker loungers and chairs with cream cushions line the right-hand side beneath potted palms, and a backlit vertical slatted wall glows warm at the far end, reflecting on the still water

The pool room itself is warm and humid, like a Florida summer; the water was cool but not cold. Unfortunately, they’ve been very heavy-handed with the chlorine – after only a minute in the hot tub with the jets on our eyes started burning. We wrapped up, made use of the surprisingly nice changing rooms to shower off the chemicals, and changed back in to street clothes to explore more.

The afternoon was exclusively walking and touring. We first walked back down to Waterloo Station to scope out the route for our 8:35am train on Saturday. Adjacent to the station is Graffiti Tunnel, which is worth a look. From there we continued across Westminster Bridge, admiring Big Ben and Parliament – and all the social influencing happening in the vicinity – then onward to Buckingham Palace. It was an unplanned visit; we didn’t try to time it for the changing of the guard or anything else interesting.

We started back toward our neighborhood along Pall Mall and crossed back over on the Golden Jubilee Bridges. Between the Bridges has a number of food and beverage stalls set up and a lively crowd of locals (and new graduates?). Rowan scarfed down a hot dog and fries – “chips” – while Siena ate 10 pancakes. In her defense, they were half-dollar sized and had nutella on them.

By 9pm we were all physically destroyed. Not only had we not slept, we’d each racked up something like 20,000 steps. Everyone was passed out by 9:30. I slept ten and a half hours. Sherri was closer to eleven and a half. At home we maybe get six or seven hours.

A red London Routemaster double-decker bus wrapped in Peppa Pig Afternoon Tea Bus Tour advertising, parked on a tree-lined street. The rear panel reads 'Join us for Afternoon Tea' and features Peppa Pig characters at a tea party, with registration plate JSJ 747. Parked bicycles, a rental bike rack, and modern glass apartment buildings line the background

The Triptych Bankside residential towers seen from street level, with curving white balcony bands wrapping around terracotta and glass facades against a partly cloudy blue sky. At ground level people sit on wooden benches in a landscaped plaza with young trees and planters, and three men in business attire stand talking beside a Triptych information sign near the entrance

Shakespeare's Globe theatre in Bankside, London, a white timber-framed circular building with a thatched roof, photographed from the paved forecourt. Purple and green banners reading 'Shakespeare's Globe' and 'Imagine Together' hang from the facade, and a curved brick wall with a poster for the production 'A World Elsewhere' fronts the steps where visitors are entering. Pedestrians walk across the foreground on a partly cloudy afternoon

Selfie outside the Tate Modern in London, wearing sunglasses and a navy and white striped polo, standing beneath a large orange banner with white lettering reading 'Welcome to Tate Modern' mounted on the gallery's tan brick facade. A man with a black backpack walks past on the left and other visitors queue behind stanchions at the entrance

Inside the Leake Street Arches graffiti tunnel near Waterloo Station, a long curved railway underpass covered floor to ceiling in layered spray-painted murals and tags in bright pinks, blues, and yellows. A large monochrome portrait of a face is painted across the ceiling vault, cartoon characters cover the right-hand wall, and several people walk toward the daylight at the far end past red plastic barriers

The east front of Buckingham Palace photographed from across the empty forecourt on an overcast day, showing the full symmetrical stone facade with its central pediment and the Union Flag flying from the roof. A Royal Collection Trust A-board in the foreground reads 'Buckingham Palace — Scan to find out when you can visit and the top things to do near Buckingham Palace' with a QR code

The BFI Southbank cinema in London tucked beneath the concrete underside of Waterloo Bridge, its frontage lit by a bright magenta illuminated panel with black lettering reading 'Cinema' and 'BFI Southbank'. Potted plants and green planters edge an outdoor seating area where people sit at tables, and pedestrians walk across the paved terrace in the foreground

Part of the England and Iberia 2026 trip.

England and Iberia Day 3

Coffee, Carnaby Street, and the Tube

  • Start of day: London, England
  • End of day: London, England

We were up and operating by mid-morning. The jet lag is real.

I’d narrowed our brunch choices to The Table Southwark1, or Black Sheep Coffee at about a fifth of the cost. We went with Black Sheep. Four pastries and an Americano came to £14, which I was happy with. The service, atmosphere, and quality were solid enough I left a review.

A white cup of black Americano coffee on a matching saucer, both stamped with the Black Sheep Coffee logo of a sheep's head in a circle, sitting on a dark reclaimed-wood counter beside a branded coaster and a pastry plate. Through the open window above the counter, a sunlit street with green trees, a traffic light, and glass office buildings is visible

From there we had a mission to find a Sephora, which took us to the Carnaby Street shopping area by Underground. Transit today was simpler than yesterday’s Thameslink confusion. We did observe that the Tube doesn’t have air conditioning – maybe it’s not an issue most of the year? It’s also the most tube-like subway system we’ve been on, or at least the lines we rode today were: low ceilings, narrower cars, not a lot of room on the platform.

The pedestrianized Carnaby Street in London on a bright sunny day, with a white metal arch overhead reading 'Welcome to Carnaby Street' and a tall colorful banner installation of stacked painted panels and faces further down the street. Shoppers walk between brick and painted buildings lined with hanging plants, a Pret A Manger awning on the right, and a pub sign for Shakespeare's Head, under a blue sky with scattered clouds

The Sephora storefront on Carnaby Street, a curved white facade with a large arched glass window and black lettering spelling SEPHORA, with a living green wall on the floor above. A queue of shoppers waits on the pavement outside the open entrance, and cosmetics displays and browsing customers are visible through the glass

Looking down a narrow Carnaby Street side lane strung with rows of brightly colored papel picado bunting in red, green, orange, and blue against a blue sky with white clouds. Shoppers carrying bags walk along the brick-paved street past storefronts including a green-fronted Farm Rio shop with a fringed banner and a Tala sign

Shopping successful, we tubed over toward St. Paul’s.

In the area we found a quick sushi lunch spot at Wasabi for two of us.

Then onward to St. Paul’s. It’s a little tricky there, as it’s free if you’re coming to worship and something like £60 for a family of four if you’re just sightseeing.

St Paul's Cathedral in London photographed from the gardens to the south, showing the full stone dome with its lantern and gold cross, the columned drum beneath, and the pedimented south transept entrance with statues along the roofline. A red double-decker bus is parked at the foot of the steps, visitors sit on benches in the shade, and a large tree frames the left side against a deep blue sky

We passed on it, knowing we’d have multiple cathedral opportunities on this trip, and crossed back over the Thames to Southwark. Our group separated for around half an hour so daughter and I could tour The Golden Hinde, which was neat!

Below decks aboard the Golden Hinde replica galleon, showing a long scrubbed oak table running the length of a low timber-beamed cabin with benches and purple cushioned seating along the walls. A girl in a white top sits at the far end of the table beneath leaded diamond-pane windows, with a lantern hanging from the ceiling and small arched windows letting in daylight

View through an arched wooden doorway aboard the Golden Hinde, looking out from a dark timber cabin onto the sunlit main deck. Beyond the doorway are a wooden grating hatch cover, coiled rigging around the mast, a ship's capstan, and stairs leading up, all sheltered under a white canvas awning strung with festoon lights

We then continued our walk along the water towards the Tower Bridge, looping back toward the hotel after getting the obligatory photos at the bridge.

A large painted mural of William Shakespeare on a brick railway arch wall in Bankside, showing him holding a quill in one hand and a skull in the other against a starburst of orange, pink, blue, and purple rays. Pedestrians walk through the dim brick underpass to the right past a wagamama sign and illuminated shopfronts

Inside Hay's Galleria at London Bridge City, a glass-roofed Victorian arcade with an arched lattice of black ironwork overhead and tall yellow brick buildings on both sides. A blue padel court enclosed in glass and netting has been installed on the ground floor, with two players mid-rally, and a black sign reading 'London Bridge City' hangs above

A selfie taken on the south bank of the River Thames with Tower Bridge filling the background on a clear sunny afternoon. The bridge's two Gothic stone towers with pointed turrets rise on either side of the pale blue high-level walkway, and the road deck and suspension chains span the green-brown water below, where a small white boat passes on the left. A man with short hair, wearing dark wraparound sunglasses and a navy polo shirt, stands at the right of the frame beside a metal railing, with a blue sky and scattered white clouds overhead

Back in our hotel neighborhood, we thought we might go to this place just down from the hotel. However, the mood was off inside, with the bartender clearly not happy we were there even though there were empty tables, we didn’t break any etiquette rules I’m aware of, and we were prepared to spend £50 on food. It was noticed by daughter that nobody was eating, so overall I’m thinking we dodged a bullet.

We showed ourselves out and wandered back toward the river, deciding on an early dinner at Pizza Express. I only had a caprese salad, since this restaurant choice was mostly about what everyone else wanted. Service was a little uneven; food was fine.

Our hotel is just steps away from the Tate Modern and it’s FREE, so that was next.

The Tate Modern seen from street level, with the angular brown brick Blavatnik Building rising in stepped, twisting tiers against a clear blue sky and the original power station's tall chimney visible behind it to the right. In the foreground a curved concrete retaining wall carries the gallery name 'TATE MODERN' in large white letters

A large quilted textile artwork suspended by wires in a white gallery room at Tate Modern, hanging just above a pale wooden floor. The padded fabric panel depicts a stylized face in vivid stitched color, with two huge circular eyes made of radiating triangular segments in orange, yellow, blue, and purple, framed by a border of small multicolored squares and a band of zigzag triangles along the bottom

View from a gallery window at Tate Modern looking north across the River Thames in late afternoon light, with the Millennium Bridge crossing the water and pedestrians strung out along its span. The dome of St Paul's Cathedral rises above the City of London skyline, with construction cranes and office towers on the horizon. In the foreground, dark twisted sculptural forms are laid out across a white plinth

A large Roy Lichtenstein painting of a bedroom interior hanging on a white gallery wall at Tate Modern, rendered in his comic-book style with heavy black outlines and Ben-Day dots, showing a made bed with a striped valance, a chest of drawers, framed pictures, and table lamps in pastel pinks, greens, and blues. A teenage boy in a black t-shirt and grey sweatpants stands with his back to the camera looking at it, behind a low stanchion barrier

Part of the England and Iberia 2026 trip.

We got a late start at the Tate and weren’t able to see as much as I would’ve liked. We made our way back to the hotel.

Large freestanding letters spelling BANKSIDE, each studded with round bulbs, set up on a paved plaza outside a modern brick and glass building whose entrance canopy is hung with strings of warm fairy lights. Three people pose among the letters and a passerby walks by on the right beside an orange bollard covered in stickers

Later, around 9:45, I set out to find something to eat, but most restaurants were closed or about to close their kitchens. Does London close early, or was it just our neighborhood? My dinner ended up being a chicken salad sandwich and a bag of Doritos from a convenience store. End of night.

Footnotes:

  1. This is nothing against The Table, it was more about our mood and energy levels. It looks like a place with a solid menu and nice indoor and outdoor seating. ↩

England and Iberia Day 4

Waterloo to Southampton, and the walk to the terminal

  • Start of day: London, England
  • End of day: Southampton, England, aboard ship

Embark day! Today we board the Celebrity Apex in Southampton for a 14-night round-trip sailing through Portugal and Spain.

The itinerary:

Date Place About
Saturday, August 1 Southampton, England Embarkation, 3:00pm sailaway
Sunday, August 2 At Sea  
Monday, August 3 Porto (Leixões), Portugal Port town of Matosinhos, gateway to Porto
Tuesday, August 4 Lisbon, Portugal Portugal’s capital
Wednesday, August 5 At Sea Passing Gibraltar
Thursday, August 6 Palma de Mallorca, Spain Balearic island capital
Friday, August 7 Barcelona, Spain Catalonia
Saturday, August 8 Ibiza, Spain Late call, aboard by midnight
Sunday, August 9 At Sea  
Monday, August 10 Málaga, Spain Costa del Sol
Tuesday, August 11 At Sea  
Wednesday, August 12 La Coruña, Spain Galicia, on the Atlantic
Thursday, August 13 Bilbao, Spain Basque Country
Friday, August 14 At Sea  
Saturday, August 15 Southampton, England Disembark

We all slept terribly, victims of jet lag. We were out of the hotel by 7:50am to make the walk down to Waterloo for our 8:35am train to Southampton. It’s an easy walk, and we had ample time to pop into a coffee shop for croissants to take on the train.

Four roller suitcases -- black, gunmetal, navy, and a patterned tan one -- lined up on a wide paved sidewalk outside a corner Costa Coffee in bright early morning sun. The shop occupies a brick and white-rendered building with a large plate glass window bearing the white COSTA COFFEE logo; a burgundy A-frame sign on the pavement advertises hazelnut creme delights. A man in a dark t-shirt sits at an outdoor table on the right. A yellow tactile paving strip runs along the left edge of the sidewalk and parked cars sit on the quiet street beyond.

We arrived early enough at Waterloo that the board only told us our train would be somewhere in Platforms 12-29. We walked over to that area and our platform was assigned a few minutes later. Two of our people tapped in with their contactless cards instead of scanning their prepurchased tickets, but we caught it and they were able to tap out a moment later and re-scan without any trouble.

It’s an easy ride to Southampton Central, no transfers needed. Phone screenshot at 7:30am of a rail app's Calling Points screen for the 08:35 London Waterloo train to Weymouth. Train information at the top reads 10 carriages, with a carriage diagram showing two first class cars and a Seats legend for Many, Some, Limited, and No data. The stop list below shows 08:35 London Waterloo, 09:00 Woking, 09:33 Winchester on Platform 2, 09:42 Southampton Airport Parkway, 09:51 Southampton Central, 10:06 Brockenhurst, 10:24 Bournemouth, 10:29 Branksome, and 10:32 Parkstone (Dorset). The phone battery reads 80% and charging.

There’s zero convenient luggage storage for roller bags on these trains, unlike other systems I’d used in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Norway… You either have to be prepared to hog seats with bags or to lift suitcases up and over your head to wedge them into the overhead racks. Ours fit, but barely. Note: this was one of the two first class cars. Perhaps there are other cars with better luggage storage? Anyway, we all sat at a four-top table. The ride was fine. I was too tired to enjoy it. It was transportation.

We got off at Southampton Central along with another older couple – Dottie (a retired nurse) and her husband – who turned out to be on our same cruise. We’d mentioned our plan to walk to the terminal and they said they were game. Google Maps wasn’t being especially helpful, as it was tough to parse whether we should be walking along the car park or going up the hill on the main road. There’s a convenient cruise terminals sign, but ONLY after you’ve already committed to one direction. Once we were heading the right way, the walk was straightforward.

Walking from Southampton Central Station to the Horizon Cruise Terminal

For future travelers wanting to walk from Southampton Central Station to the Horizon cruise terminal (berth 102), here’s how to do it. (I’m pretty sure this would work for the City terminal (berth 101), just walking further past Horizon, but it’s untested)

Exit the train station through the south exit. We were already on the southernmost platform and had an easy exit; you may need to go up and over some tracks to reach the south exit depending on how you arrive. Once outside, continue directly south across the car park toward the main road, then turn right onto the sidewalk and head up the embankment. At this point you should see a blue sign directing you to Dock Gate 10 and Cruise Terminals.

Looking up at the same blue Dock Gate 10 & Cruise Terminals sign, mounted below a blue shared cycle and pedestrian roundel on a metal pole, with a red SCN S4 route plate. To the right, a large billboard advertises Longleat with the tagline So much to squeeze and Book in advance from 34.95 pounds, showing a close-up of an elephant's eye. Below the billboard a teal Unilink double-decker bus passes on the road, and pedestrians with roller bags -- including a young man in a white t-shirt, grey backpack, and pink shorts -- walk along the sidewalk beside a metal railing.

View up a sidewalk beside a road under a cloudless deep blue sky. In the middle distance, three people walking away from the camera with roller bags -- a young woman with a pink backpack and braided hair, a woman in a pink top with a plaid shirt tied around her waist, and a man in a straw hat, dark backpack, and shorts. A signpost in the foreground carries a blue cycle-and-pedestrian shared path roundel above a blue sign reading Dock Gate 10 & Cruise Terminals with an up-right arrow and a quarter-mile distance. A large billboard on the right shows a dark animal photo. Cars pass on the road at left, and the grass verge is scorched brown from summer heat.

You’ll pass through some nice shade and then follow the sidewalk to the left, and you might catch sight of your ship off in the distance.

A young woman with a blonde ponytail, pink backpack, and a blue sweater draped over her shoulders walks away from the camera along a sidewalk pulling a tan patterned roller bag, wearing shorts and flip-flops. A tall sign in the left foreground reads Traffic signal and speed cameras above a blue shared cycle and pedestrian roundel. Plane trees line the left side; a wide multi-lane road with double yellow lines and a red SUV runs along the right. In the gap between the trees at the center of the frame, the white superstructure of a cruise ship is just visible above rooftops in the distance.

That’s where you’re heading. You can stay on this side of Southern Road the rest of the way. You’ll cross one large intersection with proper walk signals. Further up you’ll come to a second intersection that has no walk signals – look at the traffic lights for the crossing traffic and wait until all lanes are red, otherwise you risk getting squished by turning traffic you might not be primed to look for if you’re from a right-side-driving country.

Once across, continue through Gate 10; the guard will wave you through.

Two teenagers with roller bags stand in the road in front of the stone arch of Dock Gate 10 at the Port of Southampton. The arch is carved with ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS and PORT OF SOUTHAMPTON, with BERTH 102-109 on the left pier and GATE No 10 on the right, a clock face set into the top, and a Union Jack on a flagpole above. Through the archway a white cruise ship is visible at the berth beyond a gatehouse and security fencing. A red-headed boy in a white t-shirt and pink shorts and a girl in a navy hoodie and shorts pull black and tan suitcases. Bright sun, clear blue sky.

If you’re going to the Horizon terminal (102), ease off to the left and cross the street at the earliest opportunity, per the advice of the guard at the gatehouse. From there, continue past the car park and make a right turn to reach the terminal.

Walking toward the Horizon cruise terminal, the Celebrity Apex looms over the low modern terminal building on the right, its dark blue hull lettering reading APEX below the funnel, with the orange Magic Carpet platform parked partway up the side. A green mesh security fence runs along the left with construction plant, dump trucks, and a yellow excavator behind it. Two travelers with roller bags -- a man in a white t-shirt, dark backpack, and yellow cap, and a woman with a floral bag -- walk ahead of the camera down the roadway. High-vis-vested port staff and a black van are visible near the terminal doors. Cloudless blue sky.

It’s not a hard walk – certainly easier than my walk from the Civitavecchia train station to Largo della Pace – but you’ll want decent wheels on your luggage.

These directions are also available as a standalone post if you want to share or bookmark just this part.

We arrived at the terminal around 10:15. We cleared security, checked in with Celebrity, and took seats in the terminal. Waiting in the terminal was a first-time experience for us, since we’re usually arriving after embarkation has already started. They seat you in the order you arrived (Priority and Concierge get their own area) and then board you in that order.

Almost everyone who boarded ahead of us either headed to their rooms or went to check in at their muster stations. We made a beeline for the buffet and, I kid you not, we were the very first people into the buffet on an embark day. It was eerie. Embark day buffet is usually a shit show.

The rest of the day was uneventful – regular cruise stuff.

Elevated view from the ship over the Port of Southampton. In the foreground, a long grey warehouse with a navy sign reading Welcome to the PORT OF SOUTHAMPTON, Gateway to the World, beside an empty concrete quay marked with yellow lines. Behind it, a multi-story car park stacked with hundreds of new cars, rows of yellow construction machinery lined up on the dock, a white marquee tent, and a grey naval supply ship moored at a wharf. Beyond the water lies the far shore with a road bridge, wooded hills, and waterfront apartment blocks. Partly cloudy sky.

Part of the England and Iberia 2026 trip.

England and Iberia Day 5

A sea day and the last of the jet lag

  • Start of day: At sea
  • End of day: At sea

Sea day. Since sea days are boring, I’ll use this one to talk about when we scheduled this cruise, and what my feelings are on Celebrity Edge-class ships and their infinite verandas.

Infinite Verandas

This is a Celebrity Edge-class ship. On these ships, there are not a lot of traditional veranda rooms. Instead, Celebrity offers an “Edge Stateroom with Infinite Veranda”.

What is that? A standard veranda room like you might be used to has an outside sitting area with a few chairs and maybe a table, with a door separating inside from out. For the Edge-class of ships, Celebrity has this hybrid inside/outside kind of stateroom. The entire end of the cabin is window, with the entire top part able to slide down.

Here’s a video tour of an Infinite Veranda stateroom.

For sleeping, from the video, note that there’s a bed for one additional person:

A screenshot of the YouTube video 'Celebrity Apex Edge Infinity Veranda Balcony Stateroom Cabin Tour & Review' by the channel TravelTouristVideos, which has 44.6K subscribers. The video frame shows an Edge Stateroom with the sofa converted into a made-up single bed, captioned in white text at the upper left 'Sofa Bed made-up by Room Steward'. The bed carries white sheets, a folded white duvet, and a tan runner across the foot, set against a padded headboard below a framed print of a red abstract form. A wall sconce with a rectangular shade glows beside it, and a grey rug patterned with white rounded rectangles covers the floor. At the right, the infinite veranda's glass wall is open to a darkened evening view, with a woven chair, an ottoman, and a small white side table on the veranda where a seated person in a blue top is partly visible. The YouTube interface below shows Subscribe, 276 likes, and Share, Ask, and Save buttons.

I prefer traditional balconies over these edge veranda rooms, for a few reasons:

  • When you open the giant window, the air conditioning shuts off. From our experience in the Caribbean in January, this means the stateroom gets pretty hot pretty fast. You wanted fresh air but now you’re making the other person in the room accommodate you.
  • Even with the window closed, this part of the room gets pretty warm when in direct sunlight.
  • You can separate the ‘veranda’ from the rest of the room with a full-length curtain, but that doesn’t stop noise, and you still have the AC issue if you also open the window.
  • As far as I can tell, there aren’t any infinite veranda staterooms that also have upper berths. As a parent with two teenagers, two separate beds is strongly preferred over a convertible sofa that sleeps two. In fact, it’s a non-starter for us.
  • Those chairs aren’t all that comfortable.
  • There’s a motor-actuated shade at the window instead of a blackout curtain. This means there’s no peeking your head out to see where you are. You can start to raise the shade… from the bottom… but it’s much less convenient.

The only itinerary where I’d consider an infinite veranda would be Alaska, where more reasonable temperatures and an abundance of scenery play well with this configuration. Otherwise, it’s a pass for me.

Enough about that. For this cruise, we booked it quite late – June 14, with the sailing on August 1. As such, there weren’t many choices for staterooms. By some miracle, I was able to find two oceanviews adjacent to each other on deck 3. Sherri and Siena were already familiar with this cabin configuration from our January cruise, where they liked the layout and the location. We opted for the two cabins so everyone could get a proper bed. We split between me and my son in one cabin, and Sherri and Siena in the adjoining.

We all slept in, still working through the ravages of jet lag. I slept solid from 10pm to 8:30am or so, and yet my Apple Watch1 was convinced I’d had a bad night and was up a few times.

I had a light breakfast at the high-top tables in the back of the buffet with Sherri, and did the same for lunch a bit later. I laid out for a while by myself, and then with Sherri and Siena.

Around 4:30 I went up to Eden to enjoy the view and update this log. We’ll likely do 6pm dinners for the rest of this cruise. There’s no waiting to get into a restaurant at that hour and the service is fast.

A few other random tidbits:

A la carte drink prices are expensive. I haven’t tracked drink prices over time, but $12 for a Bud Light? Or $16 for a Stella? I’ll cover this towards the end of the overall trip report, or perhaps in a separate article, but this was the first cruise where I felt there was an excessive amount of nickel-and-diming.2

A laminated table-tent drinks menu standing on a white tabletop in a glass-walled shipboard venue. The card is headed WINES BY THE GLASS in red, with sections for Sparkling (Champagne, Robert de Pampignac, France 23; Prosecco, Torresella, Italy 14), Rose, White (Pinot Grigio, Santa Margherita, Italy 23; Sauvignon Blanc, Wairau River, New Zealand 23; Chardonnay, Concha y Toro, Chile 14; Riesling, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington 14), and Red (Pinot Noir, Meiomi, California 23; Merlot, Columbia Crest, Washington 14; Malbec, Zuccardi, Argentina 14; Cabernet Sauvignon, Silver Ghost, Napa Valley 23). A BEER & OTHERS block lists Heineken 12, Blue Moon 14, Peroni 14, Stella Artois 16, Dos Equis Lager 12, Coors Light 12, Bud Light 12, Corona Extra 12, Stone IPA 16, and Topo Chico Hard Seltzer 13, with fine print noting the classic beverage package does not include all offerings. Two green Heineken bottles are printed alongside. Behind the menu, salt and pepper shakers sit on the table and other passengers are seated at tables beside the windows, with flat blue ocean and sky beyond.

A bit of the view from Eden at the aft:

The theater show Rockumentary was great! Looking down over a packed shipboard theater from the back rows. The round thrust stage in the center is lit in blue and yellow pools of light with a haze of theatrical smoke, ringed by stacked speaker cabinets and scaffolding towers. A large projection at the upper right reads ROCKUMENTARY in red block letters over a collage backdrop. Curved pink and white sculptural panels frame the stage at left, a red LED strip traces the dark ceiling, and an upper balcony level is visible along the left wall. Several hundred seated audience members fill the dark auditorium in silhouette.

And a piece of ship art. Night shot on the pool deck outside the Oceanview Cafe, whose backlit lowercase sign glows above the glass entrance doors at left. The ship's superstructure is washed in deep blue and violet uplighting, with a glass-railed upper deck above. In the center, a large sculpture of a human head rests on a low black plinth -- a pale, weathered, cracked-clay face with heavy-lidded eyes and a closed mouth, lit warmly against the blue. Empty cream lounge chairs sit on the warm-toned teak deck in the foreground, a potted plant stands to the right, and the sky beyond is black.

Footnotes:

  1. The sleep score from my Apple Watch is always a bit dubious. There’s a very loose correlation, I feel, between my score and reality. And I’m convinced there’s something about being on a ship that causes mismeasurement. ↩

  2. My cruise before this was on ultra-luxury line Silversea, which certainly affected my thoughts on this. ↩

England and Iberia Day 6

A gray day in Matosinhos

  • Start of day: Leixões, Portugal
  • End of day: At sea

The cruise terminal building is pretty nice! A long covered walkway at the Leixoes cruise terminal, its underside clad in thousands of small cream hexagonal tiles that ripple across the curved ceiling. Slender white columns line the right side beside a full-height glass wall reflecting the terminal's white curved facade and the water beyond. Passengers walk away from the camera down the pale concrete deck -- a woman in a black tank top and denim shorts with long dark hair and tattooed legs in the foreground, others further on in sun hats and backpacks. To the left, the white hull and orange Celebrity lifeboats of the ship are visible over a wooden railing. Bright blue sky with scattered cloud.

My data service wasn’t working today. This meant Google Maps wasn’t working1 so I couldn’t get directions to any of the places on my cheat sheet (the mercado, probably a cathedral or some sort of scenic overlook, I don’t remember). We found a printed tourist map that helped a little. (After a few hours I eventually discovered my phone’s VPN was glitching – connected but showing not connected, but by that point a lot of wind had gone out of my sails.)

We didn’t have a plan for today anyway. Porto was further away using transit than we wanted to deal with, we were still lethargic from the jet lag, and the weather was gray with occasional misting rain. We explored the town at the port, Matosinhos, walking up and back down a main street.

A lime-green and yellow Metro do Porto light rail tram stopped on cobbled tram tracks running down a narrow Matosinhos street, with the nose of a second yellow tram at the left edge of the frame. The carriages carry idealista branding along their flanks. Older two- and three-story buildings line both sides -- weathered stucco and tile facades with roller shutters, one bearing a hand-lettered sign reading Atelier do BeBe. Overhead catenary wires cross the frame against a heavily overcast grey and white sky. A white VW estate car with the Portuguese plate 31PU89 is parked on the granite-paved sidewalk at right.

Looking down a long residential Matosinhos street paved in granite cobbles, tightly lined on both sides with parked cars carrying Portuguese plates. Mature plane trees arch overhead from both curbs, meeting in a dense green canopy that shades the roadway into the distance. Mid-rise apartment blocks in cream, brown, and grey render rise on either side with recessed balconies and shopfronts at street level -- a green awning at left reads Old Place em Escapes, and a white delivery van marked Casa Frut is parked further down. Patches of blue sky and white cloud show through the branches.

We did see this cursed Simpsons-KFC product. There was a KFC around the corner but when I tried to find it on the self-service kiosk it wasn’t there. Probably for the best. A glossy backlit street advertising panel on a Matosinhos sidewalk showing a KFC promotion tied to The Simpsons. The Colonel Sanders logo and KFC wordmark sit at the top; below, against a cartoon blue sky with white clouds, a photographed burger is topped with a pink sprinkled donut in place of the bun, stacked with fried chicken, bacon, and melted cheese. A yellow badge reads ROSQUI BURGER, and Homer Simpson's head appears in silhouette at the bottom. Portuguese fine print reads Sugestao de apresentacao publicitaria. A man in a green t-shirt, white shorts, dark cap, and crossbody bag walks past at the left, with parked cars and a modern concrete building behind.

Rowan and Sherri returned to the ship, as I wanted a local lunch and they weren’t keen. Siena, usually up for an adventure, tagged along with me. We found a restaurant near the cruise terminal entrance. Unfortunately, my glitching cell service meant I couldn’t check reviews first, and this one was not a winner. The service wasn’t especially friendly, and they’d somehow run out of the cured ham listed on their starter menu2. I’m not exaggerating when I say prices for anything beyond the starters were either €16 or €112, without much in between. We had bread and olives and made our way back toward the ship.

Siena and I took some photos from the top of the cruise terminal. Shot from inside the Leixoes terminal, looking out through an open doorway framed by walls tiled edge to edge in matte olive-grey hexagons. Siena stands centered in the bright doorway on the pale stone terrace outside, smiling at the camera, wearing a light blue ribbed tank top, grey athletic shorts, white sneakers, and sunglasses pushed up on her head, arms held slightly out from her sides. The open door leaf on the right is faced in white faceted panels. Beyond her, a white railing runs along the terrace edge, with the beach, the low white and tan apartment blocks of the waterfront, and a flat grey overcast sky in the distance.

Brian stands on the curved white terrace of the Leixoes cruise terminal, leaning back against its low white railing, smiling at the camera. He wears a horizontally striped polo shirt in navy, white, and pale blue, light grey shorts, a dark watch, navy sneakers with white socks, and sunglasses hooked on his collar. Behind him at left, the tiled sweep of the terminal's curved wall leads the eye to the Celebrity Apex moored alongside, its tiered glass-fronted balcony cabins stacked above the waterline and a red flag flying from the upper deck. To the right, small fishing boats sit moored in the harbor with port cranes, container stacks, and the town skyline beyond under a flat grey sky.

Overall, as you might be able to tell, we just weren’t feeling it. In hindsight we should’ve done Porto, of course. This port felt like a lackluster start to the cruise. So it goes.

In the evening, the entertainment was violinist Doug Cameron and his sons Alex and Sean.

Two violinists performing on a dark shipboard theater stage lit in deep red, with a band of vertical red light strips across the backdrop above them. At left, an older man in a flat cap, black waistcoat, white shirt, tie, and grey trousers holds a violin and bow at his sides, a moustache and slight smile on his face. At right, a much younger performer in a dark three-piece suit and patterned tie sings into a microphone, curly dark hair, holding his violin down by his hip. Behind them a keyboardist in a black shirt plays a red keyboard beside a grand piano, with sheet music stands, cables, and water bottles scattered across the stage floor.
Doug Cameron on the left, his son Alex on the right.

We established an early positive relationship with our stateroom attendant and were rewarded thusly:

A cruise ship stateroom bed after turndown service, shot in warm low light. Two plump white pillows are stacked against a padded grey headboard with four small dark foil-wrapped chocolates lined up neatly on top, and the white duvet is smoothed flat across the bed. A cylindrical shaded lamp glows on the light wood nightstand at left beside a white cabin telephone, a dark green insulated water bottle, and a small tablet propped in a stand; a folded towel sits on the shelf below. A second matching lamp stands at right, with a black TV remote on the far nightstand. The cabin walls are finished in vertical pale wood veneer panels.

The evening was nice. These were the evenings before we hit the hot and humid nights of southern Spain.

Dusk from an open-air bar at the stern of the ship, looking out over a calm Atlantic. The sky graduates from deep blue-violet overhead to a broad band of gold and amber at the horizon, with a low line of small dark clouds catching the last light and a faint glint of sun reflected on the water. In the foreground at right, a grey bar counter beaded with water is lit from beneath in electric blue, with a square black-framed lantern holding a glowing white pillar candle standing on it. Glass windbreak panels and a curved red-lit wall frame the left side, and dark wicker chairs sit at the right edge of the deck.

Footnotes:

  1. Yes, I know about offline maps in Google Maps. I always make a point to download maps for the areas we’ll be traveling. Actual use of them is always a bit hit-or-miss in my experience, often not having the level of detail needed. ↩

  2. A restaurant, in Portugal, running out of ham… that’s impressive. ↩

England and Iberia Day 7

Uphill in Lisbon, and a flea market find

  • Start of day: Lisbon, Portugal
  • End of day: At sea

Good morning from Lisbon!

Breakfast at a low white table in a glass-walled shipboard lounge, looking out over Lisbon. On the table sit a white plate of cut melon and pineapple, a second small plate holding a topped toast, a folded napkin, and a metal sugar caddy. Round rope-woven armchairs in dark red with grey cushions surround the table on all sides. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city climbs the hillside in dense tiers of white and pastel buildings under terracotta roofs, with church towers, a large pale monastery-like building, and two yellow construction cranes on the skyline. Blue sky with scattered white cloud.

Looking up at the Celebrity Apex from the concrete dock apron, the ship filling most of the frame at a steep angle. Its deep navy hull carries the white wordmark Celebrity APEX in large lettering, with a row of round porthole windows above and tier upon tier of white balcony cabins and glass-fronted decks rising to the top. A white gangway structure and mobile stairs connect to the ship at the right, with orange traffic cones on the tarmac beside them. Bright blue sky with streaks of high white cloud.

I haven’t been to Lisbon in… let’s see… two months! I was last here when disembarking the beautiful Silversea Silver Spirit; you can read about that cruise in my Rome and Silversea recap. That last visit was just from the cruise port to the terminal, though, and barely counts.

With my glitching data service now sorted, today went much more smoothly than yesterday. I had a short list of sites to visit and knew the general direction, so uphill we went.

We toured the Sé de Lisboa.

A black-framed A-frame ticket sign standing on worn stone steps outside Lisbon Cathedral, roped off by a black barrier belt. The white panel is headed with a red rose-window outline, then BILHETEIRA TICKETS and BEM-VINDO! WELCOME! Prices are listed in Portuguese and English: Adultos / Adults 7 euros; Lisboa Card 5 euros; Criancas 7-12 / Children 7-12 5 euros; Criancas under 6 / Children under 6 Gratuito / Free. A color photograph of the cathedral's stained glass rose window sits at the right, and the footer reads Mantenho o silencio por favor. / Please remain silent, with Se de Lisboa in red. Behind the sign, the deep stone doorway of the cathedral stands open with a visitor stepping inside.

Brian stands in the middle of a long, ornately decorated hall, smiling at the camera in a white t-shirt with thin navy horizontal stripes, pale blue shorts, a dark watch, and sunglasses hooked at his collar. Above him the coved ceiling is elaborately painted -- a central fresco of robed figures and cherubs floating on clouds around a gilded royal coat of arms, framed by white rococo plasterwork scrolls against panels of sage green, dusty pink, and ochre. The walls carry large gilt-framed landscape paintings and blue-and-white azulejo tilework, with an ornate carved and gilded canopy over a red-upholstered ceremonial chair in the middle distance. Dark polished floorboards run the length of the room, and a family of visitors moves through a doorway at the left.

Inside Lisbon Cathedral, looking across the ambulatory at a soaring Gothic interior of pale limestone. Pointed arches spring from clustered columns with carved capitals, and tall lancet windows with leaded glass fill the clerestory above, sending shafts of hazy light across the space. Siena walks away from the camera across the worn stone floor, wearing a pink tank top, short black skirt, and sandals, glancing back to her right. In the left foreground a wooden votive candle stand holds rows of unlit white candles behind glass. A carved stone tomb chest and a potted palm stand along the far wall, with a jewel-toned stained glass window glowing in the aisle beyond.

Close view of a carved stone tomb effigy inside Lisbon Cathedral. The recumbent figure lies on a raised sarcophagus, hands folded together in prayer at the chest, the head resting on a stone cushion beneath a carved canopy at the right. The robes fall in deep vertical folds across the body, with a decorative motif carved at the waist. At the feet, a small stone dog lies curled with its head on its paws, catching a faint patch of violet light. The tomb chest below is carved with worn relief panels, set against a plain ashlar block wall with a projecting stone molding running above.

The interior of a small baroque church, viewed down the center aisle between rows of dark wooden pews. A barrel-vaulted ceiling with gilded plasterwork leads to an apse containing a heavily gilded altarpiece: twisting columns and carved scrollwork frame a large oil painting of a gathering of figures, with an ornate golden tabernacle on the marble altar below and silver candlesticks and flower arrangements on either side. A large brass chandelier hangs on a chain from the vault above the aisle. Wall sconces with electric candle bulbs flank tall wooden panelled doors at left and right, a green-draped celebrant's chair stands beside the altar, and worn stone flags pave the aisle.

Afterwards, we continued on to the Feira da Ladra, an open-air flea market that runs Tuesdays and Saturdays. Siena found a top and Rowan bought an old Portugal license plate after deciding then-and-there he wanted to collect unique license plates. We took our time strolling through the flea market, and it was much bigger than I was expecting!

A photocopied white poster taped to a Lisbon wall entirely faced in old azulejo tiles patterned with repeating ochre, brown, blue, and cream floral medallions, chipped and scuffed with age. The poster has a black-and-white checkerboard border and reads Pieces CHESS CLUB, with OFF-LINE at the left and OPEN TO ALL at the right. Below is a cartoon of a checkerboard chess board with arms, legs, and a raised fist walking along. The text continues AT DURO DE MATAR, 31.07.2026 - 6PM, then MUSIC BY with a list of names -- Millian Dolla, King Kami, Umafricana, Didi, Mei Glez -- with a small Vida Justa logo at bottom left and a QR code at bottom right. A handwritten note in Spanish is taped to the wall at the upper left.

A wooden crate of second-hand vinyl records on a stall table at the Feira da Ladra flea market. The record facing forward is 10,000 Maniacs, its sleeve showing a black-and-white photograph of six children and adults drawing bows in an archery line against a cream background, with a lavender border. A handwritten blue sticker on the sleeve reads 1987 Portuguese Pressing, Soft Rock, Folk Rock, Pop Rock. The crate front is covered in stickers -- a black Anti-Corpos punk logo, a diamond-shaped A Record A Day card reading COMPRO DISCOS de Vinil (todos os estilos), CD's, Cassetes e Material de Som with the phone number 910 351 476 and WhatsApp, a blue Café Mondo sticker, and a discosboorecords.pt sticker. Black-and-white genre divider cards stand above the racks behind, labelled Psych, Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, and Pop Rock.

I wanted a light lunch and Rowan wasn’t interested, so we escorted him back to the ship and then the rest of us headed to a well-reviewed place (back uphill) a few blocks from the water called Alfama Cellar.

The interior of a small Lisbon restaurant, its walls lined floor to ceiling with shelving built from reclaimed pallet wood and stacked with wine bottles. Prices are chalked directly onto the shelf edges -- 30,00 euros, 42,00, 39,00, 50,00, 23,00, 33,00, 98,00 -- and shallow boxes of used corks sit along the upper shelves. A row of Dalva port bottles with orange labels fills the shelf at the right. In the center, a small niche is lined with blue-and-white patterned tile and holds a plant and a couple of small figurines. A bare pine table in the foreground is set for two with wine glasses, dark placemats, and patterned plates, surrounded by red-painted wooden chairs on a dark wood floor. A white air-conditioning unit is mounted high on the left wall.

The three of us snacked on a sausage and cheese platter (with several types of chorizo!), and I had fish soup. It was all delicious.

A narrow stepped alley climbing between tall buildings in Alfama. The left wall is deep red and heavily covered in layered graffiti tags in yellow, white, red, and black, with a barred window set into it. The right wall is bare cream stucco with a green-barred window and an open doorway. Sherri stands midway up the stone steps in a black tank top, white shorts, and white sneakers, holding a water bottle and turning back toward the camera; Siena stands a few steps below on the right in a pink tank top, black skirt, and sneakers, also looking back. Higher up, potted plants hang on brackets from the left wall and laundry is strung across the gap between the buildings, with a strip of bright blue sky visible far above.

A large blue-and-white azulejo tile panel on an exterior wall, painted in loose brushwork with two life-sized women in traditional dress. Each wears a headscarf, a long-sleeved blouse, an apron over a pleated skirt, and carries a load balanced on her head -- a broad cloth-wrapped bundle on the left figure, a stack of flat baskets or trays on the right. Both are painted mostly in cobalt blue washes on white tile; the right-hand figure has been vandalized with a pink mouth scribbled over her lips, and both have small pink marks added at the fingertips. The tiles are grimy and cracked in places, with a spray-painted grey band across the upper section and rough grey stone wall visible at the right edge.

A narrow cobbled street in Alfama on a bright afternoon. Tall, weathered four- and five-story buildings line both sides in white, cream, and mustard yellow, with wrought-iron balconies, satellite dishes, laundry hung out to dry, and a Portuguese flag. Souvenir shops crowd the street level -- racks of t-shirts, bags, straw hats, and painted fans hang in the immediate left foreground, and a green-awninged stall further down displays magnets and postcards. A man in a dark vest and khakis leans against the shopfront at the left, talking on his phone. A shopfront at the right is signed lavandaria self service laundry at number 115. A line of black bollards separates the sidewalk from the granite-paved roadway, which is empty of cars.

When we boarded the ship, Sherri thought the security guy was the hand sanitizer guy, so she put her boarding card in her mouth for presentation, quite the power move!

Our sailaway on the Tagus was quite memorable!

Sailaway on the Tagus, shot from an upper deck of the ship as it passes beneath the 25 de Abril Bridge. The rust-red suspension bridge crosses the upper half of the frame, its tower and cables rising against a deep blue sky, with the wooded green hillside of the south bank and the white buildings of Almada below it. In the foreground at right, passengers sit in a circular glass-walled hot tub cantilevered over the side; along the railings above and to the left, dozens of people stand watching and photographing the bridge. The teak pool deck below is filled with rows of lounge chairs, most occupied by sunbathers, and crew and passengers move along the deck.
(That's daughter in the hot tub)

In the evening, Rowan opted out of a sit-down dinner, so the remaining three of us went to Normandie, where I discovered Coquilles Saint-Jacques (scallops in a tasty cheese sauce).

While the weather in Lisbon was hot, it was mild compared to what we’d encounter in Palma de Mallorca and Ibiza, coming soon!

The Eden lounge aboard the Celebrity Apex at night, looking down its curved length. The outboard wall is a full-height lattice of white structural ribs dividing the glazing into tall triangles and diamonds, the glass black against the open Atlantic outside and faintly reflecting the room's lights. A long tan leather banquette curves along the right side on slender metal legs, raised on a low platform of pale slatted wood. Tall potted areca palms stand at intervals in ribbed wooden planters, their fronds reaching into the frame from above. Beyond them, white filigree wire chairs and small dark tables sit under violet accent lighting. The floor is laid with a dark carpet in a swirling feathered pattern of charcoal, teal, and rust.

England and Iberia Day 8

Gibraltar off the rail, and a slow sea day

  • Start of day: At sea
  • End of day: At sea

Sea day.

Sharing two Internet connections between four family members (two of whom are teenagers) on sea days is rough.

Today’s most notable event was the passing of Gibraltar off the port side and Tangier off the starboard side. Click on either of those links to read my blog posts about them… from 2007! Whew. Anyway, you go twenty years without sailing the Strait, and then you do it twice within 3 months! (The other recent time was in May, aboard the Silver Spirit.)

It was a lazy day. I sat on the shaded deck cross-ship from the ping pong tables, listening to music and people watching for a few hours. After, I went up to Eden and watched the back of the ship go by for another hour. For me it was mostly a day of thinking, as I was in a reflective mood.

We couldn’t get organized for a sit-down dinner, so I treated myself to the buffet and the others fended for themselves.

Typical sea day stuff.

The Rock of Gibraltar seen across the Strait through heavy summer haze, its long ridge rising from a low spit of land and falling away in a sheer cliff at the right end, the whole silhouette flattened to pale blue-grey by the atmosphere. A band of white buildings is just visible along the shoreline beneath it. In the middle distance a black-hulled DFDS ro-ro ferry with a white superstructure crosses left to right, the DFDS wordmark large on its side, pushing a small white wake across otherwise calm deep blue water. Cloudless pale sky above.

Passengers lined along the glass-and-steel railing of the ship's teak sun deck, looking out at the mountainous Moroccan coast across the Strait. The jagged ridge of Jebel Musa fills the horizon in grey-brown rock under scattered white cumulus and blue sky. About a dozen people watch from the rail -- several in straw sun hats, one in a bright floral shirt raising a phone to photograph, others in t-shirts and shorts -- while a woman in a white top and dark jeans walks across the foreground carrying a folded paper. Grey-cushioned loungers, potted palms in stone planters, and a white radar dome at the left frame the deck, which is paved in alternating teak-toned and pale green surfacing.

Tomorrow: the hottest hike of my life in Palma de Mallorca, and some other stuff. Stay tuned!

England and Iberia Day 9

A hot castle, a lucky taxi, and Segways in Palma

  • Start of day: Palma de Mallorca, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

It’s hot.

We started our day with a walk from the ship up to the castle on the hill, Castell de Bellver.

A weathered bronze bust of a bearded man in a jacket, holding a rolled document and a book, mounted on a pale stone plinth on a patch of dry burnt grass. Someone has balanced a small blue and white traffic cone on his head like a party hat. The plinth is inscribed AL CIENTIFICO RUMANO EMIL G. RACOVITZA, FUNDADOR DE LA BIOESPELEOLOGIA EN MALLORCA -- 1904, FUNDACION EUROPEA DRAGAN. Behind him, the curving dry-stone retaining wall of the castle grounds sweeps across the frame, topped by a pale stone balustrade with palms and pines above it against a deep blue sky.

There’s a beautiful small stone chapel near the castle that strongly reminded me of our 7 years in California. I took a few minutes to sit in the cool(er) chapel to recover from the heat and sit with my feelings.1 The front of a small stone chapel on the wooded hillside below the castle, shot straight on from the cobbled forecourt. The honey-colored limestone facade rises to a gable topped with an ornate wrought-iron cross, with a round rose window of tracery glass at its center and a pointed stone doorway below carrying a carved Marian monogram. The heavy iron gate stands open, and inside a person in white can be seen sitting in the wooden pews. Wrought-iron lanterns are bracketed to the walls at either side, pines press in from both edges of the frame, and the sky above is cloudless deep blue.

Sherri stands at the foot of a broad flight of rough stone steps climbing the pine-covered hillside toward the castle, turning back toward the camera. She wears a maroon sleeveless top, white shorts, and white sneakers. The steps rise from the cobbled terrace in the foreground and bend out of sight into the trees, bordered on the right by a dry-stone retaining wall with the corner of the chapel and its iron gate at the frame edge. Dry yellow grass, low scrub, and Aleppo pines fill the slope under a bright blue sky with a few thin white clouds.

The heat was oppressive, truly, and we were grateful they weren’t gouging on water at the castle. I should have brought water. I didn’t. We bought the kids water in town, but I figured I’d tough it out. It was a mistake.

I toured the castle, didn’t enjoy it much on account of said lack of water, and as far as I could tell there was no water fountain inside the castle on any of its three floors. I did briefly consider drinking from the bathroom sink faucet. There is a bar/restaurant outside the ticketed area, but I didn’t want to take the chance there was no re-entry. We grabbed bottled water here after the castle and sat for a few minutes.

A dark grey A-frame sign standing on the worn stone threshold of the castle's deep entrance archway, beside a heavy studded timber door. The panel is headed Castell de Bellver, Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat in white and pale green, below which three pictograms are struck through: a burger and soft drink cup in a red prohibition circle, a figure climbing the battlements, and a lit cigarette. The footer reads Ajuntament de Palma with the city crest. The surrounding walls are pale ashlar block, weathered and patched, with a terracotta saucer resting on the ground behind the sign.

The circular courtyard at the heart of Castell de Bellver, shot from the edge of a temporary black stage floor. Two tiers of arcades ring the whole space -- rounded arches on square piers at ground level, taller pointed Gothic arches on slender double columns above -- all in pale honey limestone, with the castle's freestanding keep visible over the roofline at the far side. Rows of white folding chairs are set out on the far half of the yard, and stage gear fills the foreground: black monitor wedges, microphone stands, cabling taped down, lighting bars rigged under the upper arcade at the left, and a white canopy against the far wall. Deep blue sky with wisps of cloud above.

With an hour until our arranged excursion and an hour’s walk in front of us (time got away from me at the castle), we started back down the hill. Would I have liked to summon a taxi from the top? Very much so. However, a recommended taxi app for Palma would not let me book a cab without a credit card on file (even when I indicated I’d pay the driver cash), and the app refused both a VISA credit card I’ve used worldwide and a debit card. The ticket office helpfully has a sign posted with the taxi company’s dispatch number, but I don’t buy voice service for these international trips.

A phone screenshot of the Palma taxi app with an error dialog over a dimmed street map. The dialog shows an orange circle with a white X above the message: You need to register a card to be able to order services. Click on the payment method selection option to add one, with a single Accept button. Behind it the map shows the Ponent District, Estadi Mallorca Son Moix, and Placa de Toros (Coliseu Balear), with route cards reading Carrer de Camilo Jose Cela, Palma, 7 min and 2 Wheel Tours Palm...eial, Palma, 13:21. The visible strip of the trip sheet shows Adapted Taxi at 8,50 EUR to 9,90 EUR, and the footer shows Seats 4(me), payment set to Cash, with the Book button greyed out.

We took paths down the hill into the edge of town and were then fortunate to find an idling taxi just a few meters from where we emerged from the woods. It was our destiny to take this cab. The driver cut a 50-minute walk down to a 15-minute, €8 ride with air conditioning, and got us to our tour with ample time.

Our excursion, booked through GetYourGuide2 (my first time trying that platform), was a two-hour Segway tour around the old town. It was great! The midday heat was relentless, and I doubt we would have seen even a twentieth of what we saw had we been on foot. Rowan did get the dizzies at one point, which we managed with sunglasses, adequate water, a Coke, and ice cream. I have some great GoPro footage of a lot of it, which I’ll cut into a proper video at some point.

The storefront of 2 Wheel Tours Palma on a narrow old-town street, with a large white SEGWAY sign mounted above the entrance. The glass frontage is printed with a wash of blue and white water, and a price list is taped inside reading Express Tour 1 hour 45,99 EUR, Deluxe Tour 2 hours 74,99 EUR, Palma and Portixol Tour 84,99 EUR, Private Tour 84,99 to 104,99 EUR, with the address Carrer del Palau Reial 12, 07001 Palma de Mallorca and contact details. Through the open door, several black Segways are parked in a bare tiled room. A Segway stands at the right of the frame in the foreground, a yellow TOUR INFO placard with a QR code clipped to its handlebar column. Dark green shutters and pale render fill the upper facade.

A five-story Palma modernista building on a street corner, shot from below against a cloudless blue sky. The upper facade is encrusted with pale mosaic and floral relief work; green-shuttered windows and slender wrought-iron balconies wrap the rounded corner, and a broad glazed gallery of green-framed windows fills the center, lettered CLINICA DENTAL across the glass. A carved grotesque face with flanking sea creatures sits above the second-floor balcony, which runs the width of the building on ornate ironwork. At street level, a cream awning marked St. Cristo shades a shopfront where a life-size chef figure stands beside the door, with a jewelry shop under a pale green awning to the right. A crowd of summer pedestrians in shorts, sundresses, and caps crosses the zebra-striped street in the foreground; a pink-washed building adjoins at the left.

Eight black Segways parked in a cluster on the granite paving of a shaded Palma square, their handlebar columns leaning together and 2wheelspalma.com printed on the footboards. A huge plane tree arches over the top of the frame, its branches framing the honey-stone Gothic church beyond -- a tall openwork bell tower with a slender spire rising above a gabled nave with lancet windows and a pointed doorway where a few people stand. A white Correos Express delivery van and a white and blue police car are parked along the far side of the square, with a red car at the right and tall shuttered apartment buildings enclosing the space. Bright blue sky above the tree canopy.

The entrance wall of Es Baluard, shot at an angle from the paved forecourt. A tall white concrete slab carries the museum's name in large black cut-out letters -- ESBALUARD MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE PALMA -- with a black arrow at the lower right pointing down toward the entrance. Behind and above it rises the massive dark stone rampart of the old city bastion, with a rounded arch tunnel cut through it at the left. In the shade beside the tunnel, several people from the Segway tour stand talking in white safety helmets, their Segways parked along the wall. Bright sun rakes across the pale stone paving in the foreground, with a manhole cover and a steel bollard at the bottom of the frame.

After the tour I talked everyone into tapas at Maura, which was OK, and then we taxi’d back to the ship. Twice now I’ve tried to treat the family to tapas in hopes of building a tradition, and both times the food has been just OK – nowhere near tapas I’ve had in other countries, like a place my Dad and I found in Basel, Switzerland, or just The Columbia in Celebration. I’ll make a few more attempts.

Footnotes:

  1. I may write about this at length some day but the tl;dr is: we lived in California for 7 years and raised the kids there during their elementary school days. We moved to North Carolina in 2020. I play a lot of “what if we had stayed in CA?” thought experiments, mostly to torture myself. ↩

  2. Affiliate link. If you book or buy through it, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to things I’d actually use myself. ↩

England and Iberia Day 10

Barcelona on half a tank

  • Start of day: Barcelona, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

I started getting sick yesterday – a sore throat and general blahs that I mostly attributed to dehydration. It progressively got worse while in Palma, and rehydrating (a lot) back on the ship didn’t fix it. I woke up on this Barcelona port day feeling pretty wrecked: sore throat, slight aches, and very tired. Regardless, I knew I needed to make something of our time here.

I left the ship around 8:45am, solo, with a mission in this order: stroll La Rambla, find cold and flu medication and shaving gel, wander Mercat de la Boqueria before the full tourist onslaught, and have a bite of breakfast. I succeeded at all of it and was back on the ship by 11 or so, drenched in sweat and ready to be horizontal. I do wish I’d been feeling more up to it. Sherri and I had a terrific first visit back in 2007 during our European honeymoon cruise. I would have loved to wander away from the hardcore tourist areas and explore the residential blocks, perhaps visit the now-finished Sagrada Familia, and maybe even do the hop-on/hop-off bus.

Well, maybe not that last one. The queue for it at the port was wicked!

A long queue of cruise passengers waiting along a palm-lined pavement beside a red City Tour Barcelona double-decker bus, number 2588, its side lettered City Tour BARCELONA and barcelona.city-tour.com with a JULIA moventis logo and a green ECO-BUS badge. The open top deck shows rows of empty red seats. People in shorts, t-shirts, sun hats and backpacks stand in line under tall palms against a cloudless blue sky, with a second red bus waiting further back. At the right two staff in pink shirts stand beside a red City Tour umbrella and a loaded hand truck.

The Columbus Monument at the foot of La Rambla, shot from across the road against a deep blue sky. The bronze figure of Columbus stands atop a tall fluted column pointing out to sea, the base ringed with bronze allegorical figures and stone lions on plinths, with protective mesh over part of the stonework. Behind it are a glass-fronted tower block carrying a large Samsung Galaxy billboard and the classical stone facade of the port authority building. Buses and a few pedestrians cross the wide junction in the foreground, and birds scatter across the empty sky at the right.

I was so tempted to eat here at Mercat de la Boqueria but my body just wasn’t up to it. I enjoyed exploring, though.

Inside Mercat de la Boqueria, looking down an aisle toward the Quim de la Boqueria stall, its curved yellow signboard lettered Quim de la Boqueria, Barcelona since 1987, with stall numbers 610 611 612 on an orange panel at the right. Diners sit on black stools along the marble counter, an older man in a checked shirt and shorts nearest the camera, while a cook works behind the bar under hanging glassware and a chalkboard menu. Strings of dried red peppers hang in the glass case at the right. Industrial pendant lamps drop from the high timber and steel roof, and shoppers move down the aisle at the left.

Brian takes a selfie in the aisle of Mercat de la Boqueria, filling the right of the frame. He wears a white short-sleeved shirt printed with large blue-grey leaves and sunglasses hooked on the placket, and looks tired and flushed, not smiling. Behind him the market hall recedes under its arched roof -- pendant lamps on long cords, a stall sign reading Mediterranean, shoppers crossing the polished concrete floor, and diners on brightly coloured stools at a counter to the left. A yellow waste bin stands against the stall at the right.

A market stall display at the Boqueria holding tall skewers of spiral-cut potato crisps, deep orange and stacked in ruffled columns behind glass. A card propped in front reads SPIRO PATATA 4 euro, BOQUERIA GOURMET STREET FOOD. Spotlights and a small security camera are mounted on the dark ceiling above. A lower case at the front holds cured meats, stuffed peppers and green olives, and a shelf of packaged saffron with handwritten signs stands behind the glass at the left.

A large coral-pink sign in a metal frame at a side entrance to the market, headed Mercats de Barcelona and Mercat de la Boqueria in white, with opening hours De dilluns a dissabte 8.00-20.30h. Two rows of pictograms below prohibit bicycles, scooters, smoking and dogs alongside information, wi-fi and parking symbols, and the footer gives www.boqueria.barcelona and www.mercats.barcelona. A small panel at the top right reads BOQUERIA 180. Through the dark steel-columned entry behind it, a lit butcher's counter and a few shoppers are visible under the market's timber roof.

Back out on the streets, I set out to find lighter fare.

A narrow Raval street corner in bright morning sun. At the left a small kiosk bar under a green awning lettered MENDIZABAL, its front tiled in coloured squares and hung with festoon lights, a few people standing at the counter; the pale wall above is covered in graffiti tags and a large mural. Ahead stands a plain medieval stone building with a small arched window and an iron-grilled doorway, a tree spilling over its roofline and an ornate baroque stone portal at its left. Two women walk away from the camera along the pavement at the right, one in a white top and denim shorts holding a phone, the other in a white blouse and patterned trousers with a black tote bag.

… settling for this little cafe which ended up being quite good1. A breakfast tray on a wooden cafe table: a plain croissant on a white enamel plate with a blue rim, a takeaway coffee cup with a black lid and kraft sleeve, and a folded paper napkin. A black napkin dispenser sits at the left against an exposed brick wall. Behind, the cafe's glass frontage looks out to a sunlit street where a red-and-white bollard stands; a person in an olive t-shirt sits at a table by the window, and two customers wait at the counter at the right under track lighting.

Siena and Sherri left the ship later in the afternoon to have the La Rambla experience for themselves.

By the way, the La Rambla experience right now is… not good. There’s major construction happening along a significant portion of it. They seem to be building toward something better, which is a worthy goal, but the experience today lacks the anticipated charm.

A green temporary pedestrian sign zip-tied to construction fencing on La Rambla, reading ACCES A METRO with a walking figure, a white arrow in a circle, and the red Barcelona metro M logo beside L3. Yellow flexible ducting runs above the sign along the hoarding. Behind the wire mesh, a plane tree trunk is boxed in with timber boards, red conduit snakes through excavated bare earth, and stacked materials and white bags sit along the dug-up promenade. A couple of pedestrians pass on the narrowed walkway beyond.

Back on the ship, in the evening near sailaway time, I was able to get some photos.

The spires of the Sagrada Familia rising above the Barcelona rooftops, seen at long range through the golden haze of early evening. The tallest tower is capped with a white cross and a construction crane stands close beside it. In front, the dense city stretches across the frame -- office blocks, apartment buildings, a domed roof and a stone bell tower -- and behind, the wooded ridge of the Collserola hills fades into pale sky.

Two women on the ship's shaded outer deck at golden hour, seated on rattan loungers with striped cushions. In the foreground a young blonde woman in a white top turns back toward the camera with one arm along the seat back; behind her an older woman in a blue and white paisley dress sits holding a phone. The deck is panelled in warm timber with a tall white sculptural arch framing a lounge area behind, potted plants in white planters along the wall, and a polished wooden handrail running the glass balustrade at the right, beyond which the orange hull of the Magic Carpet and the port cranes are visible.

The ship's pool deck at dusk, shot from between empty loungers. The bright orange frame of the Magic Carpet platform rises against a deep blue twilight sky streaked with pale cloud, silhouetted above the upper deck's glass rail. Below it the sheltered pool area glows with purple and amber light under scalloped white canopies, a strip of blue-lit water visible through the openings. Furled navy parasols stand at either side of the frame, and rows of grey sun loungers fill the foreground on the darkened teak deck.

Footnotes:

  1. And which I can’t seem to locate again, despite having a GPS-tagged photo from the place and having walked Google Street View. Pretty sure I paid with cash, too. It’s a mystery. ↩

England and Iberia Day 11

Waiting out the heat in Ibiza

  • Start of day: Ibiza, Spain
  • End of day: Ibiza, Spain

The past three days – Palma, Barcelona, Ibiza – have been exceptionally warm. As in, drenched in sweat within a few minutes of walking away from the ship. Anticipating the heat, we didn’t leave the ship to tour Ibiza until 5:00pm, and even that was too early with the benefit of hindsight.

I really enjoyed Ibiza. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was like. Some combination of Carmel, California; Key West; and St. Augustine, Florida? I know I’m doing it an injustice, but it was unlike anywhere I’ve been before.

We took a shuttle from the port to the outskirts of the old town, then started strolling the streets. The shops were open, but we were still too early for the “proper” restaurants to open. As you walk along the waterfront you get more of the restaurants with photos of the food out front and someone trying to draw you in. Further up the hill, in the meandering side streets and narrow alleys, you find the more interesting establishments.

A young woman in a black crop top, white skirt and sunglasses pushed into her ponytail walks away from the camera down a shaded old-town street. The whitewashed wall of a building runs along the left with a small shopfront awning lettered Casa Afro further down. Leafy trees arch over the pavement, and beyond them a row of pastel buildings in cream, yellow and dusty pink stand in bright sun, one with a small flag hanging from a balcony. Parked scooters line the far kerb beside a black Mercedes van, and a green wheelie bin and dark litter bin stand on the tiled pavement. Deep blue cloudless sky above.

A restaurant table built from an old wooden cart with a spoked wheel, set for three on a sunlit pedestrian street. Woven rattan placemats hold glazed ceramic plates in green and terracotta, cut-glass tumblers and rolled napkins with cutlery. At the far end a shallow wooden bowl is piled with oranges, lemons, limes and a whole pineapple, beside a round terracotta urn holding dried flowers and a tall wrought-iron candle stand. A banana plant and potted greenery crowd in at the right under a white parasol, and cushioned stools with a striped linen cushion sit at the left. Across the street a red-washed building houses a small shop hung with jewellery and macrame.

A narrow, busy shopping street in the old town, walled by tall white buildings with green and brown louvred shutters and iron balconies. Souvenir displays crowd both sides -- a rotating rack of postcards, hoops of coloured bangles, keyrings, printed ceramic plates, straw bags and racks of jewellery, with a tray of fridge magnets held out on a stand at the right. A man in a blue polo shirt and denim shorts browses at the right; two boys in a salmon t-shirt and a white t-shirt walk down the middle, and a woman in a pink dress checks her phone beside a woman in cream. Cream parasols shade cafe tables further down, and a wrought-iron street lantern hangs at the top left against deep blue sky.

The frontage of Il DeK Italian Bistrot on an old-town street, its cream awning lettered IL DeK with ITALIAN BISTROT beneath and repeated in gold on the wall. Three large black-and-white mural portraits are painted on the shutters and panels -- a man in a hat smoking, a man in a flat cap slurping a strand of spaghetti, and a woman with long dark hair and heavy eyeliner. Through the open doorway at the right, a bar is stacked with wine bottles and wooden crates. Pavement tables in grey are laid with wine glasses, cutlery and coloured tumblers, surrounded by mismatched chairs in white, olive green, red and grey, with a bright red high table at the centre. Above, an ochre facade carries two tall windows with ornate wrought-iron balconies.

We found a lovely Italian place called Il Pavone that was just opening. We relaxed for a bit, sharing a few starters among us. It was good!

A wooden charcuterie board on a restaurant table, laid with folded slices of prosciutto, coppa and a dark chilli-flecked salami, wedges of hard yellow cheese, a crumbling white cheese and a blue-veined cheese pinned with cocktail sticks, arranged around a whole round ball of creamy burrata on a bed of shredded lettuce. A basket of bread sits at the right beside a green tumbler, with white side plates, black napkins, a bottle and a shaker around the edge of the frame. Three pairs of hands and forearms are visible at the far side of the table -- one in a navy and white floral dress, one bare, one in a black top -- with phones resting on the placemats.

A hand-painted ceramic tile sign set into a thick whitewashed wall, photographed at an angle. The tile shows a peacock in profile in blue-grey with its tail fanned out in green and ochre eye feathers, standing on a sprig of grass, with the words Il Pavone lettered beneath in flowing blue and green script. The rendered wall around it is rough and uneven, and a band of bright yellow paint runs down the wall at the right edge of the frame.

A narrow cobbled alley in the old town in low evening sun, lined with pavement tables and brightly painted wooden chairs in yellow, pink, purple, red and blue. At a white table in the foreground a woman in a navy and white floral dress leans over the table setting something down, while a young woman in a black crop top, white skirt and sunglasses on her head stands beside it looking toward the camera; the table holds glasses, a small dish and a bottle. A deep blue studded door with a dreamcatcher hanging beside it fills the left of the frame, and paper lanterns and bright fabric flower garlands are strung overhead between the balconies. Further down the alley a man in a white shirt sits reading at another table, with whitewashed walls and a chalkboard menu beyond.

After dinner, while I wouldn’t say the air temperature was exactly comfortable, it was at least reasonable. We did some more strolling and sightseeing before catching our shuttle back to the ship.

The Celebrity Apex seen broadside from across the water at golden hour, moored along the breakwater. The dark navy hull carries the words Celebrity APEX in white near the bow, with rows of white lifeboats slung along the superstructure and tier upon tier of balcony cabins above, topped by the glass-domed observation lounge and the funnel lettered APEX. Low evening light warms the white upper decks against a pale, cloudless blue sky, and the calm harbour water in the foreground is a deep rippled blue.

Brian takes a selfie on the quayside at golden hour, filling the right of the frame. He wears dark wraparound sunglasses and a white short-sleeved shirt printed with large blue palm leaves, and looks into the camera with a slight smile. Behind him across calm blue water the Celebrity Apex lies moored, its navy hull lettered Celebrity APEX and the low sun flaring off a window on the upper deck. A pale cream awning edge juts into the top left corner and a white rail runs along the bottom left. The sky fades from blue to warm gold at the horizon.

The Celebrity Apex viewed head-on from the pier at sunset, its dark blue bow rising above its own reflection in still water, mooring lines running down to bollards along the concrete quay at the left. The white superstructure and the glass-walled observation lounge catch the last warm light. A stanchion-and-rope barrier zigzags across the wooden decking in the foreground, a small red tender and a green gangway structure sit at the right, and low hills and moored boats are visible on both sides of the harbour under a clear sky graduating from blue to gold.

Turns out we’d picked the island’s biggest night. August 8 is Sant Ciriac, the heart of the Festes de la Terra, and it wraps up with fireworks over the port at midnight. Either through planning or by coincidence, the ship was set to stay until 11:59pm, so we had front-row seats for the show.

England and Iberia Day 12

Sea day

  • Start of day: At sea
  • End of day: At sea

Just your average sea day. I took exactly three photos today, and you get to see all of them.

The Club is one of the, well, clubs aboard the Celebrity Apex. I spent some time in here working on this blog.

A dim lounge aboard the ship with a dark grey ceiling, floor-to-ceiling gold-beige curtains, and a large wall-mounted screen showing a purple and green graphic reading THE CLUB — SOCIAL HOUR, EVERY HOUR. Grouped seating fills the room: pale grey and blush tub chairs, a tan curved banquette with mauve and floral cushions, burgundy velvet armchairs, and round white marble-topped cocktail tables. Two globe floor lamps glow, and a small teal stage light is fixed to the ceiling. The carpet is dark blue with a pale geometric pattern. The room is empty of people.

A wider view down the same lounge toward its bar. Recessed ceiling panels are lit warm gold with deep blue cove lighting between them, and green illuminated exit signs hang from the beams. On the right, a long bar runs the length of the wall with backlit vertical light fixtures, tiered shelves of liquor bottles, and a row of rust-red barstools with black bases; two bartenders in dark uniforms work behind it. Rust-red banquettes and grey tub chairs line the floor, one foreground chair upholstered in a bright multicolored floral print. At the far left a handful of guests sit in a blue-lit alcove beside a neon wall sign. The carpet is grey with a gold houndstooth pattern.

And then some time in the spa binge-watching Widow’s Bay, which is fantastic (IMO).

A view from a blue upholstered window seat aboard the ship, looking out through a tall glass wall at a flat pale sea under a hazy sky streaked with thin cloud. A container ship sits small on the horizon. Two folded grey towels rest on the bench, and an iPad in a keyboard case stands open on the right with a dark audiobook player screen showing pause and skip controls and the title Widow's Bay. Reflections of the interior are visible in the glass.

Tomorrow: my favorite port on our cruise!

England and Iberia Day 13

My favorite stop of the trip

  • Start of day: Málaga, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

Welcome to Málaga, Spain!

We docked in Málaga at 07:00 with all aboard at 17:00 – a long day in port, and after Ibiza we were glad to have the morning rather than waiting out the afternoon heat. I’d booked just Sherri and me for a walking and eating shore excursion from 9:30am to 12:30pm. Did we beat the heat? Sort of!

The Málaga waterfront seen from high on the ship in early morning light. A long concrete quay and a palm-lined promenade run across the frame toward the white La Farola lighthouse, with the curve of La Malagueta beach behind and rows of apartment blocks along the seafront. Dry brown hills rise beyond the city under a pale sky washed gold near the horizon, and a couple of sailboats lie at anchor on flat water at the right.

Sherri in a blue and white floral top and glasses walks along a narrow city street in shade, a black backpack over one shoulder. To the right, cream awnings lettered LOS MELLIZOS shade a row of pavement tables set with wine glasses and bread baskets, with a round yellow sign for the restaurant mounted on the wall above. The pavement is laid in black and white chevron marble, and tall ochre and cream apartment buildings with wrought-iron balconies rise on both sides under a narrow strip of bright sky.

A large painted ceramic tile panel mounted on a pale wall, advertising Victoria beer. The artwork shows a flamenco scene in 1920s poster style -- a woman in a white ruffled dress dancing with a man in dark clothes, a figure in a wide black hat behind them, and a woman in red with a mantilla -- above gold scrollwork and the words LA FAROLA de ORELLANA, VICTORIA, MÁLAGA 1928. A patterned blue and white tile border frames the panel, a second panel is visible at the right, and raised lettering reading MÁLAGA 1928 runs along the wall above.

Málaga Cathedral is the obvious landmark, and the Museo Picasso is a few streets on from it. Picasso was born here. Had we more time…

Málaga Cathedral seen from a shaded side street, its honey-coloured stone facade rising above the plaza in full sun. Two heavily ornamented bell towers flank a tall central section of round-arched windows and carved pilasters, with a deep arched doorway below and white scaffolding sheeting across part of the left side. Orange trees stand in the square in front, and a mixed crowd of visitors in summer clothes -- sun hats, sundresses, shorts, one woman in a grey headscarf in the foreground -- crosses the pale paving. An ornate black iron street lamp hangs from the ochre wall at the left.

The entrance to the Museo Picasso Málaga, a deep stone doorway cut into a golden sandstone wall with museoPICASSOmálaga lettered on a plaque beside it in orange and grey. Inside the doorway a wall panel reads Pablo Picasso, Estructuras de la invención / Structures of Invention, Unity of a Life's Work, 2024-2028, with a second line for Joana Vasconcelos, Transfiguración. Two staff in black stand at the threshold and a queue of visitors waits behind a rope barrier at the right, mostly young women in summer dresses and shorts, some fanning themselves in the heat.

The best view of the day was from up at the Gibralfaro, looking back down over the bullring, the city and the whole port – our ship included.

The view down over Málaga from the wooded hillside below the Gibralfaro, framed by pine branches at the top and scrubby trees in the foreground. The circular Malagueta bullring sits at the centre of a dense grid of apartment blocks in cream, pink and terracotta, and beyond it the harbour spreads out -- container cranes, a white Baleària ferry, and a cruise ship moored along the far quay. The Mediterranean fills the left of the frame in flat pale blue under a hazy sky, with hills receding along the coast to the right.

Our shore excursion dropped us back at the ship at around 1:00pm.

We grabbed Siena (Rowan wasn’t interested) and proceeded to walk from the ship back into town and Calle Larios, which takes around 20 minutes, most of it along the harbor.

Looking down Calle Larios, Málaga's main shopping street, paved in polished marble and lined with tall cream buildings with green shutters and iron balconies. A large cream shade sail printed with the Málaga city logo is stretched between the buildings overhead against the bright sky. Sherri and Siena walk away from the camera in the foreground -- Siena in a white pleated skirt with a blue top tied around her shoulders, Sherri in a white vest and purple shorts carrying a drinks bottle. Shopfronts including Etam line the right, a living statue performer stands on a plinth at the left, and more shoppers move through the sunlit square beyond.

We stopped for lunch at Sushita Chinitas, just off Calle Larios. It was advertised as a sushi restaurant (though you’d never guess it from the decorating).

The dining room of Sushita Chinitas, decorated almost entirely in blue and white. Ikat-patterned fabric covers the walls and is gathered across the ceiling, with a large toile-papered wall behind a curved navy banquette. A round marble-topped table is laid with blue glassware and white plates, ringed by rattan cane chairs on a travertine tile floor. Starburst mirrors and a gilt-framed mirror hang on the walls, table lamps with linen shades stand on a skirted side table stacked with books, and potted palms fill the corners. At the right, staff and a family wait near the host stand by the front windows.

We did some strolling and shopping, then meandered our way back towards the ship, cutting past the Centre Pompidou’s glass cube.

The Centre Pompidou Málaga on the harbour promenade -- a large cube of glass panels in red, yellow, blue, green and clear, sitting low against the skyline. A glass balustrade runs along the raised walkway in the foreground with clipped shrubs beside it, and the promenade below is lined with palms and white parasols where a scattering of people walk in the sun. Apartment blocks and hotels rise behind under a cloudless pale blue sky.

We sailed at 17:00, and the run west put us back through the Strait of Gibraltar in the evening – the second time this trip, and this time in great light.

A view from the Magic Carpet platform:

And from my stateroom: The Rock of Gibraltar seen through a cabin window at golden hour, its distinctive ridge silhouetted low on the horizon across open water. The window is a large rounded rectangle set in a cream frame studded with rivets and divided by a central bar, with a grey curtain drawn back at the right. Below the glass, white bedding and a dark blue runner are visible on the window seat. The sea is a deep rippled blue with whitecaps breaking in the ship's wake, and the sky above fades from pale blue to warm gold.

Reflecting back on the overall cruise here two weeks later (I’m writing this on August 24), I feel Málaga was my favorite stop on the trip. The views and scenery were incredible, the streets and parks well-kept, the local people we met were exceedingly friendly, and it’s on the mainland so it could serve as a base for visiting other places. I could see myself spending several weeks here, though perhaps not in August!

England and Iberia Day 14

Sea day stuff, and a primer for tomorrow’s eclipse

  • Start of day: At sea
  • End of day: At sea

Celebrity hosted a lecturer to ready people for the total solar eclipse happening tomorrow.

The ship's theatre during a daytime lecture, shot from the back of the raked seating. Three curved screens across the stage wall all show the same slide titled Geometry of Solar Eclipse, with a diagram of the sun, moon and Earth on a black background. The room is lit deep blue, with sculpted white ceiling ribs and a balcony rail curving overhead. A speaker in light clothing stands at a lectern beside the round stage, which is edged with blue LED strip. Perhaps a hundred passengers sit watching in grey armchairs, more filling the seats along the right-hand side.

A close view of the lecture screen showing a slide headed Geometry of Solar Eclipse. On a black field, a glowing orange sun at the left casts two blue shadow cones onto a small white moon and then onto the Earth at the right, with the umbra and penumbra labelled, along with SUN, MOON, EARTH, EARTH'S ORBIT, MOON'S ORBIT, TOTAL ECLIPSE and PARTIAL ECLIPSE. The Earth is shown with Europe and Africa facing the viewer. A logo at the lower right reads BEYOND THE PODIUM, ENRICHMENT SERIES. Below the screen, the speaker and a second person stand at a lectern on the darkened stage.

A projected slide in the ship's theatre headed SOLAR ECLIPSE, with CELEBRITY APEX beneath it, laid out as numbered panels on a dark blue background. Panel 1, OUR DIRECTION, shows a photograph of the Apex at sea with the sun low to the west and an arrow pointing east, and reads that the ship is sailing east, the sun is on the west side, and the eclipse will only be visible from the PORT SIDE. Panel 3, TURNING PORT WIDE, shows an overhead view of the ship with a dashed curved arrow and a compass rose, noting that at 8:20 PM the ship will turn port wide and face north. Panel 5, WHERE TO WATCH, shows a deck plan shaded green along the port side and red along the starboard, with a bed icon and a lounger icon arrowed to the green side and a crossed-out eye on the red, explaining that port-side guests can stay in their cabins or head to the open deck while starboard guests will not see the eclipse. A line along the bottom beside a pair of eclipse glasses reads GLASSES: One pair per person. The darkened raked seating and the edge of the stage are visible below the screen.

Otherwise it was a lazy sea day. On sea days (and perhaps other days) the Activities team places a collection of board and card games in one of the main restaurants for people to play. Siena and I played a game of Battleship, then the kids played a game of chess.

Siena and Rowan look up from a game of chess at a white-clothed table in a quiet ship's lounge. Siena, at the left in a blue sleeveless top with her blonde hair in a ponytail, leans on the table with both arms; Rowan sits opposite in a black t-shirt with wireless earbuds in, one hand resting near the board. A small red and black folding chessboard sits between them, mid-game, with a printed card of rules beside it. Cream leather tub chairs surround them on a patterned red and cream carpet, with pale timber-panelled walls and wall sconces behind.

I spent time in Eden up on the ramp, one of my favorite spots, working on this blog and some other business. As far as offices go….

The ship's wake seen through a large angled window, the white-painted frame cutting diagonally across the top left of the frame. Beyond the glass, a broad churning band of white water trails away to the horizon across deep blue open ocean, under a clear blue sky with a line of small white clouds low on the horizon. A faint reflection of a person is visible in the glass at the right, and a second pane below the sill shows more of the wake.

A bit later I found Rowan in the lobby playing chess, online this time:

Rowan sits sideways in a cream leather tub chair in a quiet corner of a ship's lounge, legs draped over one arm of the chair, wearing a black t-shirt, pale blue sweatpants and black slides, looking toward the camera. A dark walnut display wall of open shelves fills the space behind him, lit from within and holding vases, books and ornaments. A second matching chair and a small round mesh side table sit at the left, a framed dark floral picture hangs on the wall, and the floor is laid with a grey carpet in a swirling contour pattern.

The weather was clear (and a bit cooler, which was a relief) in the evening:

The upper deck of the Celebrity Apex at dusk, looking forward along the port rail. The ship's blue funnel housing rises at the right with APEX lit in white letters across it and a bank of tall exhaust stacks angled behind a black lattice screen. Below it, a curved wall is painted with a colourful mural, and a row of tall rust-coloured cut-metal lanterns glows on a raised planter bed. Teak decking and a glass balustrade run away toward the bow, past a planter of clipped greenery and a red life ring, with the dark Atlantic to the left and a pale pink and blue sunset sky along the horizon.

A selfie of Brian on the Celebrity Apex upper deck at dusk, his face filling the right of the frame. He has short light brown hair and blue eyes and wears a white t-shirt with irregular black horizontal stripes. Behind him the teak deck runs forward along the port rail past a white planter of clipped green shrubs, with warm deck lights already lit. The ship's blue funnel rises at upper right lettered APEX in white, beside a wall of tall perforated rust-coloured metal screens and a mural in pale blues and yellows. The flat Atlantic is dark at the left under a pale sky streaked with pink and grey cloud near the horizon.

That’s about it. Sea day stuff.

England and Iberia Day 15

La Coruña, Spain AND AN ECLIPSE!

  • Start of day: La Coruña, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

Big day! Big, big day.

La Coruña

A vertical digital signboard set into a marble-and-timber wall in a ship's elevator lobby, glowing bright blue. White text reads WELCOME TO LA CORUNA, SPAIN, then below a dividing rule, ALL ABOARD, then GUEST — 3:30 p.m. and CREW — 3:00 p.m. At the bottom is the Celebrity X logo beside CITIZEN, Eco-Drive, PURPOSEFUL POWER, and the line Precision Partner for Today's Port-of-Call. A small red fire-damper inspection plate is mounted on the pale wood panelling to the right.

La Coruña is well-situated for this evening’s viewing of the total solar eclipse.

Sherri and I were off the ship early-ish to explore, get food, and get our steps.

The waterfront area has an impressive facade: The waterfront of La Coruña seen from an empty granite quayside under a flat grey overcast sky. A long unbroken terrace of tall buildings faces the harbour, their facades entirely covered in the city's characteristic white-painted glazed galleries, tier upon tier of small window panes running the full length of the block. A row of green trees and street lamps lines the promenade in front of them, with a small wooden kiosk and a red vehicle at the left. In the foreground, low granite block benches step down toward the water, where a red and white fishing boat and a line of dark pontoons are moored against the harbour wall. A small Spanish flag flies at the water's edge and one person in a dark jacket walks along the quay.

We had a loose plan to follow a circuitous trail along the coast toward The Tower of Hercules. It’s the oldest Roman lighthouse still in service, and a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it seemed worth a look. After about 20 minutes, we started to get hungry for breakfast and diverted into the central part of town – still on the way towards the lighthouse.

We peeked into a few cafes before deciding on El Chef Urbano, on Avenida de Navarra up in Monte Alto.

I had ham on toast, which in the photo kind of looks like I’m chowing down on a raw ribeye: Looking down at a slice of dark, thick-crusted toast spread with grated tomato and piled with draped slices of cured Iberian ham, the meat deep red and marbled with ribbons of white fat. It sits on a sheet of greaseproof paper printed in black with mock Victorian newspaper columns, engravings of a coffee grinder, a stove and a pointing hand, and the words FINCH & SON, STREET FOOD and 1897. The paper lies on an oval acacia wood serving tray with a visible grain, set on a dark brown table, with a folded napkin at the left edge and the corner of a phone at the bottom.

The restaurant had stuffed animals around, so I took an opportunity: A selfie of Brian indoors beside an oversized plush teddy bear that stands taller than he does. He is at the left of the frame with short receding light brown hair, smiling slightly at the camera, wearing a navy rugby shirt with white and grey horizontal stripes and a white collar. The bear fills the right half of the frame, pale beige and fuzzy with a cream muzzle, dark brown nose, stitched smile and a small red ribbon bow at its neck. Behind them are walls of raw pale pine boarding and a cream painted column, lit warmly from a fitting out of shot.

Fed and coffeed we continued our walk towards the lighthouse.

An ornate cast-iron street lamp painted rust orange, standing on a pink brick promenade under a heavy grey overcast sky. Its tapered column is moulded with layered shell-like reliefs at the base and branches at the top into sweeping Art Nouveau arms filled with a lattice of open circles, carrying a red enamelled lantern at each end. A pigeon perches on the crossbar. To the left is parkland with a row of dense dark evergreen trees over dry yellowing grass; to the right a line of parked white and grey cars and a large white van runs along the kerb, with more matching lamps receding into the distance.

For future travelers wanting to visit inside The Tower of Hercules, either get there early or buy tickets in advance online. We arrived around 10:15am and they were sold out until 1:00pm. Still, we enjoyed great views from the outside.

And here’s a closer view from my Instagram1.

After some time soaking up the views, we made the long walk back to the ship to pick up the kids and bring them out into town.

Doesn’t this kind of look like Conan? A shopfront sign photographed from street level against a grey concrete building. A black rectangular panel with yellow and white rules and small hop-cone motifs reads CANECA FURADA above CERVEXERÍA ARTESÁ. Beside it, a projecting black box sign carries a cartoon of a white beer mug with a face, gritted teeth and a plaster on its forehead, topped with a billowing orange head of foam. Two wire hanging baskets of ferns and trailing pink flowers hang from the awning below. On the floor above, frosted windows for a language school read Teaching English Since 1991 with a purple flame logo and the phone numbers 981 210 864 and 604 037 751 beside a green WhatsApp icon. A small white sign on the pillar below reads in English please! Bundled black cables run down the wall at the right.

This building in the cruise terminal area was having some sort of Simpsons expo that I now regret not checking out. The glass frontage of the Sala Municipal de Exposicións at Palexco, a modern building of blue-tinted mirrored panels in a grey metal grid that reflects a clear blue sky and a wavy white cloud band. Two large exhibition posters are mounted at ground level. The left one, headed SALA PALEXCO VIÑETAS EXPO, reads JACOBO F. S. DE ARCHIMBOLDO A MARCOPOLA and shows a cartoon of a giant pink dragon in red shorts reading papers over the shoulder of a small man drawing at a drafting board. The right one reads UN PASEO POR SPRINGFIELD, OS SIMPSON NA COLECCIÓN DE RAÚL GARCÍA and shows Simpsons-style caricatures of two men, one grey-haired with glasses and a moustache, one bald in a red jacket holding a beer glass, with Bart between them. Both run Do 30 de xullo ao 27 de setembro and carry QR codes and Concello da Coruña and Xunta de Galicia logos. A woman in a black top and denim shorts stands reading a leaflet by the entrance doors at the right, above a broad flight of stone steps.

A shop called American European Market on a narrow old-town street, its name in blue outlined lettering on a white fascia flanked by two red and white stars, with red and white candy-striped pilasters either side of the open doorway. The windows are covered in brightly coloured neon-style outline decals of cartoon characters, game controllers, an alien head and a heart. Inside, shelves of colourful packaged sweets and drinks are visible along with a glass-fronted cooler lit bright green. Above the shop is a grey stone facade with a long black cast-iron balcony in an elaborate scrolled pattern and tall shuttered windows. Several people stand on the pavement: a couple in the doorway, the woman in a white vest and patterned wide-leg trousers looking at something in her hands, the man in a dark t-shirt and beige shorts; a man in an olive t-shirt and mustard beanie by a heavy carved wooden door at the right, beside black bags and a display of handbags laid out on the ground; and a woman in a brown tie-dye top in the near foreground.

A laminated A-board poster on a tiled pavement outside a café. On a black background, white capitals read ENCARGA TU EMPANADA DEL ECLIPSE, with a glowing orange ring of an eclipsed sun set behind the word EMPANADA. Beneath it, EN MASA DE TRIGO O DE MAIZ SIN GLUTEN and SÓLO DISPONIBLE POR ENCARGO. The lower half shows photographs of a golden lattice-topped pie sliced open to reveal a jet-black squid-ink filling with chunks of white seafood, captioned CHOCO Y CALAMAR EN TINTA, with further images of a plated dish and a whole cuttlefish on a board below. Behind the sign are the café's glass frontage with shelves of jugs and pink mugs, a handwritten notice about 9:30 opening, and a shaded terrace with seated customers further down the street.

A narrow pedestrian street in bright midday sunshine under a deep blue sky. A dense canopy of green vine leaves is trained across the street on wires about halfway down. The buildings on the right have white-painted glazed galleries stacked above a black wrought-iron balcony and, at ground level, a wine shop with bottles and hanging glasses visible through the window and JAMÓN lettered on the wall. Two people sit at a small red-framed café table on the terrace, a bearded man in a pale shirt leaning forward and a woman in a white top with a glass in front of her, and another woman with dark hair sits at a table in the near right corner. Two large wooden barrels serve as standing tables against the wall. On the left a green OXFAM Intermón projecting sign hangs above a shopfront, and two red drum-shaped tables stand in the near foreground. Further down the sunlit street a person in a white top walks past a row of closed shutters.

We arrived at the market too late to see most of the vendors. Still, cool building. The interior of a covered market hall, looking down a wide central aisle with a green painted floor. A soaring white parabolic concrete vault arches overhead, pierced by two curving bands of skylights, and ends in a tall arched window filled with a grid of small panes in dark green frames, with a second smaller arch inside it. Rows of empty stainless steel and pale green tiled fish counters line both sides, numbered 9, 10, 13 and 14 on hanging signs. Most stalls are cleared and washed down for the day, with a wet patch on the floor and a black wheeled bin at the right. A handful of people are gathered at the far end, including a woman in an orange top with a bicycle and a man in a white shirt behind one of the few counters still holding produce.

For lunch I did a solo visit to the BK and sat just under that sign. Not going to lie, my Whopper really hit the spot.

A tall arched window set in a rough grey granite surround with white-painted mortar joints, housing a Burger King. The upper arched pane carries the chain's logo, the red BURGER KING lettering between two halves of an orange bun. Through the lower pane, the empty interior is visible with orange and dark wood tables, black and pale wood chairs, pendant lights and a stone-clad column, and the small line A LA PARRILLA DESDE 1954 on the back wall. Daylight and a stretch of grass and pavement reflect across the glass. In the foreground on the pavement outside are black metal café tables and chairs branded Estrella Galicia, with a QR code sticker on the nearest table top.

Back onboard and sailing away, we spotted the Tower again.

The Tower of Hercules seen from the water on departure, across a stretch of deep blue sea with small whitecaps breaking on a low pink granite shoreline. The square Roman lighthouse tower stands in silhouette on the crown of a bare grassy headland, its stone warm brown in the haze, topped by a smaller lantern stage and cupola. A pale path traces the ridge of the headland below it and tiny figures are dotted along the skyline. To the left, a long low modern building with a heavily ribbed concrete facade runs along the shore beneath a hazy hill, with a line of pylons and scattered trees between. The sky is a pale washed-out blue.

Total solar eclipse

Funny story, we didn’t even know this was an “eclipse cruise” until two days after we booked the cruise. We waited too long to book, and so by early June, when we sat down to do it, there weren’t a lot of options. This one fit the bill perfectly: 14 nights (to make the long travel worth it), Celebrity (a brand we know and like), interesting ports, and our preferred type of stateroom. Only once I started to look at the itinerary more closely did I make the realization. And then I started to get excited. What a bonus!

Onboard, as you saw yesterday, there was an informational lecture on what eclipses are and what to expect for this one. The staff made preparations for how to position the ship, and how to communicate that. The ship provided eclipse glasses for everyone. We were ready!

We had a sit-down meal at one of the restaurants around 6:30, securing a seat by the window on the port side2, mostly by luck. As we ate and looked out the window, we formed the idea this might be a good place to watch the eclipse. We didn’t know how crowded the top decks would be, and here was a front-row seat… with drink and dessert service!

We conspired with the waiter that our plan was to eat slow and kill time until the eclipse. He was onboard. There were lots of empty tables at this point.

As time went on, though, we realized we’d miss the partial eclipse, since that was happening to the aft. We ultimately decided to head up to the top deck and take our chances with the crowds.

It ended up being a much better choice than staying at our window spot. I’d expected the top deck to be wall-to-wall crowded, people jostling for position, but it wasn’t like that at all. We had plenty of room to view the partial eclipse from the aft before they turned the ship, and then had a nice spot up top next to one of the hot tubs for totality. Having people crowded nearby was, for me, a feature not a bug. The excitement was contagious.

Looking steeply down from an upper deck onto a crowded outer deck of the ship in warm low evening light, with the flat dark blue Atlantic filling the left half of the frame beyond a glass balustrade. Dozens of passengers are packed along the green-striped deck and the timber handrail, nearly all wearing dark cardboard eclipse glasses and tilting their faces up toward the sun out of shot. Among them are a man in a bright yellow jumper, a man in a pale blue shirt, a woman in a white dress, a young girl in a pink dress and several people in caps and sun hats; some hold phones up to photograph the sky. A curved white section of the ship's superstructure and a large tinted window cut across the right of the frame, reflecting more of the crowd.

Passengers packed along the curved glass balustrades of the ship's upper decks during the partial phase, nearly all of them wearing cardboard eclipse glasses and tilting their faces up toward the sun out of shot. The lenses catch the light as bright rectangles across dozens of faces. Several people hold phones up to photograph the sky instead. The crowd is in summer clothes — a man in a turquoise polo, a woman in a coral jacket, a girl in a white sweatshirt and sequinned skirt, a man in an orange cap — and stands two tiers deep along the curve of the rail. A white ventilation mast and a corner of the superstructure rise at the right, and the flat pale sea meets a hazy twilight sky behind them.

And then, at 8:28pm, it happened:

Totality, photographed through a veil of thin grey cloud. The moon sits as a flat dark disc squarely in the centre of the frame, ringed by a narrow band of pale golden light from the sun's corona, brightest along the left and right edges where faint flecks of red and orange show. The glow diffuses outward into a soft halo before fading into the surrounding sky, which is an even dull olive grey mottled with darker drifting cloud. No landscape or horizon is visible.

I made a conscious effort to be in the moment once totality hit. It’s something I’ll remember forever.

Footnotes:

  1. Obligatory smash that follow button. ↩

  2. The ship’s officers had informed us yesterday they would turn to port prior to totality. ↩

England and Iberia Day 16

Where we visit fast food restaurants in Bilbao

  • Start of day: Bilbao, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

Our return to Bilbao after 19 years. How time flies!

A vertical digital signboard set into a marble and pale timber wall in a ship's lobby, glowing bright blue. White text reads WELCOME TO BILBAO, SPAIN, then below a dividing rule, ALL ABOARD, then GUEST — 4:30 p.m. and CREW — 4:00 p.m. At the bottom is the Celebrity X logo beside CITIZEN, Eco-Drive, PURPOSEFUL POWER and the line Precision Partner for Today's Port-of-Call.

The shuttle from the port to Bilbao took around 20 minutes and dropped us here behind the Guggenheim museum.

A coach drop-off beneath a large modern building on a bright, cloudless morning. A curving limestone-clad upper storey is carried on square columns over a covered roadway, with a deep blue cylindrical volume rising behind it and a tall angled glass curtain wall to the right. A white coach is parked in the shade under the overhang. A man in a dark t-shirt, jeans and a pale cap walks along the block-paved pavement in the foreground, with two more people at the far left, a strip of bright green lawn to the right and a yellow line painted along the kerb.

Here’s the front side: Siena stands smiling on the pale stone terrace in front of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, her long blonde hair loose and sunglasses pushed up on her head. She wears a loose charcoal t-shirt over a pale pink pleated skirt. Behind her the museum's titanium-clad volumes twist upward in overlapping silver and bronze curves, with a canopy of curved metal on slender columns to the right and a glass-walled section beneath. A shallow reflecting pool runs along the base of the building, and in the distance a cluster of mirrored spheres, palm trees and apartment blocks are visible under a clear blue sky.

A selfie of Brian in front of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, his face filling the lower right of the frame. He wears dark wraparound sunglasses and a navy short-sleeved polo shirt with the collar open. Behind him the museum's titanium panels curve in bands of silver and warm bronze, with the curved metal canopy on its slender column at the right and the glass atrium below. A reflecting pool and steel handrail run behind him, with the mirrored sphere sculpture, palm trees and a bridge visible in the hazy distance under a clear blue sky.

If you’d like an expensive meal at the museum, you can visit here. We did not. A freestanding stainless steel and glass sign outside a restaurant, lettered nerua in lower-case with GUGGENHEIM BILBAO beneath it. Below the name are two round badges: a dark red MICHELIN 2026 disc with the star emblem, and a navy 3 SOLES Guía Repsol disc with three orange dots. A lockable display case mounted below holds the printed menu. Behind the sign, the museum's pale limestone wall curves away up a flight of steps, and the green-painted steel underside of a road bridge crosses overhead.

The restaurant's menu behind glass in its stainless steel display case, printed in parallel columns of Basque, Spanish and English. A header block gives the serving hours as 13:00 to 14:30 at midday and 20:00 to 21:30 in the evening, above a paragraph explaining that the kitchen changes its menu three times a year and works with local producers. Individual dishes are listed with prices — tomatoes in aromatic herb sauce, mochi filled with scorpionfish cake, Russian salad with spider crab and red prawns, sea bass, fried suckling lamb, tripe and snout in Biscayan sauce — alongside a tasting menu headed MUINA at 110 €. The MICHELIN 2026 and 3 SOLES Guía Repsol badges are visible at the top of the frame.

We walked along the river… A row of life-size rust-brown sculpted female figures strung out along a riverside promenade, each leaning into a thick white rope that runs from the front figure back through the line, as though hauling a barge upstream. The nearest figure is in a long dress with a cloth wound round her head, her hands gripping the rope. Two women in vest tops and shorts walk past on the left and more pedestrians are further along the paving. A white-painted railing runs beside the green river to the right, with plane trees, a road bridge on slender masts, banners on lampposts and a wooded hillside beyond, all under a clear blue sky.

… then crossed a pedestrian bridge to the other side. Rowan stands on the Zubizuri footbridge over the river in Bilbao, looking toward the camera in white-framed sunglasses and a black t-shirt, with a silver cross pendant on a black cord. His curly reddish-brown hair catches the sun. Behind him the bridge's white steel arch sweeps overhead and its cable stays fan down to the deck on both sides. The walking surface runs away in dark asphalt with a pale turquoise strip of the original glass decking along the left edge. Several other pedestrians walk ahead, including a man with a grey backpack in pink patterned shorts, with green trees and apartment buildings on the far bank.

We were seeking out El Salón de Mi Casa, a cat café in Bilbao. They said reservations were recommended but not required. We showed up, rang the bell, and nobody came. We peeked in windows but we saw neither people nor cats.

Instead we ended up going to McDonalds for one child, and then Taco Bell for the other. The Taco Bell happened to have the fastest WiFi I’ve ever encountered in any fast food restaurant anywhere, allowing me to do some backups and reduce my anxiety somewhat.

A McDonald's paper order ticket held up in the foreground, printed with the order number 2232 in large white figures on a black band. Smaller Spanish text below invites the customer to rate their visit, above a QR code. Behind it the restaurant counter area is out of focus: a black sign reading RECOGIDA for order collection, an order-status screen on the wall, a row of recessed ceiling spotlights, two deep red pendant lamps, illuminated menu boards and a promotional panel in blue and red.

A cardboard carton on a black tray holding two crunchy tacos filled with shredded lettuce and grated yellow cheese, alongside a pile of orange seasoned fries and a folded paper napkin. The carton is printed with a row of numbers and small animal silhouettes. Behind the tray the restaurant interior recedes: wooden picnic-style tables with brightly painted legs in teal and purple, pendant bulbs hung on lengths of rope, a grid-patterned partition, framed black and white photographs, and a self-serve drinks machine lit with purple neon where a teenager in a black t-shirt and blue shorts is filling a cup.

We made our way back to the museum to pick up the shuttle. Sherri, Rowan and Siena walk away from the camera down a flight of shallow steps with metal handrails, cut into a grassy slope. Sherri is at the left in a blue and white floral dress, Rowan in the centre in a black t-shirt and blue shorts, and Siena at the right in a black top and pale pink skirt. Below them the road runs past the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, its titanium curves rising above pale limestone blocks with a banner hanging on the facade. A deep blue office building stands to the right, with young trees, parked cars and green wooded hills behind, under a cloudless blue sky.

Back onboard and look who we see: the Explora III ship again, which we were docked near yesterday in La Coruña. This ship was only 13 days old at this point, and I’d been researching Explora Journeys prior to our trip, so it feels like I’m meant to sail on her at some point. :)

Two cruise ships lie alongside a concrete quay, seen from high on a third ship. In the foreground the dark blue hull and white superstructure of EXPLORA III fills the frame, her name lettered on the bow above a gold band, with mooring lines running down to bollards on the pier and lifeboats slung along her side. Beyond her bow is another ship of the same line, her funnel lettered Explora in gold on black and white stripes. At the left edge a third vessel shows a white hull with a red and orange swoosh. Behind the ships, a town of red-roofed apartment blocks and villas climbs a green hillside, with hazy blue mountains beyond and small yachts moored on the water.

Later, leaving Bilbao, we passed this breakwater lighthouse. My memory of last time we passed it was that there were lots of people there to wave us off.

The Faro del Rompeolas, a white stone lighthouse at the end of the long Getxo breakwater, seen from a departing ship. The round tower has a ring of small square windows, a railed gallery with a stone balustrade, and a glazed lantern room capped by a green-bronze dome and a weathervane. It stands on a massive semicircular stone bastion whose lower courses are stained green at the waterline. Graffiti in coloured spray paint covers the base of the tower and the small flat-roofed building beside it. A handful of people stand on the bastion and along the mole, which runs away to the right behind a white railing. Two small motorboats and a rowing skiff are on the blue water, and behind them a crowded sandy beach curves along the shore below red-roofed villas and a wooded headland.

I checked my old photos and, sure enough, we had a huge send-off in 2007. I’m guessing the novelty of large ships in Bilbao has worn off now.

A two-panel side-by-side comparison of the Faro del Rompeolas, the lighthouse at the end of the Getxo breakwater, nineteen years apart, each panel headed by a black bar with the year in white. The left panel, labelled 2007, shows the white lighthouse and its semicircular stone bastion crowded shoulder to shoulder with people along the parapet and out along the mole, the stonework clean and unmarked, with a hillside town of white and red-roofed buildings behind under a pale sky. The right panel, labelled 2026, shows the same tower and bastion from a similar angle in bright summer light, now with coloured graffiti sprayed across the base of the tower and the small building beside it, only a scattering of people on the bastion, and the mole running away to the right past a white railing.

We could’ve done more in Bilbao. I think we’re at the point in the cruise where we’re starting to get travel burnout and just weren’t feeling it. I’d like to do a proper visit sometime, including the Guggenheim.

England and Iberia Day 17

The final day, somewhere in the English Channel

  • Start of day: At sea
  • End of day: At sea

Our final full day on the ship, and a sea day. This will be brief.

Our adjoining staterooms. Rowan and I were in the left one, Sherri and Siena on the right.

A short alcove off a ship's corridor with two stateroom doors side by side, separated by a square structural column. The doors are pale grey with brushed steel lever handles and card readers, and each carries a small black door hanger printed DEEP SLEEP in white. Cream vertical-grained timber panelling lines the alcove walls, with a black band at waist height carrying white cabin number plates reading 146 on the left and 148 on the right, each with DECK 3 in small type above. A single round ceiling light glows overhead and grey carpet runs across the threshold.

There was a heavy set of doors that ran between the rooms. As far as we could tell, there wasn’t a way to prop the doors open. The utility of having a door between the rooms was marginal.

A beautiful sunset from our room: A sunset over open ocean seen from inside the ship through a large window divided into panes by dark metal mullions studded with rivets. The sun sits as a small bright disc just above a flat, clean horizon, laying a pale gold path across gently rippled deep blue water. Above it the sky grades from warm apricot at the horizon through pale gold to soft blue, streaked with thin cirrus and two long contrails, with a band of small pink and grey clouds catching the light to the right. A cream curtain hangs at the left edge of the frame and the pale windowsill runs across the bottom.

Our final evening: A dimly lit cruise ship stateroom at night, photographed from the entry passage. Two single beds made up in cream bedding stand side by side in the foreground, the nearer one with a folded grey throw across its foot and stacked white pillows against a pale timber headboard wall. A single bedside lamp is on between them. Beyond the beds a grey sofa under a framed picture of a red fish holds a jumble of packed bags, with more luggage on the floor beside it. A curtained window, a writing desk with a lit lamp and a wall-mounted television fill the far corner, and the floor is laid with a dark patterned carpet.

England and Iberia Day 18

Homeward bound

  • Start of day: Southampton, England
  • End of day: Home in North Carolina

Disembarkation. Our flight from Heathrow to Atlanta departs at 1:25pm giving us plenty of time. Still: I wanted to leave plenty of margin for problems, so I booked a private car from Gunwharf Executive Travel to take us from Southampton, and we kept our luggage with us on the last night so we could do walk-off shortly after the ship was cleared by Customs + Immigration.

Did I mention I discovered I could control the stateroom from within the Celebrity app? What better time to figure this out than the final hour of a 14 day cruise. 😐

A phone screenshot of the cruise line's stateroom control app, headed Ship Time 5:53 AM with a speech-bubble icon at the top right. A teal header bar reads Living room, with tabs for Room and Television and Room selected. On the dark panel below, a °F toggle sits beside up and down arrow buttons for the thermostat, with the current temperature showing only two blank dashes. A section headed Living room lights offers three buttons — Off highlighted in teal, 50%, and On — and below that a Scenes row of four buttons labelled Morning, Evening, Sleep and Movie, each with a small pictogram.

A phone screenshot of the same stateroom app with the Television tab selected, again headed Ship Time 5:53 AM above the teal Living room bar. The dark screen shows a virtual television remote: a round Mute button at the upper left and a power symbol in a circle at the upper right, a large circular directional pad with up, down, left and right arrows around a central OK button, and along the bottom a vertical VOL rocker marked plus and minus, stacked Menu and Return buttons, and a vertical CH rocker with up and down arrows.

It’s over:

A wall-mounted flat-screen television in a wood-panelled stateroom, showing the ship's navigation channel. A Celebrity X Cruises logo sits at the top left above a world map centred on the Atlantic, with Europe, Africa and the eastern seaboard of North America labelled. A small ship symbol is circled at Southampton, and the ports of Porto (Leixões), Lisbon and Málaga are marked down the Iberian coast. A panel at the left lists Position 50°54.01′ N, 001°24.97′ W, Speed 0.0 kts and Course 297°. A blue bar across the bottom reads Saturday, August 15, 2026 06:56 (UTC+01:00) and Total cruise distance sailed: 3993 nm.

Walk-off was a breeze – basically no line – contrary to our experience in January. I WhatsApp’d the driver, he told me where to stand, and then pulled up within a few minutes and we were off to Terminal 3.

Funny thing about Terminal 3. As we were on the road toward the airport, we received an alert that T3 had a water break and some flooding, and that it wasn’t accepting car traffic at this time. Our driver’s plan was to take us to Terminal 5 instead, which I expect would’ve worked fine, but after some back-and-forth with Claude we opted for the Hatton Cross Underground Station instead. From there it’s one tube stop to the station for Terminals 2 and 3. Using Hatton Cross avoided Heathrow traffic altogether.

Waiting for the train. It was crowded and we had luggage, so it was divide and conquer.

Siena stands on the Underground platform at Hatton Cross, smiling toward the camera with her long blonde hair down, wearing a slate blue hoodie and a pale pink backpack. Behind her a white sign lettered HATTON CROSS in blue runs along the tunnel wall beneath a ribbed metal ceiling, and a burnt orange tiled pillar carries the station's blue zigzag motif. A roundel is mounted on the cream tiled wall of the opposite platform across the track. To the right, a woman with blonde hair and glasses in a black jacket stands with a rucksack and a water bottle, and wheeled suitcases are lined up along the platform edge in the foreground.

Made it to Heathrow, flying Delta today: Siena, seen from behind with her pink backpack over a navy hoodie, walks toward the entrance of Heathrow Terminal 3 under a glass canopy on a bright morning. The terminal's glazed facade carries the Virgin Atlantic name and logo in white across the glass, with a smaller Virgin Atlantic and DELTA sign above the automatic doors. A yellow panel to the left of the doors is marked with a large letter A. A woman in black activewear stands to the right beside a black cabin bag and a beige suitcase with a travel pillow looped over the handle, and other travellers with luggage are visible through the doors.

Clearing security was easy. I couldn’t recall if the UK does exit interviews like Schengen; they do not. We now had lots of time on our hands.

Sherri and I hit up the Centurion lounge for breakfast and coffee.

A yellow airport wayfinding sign mounted on a white tiled wall, lettered in black with a left-pointing arrow and two pictograms — a seated figure and an adult with a child on a slide. The text reads The Centurion® Lounge and, on a second line, Play area. Below and to the left, a Fire Action notice in red, blue and green panels gives numbered emergency instructions for the Terminal 3 Family Lounge, along with a spillage contact number and an emergency call point extension. A small QR code label to the right is captioned as a training team tag not to be scanned during patrol, and the corner of a green emergency exit sign shows at the top right.

It was a little early for an ice cream. A Ben & Jerry's ice cream vending machine in an airport concourse, its curved front wrapped in a blue sky and green field design with a black and white cow at the bottom and the words Mini Tubs, Ice Cream in yellow lettering. A grid of product buttons shows mini tubs of Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Caramel Chew Chew, Strawberry Cheesecake and Vanilla alongside Magnum White and Magnum Classic bars, with prices beside each. A black payment column at the right carries a contactless reader, a keypad, a note slot and a coin slot. A red Coca-Cola drinks machine stands to the left beside a chilled cabinet of bottled water, and a snack machine is partly visible at the right.

The rest is mundane travel. Our flight was a little delayed, they made up a little time in the air, it felt endless regardless, and then we landed in Atlanta. It’s an odd new process Delta has for international connecting flights. There’s a lot of staff along the walk from the plane to immigration, and you don’t have to claim and recheck your bag. Overall pretty nice.

With plenty of time before our ATL->RDU flight, my son and I did the walk from terminal E to our gate, which…. I kid you not… was A1, about as far away as you can get. We booked some good steps, though, and it helped keep us awake. The flight home was uneventful, as was the Uber.

THE END

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