Our Trip to the British Isles

Today we disembark the Royal Princess but we still have one last tour to complete. Stonehenge, here we come. We were up early as our room steward wants to get our room ready for the next guest who will be boarding later this afternoon. As luck would have it there was an early tour leaving the ship for Stonehenge and then dropping us off at Heathrow. What worked out even better was that we arrived at Stonehenge so early that we were vertially the first to arrive allowing us to get photos with no crowds in front of us. It actually took us a bit of time to find someone to take this photo of us Stonehenge was built about 5,000 yeras ago. The original circle was started about 3,000 BC with the larger stones added around 2,500 BC. These larger stones were up to 30 feet tall and weighed as much as 25 tons. They most likely traveled about 20 miles to get here. No easy task for sure The smaller inner stones were added over the next 50 years. Stonehenge was also a burial ...

June 6, 1944, the day the allied forces landed at Normandy on 5 beaches over a 80 km stretch of shoreline. The code names were Utah and Omaha beach where the landings were led by the Americans, Gold and sword beaches led by British forces and Juno beach which was led by the Canadians. Our focus today was to visit the Canadian memorial at Juno beach. No funny punchlines today. A panarama of Juno beach Outside of the Juno memorial,  359 Canadians lost their lives on the first day and a plaque has been placed here for each one of them. Inside the memorial the Canadians are honoured with this monument filled with poppies. As we walked thru the memorial there were several stations where you could listen to stories about the D day invasion at Juno beach Outside we continued our tour to the beach itself. These concrete structures littered the beaches.  Attached to the top of each pyramid would be an explosive mine for invading landingcraft. Bec...

Managed to sleep in today which was great and had a lazy day on board. Our excitment today revolved around the various shops on board the Royal Princess. In particular in the jewlery store were Sheryl won a draw and received a tanzanitet bracelet. And the winner is... From cabine E-717, Sheryl!!!! One happy person And it didn't cost me a cent Tomorrow we storm the beaches of Normandy

Today we anchored just off South Queensferry and tendered in to the dock where we caught a bus to Edinburgh. We toured around the old city and what they call the new city (founded in the 1700's). We drove past the First Minister of Scotland's home (this would be the 10 Downing Street of Scotland) Security is not as noteable here as in England, was tempted to walk up and ring the doorbell This would be considered the Shaughnessy area of Edinburgh We continued along the busy road called the Royal Mile which leds up the Edinburgh Castle where the bus found a place to stop and let us off This was the view outside of my bus window (but technically I guess we were unloading) As you can see the streets were a little busy Just a short climb to the Castle And here we are finally at the top in the centre courtyard. The Scotish Crown jewels are just behind us in that building, only an hour and a half away in this queue As we only had 40 minu...