Part I. Take-off - Charlotte, New Jersey, Glasgow to Lisbon
January 7-8 Following months of preparation the beginning of our sixty day journey around the world began on a worrisome note. The evening prior to leaving Boone I discovered that our Cheap Fare Guru was a bit on the lazy side. He failed to tell us that our United Airlines flight from Newark NJ to Glasgow would be landing ½ hour after our scheduled Flybe departure from there to Southampton, and that we needed rescheduling. Woe were we. Turns out that Flybe indulges in flights of fancy, changing times and routes on very short notice. When we arrived in Glasgow our subsequent consulting with the Flybe customer service was initially of little comfort. Basically they claimed that this was the problem of our American agent (to the Scottish Flybe folks this was clearly a joyful revelation). So, I should call and complain to the Cheap Fare Guru, i.e. for them to agree to absorb any costs related to refunding tickets, etc. Hey, this is 9am in Glasgow, we have to be at the dock in far off Southampton at 5pm! And let me tell you. Glasgow Airport is not Dulles International. Only one additional flight was scheduled for the day to Southampton. That was for mid-afternoon, and it was full. Really, the options were few and very costly. Rent a car one-way – at least an eight hour drive on British 'wrong'- sided freeways, and then possibly not making it in time with the ship closing the gate at 4:30pm. Or fly to Lisbon and get on board there two days later. Formidable challenges.  |
| Glasgow International Airport |
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| Glasgow harbor and industrial concentrations in the early 1900s |
bus experience was called for. Half an hour later we were in Glasgow's Victorian center.
Altogether a brief cold (40F), stormy, very wet and thoroughly forgettable occasion. Well almost. This city has had a glorious history as a leader in the industrial revolution bringing to it major concentrations of iron and steel with attendant ship building and other heavy industry during the latter part of the 19th century
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| Amid construction activity on the St. Georges Square is the declaration on the pink background. "People built Glasgow". Christmas decorations are still up. |
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| In front of the Victorian era Municipal Building is a memorial to the fallen soldiers of WWI and II. |
Scottish people are well know in my area of North Carolina, where there are many descendants including an uncertain though very large number of pretenders, as a prideful peopleI. No surprise therefore to see the evidence of their commitment to their past as well as to the present here in Glasgow (above). Yes, dear readers, you will need to enlarge the pictures for the full story. We did manage a few sights before the weather drove us back to a waiting area for the airport bus
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| Looks like a major graffiti removal effort |
Certainly Ane and I will testify to the cleanliness of the small part of the center city we visited. Here is an idea we might learn from for use in our own town. The Glasgow municipality has vans running about with the eviscerating tools and chemicals to eradicate whatever was sprayed wherever in the city the night before. On the other hand, the local government is not shy about approving wall murals to serve a particular cause. As I have found in recent years in many European cities, hand crafted poster style art has become plentiful, as evidenced by the below shown artistic expression of an otherwise drab wall surface.
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| A blank drab wall facing the sidewalk, or a giant artwork |
In our journeys there is always there is this question facing us: But what is it you want from a city in your brief visit? Just how can you expect to gain a feel for the locality that will allow you to remember it, let alone cause you to write about it in some meaningful way, down the road, at some point in time? It is a wonderful question. Look, the context of the answer drives my life! My goal has ever been to discover the world through my own eyes, and to capture memories through the use of my camera lens. On this particular 'round the world venture, in most cases, we will have merely one day to absorb the complexities of a particular place. Can one uncover the soul of a locale in a sole day, capture the spirit of place, and come to an even vague appreciation of the extraordinary, delicate and complicated mesh of human beings giving life to their local environment? How is it possible to not be caught in the dilemma noted by Bob Hope in one of his many 1950s travel movies with Dorothy Lamour, and Bing Crosby, "Well, if this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium". And thus find oneself fogged over by far too many impressions and defeated by the limits of time. Well, you judge and you tell me. OK?
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| We seek out historically preserved monuments, museums, neighborhoods, whatever will catch the essence of a cultural past, as here in the case of a museum built into an existing grandiose Glasgow Victorian era edifice. |
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| ...places where the locals gather |
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| Most of all, perhaps, we seek people in their daily activities or involved in festivals or expressions of their changing world |
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Notable cityscapes, here the Clyde River which, according to the Scots, far outshines the Thames in London as an image of regional/local identity.
Compelling modernistic artistic and architectural endeavors. This is the Glasgow Science Center. But compare this to the show pieces en mass we found in Dubai and Singapore later in our journey.
Ane and I were both beyond exhaustion when we finally got on the 14:45 Flybe flight to Southampton. (Did someone else loose their seats to us, hm?) OK, so there we were in Southampton, an hour and fifteen minutes later, met by a HAL representative who quickly got us by taxi to the M.S. Rotterdam. We arrived right at 4:30pm, darned near missing the life boat drill. Rats! Well, yes, we ARE seasoned in this stumbling about affair of seniors easily lost in their initial hours on this large cruise ship.
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This lovely image, in the minds of many Americans, IS Scotland!
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| All of the comforts of home for 40 nights on the MS Rotterdam from Southampton, England to Singapore (you are seeing the preps for our daily pre-dinner ritual; thought you might like this on a scale where you can see yourself sitting down to enjoy a late afternoon aperitif while contemplating the journey ahead). |
For forty days we are in this wonderful Vista room with its private balcony, and a living room separated (by curtain) from the bedroom. Considerably more extravagant than the room originally planned but then HAL had called a few weeks prior to departure with a cheap upgrade offer. They offered this for $3,700, I countered with an offer of $500. They accepted! As we say in Danish “heldet følger de tossede”, which translates to “luck follows a fool” (hm! We shall see how this works out - - - -).
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| North Atlantic seas having quieted down a bit by mid-morning |
Swells, I found later, were at up to a max of 15 feet, so that even a massive and mechanically stabilized ship like the Rotterdam was being tossed about like a rowboat (well, perhaps not quite). The seas barely quieted all day. There were noticeably less folks for dinner, and some activities were cancelled. Neither Ane nor I got seasick, landlubbers we are not!
Otherwise a desirably uneventful day of rest and relaxation. Though we still get confused by fore and aft, we remember the layout of the cruise ship from our previous stay in 2004. The MS Rotterdam had a much needed overhaul in 2009, but the essential spaces stayed pretty much the same.
One rather critical objective was reached. I was able to convince the HAL administrators of the legitimacy of Ane and I leaving the ship in Muscat, Oman, taking a flight to Dubai and then rejoining the ship three days later. Unbeknownst to me there were international boundary issues relating to whether HAL had any responsibilities for us as we moved beyond their immediacy. Reason for the absence from the ship being that our dear friend Tara Doddihal complained of her having us only for one day of driving around seeing the Dubai and other United Arab Emirates sights, and would it not be better for us all to have a night or two with her and the family at their residence in Dubai. Ane and I are so pleased that this is now an addition to the tour, especially as a break from the shipboard routines a bit over half way to Singapore. This cruise, the major portion of our ‘round the world tour, has gotten underway.
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| Tanvi and her mother, Tara Doddihal, with Ole and Ane in the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi |
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| A troupe of three Thilawa high school students performing as a dancing elephant delighted the cruise audience at the end of the Myanmar stay |
January 10 Even more restful of a day with lesser swells, zero precipitation, and a gradually clearing sky. We are beginning to meet other guests. Having changed our dinner hour, these are two times per evening with pre-assigned tables and the same retinue of guests (up to 8 per table), to one that allow us to show up when it pleases us between 5:30 and 8pm. This evening we sat at a table with an engaging Vietnamese-California couple originally from Hanoi (did we have a lot of questions), and two ladies, one from Brisbane, Australia, and the other the engaging Shiraz from Wisconsin (though originally from Pagan in the Philippines). So along with two Americans born in Denmark, a committee of the United Nations was in session.
In retrospect this was one of the more enjoyable aspects of being on board. Lots of different nationalities, though the Dutch, Canadians, and British appear to dominate. Canadians, by far, seemed the more personable, seasoned and venturesome travelers. That, in fact has been our experience from several of our longer cruises (this is our seventh). Perhaps one of the more negative aspects is the preponderance of seniors. But then who but the idle rich and reasonably well off retirees can take off for a 40 day cruise in the depth of the northern winter. Do note here that we are going to subtropical environments, being just one degree of latitude north of the Equator at Singapore.
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