British Isle Cruise--Day 10

August 4, 2015—Day 10, Dublin, Ireland (or not)

Our ship was scheduled to arrive in Dublin at 5:00am, an early arrival due to the tides.  I woke up at around 5:30, and looked outside and we were still at sea with gray clouds and rolling swells.  I had heard the approach to Dublin wasn’t an easy one, and I guessed that with the swells, we would most likely miss this port.

Finally, this was confirmed around 8:00am while we were having breakfast with the captain saying that by now, we may have noticed that we weren’t docked in Dublin (ummm, really?).  He said that due to the sea state and because the approach to Dublin required the ship proceed backwards into the channel for 6 miles (the ship is too big to turn around in such a small channel), the decision was made not to port in Dublin for safety reasons.  Instead, the ship would proceed to Liverpool and we would arrive this afternoon around 4:00pm and remain overnight until our scheduled departure at 6:00pm on Wednesday. 

So we would finally have a day at sea.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t very good (cold and windy), so everyone remained indoors and the ship’s public areas were very crowded.  There were no tables or chairs available in the piazza area on Deck 5, nor along the piazza on Decks 6 and 7.  We ended up going back to our cabins where my parents watched one of the many movies on demand that were available.  I went to participate in the trivia games—first the regular trivia, then later to the Discovery at Sea trivia (which was based on facts from shows presented on the Discovery Channel—Princess has an agreement with the Discovery Channel).

We decided to go to lunch at 1:00 thinking the buffet might not be as crowded then as most people would have had lunch earlier.  Unfortunately, after wandering around through the crowds for ½ hour, we gave up as there were no tables available at all.  Some folks weren’t even eating, but were simply sitting there reading or whatever, but were unwilling to move.  Instead, we headed down to Deck 6 to try out Alfredos, the pizzeria on board Royal Princess.  We did get seated and ordered salad and individual, made to order pizzas.  It took over an hour to get the pizza and our waiter apologized and said it was because they were so busy and the pizza ovens were too small.  So we had a late lunch, not finishing until after 3:00pm. 

We watched the ship proceed down the channel and approach Liverpool—from the less crowded area of our balcony.  The ship was docked along her berth on the port side, and since our cabins are on the starboard side, we couldn’t see the actual landing area and docks, but we could see across the channel to the other side of Liverpool.  And wonder of wonders, the sun came out, although the clouds also moved in again and it was still pretty breezy.  In any case, the sun was actually warm, and I’m hoping that the wind will die down and the sun shines tomorrow when we are booked on the first of our private excursions (keeping my fingers crossed). 

After it was announced that passengers could go ashore, we decided that we would go down to the piazza on Deck 5 for a cappuccino and tea.  There were plenty of tables available since a lot of folks had gotten off to visit Liverpool.  We talked about going to the dining room for dinner, but since we had such a late lunch, none of us were hungry.  Since we knew we really should eat something (or we’d be hungry late at night when it was time for bed), we just decided to get a light dinner in the buffet later. 

Afterward, we made plans to meet up early in the morning for breakfast before meeting our tour guide, Judy, for our excursion into Wales, then called it a night.