With the advent of the latest Vista for Cunard in 2007, Queen Victoria, it made what was to be the original Queen Victoria look decidedly more attractive and she was calling me! Actually we think she had since she followed us out on QE2 in October 2006 then again on Aurora in September 2007. It was like she was saying, "Come on. You know you want to sail on me. You can't resist my funnel based on Lizzie, you know you can't." Yes, I'm talking about Arcadia, the fourth in the first generation Vista series. I had already visted Arcadia in October 2005 when she was six months but in December 2008 she had the stern balcony addition given to a couple of her Holland America sisters to make them look like the second generation Vistas, Eurodam, Costa Luminosa, Costa Deliziosa and the forthcoming Nieuw Amsterdam and Queen Elizabeth. I daresay when QV returns from a rescheduled refit this coming December she'll have it too in Carnival Corporation's quest to prove they are NOT the same ship whatsoever. Not working! However, Arcadia now looked the best out of the lot, the tall stately funnel making all the difference instead of squat things on her sister ships. During visits you only see what they want you to which means little of the deck area. Any excuse to explore! Rowan and I discussed going on the 30th May-2nd June cruise to Zeebrugge and Le Havre, since she didn't want her Portunus points halved and wouldn't travel from Plymouth for two night trips. Also it was a back up in case, for some reason, she was unable to go on Celebrity Eclipse the month before. As it turned out that was a wise decision since she was unable to go due to various health issues and medical appointments instead of being at sea. Originally I was going to leave booking until we returned from Vision of the Seas in May 2009 but a quick chat with Becky in Thomas Cook on the 24th April while waiting to be served by Julie for Norwegian Kroner changed that. She told me some prices had gone up so a quick call to Rowan while in Waitrose and I returned to book it. They had cabin E187 at their new DG grade, which was an original stern one so we decided to go for that. It was all paid off on the 15th February 2010 and we booked an excursion to Rouen (since we were going to Paris on Eclipse) once they became available. We weren't planning to go anywhere in Zeebrugge.
Well with Rowan's ongoing health issues, it was beginning to look like she'd miss this too but, despite being in pain after surgery nine days earlier, made the journey trying a new, quicker route on the 29th May. My friend Julie offered to drive us to the terminal instead of going by ferry. Because of Rowan's problems and partially my own pains, we chose to arrive around 1.30pm when it's normally quiet instead of the usual 12pm. How wrong can anyone be! This was the first time either of us had sailed from this terminal and as we were about to find out, things were done VERY differently to the other three which took longer. |
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