{"id":13858,"date":"2016-07-14T14:01:56","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T19:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/?p=13858"},"modified":"2016-07-14T14:01:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T19:01:56","slug":"wales-setting-sail-on-thursday-aug-27th-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wales-2015\/wales-setting-sail-on-thursday-aug-27th-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales – setting sail on Thursday Aug. 27th, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

well, now it’s not wales at all anymore. \u00a0we started out at the lovely\u00a0Willows B&B<\/a>\u00a0in Ashurst, and enjoyed a delicious\u00a0breakfast.<\/p>\n

\"w880\"<\/p>\n

it was a lovely dining room, and i wish i’d taken a wide shot of it.<\/p>\n

\"w881\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"w882\"<\/p>\n

they do have a couple willows on the property.<\/p>\n

\"w883\"<\/p>\n

and we loaded up all our bags and took off!<\/p>\n

\"w884\"<\/p>\n

here’s our giant mound of luggage outside the car rental place. \u00a0for some reason, the day before we’d spent way too much time trying to figure out how to walk from the cruise terminal back to the rental place. \u00a0i don’t know what we had been thinking – maybe kevin was going to drop me and the luggage off at the terminal, and then drive to the rental place, and then walk back to the teminal? \u00a0it doesn’t matter; we easily drove and dropped off the car, got in a cab, and away we went.<\/p>\n

\"w885\"<\/p>\n

The Cunard waiting area at the Southampton Dock. \u00a0it was pretty crowded, but not bad. \u00a0i was excited that we were about to get back on board. \u00a0i bought a few mini bottles of wine to have in the stateroom, and i wanted to mail a postcard, but there were no mailboxes. one of the many nice women who were running things put my postcard in her pocket and said she’d mail it for me when she got home! \u00a0super nice.<\/p>\n

\"w886\"<\/p>\n

we saw a little dog in a sailor collar waiting to board; his owner was trying to get him to wear a sailor hat, but he’d have none of it. \u00a0we saw other nice dogs waiting, too.<\/p>\n

\"w887\"<\/p>\n

we’d arrived at the terminal at about 11:30, but then there was an issue – we’d checked our bags, and they held one of kevin’s back. \u00a0it was the biggest bag of all, and we had to wait a while so they could inspect it with us there.<\/p>\n

so we were finally led down through the crew metal detector,\u00a0and they had to frisk kevin because he wears an insulin pump, and then we went into a room below where they searched his bag. \u00a0i think the issue was…some kind of knife? \u00a0i can’t remember, but whatever he had, i knew there was one in my luggage, too, but it didn’t get stopped.<\/p>\n

another couple was there getting their bags checked and they were really mad about it. \u00a0i thought it was interesting, to be in the bowels of the terminal, plus we got to see crew members boarding, wearing their street clothes. \u00a0they have to wear such spiffy uniforms when on duty, so it was interesting to see them as they really were.<\/p>\n

the wait wasn’t so bad, and we were in our lovely balcony cabin by one o’clock.<\/p>\n

\"w888\"<\/p>\n

we immediately put some laundry in a washer, because the huge lines hadn’t formed yet, and met a chatty australian travel writer. \u00a0then we ate a delicious al fresco lunch on the deck, waiting to set sail.<\/p>\n

\"w889\"<\/p>\n

we were the only people sitting out on \u00a0deck! \u00a0we knew that once we started off it would probably be too windy to eat out there.<\/p>\n

the glass-fronted balcony really is the only way to go.<\/p>\n

\"w890\"<\/p>\n

i stood in a very long line of people so i could change our dinner time to the six o’clock seating instead of the later one, while kevin continued with the laundry.<\/p>\n

here’s kevin – we were the first couple at our table down to dinner. \u00a0one couple was british, the other australian. \u00a0the australians were travelling for three months! \u00a0that’s a long time. \u00a0i bet they took a lot of luggage; i remember that the woman’s favorite pasttime was shopping.<\/p>\n

the english woman asked if we had “any family.” \u00a0we got asked that a few times. yes, we have three cats!<\/p>\n

\"w891\"<\/p>\n

i wrote in my journal on thursday that i thought we’d have better food if we went to the buffet at night. \u00a0dinner was ok, but dessert was good. \u00a0plus more chocolate when we got back to the room!<\/p>\n

\"w892\"<\/p>\n

here’s the last bit of land as we sailed away from England.<\/p>\n

\"w893\"<\/p>\n

ok then,<\/p>\n

mrs. first day of the trip back hughes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

well, now it’s not wales at all anymore. \u00a0we started out at the lovely\u00a0Willows B&B\u00a0in Ashurst, and enjoyed a delicious\u00a0breakfast. it was a lovely dining room, and i wish i’d taken a wide shot of it.   they do have a couple willows on the property. and we loaded up all our bags and took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[115,267],"class_list":["post-13858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wales-2015","tag-queen-mary-2","tag-the-willows-bb-ashurst"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-3Bw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13858"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13959,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858\/revisions\/13959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}