Today we are leaving London by private bus. It will leave London fairly early, before 8am.; approximately two hours to Stonehenge, then on to Southampton, board the ship and get settled. That pretty much takes up the whole day. Set sail around 5pm, then across to Guernsey Island.
My first cruise out of Southampton was aboard the Royal Princess. The Princess ships are similar to one another and all luxuriously furnished. It feels like you are walking around a posh hotel. Mostly, when you are at sea, you can’t feel the movement of the ship, but sometimes when the sea is a little rougher you can feel a bit of sway. We were on the Crown Princess for one of our other cruises…out of New York City, along the New England Coast and into Canada(Prince Edward Island, then on to Quebec), so this is our second cruise on this ship. We usually pick a room on Emerald Deck….it’s only one deck above the outside (Promenade) deck and we like to walk outside when we are on board. On this cruise we have booked a mini suite for more room for the three of us; last cruise we had a regular state room with bunk beds but they are just too hard for us ‘older’ (lol) ladies. The mini suite has twin beds and a couch that folds out.
WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL
OUR SHUTTLE BUS FROM THE CRUISE LINE STOPPED OFF IN WINCHESTER ON THE WAY TO SOUTHAMPTON AND LET US ROAM ABOUT A BIT. THE CATHEDRAL WAS BEING REPAIRED AND WE WEREN’T ABLE TO GO INSIDE.
I was born in California, but both my parents were born in different areas of rural Oklahoma. My father grew up on a small cattle ranch and my mother grew up in the hills of eastern Oklahoma near the Ozark Mts. Both were born in the 1920's when Oklahoma was still more a part of the 1800's than the twentieth century so I like to say I was born of parents who were the last generation born during the old west. Their old west roots had a huge impact on my childhood.
I spent the first three years of my life on my Granny's chicken farm. She was my father's grandmother and she owned 60 acres of alfalfa which she rented out and lived on three acres of barnyard where she raised chickens. There was some electricity, but no indoor plumbing outside of a faucet in the kitchen. The toilet was down the boardwalk in a small shed...in other words...an outhouse. The shower was a room under the water tank in the pumphouse. Granny's little three room house was the only painted building on the property. Everything else was raw, unpainted wood including the two room house my parents lived in. And I loved living on that little farm where I pretty much had free run of the barnyard and sometimes even wandered into the fields surrounding it.
The town where I was born is along the Colorado River in the middle of the California desert and across the river from the Arizona desert and while we did live there for the first 12 years of my life, we moved a lot due to my father's employment. He was a big equipment operator and we moved to where the work took him, but usually only six months of the year then we moved back to our hometown.
We moved to Northern California in 1958 and I have lived here ever since. I am a mother, a grandmother, have one great-grandchild and recently retired. I am divorced and now live with my youngest sister. My sisters and I like to cruise and take road trips. I am enjoying my life.
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