VOV21

Plymouth

While we were eating breakfast this morning we noticed that the ship had stopped moving toward the dock and we speculated about the table that we had to wait for a ferry as ferries' schedule throughout Europe takes precedence over other shipping. Well we were partly right. The ferry was scheduled to leave the dock we were going to occupy at 6:00 AM but did not depart until 8:00. which meant that we did not dock until after 9:00. When the captain made the announcement about the delay he made no effort to hide his irritation at the “ needless delay”.

We were anxious because we were to meet Dear’s Wife’s friend Angela and her husband David at 9:30 and the all clear to disembark was a few minutes after. Not to worry though, as they arrived just after we left the ship.

We spent a great day touring around and reminiscing ( mostly the latter ). We did get to a Natural Trust Park famous for their horses and we had coffee and tea there and reminisced. We also visited Tavistock – a medieval town that has remained intact as it was never bombed during WWII.We were treated to a fantastic lunch at the Bedford hotel and of course, more reminiscing. We checked out the local markets and toured around until it started to pour rain and our hosts drove us back to the ship.

The ship was delayed leaving port for about 20 minutes as some of the organized tours were not back in time as a result of the later start . I guess some of the people on the tours were really tired out as they did not make dinner, two of them Kay and Jim at our table.

Later tonight we are going to dance to big band music and tomorrow we will arrive in Dublin around lunchtime.