Heathrow Bound and Onward To Dover UK

Finally....the clock turned to 5:30. After waiting in Newark Airport for most of the day, we made sure that we were first in line when Virgin Atlantic decided to open up their check in and bag drop counters for business.

It wasn't long before we turned our luggage in and ditched our luggage cart that had served us so well throughout the course of the day.

Once we turned our luggage in, we were able to roam around freely in the terminal for a bit.

We then had a brief wait until they began boarding our plane for our long flight to Heathrow Airport.

We did not look nor feel too awfully bad after just spending the day hanging around in the Newark Airport. Must have been the adrenaline pumping that kept us bright eyed and bushy tailed for our flight. Here we are in the pre-boarding area.

And here we are once we have boarded the plane. We had seats 3 rows from the back of the plane. We only had 2 seats on our side too. The plane was pretty big and even though we were in the Economy section, we had enough leg room. The seats could have used a little more padding to them but we weren't planning on staying awake for most of the flight.

Each seat had a television screen built into the seat in front of it. They had all kinds of movies, television shows, games and travel info available for viewing during the flight.

Within the first hour or so of our flight, they served us dinner. By the time we got our meal, it must have been around 10:30PM.

I know what your next question is going to be...what was the entree that each of you had? Unfortunately the answer to this question is going to be that what we each had is going to fall into the epicurean don't ask don't tell category.

To be honest with you, I just don't remember what we each had and by looking at the photos, it still doesn't really look like anything that I could put a real name to.

One is obviously some type of mystery meat and the other is most likely some type of curried chicken...and yes....that is my final answer

Shortly after eating our meals, we took some sleeping pills which knocked us out for a majority of the flight. We departed Newark Airport at approximately 9:10PM and arrived at Heathrow Airport at approximately 9:25AM.

Once we arrived at Heathrow, we went to claim our baggage and then went to the Arrival Lounge in terminal #3 so that we could meet up with a NCL representative, who was going to get us on board a bus for our 2-3 hours or so ride to the Dover Terminal

Here we are on the big shuttle bus that took us to the Dover cruise terminal and the pier where our cruise ship was awaiting us. We did not look too worse for wear at this point in time. Ahh....but looks can be quite deceiving you know.

About half way through our journey to Dover, we stopped at a rather large and rather busy truck stop/rest area. We got our very first, but not last, experience in foreign foods and currency.

I must admit that even though I took these photos of the baked goodies, I am really shocked that I did not get anything from this shop...maybe a nice looking lemon cupcake or something chocolaty

This photo might give us a clue as to why I did not buy any of those tasty vittles being offered up at the rest area. Looks like I am working on a return trip to LaLa land....Calgon take me away!!!

Well we finally made it to Dover got our first glimpses of those often mentioned White Cliffs of Dover

This was some sort of military building that probably housed some sort of cannon used to protect the harbor during the war

Another ship that was docked adjacent to ours

Although it was kind of hazy outside for a while, I could kind of make out what appeared to be some sort of castle up on the cliffs.

Looks like we are starting to wear down as the time drifts by

I believe that this is the pilot boat that drops of a pilot onto our cruise ship and then assists the ship as it leaves the port area.

Here is the mandatory safety muster drill. They used to make you bring your life preservers that are stored in your cabins clothes closet but they quite doing that. Now they just make you show up at your specifically assigned gathering station. This is done just as the ship is pulling away from the pier.

I was too tired to take photos when we first arrived in our clean room plus they had delivered our luggage and we wanted to unpack before we took a nap.

Our room steward, Fernando, left us several towel animals that he made for us throughout the diration of our cruise.

I did manage to get a few clean bathroom photos before we messed that up

I really liked our shower setup on this ship a lot better than the set up on the Pearl, which we were on during our last 2 cruises to Alaska. This one is circular and was just a lot more convenient than what we experienced on the NCL Pearl. I know...I now sound like a connoisseur of fine showers.

Shortly after hanging up and putting all of our clothes away, we decided to take a short nap. It must have been around 7PM their time when our heads finally hit our pillows. We closed the balcony blinds and drifted off into a sound sleep. I was really surprised at how soundly we were actually sleeping.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!

If you want to get a closeup of any of the photos, just click on it and they will enlarge for you