British Isles on Crystal Serenity - Ireland, Scotland and More, July 2018

1 – Burough Market Food Tour in London 2 – The Beautiful Crystal Serenity

3 – Volunteering at the GSPCA in Gurnesy 4 – Such a fun Musical Pub Crawl in Dublin

5 – Learning about the murals and Peace Wall in Belfast

6 – Loch Lomond and Trossach’s National Park in Greenock, Scotland

7 – Riding bikes to the British Open from Dundee, Scotland

8 – Seeing the inspiration for Harry Potter in Edinburgh

9 – Museums and a heat wave in Amsterdam 10 – Beer tasting in the quaint city of Bruges, Belgium

London is a busy, festive party all summer long with events from the Chelsea Flower Show to Wimbledon Tennis and beyond. During our stay tennis-themed shop windows, restaurants and hotel décor abounded. With open-air opera in Trafalgar Square, gorgeous hanging flower baskets on all the streets and baby swans in Saint James Park, London has a wonderful vibe during the warmer months. We did some of the requisite tourist stops and also took advantage of a food tour with many stops in Borough Market. The best fish and chips, bacon sandwiches and glorious donuts were some of the decadent goodies we tasted while learning some London history along the way.

We made our way to Dover and its white cliffs to board the beautiful Crystal Serenity that, I feel, is the perfect size for a cruise ship. The Serenity accommodates just over 1000 passengers so the staff amazingly gets to know your name and drink preferences very quickly! It is large enough to have a variety of dining options and interesting speakers on each journey, while not being so big that you get lost or have to deal with crowds or long wait times. The size also allows for high quality entertainment from the ship’s singers and dancers as well as several outside performers that bring a local flavor on board. Our beautifully decorated verandah cabin on deck 9 was super comfortable, had plenty of storage and dual sinks in the bathroom.

You can get sushi and more at Silk Road by Nobu, and the delicious Italian food at Prego, the two specialty restaurants available for dinner in addition to the main dining room and casual upstairs venues to satisfy all of your culinary desires.

Guernsey Island is one of the Channel Islands closer to France than England. With its population of about 63,000 it is super cute with plenty of flowers and kind-hearted locals. A trend in cruising is to offer a give-back opportunity or two along with other excursion choices. We went the SPCA and cleaned out the rabbit hutches, walked dogs and got a tour of the facilities and its many inhabitants. We had a great time and felt as though we made a small contribution by helping out with the animals. It was a win-win!

After almost a day at sea we pulled into Dublin’s port around 5 pm. We took the ship’s shuttle into town, walked around to absorb the wonderfully energized feel of Ireland’s capital city and made our way to a pub in the Temple Bar area called The Oliver Street John Gogarty Pub. That is where our fun musical pub tour began. Our musician hosts gave us some history of Irish music and instruments and played and sang all evening. These guys had a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor which had the group laughing in addition to clapping and toe-tapping to the music. Of course, one of your beer choices while in Ireland has to be Guinness. I highly recommend this as a great way to see part of the city while having a lot of fun.

Our second day in Dublin was spent at the Trinity Library and Book of Kells and then a three hour historical walking tour. This tour gave us an overview of Irish history through the ages. With this foundation of new knowledge it was especially interesting to then go to Belfast in Northern Ireland the next day. Northern Ireland is a separate country from Ireland and is one of the countries of the United Kingdom. We took a tour of the many murals which depict the clashes between catholic and protestant, the 20th century “Troubles” conflict.

In Greenock, Scotland, we thought we would brave driving on the other side of the road by renting a car for some nature sight-seeing. Well, the ONE car in town was already rented so we turned to plan b and had a taxi drive us for a few hours! We went to the cute town of Luss, beautiful Loch Lomond and thru part of Trossach’s National Park all the while enjoying traditional Scottish countryside views. We yelled stop to our driver at one point and jumped out to take some photographs of a very picturesque stone bridge spanning a rushing stream flanked by wildflowers. This couldn’t have happened on a big bus tour!

Our driver also took us to a beautiful castle where we saw the cute, long-haired highland cows.

In Dundee, Scotland, we rented bikes at the train station and pedaled off to go to the small town of Carnoustie where the British Open Golf Tournament was being played. As it was a Sunday, this was the only rental place open. We were on a nicely paved bike path for much of the 24 mile round-trip ride. We saw many swans on the water, and old fort, painted penguins as part of an outdoor art installation throughout the area and many people walking dogs and going to the beach with their families. In Carnoustie we had a casual, al fresco, farm-to-table lunch and chatted with the locals (always one of my favorite parts of traveling) before making our way back to the train station in Dundee.

The bustling capital of Scotland, Edinburgh, is a beautiful city with a medieval old town, the formidable Edinburgh Castle and many other sights along its Royal Mile. Harry Potter fans will love this city where J.K. Rowling started writing her popular novels about the wizarding world. You can see how the streets and architecture inspired her writing. The colorful Victoria Street certainly was inspiration for Diagon Alley while the local kirkyard has old names on the gravestones that became characters in the books. There are many Harry Potter tours to choose from along the street leading up to the castle.

The port servicing Edinburgh is kind of far from the city so the second day in this port we decided to explore locally. Just a couple miles from Queensbury port we found Hopetoun House. Hopetoun House is one of Scotland’s finest stately homes and has been in the same family (that still lives there!) since the 1600’s. You can tour on your own inside and out and can walk around their sprawling grounds too. The docents are very helpful if you would like more information. You may recognize this as the place where Outlander is filmed.

The weather really changed for our 48 hours in Amsterdam. They (we) experienced record setting heat for this part of the world! We still walked around the city in spite of the 98 degree high temperature but especially appreciated our time in the air-conditioned museums! Amsterdam is a flowery canal and bicycle filled, beautiful and interesting city. Two must-see museums are the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijks Museum.

The audio guides are helpful. They are right next door to each other in the Museum Plein area along with a couple other museums. We chose an evening canal cruise to see the city from the water point of view. If it was a little cooler we would have rented a boat during the day to cruise around on our own or maybe would have tried the paddle boats or a beer cruise!

Bruges has a picturesque city center that is also a UNESCO world Heritage Site. It is referred to as the Venice of the North because of its many beautiful and swan-filled canals. Bruges is one of the most well-preserved medieval towns in Europe making it easy to take good photos! We went to the Beer Museum on a small ship-organized tour. There were about 14 of us, including one of the guest lecturers, Stephen Fox from the BBC, and CNN International. It was great chatting with him throughout this super fun day. You’ll love eating the famous Belgian waffles and chocolates, taking a horse and carriage ride, eating mussels outside at one of the many cafes or just wandering the picturesque streets.

Shoot an email to: doug@plazatravel.com if you have any questions or want more details about this, or any of my other trips!