Guy Gadwa

Headed home. 

Well we are now at T3 in LHR waiting for a gate to be posted. They will not post the gate until an hour before departure. 
 
How can I describe the chaos that is T3 at LHR? The train ride from T5 (where Sofitel is) to T3 was quick and easy. Things started to go wonky when we went to check our bags. Because we are Canadian citizens, but flying into DTW, there was a slight delay as the ticket agent explained that their system doesn’t allow them to check off that we are just passing through the US, and their is no address that we are staying at. I already anticipated this would be a hold up because yesterday when I was doing the online check in, it wouldn’t let us check Hubby in online. And when I was filling in the contact tracing, it would not let me check that I am passing through and not remaining in the US. Anyway, after explaining to the ticket agent that our car is parked at DTW and we drive back to Canada from there, they said all is good and boarding passes were printed. I told them that as long as there is no trouble at the gate, we are all good. 
 
Next came the part where everything you see on the news lately (about LHR) is true. Massive lines to get from checking your luggage to security. The line was wrapped around to the outside, 5 lines deep. Hubby took a pic but the pic doesn’t truly show the craziness here. 


Once you make it into the part of the line that is inside the terminal, it’s about another 75-90 mins to actually get to the security check point. As the ever optimist (glass is half full person), Hubby said at least there are lots of staff directing the crowds, which there was. 
 
Our flight is scheduled to depart at 12:55pm. Last night before bed, the family discussed what time we should get to T3. In normal times, 3 hours is the general guideline for international flights. I told them that news about LHR has not been the greatest. We decided to give ourselves 4 hours and we left our hotel room at 8:30am this morning. Thank goodness we did. It is now just past 11:00am and we are relaxed and waiting for our gate, praying that our flight does not get cancelled. All is on time for now. Fingers crossed. 
 
In other news, lots of reports from our FB roll call group this morning and last night of people getting home and testing positive for covid. Not great news for FR coming up. 😕

Update on us! 
 
Like @Lovetocruise2002 we left CK that morning, and were in our ride 15 minutes later. We used blackberry cars again and 2hrs later we were in London walking into our hotel. We will be here in London for another 5 days. We don’t have a bunch of Suite credits and we were also looking for convenience, we we are in a Premier Inn, within a very short walk to Paddington Station. It’s a place to sleep and one that also claims to have the space for 4 people in the room. Well this room didn’t match the picture on the website.  It’s a bit snug🤣

We will make it work. It would be better if there were more options for storage. The AC is nice and cold, which will be good for Monday when it’s due to be 101 degrees. That’s 38.3 for the neighbour (neighbor?) that lives in the ingloo🤣
I’ll have much more to update everyone with as we go along, but I have to be careful with my phone battery. Like an idiot, I brought the wrong outlet adapters for the UK, so until I can get a few, updates will be sparse.
 

That is true lol. We hopefully have another cruise coming up in 10 days on FR and they are not going on that one. Hubby might be in for a bit of a shock though lol

That's b/c you leave their a$$es at home when you don't cruise in SC !  LOL
[just kidding !]

Relaxing comfortably at the Sofitel Heathrow right now. We are camping out here until tomorrow morning. Then we fly home.
I had 1 Accor suite night upgrade left to use. That is why we are here. Otherwise I would be staying in one of the T3 hotels instead.
We have the Prestige Suite. It has one main bedroom, a living area with a fold out couch, one master bath with shower and tub, and a separate half bath with toilet/sink. Lots of space for the 4 of us.  

My kids claim they can happily sail in a regular cabin. In fact, they keep telling me they look forward to it. They say that I am the only suite snob in the family. 
We shall see 😂

I feel for any future friends or partners later in life that ever make the mistake of saying to your future grown up kids "Let's go on a cruise!".  They have no idea the expectations that await them.   

We just settled into our hotel room.

Kids: “Where is the cutlery in this room so that we can have a snack?” 

Me: Um, this is not star class. Remember in regular hotels there usually is not cutlery waiting for you. Lol

Disembarkation: Room to curb 15 mins. No customs to pass through 🤷🏻‍♀️

Worst day ever

 

Goodnight all!
📸Hubby

Tomorrow we are going to push disembarkation as late as we can (eye roll here, yes, we are going to be “those people” this one time) because we are spending one extra day in the UK before flying home on Saturday. The rationale here was that we did not want to face a long flight home on debarkation day. Staying an extra day gives us a chance to rest and reset before flying home. 
 
As we were packing up today, Hubby said to me, “We aren’t staying in some fancy hotel tomorrow, are we?” Well, I wonder if after almost 20 years of marriage he really knows me lol. I am also willing to bet he doesn’t know we had 5 Accor Suite Night upgrades and not 4. 😉
 

Final thoughts of Star Class on Anthem:
- SC definitely paid off for activities. We had zero stress getting to the bumper cars, North Star, iFly. 
 
- Specialty food options are lacking a bit on Quantum class, compared to Oasis. We repeated most of the specialty restaurants, they were all good, but compared to our other star sailings, this one lacked variety a bit. 
- At the end of our 3rd cruise now on Anthem, I can definitely say that they have the best CK staff. On all our sailings on this ship, from March 2018-now, this CK remains beyond excellent compared to other CK crews. There is just something extra about them. 
 
- Leroy, our Genie is fantastic! He is so well organized, kind, great with little kids, and pay attention to small little details. Every day he sends an overview of the day, reminders along the way, follows up on orders to the room, he is beyond thorough. Every dinner he showed up to walk us in (they don’t all do that), and no request was too much for him to handle. He is very dedicated to this job and it shows in his actions each day. He is headed back home soon for vacation but if anyone gets him in the future, they are lucky and in good hands. 
 

Final thoughts on our Grand Loft Suite. 
 
I will admit, I did not set many expectations for this suite only because I am #teamDeck17 at heart. Several things did not surprise me about this room:
- It is most definitely a long walk to/from the suite. 
- There is quite a bit of motion back here. 
- The missing vanity downstairs (compared to the star loft) was missed by the two teenage girls. It made getting ready a tad slower. 
 
A few things that did surprise me about this suite:
- Aside from the long trek to/from the room, I liked the room a lot. It is not as “open” as the star loft but I did not mind it. 
 
- The master bathroom layout in this room is way better than the star loft on the older OA/AL, and the newer HM. It is more open and there is more counter space. This one wins for sure. 
 
- The view from this suite is the best. Hands down. No contest. On OA class ships, with all your Deck 17 rooms, there is either some obstruction from the back deck (flow rider, basketball court, mini golf, etc.) in your line of sight. The ocean facing ones are one sided. The ATS has the Aqua Theater in the line of sight. This room gives you a totally central view of the wake with nothing but the wake in your line of sight. No other room can do that. We have taken so many balcony pics this cruise compared to other cruises.
Would I hesitate to book this room again? Definitely not. 

A gorgeous sunset to cap off a beautiful vacation.
📸Hubby



We feel incredibly blessed. There were a lot of hurdles to clear to take this trip and everything went so smoothly, right down to perfect weather even on days that we forecasted to be not great. Someone was definitely watching over us.
 
Over the last two weeks, we have experienced so much as a family, it’s going to take us a few days to get home and really digest and soak in what we saw. 
 
Meeting @GregD and his family has been a real treat! It is always great to meet and sail with people you have gotten to know over the years. Our cruising community is small, goodbyes are just a “so long for now”. 😊

@WAAAYTOOO, Lydia got the apple pie….sorry to report………
it had raisins……
 

Dinner at Chops tonight and Leroy had some nice things for us. It was a great way to end this cruise. What The Boss didn’t know was that Leroy reached out to me and asked for pictures of the two of us together and this was the result.

For dinner, The Boss had shrimp cocktail and the goat cheese salad. The camera forgot it’s bite there. I had the wild mushroom soup that everyone apparently loves. For me it was just okay. We both had the petit fillet, and I added the lobster. I was informed that they didn’t have the full lobsters and just had the tails. No big deal for me!

Rock climbing, and now pool time.


Tonight is our anniversary dinner at chops, followed with Spectras Cabaret. At some point we have to pack too. Lame…….
 

Izumi lunch today after we finished bumper cars and North Star with @GregDand family. 

Now at Harry Potter trivia in 270. This one is a whole lot more difficult than the one we did on Oasis. Good thing we have a major fan here because I have no clue about the answers to any of these. 

Bumper cars were also on the menu today. There was another friendly neighbour (neighbor?) battle. Johnny was out for blood!

 

Just did the North Star again. Today it went off the side of the ship! Many people know that for many years that wasn’t a thing with the response being “it was a privacy thing” From our vantage point, you can see their point! I talked with Leroy about this and he wasn’t aware of when or why there was a change.
We also have some albatrosses escorting us home.

Just to keep the streak alive for @twangster, good morning everyone on our final sea day!

 

Here are a few photos of the day that aren’t duplicates. 
 
This guy wore proper gear for a waterfall, unlike some kids I know🤣

Tucking in for some waffles!

Sometimes we take a nice picture 

There may have been a comment made by The Boss regarding Lydia and Trolls or something? Regardless, add another embarrassing photo to the collection.


Old watch tower for the city.

Regent cruises, Seven Seas Splendor was here too. This ship has a suite with a $200,000 bed that costs 11k a night, but needed to be helped out of port with tugs.

Now that we have everyone back, here is where the night got really interesting. After the show, the kids headed back to the room. The Boss and I headed down to the music hall to watch “The Perfect Couple” game show. 
 
The intention was to watch, but we ended up as contestants! This was well outside the normal comfort zone but we went with it. 
 
The game consists of four challenges that aren’t exactly PG.
The first was The Boss had to move a ping pong ball from the bottom of one pant leg, to the bottom of the other, with just her hands. Sounds easy enough, except the ball was inside the pant legs. As you can imagine, this conger interesting. We had the lowest time! One point in the bag!
Challenge 2, was we stood next to each other with our arms around each other, so my left, and her right arm were free. We then had to blow up a balloon and tie a knot. We were only allowed to use our free arms, and couldn’t talk to each other. Of course, to make it interesting, was the balloon was a prophylactic…..We again had the lowest time! Two points! Things are looking up!
Challenge 3, were the men were seated in a chair blindfolded. Then your arm was stroked by three people, one being your partner, and you had to guess which one was your partner. I managed to guess correctly here too!! 3 points! On a roll!  
 
Challenge 4……I knew I was doomed on this one. The Ladies were sat in a chair, and the men had to dance for them, and the audience would be the judge. Well this white boy can’t dance, and now was being told to give a lap dance to The Boss that was being judged by the audience. I knew that I would fail miserably here, and even the pity applause was pretty pathetic, but that’s okay because winning the first three challenges was enough and we won!
Our prize was two RC gold medals and a RC aluminum (aluminum?) water bottle, plus the embarrassment of having to give an admittedly horrible lap dance in front of hundreds of people 🤣
Well, I can cross that off the bucket list…..not that I even knew it was on there 🤦🏻‍♂️