As we continue on with our Canada & New England adventure aboard the Regal Princess, I’m excited to tell you about our day in Boston which was interrupted a bit by some inclement weather.  As you saw in my previous post where I spoke about our time in Newport, Rhode, Island, the weather was starting to kick up pretty badly by the time we finished our day there.  Well, the weather continued to worsen and to say that we had a rough night on board is an understatement.  When I turned my light out and retired for the night, the seas weren’t too awful bad, but, then I was jarred awake (literally) by the rocking and rolling seas.  I swear to goodness I almost got tossed right out of the bed…lol.  My first thought was that we certainly were going to get called to our Muster Stations at any second, but, we never were.  I will say that those were the worst seas that I ever remember being in on a cruise.  Our Stateroom was pretty far forward though, so that might have added to the roughness of our night.  Chris was up very early the next morning and he took this video out of the windows of the Vines Bar on Deck 5:

Chris estimated those waves to be in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 feet high and the winds were just a-howling. It was pretty intense there for a while, but, once I gathered my senses and woke up a bit more, I realized that we were just fine and dandy and that being jarred awake and the need to shake the cobwebs out of my brain was probably what contributed to my moment of terror (about the Muster stations…).

Once I was up and *trying* to walk around our stateroom and having my first cup of tea, it was time for me to get freshened up for the day–**Side Note:  Thank the good Lord that there were handles in the shower…Without them, well, let’s just say I would have been splayed out in the tub lickety-split, I was holding on for dear life in there…lol…**.  But, I did manage to get myself spiffed up for the day, here is the outfit I chose to put on that morning:

Next we skipped on over to our little mailbox and retrieved our Princess Patter for the day…Which had a bit of an insert — an amended Itinerary if you will — for the day.  I will play you an announcement from the Captain after I show you the pictures of the day’s Patter.

This is the amended page, we were going to have a change in our regularly scheduled morning & afternoon ‘programing’. 🙂

Let me pause and let you hear what information the Captain delivered over the public address system that morning.  Please forgive me for having my iPhone tilted throughout this little video–I was obviously intently listening to what our Captain was saying and not paying a lick of attention to how I was holding my phone—BUT, you’ll be able to see those rough seas zipping on by, and remember, we were way up on the 12th deck, so they didn’t look quite as bad as they really were; still, they look pretty angry:

As you heard in the video, the Captain had announced that they were working with everyone on shore with regards to excursions, they had to cancel many trips on this day because we truly were 4 hours late getting into Boston than was originally scheduled. This informational sheet was delivered to our Stateroom shortly after the Captain spoke to us, we were relieved to see that our tour was a go. 🙂

Here is what we had planned for the day with one slight change, we were not offered the “Optional drop off at Quincy Market”.

We didn’t do too much through the morning hours before Boston came into sight, of course, we headed to brunch and when we walked out of our Stateroom, we saw that Phillip (our stateroom Steward) had decorated up our door–celebrating Chris’ retirement…woohoo. 🙂

Yes, Msssss Smug had arranged for that via the Cruise Personalizer before we boarded…… 😉

We walked around the ship a bit, poked our heads into a couple of shops–and Chris got me this jacket (that is the Pilot Boat making its way to the ship to my left):

As we got closer to Boston the winds started to die down as did the seas.  We were then able to catch some pretty pictures off of our balcony as we were approaching…

 

Then, I tried something new, I went “Live” on Facebook—What a spiffy little option…Here is what I had to say as we were making our approach to Boston:

I had to do a little research when I got home and I actually figured out how to retrieve said live videos off of Facebook…OF course that is IF Facebook didn’t REMOVE them…More on that a little later…:/  Here are some pictures that Chris clicked off as I was chattering away into my iPhone. 🙂

There are those tug boats greeting us, they stuck with us all the way, I love to watch them work! 🙂

And we took time out for a selfie:

Once we were securely alongside, Chris and I headed down to disembark, it was time for us to head out to our excursion.  The Regal has signs like this at all of the elevators, they welcomed us to each port and gave other information on sea days…spiffy-diffy eh?!

And off of the ship we went:

I clicked off a real quick picture of the Seawalk from off of the ship (this was our first time off since we left New York):

Our mode of transportation:

We started heading toward the boat that would take us on our Harbor Tour—The Princess rep on the bus was as always full of fun facts and a plethora of information, unfortunately, I didn’t retain much info this time…haha…I do know that she said that they might open up this rusty bridge for crafters to sell their wares on the weekends…that was pretty cool. 🙂

Boston is a gorgeous city steeped in history and this is where I really got messed with by Facebook…Here is the boat that we went on for our tour:

And once aboard and on our way for our Harbor Tour, I had climbed up to the top deck and I started taking more “Live” Facebook videos–I took a ton of video, but, unfortunately it has since disappeared…been removed…been deleted (not by me), it is completely gone, gone, and gone—I am devastated because as y’all know, I love, love, love my facts to be correct and up-to-date–Sooooooooo, instead of trying to caption all of the following pictures, I will just show you what we saw because thank the good Lord, Chris was clicking off pictures the entire time that I was yammering away into my phone doing that ‘live’ and soon to be completely gone video.  Yeah, I’m a little miffed about that disappearance, I cannot tell a lie……

Here is the USS Constitution–Unfortunately, it was in dry dock:

If you would like to read up on what one could do while visiting Boston, here is a great link.  There is the Freedom Trail, the Old North Church, and a lot of other things to see…too many for me to mention, but it is a lovely city and as I mentioned steeped in history.

We really enjoyed that boat tour, and I am so so very upset that my video was lost…But, maybe one day you’ll be able to do it and you’ll get to see the wonderful sights that we did.  We climbed back aboard our motor coach and started heading back to the ship, we didn’t get back until after dark and right before the ship sailed. Yes, we normally do arrange our excursions through Princess because the ship will definitely wait if your tour is running late.  Unless I’ve been to a location before and I know first hand that a certain tour company is reputable (like for instance The Bering Sea Crab Fishermen’s Tour out of Ketchikan, Alaska–I trust them implicitly ) we will not book from an outside source.  Some might, but, we don’t…please don’t judge…that is just the way we choose to do things. 🙂

Here are some of the sights we saw as we meandered through the city on our way back ‘home’. 🙂

The Old State House:

Custom House Clock Tower:

And because I am an Apple user:

We were just about the last tour to climb back aboard the Regal Princess and we were rushing pretty quickly, but, I did manage to take a picture of the Seawalk at night while tripping on along to the tiny little metal (precarious…haha) stairs the lead back onto the ship…

Next stop…Dinner in the Horizon–We were famished!  <~~~Not really, but, it had been a long time since we had something to eat. 😉  After dinner, we were exploring Deck 16 and it was getting close to 8pm, the time that the Fountain Show begins every night.  Well, guess what I did?  Yep, I took a LIVE Facebook video, and Facebook messed with me *again*.  This time they were kind enough to leave my video in tact, but, they removed the sound…copyright worries and all of that (which I totally get and wasn’t too upset about).  Before I show you the video that I did salvage of the Fountain show, here I am on the Seawalk at night.  The reason I show you this is because I do want to mention something here for those of you who might be wanting to book a Stateroom near that Seawalk on the Regal or the Royal—The blue hue that emanates from that Seawalk is quite intense, I’m sure you could clip your room curtains shut and block it out, but, I did want you to be aware that it is quite intense (and yes, you can look through the floor and see right down into those balconies right under the walk).  Just a little info for y’all…

And before the show started, Chris and I clicked off a few more pictures of things on and around that deck and also the Boston night-scape—It was awesome!!

We had had a lovely day–And we really enjoyed this Fountain Show put to the music of Michael Jackson (in this video’s case though, I added some music so that we didn’t have to worry about infringing on anyone’s Copy-write…🙄…

So in calm seas and following winds, we started steaming toward Bar Harbor, Maine where we’d be disembarking the Regal again and heading out on a lovely Lighthouse boat tour and having a sweet lunch at a local restaurant…Here is a sneak peek and a link to my Bar Harbor–Lighthouse Boat Tour, Lunch at a Local Restaurant, The Crab Shack, & My Birthday Song post :

Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***

~Arlynn ❤