On November 3 we left Miami for Southhampton.  Right behind us,  Hurricane Raphael , was heading straight for Cayman Islands, where we were yesterday.  What a difference a few days can make. On November 5 there was another hurricane, named Donald Trump, who, defying any logic and all odds, got re-elected president of the USA.  My sleep pattern began to change, for I worried about the future of democracy in the U.S.  I was so perplexed at how far off I was towards understanding our nation, that, save for my exposition on the future of the country  the next day, for the rest of the trip pretty much avoided politics in my postings.  Today, I still seem to have lost interest in our future, for all seems lost.  Reminds me of Ray Bradbury's  A Sound of Thunder , where a time traveler returns home to find everything changed.  He would have expected Kamala Harris to prevail over Donald Trump, but the opposite happened because he stepped on a but...

The past few days we traveled from Ponta Delgada, Portugal to La Coruna, Spain to Zebrugge, Belgium to, today, Day 34, Le Havre, France.  Tomorrow, our final port, Southampton, UK. In the Spring of this year we completed a circumnavigation of the globe, including a Tauck Tulip River Cruise that included stops in  Belgium .  We also during the trip stayed in  Barcelona , Spain and  Southampton , UK.  Click on that UK link for a nightmarish introduction to  Southampton .  This time we are paying to have our Norwegian ship bus us from that city to Heathrow Airport.   However, British Air has two terminals there, 3 and 5.  You can walk between those location, but they are 3 miles apart.  BA uses Terminal 3 for short haul flights.  The flight time between Heathrow and Schipol (Amsterdam) is only 1 hour and 25 minutes.  But our itinerary shows that BA446 departs from Terminal 5.  So we need to have that re-confirmed. (...