Our Trip to Europe

Day 3 – London to Harwich

Left London at about 11am. We decided to get a taxi to the train station as we would be carrying all our luggage and many of the tube/train stations don’t have escalators or elevators but MANY steps that we would have had to lug everything up or down. Got on our train headed to Harwich and expected to have a 1 ½ hour trip. About half way there, we heard an extremely loud clunk and wondered what we had hit. Got into the next station for our next stop in the town of Kelvedon and they announced that our train had lost power, our train was electric. Ultimately we discovered that the arm that touches the electric wires overhead had broken off and that was the noise we had heard. They had us all get off the train and we stood on the platform waiting to see how we were going to complete our journey. Thank goodness we had left very early so we weren’t in danger of missing our ship. After about an hour wait, they told us that buses were arriving to take us to the cruise port but that there was also another train coming so we would take whichever one would be the quickest. We ended up getting on another train and arrived at the cruise port at about 3pm. Got on our ship and got settled in.

The ship is very nice and we have a room with a balcony. Nothing special going on tonight and our first port tomorrow is Le Havre, France. Our shore excursion isn’t until 2pm so we will work out in the morning, have lunch and then head out. We are going to the Dover chalk cliffs, which we will hike, and to a monastery that makes a liquor, which we will get to taste.