Cruise Stop--Newcastle UK

If I can't be on a ship cruising port to port, I can at least be on the internet surfing port to port. One of the ports I looked into was Newcastle in the norther part of England. It is our first stop on a cruise we booked for next year. Of course I always manage to find bunny trails to travel down and a description of Newcastle on one site included the information that it has a distinct regional dialect called Geordie. Of course I was off and checking it out.

Geordie (pronounced Jordy) refers to the people who live in the Newcastle and Tyneside area in Northeast England. It is said to be the most difficult dialect to understand. Hmmm. I thought Cockney was difficult. The Geordie dialect is not just a distinct accent. It actually has its own vocabulary and not just the usual differences we see between our American words vs. English words (think sweater = jumper). There are several interesting words I found.

• bait - food or a snack taken to work
• bobby dazzler - someone who is conceited and a show off
• breeks - trousers
• gan - to go (C'mon we'll gan doon the pub.)
• monkey's blood - raspberry sauce for ice cream
• wazzock - imbecile or jerk
• whisht - hush

Hoyahamma owaheah is not a Japanese company but "throw a hammer over here."

A stottie is a dense doughy bread.

Looks like we could have quite a time should we get lost and need direction. It reminds me of our trip to Ireland where we ended up in an area that is trying to preserve the old Irish Gaelic and many of the residents only speak that language/dialect. We had an old gentleman tip his hat to us as we sipped tea at a small cafe. He stopped, rattled off his Gaelic, smiled at us and went on his way. We smiled back and nodded our heads. I have no idea what was said or if our response was even appropriate. Ah, the fun of traveling.

Hot Summer? Time To Plan For Antarctica

One of the greatest trips we have ever taken was to Antarctica. There are all sorts of cruise lines that go there now and you can get several different types of experiences. What I liked so much about ours was that we had several opportunities to go on land and experience the penguins and other beautiful scenes that were not viewed from the ship.

I ran across someone else's experience in an article, 10 Days in Antarctica. Her adventure was similar to ours. So if you want to see Antarctica what should you look for in a cruise?

Check out the itinerary closely. Do you just want to look from the ship? Some of the larger ships will not set up land excursions. They are labor intensive and include a lot of sanitary precautions to keep our germs from infecting the wildlife and their germs from infecting us. Our crew had to scrub our boots each time we went on shore.

If you want to immerse yourself in the wildlife and land, choose a smaller ship. There are some that are extremely intensive with studies of what you will see, not just excursion lectures. The only problem with a small ship is the Drake Passage which can be quite rough since it is a large body of open water. We lucked out and it was a relatively smooth crossing both ways. I have heard stories of some pretty rough weather though.

Whatever you choose, it is an amazing adventure. I have never seen snow so white and icebergs so blue. Seals and penguins so comical. The time to visit is in January/February which is "summer" in the south. We had temps in the 60s one day and snow on another. But when the sun came out the sky was so blue and the snow so white.