Days 1 and 2 of the Cruise Day 1: Southampton, England Before we got on the cruise, we had access to the list of activities through the Royal app on our phones. As is the custom on all Royal Caribbean cruises, there was a Friday night Shabbat service at 5pm. On earlier cruises that service had been at the top of the ship in the Starlight Chapel. On this cruise, I noticed that the service was in the Windjammer Café, the enormous buffet on all Royal Caribbean ships where you co

Friday in Transition After dinner on Thursday night, we returned to the apartment. There was a message from my host, Jay, about an ambiguity over the hour of check-out between him at 10 a.m. and AirBnB’s head office at 11 a.m., plus a clarification about where to leave the keys. For me, all of this activity marked the end of our brief and pleasant stay in the apartment. Rita and I moved our clothes from the closet into the luggage with the exception of the outfits that we wer

Thursday in Portsmouth After the success of our dinner at the Spice Island Inn, Rita mentioned that she had read an interesting review of a restaurant near the Inn which we might consider for breakfast which was its specialty. It was called The Canteen. It was located in the old dining facilities of the Point Battery and Barracks. Once again, we walked from our apartment, down High Street and onto the Spice Island peninsula. Rita was quite taken with a memorial panel in the v

Wednesday in Portsmouth When I left for Portsmouth, I was determined to visit the refloated Tudor-era shipwreck, the Mary Rose, on the grounds of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. As I continued my investigations, however, I found out that the admission to the display was part of general admission to the dockyard. To get in the door cost 36 pounds which was about 70 Canadian dollars. Someone told me that the admission was good for a year, but the yearly pass was actually slig

Montreal Eclipse I am writing this account of my August 2026 trip to see a second eclipse after viewing my first in my garden in Montreal in April 2024. I think, as we get older, we tend to live more in the moment. Does everyone become more analytical? When I tried to recall what I did yesterday, I realized that many of my activities had faded into a blur, so I am looking to put interesting events in writing before I forget them. The trip began years before the actual departu

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Is the tail wagging the dog? This is my first blog post on my new website titled ‘Norman Spatz Author’. I worked as the English editor of...