The Wait is Finally Over!

Our last week in Belfast and our first week on board

Last week in Belfast

Our last week in Belfast was actually pretty busy.  We took the train back to Helen’s Bay to finish off the North Down Coastal Path we started previously.  We hiked into Crawfordsburn Country Park to see a small waterfall and then we walked all the way to Holywood before catching the train back into Belfast.  It was a long walk, but the weather was great, and the views were lovely.

A couple of the Villa Vie Residents decided to walk from Belfast to Derry; about 70 miles.  It took them about a week to do, so we joined a couple of others and hopped a train to Derry to welcome them at the other end.  It was a nice change of scenery, and we had a great meal together before heading back to our apartment in Belfast.

I was scrolling through my Google newsfeed and came across a headline on Wilmont House.  It is a house from 1859 that was donated to the city of Belfast.  It is located in Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park and the city is doing an assessment to determine if it is worth restoring.  We were curious, so we decided to walk out and have a look.  Following the river for about 2 hours we finally arrived at the park.  It is stunning and has several rose gardens on the property.  It’s getting into fall in Belfast, so they weren’t really in bloom anymore, but it was still a lovely walk.  Wilmont House is incredible, and I really hope they do what needs to be done to bring it back to life.

One of our new friends is a whiskey aficionado, so we joined them for a trip to Friend at Hand.  It is a small brickwork liquor store with a small museum that is dedicated to Irish Whiskey.  While we aren’t whiskey fans ourselves, we couldn’t argue that the shop was amazing.

Several residents got together on our last full day in Belfast and took one of the Booze Bike Tours.  We did not participate, but we showed up for the photo op at Belfast City Hall.  Our fingers were crossed that it wasn’t another false start.

Day One – Boarding Day – September 30th 

This was probably the longest day we’ve had so far since leaving home; at least emotionally.  I won’t get into the nitty gritty details, but par for the course there were some hiccups.  Finally, at 8:30pm we headed down to the Belfast Cruise Terminal to board the Villa Vie Odyssey.  It was exciting and chaotic, but we were finally home!  Excitement was high as they served a late dinner and prepared to leave the cruise terminal.  We weren’t going far, just out to anchor for the evening.  In the wee hours of the following morning, we finally crawled into bed.

Day Two and Three

While we were authorized to board, we were still waiting on clearance to actually leave, so we spent two days anchored at the mouth of Belfast Lough.  Personally, I found this to be a nice transition.  It gave us time to get used to the ship before heading out into open water.  Dinner was served in the seated restaurant on these days, and I must say the food was great.   

Day Four – Sailing at Last – October 3rd 

At last, we were given clearance to leave, so they christened the ship, fired up the engines, pulled up anchor and we finally left Belfast.  Honestly, as much as we are ready to move on, we will miss Belfast.  We really enjoyed our time in Northern Ireland and would gladly come back.

Day Five – First Official ‘Sea Day’ - October 4th

As many of you know ‘sea days’ were a fear of mine.  I do suffer from motion sickness and wasn’t really sure what to expect.  All things considered; I think I did fairly well.  I wore sea bands which work on acupressure points, but by the end of the day I was feeling pretty rough.  I took antinausea tablets after supper and they really helped.  Cross your fingers I get my sea legs sooner rather than later!

Day Six – First Port…sort of – October 5th  

We were issued clearance and left fairly quickly, so we weren’t exactly sure where we were going.  After crunching the numbers and calling around they settled on Brest for our first port of call.  Unfortunately, we had to get fuel, water and offload waste, so they took the first option that came up.  It turns out that the berth we were assigned was not set up for passengers, so we were unable to actually get off the ship.  After my first sea day I honestly didn’t mind just being docked.  We took some laps around outside on the promenade and laid in the sun by the pool for an hour.  Brest looks amazing from afar, and maybe next time around we’ll be able to see it up close.

Day Seven – Second ‘Sea Day’ – October 6th 

It’s about noon as I’m writing this and so far, so good.  I wore my sea bands to bed last night and have not taken them off.  I also made sure to get a good breakfast in my system.  I think a lack of sustenance may have contributed to the nausea on the first day.  The seas are also a little calmer today which helps as well.  My goal is to get through the day with no antinausea tablets, but we’ll see how it goes.  Update: the seas are no longer so calm and 2.5-meter swells are apparently my current limit, but the tablets really do help. For those of you concerned for Mike's welfare; he's not sure if he's seasick or just hungover...it's been an open bar so far.

We are currently enroute to Bilbao, Spain.  This will be our first official port where we can disembark and explore for the day.  We are excited to start exploring some new places!

Overall First Impressions

As this is a start up venture, we aren’t expecting things to run smoothly for a while yet and that expectation has been met if not exceeded; however, the Villa Vie Team is great, the ship Staff are amazing, the food is great, and we are really happy with our little cabin.  We did cave and upgrade to a cabin with an obstructed view, so we now look out over a lifeboat.  This gives us some natural light and enables us to get an idea of the conditions outside without leaving our room.  We’ll have more photos for the next post and Mike will do a room tour video soon.

Overall, we are excited to finally be setting sail and to see how this crazy adventure unfolds.