Friday, end of our cruise

Friday was the end of our cruise, and we were sad to disembark, but also looking forward to getting home.

A ferry was coming into Dover as we docked at the cruise terminal pier.

White cliffs of Dover

We had arranged to take Holland America's bus transfer from the ship to Heathrow Airport, as we were booked to stay one night at a hotel at Heathrow before our flight on Saturday to Phoenix.

While eating our last breakfast at the Lido Buffett, a display told us approximate times that different folks would be called to leave the ship -- we had been assigned "Lime 1" (and been given luggage tags to put on the luggage placed outside in the hallway), and the display showed that our disembarkation time would be 9:30am.

We went back to our room to await the announcement that it was time for "Lime 1" to disembark the ship. The TV screen in our room displaying the bow camera showed a pretty view out the front of the ship.

"Lime 1" was called and we left the ship about 9am, collected our luggage in the cruise terminal, and found our bus outside the terminal. After a very long bus ride - 3+ hours, we got to our hotel. Most of the drive moved along very smoothly, but the bus was in heavy traffic for about the last 30 miles and then we drove around Heathrow dropping passengers off at terminals 5 and 3 before we got to our drop off at terminal 4. We had arranged to stay at the Holiday Inn Express Heathrow Terminal 4. When we got off the bus, there was a single lady also getting her luggage and mentioned that she needed to find her way to her hotel. It turned out she was also going to the Holiday Inn Express, so we joined together to get trolleys for our luggage, wrangle the luggage trolleys that had a mind of their own on which way to go, find the passageway from the Terminal 4 Departures area to the hotels, find the Holiday Inn Express, then, after checking in, transfer our luggage from the trolleys to a luggage cart that we then used to carry all our luggage to our rooms.

From our room, we could see terminals and runways of Heathrow Airport.

Also from our room, we could see the passageway we used to get from terminal 4 departures to the Holiday Inn Express -- it is that cylindrical thing that looks kinda like the tubes that banks used to use to transfer materials from the outer drive-through lanes to the service people inside the bank! The square tunnel led from the cylinder to the Holiday Inn Express.

We got a light dinner in the hotel and went to bed early as we needed to get to the airport early in the morning.