We were a bit late getting in here to Tyne, which is the port for Newcastle. We had a general Newcastle Highlights tour which meant we had a bus ride into Tyne for a look around. Our tour left a little late at about 1:45 pm.
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| Michael always has Tabasco sauce with his avocado toast and normally it's the small-sized bottle. This morning, they brought the Costco size. |
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| Oops. Looks like someone had a little trouble docking their ship. |
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| This is the view looking down the aft staircase from Deck 11. |
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| I didn't catch the name of this church, but it is beautiful. |
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| Some of the lovely old buildings in Newcastle along the river Tyne. |
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| The Tyne Bridge was opened in 1928 and was designed by the man who designed the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge. It seems sad that there is the name of some company on it. Our guide did say that it was being refurbished and repainted in its signature green, so perhaps this company has sponsored some of that. |
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| The Concert Hall, which is actually 3 halls that are all acoustically separate. |
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| This is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge which opened in 2001. It's the first tilting bridge ever to be constructed. |
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| It's only for bikes and pedestrians. It tilts up to let boats through on these huge pins. |
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| There isn't much river traffic now, but it tilts on a regular schedule. |
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| Doesn't look like it's opened very often. |
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| This is what it looks like when its tilted up. At night it is lit up in white lights during the week and colored lights on weekends. |
It takes just 4 minutes for it to be tilted up to its full 40 degrees open position and is very efficient. In 2017 it cost just BP 3.90 per opening. And the design of the pedestrian path allows for any trash on the walkway to be rolled down into collection barrels when it's opened. Too bad we couldn't have seen it in operation. I bet it is a rare sight to see.
We had 90 minutes of free time which we spent wandering up the nearby shopping street and into a very nice department store, Fenwicks, that reminded us of those we grew up with in San Francisco like Macy's or the Emporium. There was a sweet cafe downstairs where we had a nice coffee and people watched. Then we wandered up to the first Marks and Spencer department store ever opened. It is really large and even has a supermarket inside. The prices were generally comparable to those at home and I was so surprised to walk through the fresh produce section and actually smell the melons on display. That never happens at home.
We didn't get back to the ship until nearly 5:30 pm so we missed Trivia as did most everyone on the ship because of the late tours. Jeffrey, who normally waits on us at Trivia, told us there were only 2 teams there today. I'm guessing they both won points.
We were back at our usual table for dinner and tonight the noise level was much better. It didn't get loud until we were getting ready to leave, and even then, it wasn't much worse than usual, thankfully.
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