Cruising Toward Diamond: Miami to England

In this trip, I booked a last minute cruise sailing from Miami to Dover, England.

• Part 1: Cruising from Miami to England
• Part 2: Dover, London and Brussels by Train

I took my first cruise in 2023 and, in a little over three years, I've racked up 170 days at sea with Carnival. This means I was only 30 days away from achieving lifetime Diamond status... or I would have been.

Last year, Carnival announced they were doing away with lifetime status entirely, unless you have Diamond and earn it by August 31, then you're grandfathered in forever... or until Carnival changes their mind again.

So... in a totally irrational decision... I decided to go for it. This meant I needed some long cruises and the best remaining candidate this summer was the 14 day Carnival Legend Miami to Dover sailing.

• Miami, Florida
• Liverpool, England
• Holyhead, Wales
• Dún Laoghaire, Ireland 
• Dover, England

While cheap by most people's standards, this was the most expensive cruise I've taken by about 33%. There's no way the benefits of lifetime Diamond status are worth that cost. One can only use so much free laundry. But it will be my first lifetime status and I was sooooo close. Ya got me Carnival. Well played.

Whenever I cruise, I always try to arrive the night before or earlier for an international trip. Since I'd been to Miami several times before, and there were plenty of safety flights available, I flew in a day early and stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown. No hotel is close to the port, but it's walkable if you don't mind an hour walk with luggage and arriving a little sweaty.

The room was pretty nice. Because I am a Globalist, they upgraded me to something large resembling a suite. It had large windows looking out over the river, with a space for a balcony but no way to actually open the doors. The bathroom area was a little odd in that it was walled off, but the wall only went up about five feet. The actual tub and toilet were fully enclosed so it was just the sink and vanity that had the odd half wall. 

There was no lounge, but the free breakfast was quite nice and overlooked the river. Since I was leaving on a cruise, I needed to print my Carnival boarding pass and found the business center to be one of the nicer ones I've seen in my travels.

I've been to Miami several times before, but never spent much time in the central business district. On this trip, I spent a couple hours walking around the waterfront.

The Baltic Market is a lively market with a full bar and numerous restaurants all serving the same patrons, sort of like a cafeteria. You order at the table using a QR code and can place orders from multiple restaurants and the shared bar all at once. I wasn't very hungry but one review I'd seen mentioned the dumplings so I placed a small order and they were indeed delicious and home made.

Red Brick Vintage is a huge warehouse filled with around fifty little shops. All of the shops were the size of a stall or small room. They sold records, vintage clothes, knick knacks, collectibles and more. There was even a taxidermy shop with some very strange squirrels. They all seemed to have a cohesive theme and each stall's design made it feel like a quirky work of commercial art. Oddly, few of the stores actually had people working in them and all the purchases happened at the front. 

You can see the childhood home of all the Beatles and I believe some are open to the public. However, Ringo's was the only one that felt walkable from the cruise port and since I wanted to spend the day walking around the city, his is the one I chose. It was pretty simple and you couldn't go inside, but still kind of neat to see and a pleasant walk.

If you really want to see all of the Beatles sites, you'll want to book one of the tours from Cavern Club or another group. They have buses that visit all of their homes, Strawberry fields, Abbey Road and more.

Formally called the Cathedral Church of Christ, the Liverpool Cathedral is the 8th largest church in the world and the largest in Britain. It is said to be the longest cathedral in the world. It's a functioning church and the seat of the archbishop,  but it's also open to the public and even has a gift shop inside. Admission is always free.

St. Lukes is a bombed out church about half way in between the famed Liverpool Cathedral and Cavern Club. It's a church that was bombed in World War 2 during the Blitz which has been preserved as a memorial of sorts. The roof is gone but much of the outer walls remain. I arrived a little too late to visit, but was able to snap a few photos from the outside.

The Cavern Club and by extension the Cavern Quarter is ground zero for Beatles Mania. The Beatles played 292 shows in Cavern Club between 1961 and 1963. Now the whole street and area is full of Beatles themed venues, bars and restaurants.

Holyhead is one of those ports where there is a nice little town, with a decent amount to see in a few hours, but the main attraction is out in the countryside accessible only via an excursion. After a very long day in Liverpool the day before, I opted to take it easy and stay around town.

You get off the ship in an industrial port and then need to take a 15-20 minute shuttle bus ride to the main cruise terminal and train station.  It was a little slow going, especially coming back to the ship. However, once you're there, you're in the heart of the town.

St Cybi's dates back to 540 AD. It was sacked by Viking invaders in the 10th century and damaged again in 1405 by Henry IV's invading forces, but the current version dates back to the 13th century. It seems like now it is mainly a tourist site, but there was a priest on hand telling people about the history of the site.

I decided I should have Fish and Chips at some point on this journey and this place was giving off all the right vibes. It was counter service only with no seating, kind of out of the way for tourists, with the shop run by two older woman that looked like they owned the place. They had other things on the menu but all they were selling, non-stop, was fish and chips.

After lunch, I continued walking along the waterfront and then back through town. It was pretty and I was able to see the Maritime museum, a beach and an anchorage, but it began raining and then it was time to start heading back to the boat.

The rain turned into a steady drizzle and it was time to head back to the cruise terminal and queue up for the bus. Rather than walking back along the waterfront, I cut through town and stopped for some jelly babies. 

Unfortunately, the line for the bus took a while and only those at the front of the line had shelter from the rain. Probably, they should have just moved the line inside the terminal building / train station which had plenty of space, but alas we all got wet.

It's pronounce "Dun LEER-ee" and while it's often advertised as Dublin, it's actually a pretty long journey to get into Dublin. 

Dublin has a shallow water port, but the larger cruise ships all go to a deep water anchorage near Dún Laoghaire. This makes it a tender port with a particularly long tender transit, roughly 30 minutes. We had a particularly hard time getting off the boat and they didn't allow open boarding until around 12:20pm when we had a 4pm return time. 

From there, if you wanted to go into Dublin, it's a 10 minute walk to a train station and a 20-30 minute ride into town. So, taken together, ignoring lines, you're looking at over two hours round trip to get into Dublin. With that in mind, I decided to just enjoy my time in Dún Laoghaire and not try to reach Dublin.

I spent most of my time walking up and down the coast. In some ways, it reminded me of the Coogee/Bondi walk, but everything was much closer to sea level, rockier and the weather was much cooler. Otherwise, it had a similar vibe with residential areas blending into parks and waterfront and then the sea.

The James Joyce Tower is an interesting little spot. I've never read Ulysses, but the first part of the book is set there with portions based loosely on a week stay Joyce had there. He ended up moving out, allegedly, when one of his room mates had a dream about being attacked by a panther and began firing a gun inside the tower. There were two elderly Irish women there telling stories about the tower, and one insisted we sing "Molly Bloom" before entering the tower's main room... only none of us knew it and so she sang it for us.

A few times walking along the coast I thought I saw something out in the water, but it was always gone so fast it was hard to tell. On the way back, I saw more than one grey seal lingering at the surface.

Before I left the ship, the captain announced some concerns about incoming sea conditions and said they'd be focusing on return passengers only from 1pm onward. His concerns proved correct and from the point I got back in line to the point I stepped back aboard the ship, it probably took close to 90 minutes. 

One the tender voyage back, the seas were rough, 1.5 meters. One passenger threw up and another, possibly the same one, ended up receiving medical attention when getting back aboard. 

On our final sea day, there was a lower pressure system that decided to join us on our way back to England. It produced sustained gale force winds and 6 meter seas resulting in a rocky ride. At one point, the Captain came on the PA system ship wide and asked everyone to minimize movement around the deck.

Personally, I think this is a bit of fun, but not everyone agrees. If you are worried you may get seasick, load up on carbs, a lot of the sense of nausea comes from the empty sloshing in your stomach. I think cruises sometimes alter their menus during rough seas as a way of subtly helping out their passengers.

The graph below comes from PredictWind which is the app pretty much all sailors use to navigate weather at sea. It is amazing and I recommend it for anyone that cruises regularly.

The weather cleared and we sailed into Dover a little after 5am to a perfect sunrise.

Follow the rest of the journey in the second part.

• Part 1: Cruising from Miami to England
• Part 2: Dover, London and Brussels by Train