Transatlantic - Portland, U.K.

With all but one of our sea days behind us, we were now about to start exploring the port stops of the cruise   
   Our port adventure did not leave until late morning and there was an 8:30 am showing of Moana in the movie theater so I decided to start my day there.  I had already seen it but after listening to all the talks by Ian Gooding, I had wanted to see it again to try to take notice of the details he had talked about.  The theater was very quiet with only a handful of other guests and it was a nice way to start the day.

   We didn't even give our port adventure choice a second thought.  We wanted to see Stonehenge.  We typically don't like excursions that require spending a lot of time on a bus to and from the destination but we made an exception in this case figuring that the chance to see Stonehenge would be unlikely to come up again.

   We arrived at our meeting location on the ship, checked in and pretty quickly were escorted off the ship and onto our motor coach.  It was about a 90 minute drive out to Stonehenge but our guide was great at providing information along the way.  

    When we arrived, we were given an audio guide and a little snack bag that had a scone, a cookie and an apple.  You had to take a shuttle bus for about a mile or so to reach the stones.  Once you were there, there were numbers in the grass along the way.  You would press the number on your audio guide and it would give you information based on the location you were standing.  There was a path that made its way all around the stones as you followed the audio guide so you saw the stones from all different angles as you walked around.  

   We headed back to the shuttle bus with about 20 minutes before our tour bus was scheduled to leave.  I am not a big souvenir person but I do like a magnet from wherever I travel and I wanted to buy one from here.  Well, the store was packed with a huge line so I gave up on that idea and we went to see a little exhibit that they set up at the visitor center to show what the huts may have looked like for the people that lived when Stonehenge was built.  There was also a model of how the people may have moved the stones.  You could pull on the rope and it would electronically tell you, based on your arm strength, how many more people you would need.

  We got back on the bus and started our trip back to port.  The guide gave a little more information but said she figured we would probably like to rest and maybe take a little nap so she was quiet after that.  
   As we got closer, we started to hit traffic and the guide said that we would be late arriving but she had called ahead to the ship and let them know.  This is when it pays to be on a Disney excursion.  We ended up being quite late but no worries about the ship leaving without us because they will wait as long as you are with a Disney port adventure.  
   We got back and got on board and we knew that we had already missed about 10 minutes of John Charles in the main theater.  He is one of our favorites so we decided to go right there and see what we could.  Well, unfortunately, there was hardly anyone at the show.  We started gathering information from what he was saying and apparently over 900 passengers had traveled to Stonehenge on Disney excursions that day and many were still on buses heading back to port and stuck in traffic.  His show is really best when he has a big audience to feed from but he did his best and we were glad we had gone to his adult show the night before.

   Our dinner was at Carioca's and we had the World of Flavour menu.