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Declan just returned from a 12-night cruise aboard Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas. It was round-trip Amsterdam up to the Norwegian fjords in the Arctic Circle. Declan, welcome to the show, my friend. Hi. Thank you. I'm excited to hear about this ship and this itinerary. Just went to Norway for the first time this year. And the only question I had to myself was, why is this the first time

I was going? It's just like God's country over there. And so clean, too. So I'm excited to talk about your itinerary and your cruise up there. Before we get to the ship, as we always do, though, we're going to take a step back. What made you want to take this 12-nighter out of Amsterdam? because you're over in Dublin.

That's correct, yeah.

So during the pandemic, we had to Transatlantic. did you want to take this 12-nighter out of Amsterdam because you're over in Dublin?

That's correct, yeah. So during the pandemic, we had two transatlantic cruises canceled.

And I was living in the UK at the time. And then during the pandemic, I moved back to Ireland, where I'm originally from. And we were just very, very keen to go on a cruise again.

And we wanted a long cruise.

We wanted one that would head north or head to the Atlantic.

And we just really liked the idea of being this one up to the Arctic Circle.

We've done Norwegian Fjords and Iceland with a bit of Arctic Circle in 2013 Adventure of the Seas.

We did Alaska in 2019 on Ovation of the Seas. So we're kind of keen to do that. We're not sun chasers. So this really appeals to us. Yeah, for sure. Now, you make your way from Dublin down to Amsterdam, but you did a little pre-crues in what, London? Yeah, so we had a night in London beforehand. That was a late bonus. We're kind of ABA fans and they've launched this new show in London and we were very keen to see it. So we said tag it on to the cruise. So it gave us an extra night. We were really good. We really enjoyed that. So I meant we had a short flight to London just less than an hour and then from London to Amsterdam was another hour. So it was quite an easy thing to do. Any pre-cruised time in Amsterdam before the cruise? So we should have had a good day and a half,

full day and a half, but because of various delays, I'm sure you've heard about all the issues

of the airports here in Europe. So we had a lot of delays. So we arrived in Amsterdam at midnight.

Then we had to get up the next day and go and get our COVID testing. And we had a lot of delays. So we arrived in Amsterdam at midnight. Then we had to get up the

next day and go and get our COVID testing. And we were trying to have a look around. I'm saying. We've been to Amsterdam before. So we knew we've seen quite a lot of sites before. So we were quite happy just to wander around, see the city. It was beautiful weather. You know, so we did that. I had a couple of beers, we went back to our hotel.

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