This cruise was a 14 day western European cruise aboard the Jewel of the Seas departing Harwich England on September 14th 2007.

We booked this cruise in February of 2007 with much anticipation and in celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary. With 6+ months to plan and chat on the Cruise Critic roll call and bulletin boards for information and ideas, we were ready to embark on this journey.

Pre Cruise: We flew non-stop from Chicago to London Heathrow via Virgin Atlantic on Friday Sept. 7th arriving at 8am on Saturday the 8th. With all the nightmarish stories I have heard about lost baggage by British Airways especially at Heathrow, I was very hesitant to fly BA, so we chose Virgin Atlantic. We wanted to spend some time in London since we were flying over for the cruise so we opted for 2 days pre cruise in London. Unfortunately the only departure time from London to Chicago for our return trip on Virgin Atlantic was 11:15am which would not allow us to depart on the last day of the cruise, so we opted to stay one day post cruise. This was our first trip to Europe and I did not anticipate such a difficult trip, especially flying overnight, waiting in a long line to clear immigration fighting out way through Heathrow, then a long transit through the "tube". By the time we arrived at our hotel we could barely think straight. Read more