Free Day (no shore excursion). Lauren and I decided to stay ship-board today. Transportation from the Dublin dock is complicated and restrictive, so we are checking out the gym on-board today, and may try to do some laundry.

Neither of us were very impressed with Dublin, and I saw everything I wanted to yesterday.

UPDATE on my immigration issue. I was not denied entry today to Ireland at Dublin, the second port we entered, although Princess Cruise Lines people told me I would have to “check-in” at every port, Nor have any Irish immigration officials knocked on my cabin door at 4am at each port (which was an absolutely ridiculous claim by a supervisory Princess Cruise Line employee. I finally received the immigration instruction letter today (I should have received it at check-in on the dock in Southampton) from Princess Cruise lines, after calling guest service THREE times requesting it for my records. The letter makes it sounds so wonderful that I am giving up my freedom and my identity document to travel in Ireland, and that is being done to benefit ME. No, it is being done to make it more expeditious for their immigration staff to admit people from the cruise ship, who are very low risk for admission denials anyway. Yet, the cruise line “confiscated” passports from unsuspecting travelers (all from non-EU countries), without authority, in my opinion. Ireland is one of many countries with which the USA has a reciprocal “Visa Waiver” agreement. We all had to provide a copy of our passport to the cruise line for pre-verification, and those copies are apparently readily available to Irish Immigration. Most countries is the world now issue “machine-readable” passports which can just be scanned for admission, without the requirement of an actual physical STAMP in the passport, which I received. All records are accessible on-line. I thought it was pretty crappy of the cruise line not to notify us in advance, on their website, that they were in essence seizing our passports for the duration of our stay in Ireland, and a day after that. Passports are to be returned to other passengers by the ship’s CABIN BOYS! Absolutely ridiculous.