Articles from this Category
30 April 2016
Above: With family in Brenham. We woke after 0800 feeling awful despite having more than my usual hours of sleep. It was 0100 in New Zealand, which explained a lot. We swanned downstairs to have a reasonably good breakfast of oats (yes, kinda unprocessed food in USA!), toast and a waffle washed down with plenty […]
14 September 2013
Today was more of the same … shopping, eating and meeting up with crew friends after checking out of the hotel at 1100. We headed to the airport after 1800 from the Holiday Inn Express where we had returned our rental car. The check-in area was deserted. The flight was rather full but not completely […]
13 September 2013
Above: Dinner at Redondo Pier. Our hotel bathroom window looks out at the flightpath for LA Airport. It’s quite amazing to see big jets like the A380 coming in to land while taking care of business. I wonder if there’s a curfew for the airport as we didn’t hear any aircraft noise through the night. […]
12 September 2013
We woke at 0600 to take the bus to the airport for our 0910 flight to London Heathrow. That kind of wake up time isn’t normally an issue for me but having had sleep-ins for the last few days, it was harder. We had two pleasant surprises in a row. The first was finding a […]
13 June 2010
Above: Float planes at Vancouver Harbour. We arrived at 0700 into Vancouver but disembarkation was conducted by groups so we were able to fit in breakfast on board before our group was due at 0830. We had settled our bill beforehand. The cruise company applies a pre-set tip for their staff which one can ask […]
12 June 2010
The poor weather continued and it was a rocky ride back to Vancouver. Our amazing inhouse acrobats Duo Velikovi were scheduled to do a dedicated performance this afternoon but this was cancelled due to rough seas. It was quite helpful to have bad weather and rough seas … it takes away the sad edge off […]
11 June 2010
Ketchikan was once the canned salmon capital of the world. It is a rainy place … we’ve been told that if you come at anytime and stay for more than one hour, you will encounter rain. We’re so glad we didn’t pre-book any activities as it wouldn’t be a nice day to eg. go flightseeing […]
10 June 2010
Above: Big waterfall by Mendenhall Glacier, along with floating ice. You don’t realise the size until you see the people in the photo. Juneau We pulled in bright and early into Juneau but as it was a long stop (until the evening) we didn’t wake up early for the arrival. Juneau (despite its population of […]
9 June 2010
We cruised into Yakutat Bay after breakfast and headed up towards Hubbard Glacier. This is the largest tidewater glacier in the North American continent because it begins some 76 miles upstream. At its face, it is about 100 m high and over 3 km wide! With the chunks of ice and the smaller pieces floating […]
8 June 2010
In the morning, we took a tour of the main galley of the ship. The scale and complexity of feeding over 2000 people (including the crew) was an enormous. Text continues after this gallery. We pulled into the tiny little town of Hoonah or Icy Strait Point which was once home to a […]