Category: Cruise Ships

We sailed from Honolulu the evening of October 18th, and arrived in Vancouver early the morning of October 24th. Those 5½ days were similar to the ones on the Astoria-Kauai crossing, but this post will show you events and places I didn’t cover in the one about the westbound...

Imagine living in a small community – 3,600 or so residents – which has great music venues, bars, and restaurants, a spa and many other facilities. Now imagine that in that community, you’re one of the 2,600 people that are retired, and the other 1,000 residents do all the...

My healing from the hiking accident is progressing nicely – far better than the doctors led me to believe would be the case. As I write this on Saturday morning, I’m planning to load the motorhome to get away for a few days on Monday. This past Wednesday, though,...

Saturday evening was a busy night for most of the passengers on the Celebrity Solstice, but not in a good way. For about 2,400 of the 2,800, this was our last night on the ship – on Sunday morning we had to disembark. The other 400 would continue to...

We’re now about half-way to Hawaii, “the Big Island”, having sailed from Honolulu last night at 8:00 pm. We arrived at Honolulu at noon on Monday after having the islands in sight for several hours. Sailing in is a perspective that not many get, which is a shame, because...

As I start writing this, it’s 05:20, about 90 minutes before sunrise. I’m on the back deck of the Celebrity Solstice, 8½ hours out of Honolulu, and it’s about 82°F. As usual, only a handful of other passengers are up and about, but crew members are seen often, cleaning...

One of the first questions asked by people who haven’t been on a cruise is often “what do you do on the ship?”. That’s particularly true on an itinerary such as we’re on, which starts with 5 days at sea between Vancouver and Honolulu. The short answer is that...

When I closed the blog on Tuesday morning, a glorious sunrise had just started the day. As I write this, we’re out in the Pacific Ocean a few hours southwest of Vancouver Island. It’s dark (06:00) and the seas are heavy – there will certainly be some sick people...

Cathy and I are in Vancouver for 48 hours before boarding the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice. We’ll be on her for 12 nights as she sails to Hawaii and around the islands, and Vancouver is a marvellous city to get into the vacation spirit. We took the afternoon Air...

From September 16-23, 2013, I sailed on the Norwegian Sun from Vancouver to Los Angeles with my 90-year-old father. To give you some background about us for perspective on this review, this was my 14th cruise, and my father’s 3rd. I’ve sailed on Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Holland America, Princess,...