Category: Cruise Ships

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,...

Astoria was the port I was really looking forward to on this cruise on the Norwegian Sun I may have passed through briefly during a drive a few decades ago, but had never had a good look at the community. A couple of history-oriented friends in Whitehorse like it,...

On Sunday morning, we had to leave the River Queen, and we had set a 10:00 am pickup for a taxi to take us to the Hotel Pulitzer for two nights. We were talking to the Hotel Manager on the River Queen as we were saying our last good-byes,...

I enjoyed my walk around Bernkastel on Tuesday night but was looking foward to seeing it in the daylight too. The medieval center of town is wonderful. Some of the buildings have quite a tilt to them, especially this skinny one, built as a house in 1416. It has...

On Monday (October 15th), we reached our furthest point up the Mosel River, the city of Trier. We spent 2 nights there, with the afternoon of our first full day being spent on a motorcoach tour to Luxembourg (the country and the city of the same name). Like all...

I’m behind on my posting now – it’s been very busy, and the Internet connection on the ship is very poor except when everyone else is on bed, and then only from the lounge, not ship-wide as they claim. Anyway, back to Basel for a final 2/3 of a...