Author archive
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 […]
7 June 2010
Above: On the Celebrity Mercury. Today we were at seat making our way towards the Inside Passage off the coast of Alaska. That gave us the opportunity to fully explore the ship and all it had to offer. It’s an endless buffet on board … apart from restaurant meals, there’s buffet meals at the cafe […]
6 June 2010
Expecting traffic and immigration woes we headed back to Vancouver early to avoid being late for our Alaskan cruise departing at 1700. Supposedly, it is a requirement for passengers to be checked-in and boarded two hours prior to departure, with a strict close-off at 90 mins. So, we had to be at the Cruise Centre in […]
5 June 2010
Pike Place Market Jet lag was on our side today and we were up before the crack of dawn. First stop was the Pike Place Market … home to Seattle’s fish market. Wow! The ginormous scallops, lobsters and prawns were tempting even though we weren’t hungry … but we weren’t tempted enough to actually eat […]
4 June 2010
The weather took a turn today. Shortly after lunch we picked up our Avis rental car and headed to Seattle. The drive itself was under 3 hours but the border crossing took about an hour due to queues with the usual photographing and fingerprinting. We took a detour to our motel at the character-rich University […]
3 June 2010
We met up with an old school friend Hong Tee for lunch today. I hadn’t seen her since school … errr … some 20+ years ago. It was a nice catch up over a yum char lunch at Chinatown nearby. The quality of their har gau (prawn dumplings) and also the prawn-and-scallop ones were top […]
2 June 2010
Above: Homogenised milk at a cafe; for one to add to coffee or tea. We arrived at 1415 on the same day we left home, thanks to the international dateline. The queues at Vancouver airport for the arrival formalities were long. The officials were thorough in the questioning of visitors. We managed to clear all […]
2 June 2010
We turned up at Auckland airport to check-in armed with a contingency plan in case the flight at 2000 to Vancouver was full. Fortunately there were seats available and we were issued with boarding passes available. We weren’t seated together because the remaining seats on the flight were spread through the aircraft. No complaints!