Random thoughts from the sea
Day 71, 2024 Grand World Voyage Thursday, March 14, 2024; At Sea, East China Sea. I’ve been given the gift of a string of mostly unplanned days on the ship. My injured toe is healing nicely and with my sisters traveling overland in China, I’m pretty much alone – well,
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Day 65, 2024 Grand World Voyage Friday, March 8, 2024; Shanghai, China. When I first visited Shanghai in 2017, I wrote “what Shanghai does have in spades is a spectacular waterfront, and the MS Amsterdam docked front and center.” I couldn’t believe my experience would be topped, but it was
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Day 64, 2024 Grand World Voyage Thursday, March 7, 2024; Shanghai, China As a native-born Texan, I’ve always heard that “everything’s bigger in Texas.” Of course, it’s not true, except perhaps some Texas egos. But traveling the world sure puts any Texan bragging rights to shame. Today I traveled faster
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Day 29, Grand Asia 2018 Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, Shanghai, China: The chirping drowned out almost everything. This was a side of Shanghai, with its skyscrapers and designer shops, that I hadn’t seen before. We had passed through a narrow door into a market behind the storefronts in the old
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Day 28, Grand Asia 2018 Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018, Shanghai, China: There is no better eye candy from the ship than in Shanghai. I slept later than usual and missed the pre-dawn journey up the Haungpu River. My first sight of the city was the view from my balcony, and
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Day 25, Grand Asia 2018 Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018, Tianjin, China: After a day in Tianjin yesterday and a two-day trip to Beijing last year, my options for today were limited. The ship offered a 40-minute shuttle ride to a mall, but having heard the descriptions from those who went
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Day 24, Grand Asia 2018 Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, Tianjin, China: New York City has about 8.6 million people, according to Wikipedia. Tianjin, China, has 15.6 million residents. And yet I had never heard of Tianjin before cruising to China. For cruisers, Tianjin is best known as the port for
Continue readingDay 31, Grand Asia 2017 Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017 –Xi’an, China I didn’t know there was anything in Xi’an other than the terracotta warriors. Boy was I wrong. The warriors aren’t even in town, but almost an hour away. The “town” has 8 million people. One million of them are
Continue readingDay 30, Grand Asia 2017 Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017 – Xi’an, China You can look at one or even a dozen terracotta warriors and be impressed. But the real impression comes from looking at a thousand of them. When I saw a small traveling exhibit in Chicago in 2016, I
Continue readingDay 29, Grand Asia 2017 Monday, Oct. 30, 2017 – Guilin, China There are some landscapes that are unlike anything I have ever seen before, and today I cruised down the Li River through just such an area. Towering spires of limestone surrounded us as we passed through on a
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