Those of you who know us might know that we’re not city folk in general. We’ll go to a city and spend time occasionally, but we wouldn’t pick a city as vacation destination. Having said that, it isn’t a surprise that, while we were impressed with Helsinki, it wouldn’t necessarily be a destination for a vacation to Finland. Rather, we would probably fly in and spend an afternoon seeing the sights; maybe have coffee and a pastry in a coffee shop somewhere and then make our way north to Lapland to see some reindeer.
In this gallery, we’ve set aside some room for images from our 2014 Atlantic crossing aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Star. Here we expect to post images from our days at sea as well as shots we’ll make as we tour through various cities from Ponta Delgado in the Azores, to Dover, England, and many stops along the Baltic Sea.
We hope to post these images as we make them, so check back often.
One of the things we’ve quickly grown accustomed to in the 21st century is the ability to communicate with just about any person, any time. We’ve also grew used to the idea that whatever information we want is at our fingertips pretty much instantly. Our cell phones have more computing power than the computers that landed the Apollo capsules on the moon, and we take that for granted. Continue reading →
Free Style means, well, free style. You show up for dinner whenever you want just like you would at any other restaurant. For at least Norwegian Cruise Lines, the days of assigned seating times for dinner is over. You will normally be asked if you want to share a table which is probably because some people prefer to share a table. It’s a good way to meet others. Some folks, of course, prefer not to share. In either case, our experience has been that seating is done almost instantly, depending on the time of your arrival. As with any restaurant, you can expect a wait time if you show up during peak times. Continue reading →
We’re on board the Norwegian star at the port of Miami. This was by far the easiest boarding we’ve ever done on a cruise ship. We dropped our luggage off this morning at 11 AM and took car rental car back to the airport. We then boarded a shuttle bus and came back to the cruise terminal. Once back at the cruise terminal it only took 20 minutes to board the ship including check in.
Today we’re scheduled to board the Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Star for an Atlantic Crossing re-positioning cruise. we’re in Miami at the moment and will leave here at around 5:00 PM.
Our first stop will be several days from now in the Azores, a small island group in the Atlantic Ocean east of Portugal. From there we’ll stop in England, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and Finland, but not in that order. From there we’ll leave the ship and travel to London where we’ll pick up a car and drive up to Scotland.
Internet is both expensive and slow aboard the ship, but we’ll post as often as we can about what we find. Once we’re back on dry land, we should be able to put up new articles about our brief stops on the cruise and of course the great things we’re hoping to see in Scotland too.
One of the most picturesque national parks in the United is the famous Rocky Mountain National Park near Denver, Colorado. When you think of the Rocky Mountains, images of this park will surely illustrate the essence of that great western mountain range. You can read more about Rocky Mountain National Park at our article here.
Once in a great while even the most experienced traveler experiences something that is truly phenomenal in terms of having a great vacation. Sometimes it’s the unique experience that most people can’t or won’t do, or it’s the high adventure of doing something that’s on the very edge of reasonable. Sometimes it’s just visiting a great place to spend time. New Zealand, for us, was one of those places that ended up being a great place to spend time. And if we had been looking for high adventure too, we certainly could have found it in the land of the Kiwi. With all the national parks and public lands available, we certainly had the opportunity to be outside and on the edge as much as anywhere else. Instead, we chose to give ourselves an overview of this incredible country and just see as much as we could in the short amount of time we had. Continue reading →
