Nev’s Big Yellow bus – much cheaper than the cruise ship tours and only about eight passengers – easy to get on & off. We were picked up by Nev’s driver / guide and ferried the thirty minutes from Port Chalmers, where we docked, to the centre of Dunedin. The cruise company charged $15 for the […]

At 122, 000 gt, I thought that perhaps Celebrity Silhouette was too large to berth in Stockholm, and this was the reason why we berthed at Nynashamn, which is forty five minutes, by coach, from Stockholm. I have since found out the Emerald Princess (113,561 gt) was able to berth in Stockholm during her visit, and […]

I asked this lady’s permission to take her photograph. It was during a ‘formal’ evening on the Diamond Princess when a number of Japanese ladies dressed in the national dress of Japan. Our next port of call was Akita, which would be the last for Maureen & I, because we would leave the ship in […]

There comes a time when you have to drag yourself away from the staff who are selling books. Space at home becomes a problem, because we live in a small house. A school near where we live has an annual ‘Big Day Out’ – food stalls, fairground, homemade jams, hand made jewelry and of course BOOKS! […]

The sunlight filters through the panes of book-shop windows, pockmarked grey By years of grimy city rains, And falls in mild, dust-laden ray Across the stock, in shelf and stack, Of this old bookshop-man who brought, To a shabby shop in a cul-de-sac, Three hundred years of print and thought.

We watched several shows while cruising with Celebrity Eclipse. The above was an acrobat show with music and dancing. Fish, I think. and a dragon – but couldn’t see the link but that didn’t matter it was entertaining. The acrobat/dancers were very fit and skillful. Another evening it was a Rock show       […]

Maureen & I have completed ten cruises over the years, mainly with Princess Cruises, but the one that we use to judge all of the others is Azamara Cruises. Azamara Quest 30,277 GT, the smallest ship in which we have sailed, launched in 2000, with a passenger capacity of 686 and a crew of 408. […]

During the night of the cruise from the Bay of Islands to Tauranga I was woken around 2.00 am to the sound of the ship’s foghorn, which was set to sound every two minutes.In the ‘old days’ of the 1960’s  when sailing in a cargo ship the officer of the watch would haul on a […]

Celebrity Eclipse  at Sydney. Our cruise was a nine day cruise based around wine – Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, and for the overseas passengers it also included New South Wales. First impressions of our Celebrity Eclipse cabin. Majestic Princess at Sydney First impressions of our Majestic Princess cabin. The cabins were similar in size […]

Celebrity Silhouette Our winter has just started – everyone tells me it will end on the 1st September, but I still believe it is the 21st Sept (Equinox), but regardless it is still cold at the moment. During the last couple of months my thoughts have been considering how best to avoid at least a […]

We sailed from Puerto Montt at 5.00 pm for our next port of call, which was Puerto Chacabuco. We passed a number of islands off the Patagonian coast, and experienced the majestic fjords that made one think of Norway. The area known as Patagonia is split between Chile & Argentina, but I must admit I […]

HMT Dunera (B.1937) She is shown as a troop ship when visiting Malta, I think the photo was taken in the 1950’s. A couple of years ago Maureen and I completed a road trip around NSW, South Australia and Victoria. During the trip I planned to drive from Beechworth to Mildura; both towns are in […]

Our destination was to be Calcutta – I’ll use the names of each port as it was named in the 1960’s. After sailing from Karachi our first destination was Kandla, which is in the Gulf of Kutch in the Gujarat State of India. Gujarat is the red area The pink dot is Kandla  & the […]

 Madrid Station – was spotlessly clean, and very impressive. Our four nights in Barcelona just flew past, and on the final morning we were once again making our way to the railway station for the rail trip to Madrid. Once more we paid a little more for the extra room, but this time we were […]