I was early to rise this morning, before the break of dawn in fact. I wanted to try to capture the entry into Sydney Harbour so I left the cabin at 05:30 to catch the 5:45 sunrise. I was surprised by all the people on deck. It really is quite a sight to pull up on the city skyline, Harbour Street Bridge and Opera House all in one fell swoop. I guess that I was eager to get to Five Star Camera Repairs to see if they could replace and repair the mirror on my 7000 ...

Today is our last day in Sydney before heading out to sea. We had dinner with everybody on Wednesday night at Caffe Roma in Kings Cross. It was real nice to get reconnected to everybody. Jean and Renetta took the 2 1/2 train ride out to the Blue Mountains north of Sydney for the day. The girls had a little excitement on the return trip. Apparently they were in a "quiet car" and there was a young couple that got extremely agitated because a couple of people were ...

We arrived at Vancouver airport at 1:00 p.m. PST and departed on-time at 4:00 p.m. Little did we know what we would feel like twenty-eight hours later. I want to thank Irene and Les for their assitance getting to the airport, we are truly thankful for the help. I just hope you be careful on that trip to Whistler in my little baby. In any event, we boarded our B787, a plane in Los Angeles, a great, new plane capable of a 560 mph cruising speed and one that can hol...

We had an amazing day and covered so much ground. Again we started off early today. We needed to get on the HOHO bus before 11:00 a.m. because that's when our 24 hour ticket expired. We made it. We headed downtown to Circular Quay as a starting point. I just needed to touch the Opera House at Bennelong Point (Architect Louis Kahn) and climb the 72 stairs up to the massive sails. Since the time this opened in 1973 this has always been an icon for me - there are ...

I thought this day would never come for me. I'm 62 and I'm just now getting to Australia. Many years ago I worked for a company, TNT - Thomas Nationwide Transport based in Sydney. We used to get copies of the monthly newsletter and it was always a dream of mine to get here one day. Well that day has happened. We schlepped our bags off the Volendam this morning at 8:30. Actually very reasonable disembarkation, no lines, plenty of taxi's. We had him take us direct...