Our long sea journey northbound was absolutely worth it. We arrived at the "land of the rising sun", Osaka, Japan to a band on the quayside and many locals waving the ship into port. Japan is one of the highlights of our voyage so far, it just didn't feel like we had to travelled to a different country, it felt like a different universe! We quickly found that Japan is very clean, the people very polite and their mannerisms so different to what we are...

Guam, one of the Marina Islands, is our destination today, here in the middle of the Philippines ocean on the way to Japan. With six days at sea beforehand we were glad to be on land again. The island is USA military based and Queen Mary docked at the naval base, but interestingly we didn't see any sailors! Guam is like a mini Miami, it has all the shops and restaurants that we know from back in Orlando and the high rise hotel chains along the seafront. It was...

Queen Mary's itinerary brought us back to Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand before our six days at sea to Guam. In Wellington and Auckland we felt more like locals this time and had more time to do the things we hadn't on our earlier journey. The weather was very good for us, beautiful sunny and fresh days perfect for running around the city. Queen Mary arrived in Wellington and berthed right beside the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Stadium and from our roo...

Christchurch Update! Due to the devastating earthquake in Lyttleton, Christchurch, we will not be going there, instead we will travel back to Wellington before heading north again to Auckland. The news here is all about the earthquake, we were due to sail into Lyttleton and ride the Trans Alpine Express train, although the port is working, the infrastructure is not and we will not be able to dock there. We were very saddened to here about the earthquake, the...

Our last night on board the Queen Elizabeth was a short sleep, we woke at 5 am to go out on deck to meet the arrival of Queen Mary to follow her into Sydney Harbour for our royal rendezvous. It was the first time that Queen Elizabeth had been to Sydney and it was very emotional for us too, we were looking forward to changing ships, everyone said we had saved the best ship until last to complete our world voyage, the majestic Queen Mary, but we had made many fri...