Steve and Cathy's Blog

Having left Nagasaki at 3:00pm the previous day, Insignia has sailed clockwise around southwestern Japan and entered the Seko Inland Sea at Kitakyushu during the night.  This beautiful sea is located between three of the four main islands of Japan: Kyushu, Shokuku and the main island of Honshu. It is 250 miles long, pretty much runs east/west and is dotted with 3,000 islands.  In some ways, some of the tiny islands make it look like Ha

As we pretty much anticipated because of yesterday’s sea state, we are not in port at the scheduled 8:00am.  By 8:30, however, we are passing by the large Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard that occupies four miles of shoreline.  There are two large Liquid Natural Gas tankers under construction, and we see a Japanese Navy destroyer that was built there as well.  The sun is shining and the temperature is a perfect 70 degrees. We are at

We are heading southeast from Dalian, China and will travel 628 miles to reach Nagasaki, Japan.  As our destination is “The Land of the Rising Sun,” we thought it appropriate to lead with the photo of today’s sunrise at 5:40am.  Our goal is to reach Nagasaki by 8:00am tomorrow. King Neptune may have other ideas, because by 8:00am the sea is roiling. We are on Day 96 of our 180-day journey, and we have really been

We meet for breakfast around 8:30 the next morning. Same place – Floor 25. As we approach the room, Steve smells seafood. Ahhh, we must be in China. There is a very extensive breakfast with every kind of Chinese dish you can imagine. Cathy is delighted. Steve is in search of western offerings and is rewarded. Everybody gets what they want. We chat about how hot the rooms were and how it was impossible to turn

We arrive at 9:00am to this very busy port and industrial city of 5 million +. It has had a very interesting history due to its proximity to Russia and Japan, both of whom occupied the area in the 20th century. After WWII, it was under the control of the Soviet Union but administered by China. The USSR ceded the area to China in 1955. It is the 8th busiest port in the world by tonnage,

We are scheduled to take the Highlights of Tianjin five-hour excursion that begins at 7:45am. We signed up for this tour four months ago, so Cathy checks the excursion description to see what we are set to see. The synopsis begins this way: “Depart the pier for the one-hour drive to Tianjin … “ Uh oh. Not more time on the bus!  (Hence the map at the beginning of this post as a reminder) Now we

The Westin Beijing Financial Street is a beautiful hotel catering to people on huge expense accounts. The amenities that one can enjoy at such a place would make a guest just want to never check out. As Cathy and Steve arrived the previous evening after 9pm and are leaving less than eleven hours later, a Motel Six would have been plenty of accommodation. However, the breakfast is extraordinary, especially if you like fish dishes for your

5:30am. Br-r-r-n-g-g-g! B-r-r-n-g-g-g! This is your wake up call. And they’re off!!!   The Xi’an – Beijing Oceania race continues! Cathy, of course, is already awake and slacker Steve sleeps in until the wake up call. Cathy comes up with the morning plan. In order to avoid the less punctual of our fellow tourists, the Knights will be the very first ones down in the lobby and check out no later than 6:15. Then we will leave

As explained in our Special Post from March 29th through April 4th, weather problems sunk our plans to take a special trip from Shanghai to Xi’an to Beijing. But a substituted, shorter trip was made available, and we decided that if we were ever, ever to see the site of the Terracotta Army that dates from 210-209 B.C. (yes, that is 2,227 years ago!), we must go. It will be a non-stop, two-day sprint, but it

This is going to be an interesting day for many reasons. We arrive at an enormous artificial island specially built for the anticipated growth in cruise ship traffic. Insignia, we find out later, is the first American cruise ship ever to call on Sanya (see the picture at the beginning of this post). The Chinese government has gone to great lengths to provide extra security: Chinese Coast Guard vessels are also at the pier, helicopters fly