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  • Angelaska
    Day 2

    Spruce Lodge

    May 15 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 46 °F

    For the next two nights our home will be the Spruce Lodge located just outside of Seward. Owners Brittney and John are native Alaskans who just bought this lovely hotel and have already begun expanding it. This rustic-looking exterior contains rooms that are simple, tasteful and very comfortable. Our room is a studio apartment complete with fridge and a little kitchenette. A second building is already going up, and a coffee shop on the premises has already been built. When we shared with Brittney a need for transportation on Friday, she was more than happy to assist us by offering a special trip of the hotel’s shuttle into town. In addition to all of this we have a wonderful view of spectacular Mount Baker through the window. I daresay that in the future when we come to Seward, one of our favorite places, we will certainly try to make the Spruce Lodge our home while we are here.Read more

  • Angelaska
    Day 2

    Alaska Railroad

    May 15 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 37 °F

    In most of the places I’ve lived railroads were like the frosting on a cake—nice but not essential. If one needed to get from point A to point B there were several different ways to make the trip. In Alaska the railway is essential. It was begun early in the twentieth century. Excess funds left over from the construction of the Panama Canal were diverted to the initial building of the Alaska railway. They started with some $7 million. Even today only 30% of the towns in Alaska are connected by highways, and of all the roads in Alaska only about 25% are paved. Some towns do not even have roads and can be reached only by airplane or by the railroad. Here the railway is essential. Cold weather erodes highways so fast that trucking is not a major industry. Heavy loads must be transported by rail. Today we had a wonderful privilege of boarding a train in Anchorage and traveling down the scenic railroad path to Seward. The natural beauty here is literally breathtaking. On this clear day, we saw snowcapped mountains, glaciers, a moose running through the woods, bald eagles and glorious, braided rivers streaming down from melting glaciers. While on the train, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast which included eggs, reindeer sausage, a delicious biscuit and locally roasted coffee. When we arrived in Seward Glenda and I felt as though we were coming home again. It has been only a few months since we were here, and we are ready to explore this place more deeply in the two days until we board the Celebrity Summit.Read more

  • Angelaska
    Day 1

    Arrival in Alaska

    May 14 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 52 °F

    At about 8:30 pm, we finally arrived at La Quinta Inn. Just before our airplane landed in Anchorage, we flew over spectacular snow-covered mountains. Angela was enraptured. Our Boeing 737 was high enough to allow me to see the whole expanse of a 70-mile long glacier. One tidewater glacier lay below us looking like a tiny white carpet, and in the fjord at its base floated a cruise ship with passengers admiring the white giant. We’ll be doing that in a couple of days, but now it is good to rest, refresh and prepare for the scenic train ride down to Seward tomorrow.Read more

  • Angelaska
    Day 1

    That Toddling Town

    May 14 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 55 °F

    The lyrics of an old song declares that Chicago is a toddling town. I’m not sure it toddles, but it is certainly an interesting place. For example, when we went for lunch to the Mediterranean Restaurant here in the airport, I heard Spanish, an Arabic dialect and several other languages. Very little English, except for one woman seated at our gate who said that she was from Chicago. From her accent I would guess she was from the southern Appalachian Mountains. This city is as diverse as they come. It is remarkable. My only complaint is that Starbucks has a monopoly on the coffee shop concession in the airport. There must be 20 coffee shops in the airport, and all of them are marked by pictures of the green lady. The hot coffee was an excellent ending to the chilled chicken salad I had for the midday meal. Randy and I will go to McDonald’s in a minute to grab a bag of burgers for our evening meal on the airplane.

    While we were getting our burgers, I passed a memorial to Lt. Butch O’Hare, the first recipient of the Navy’s Top Gun Award, which he won in 1942. It features an actual Grumman F4F Wildcat. As a tribute to him Chicago named its airport O’Hare Field. He and a colleague developed a maneuver called the Thach Weave, which rendered the Wildcat as an effective opponent of the superior Japanese Zero fighter aircraft. We also passed the skeleton of a dinosaur peering down at the travelers in her airport. I didn’t see any identification, so I assume she was dug up somewhere near Chicago.    Read more

  • Angelaska
    Day 1

    The Adventure Begins

    May 14 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 61 °F

    We stayed at our house last night and drove to Denver early this morning. Bradley picked us up and brought us through horrendous Charlotte traffic to the airport. We are here now waiting at gate A25. Glenda and I slipped right through the TSA pre-check, however, Angela and Randy had luggage to check, and they also were not pre-checked. So it looks as though we will wait here for them until our plane starts loading around 10 AM and we will complete the first leg to Chicago.Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 39

    Hurry Up and Wait

    October 24, 2023 in Hong Kong ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F

    We are waiting at the Hong Kong Airport. The ticket counter for Asiana Airlines does not open until 10 am. We arrived here at 9:00 am. It is disconcerting to see that the airline has only one flight daily—to Seoul and back. To meet a closed ticket counter also does not do a great deal to inspire confidence.Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 38

    Fragrant Harbor

    October 23, 2023 in Hong Kong ⋅ ☁️ 72 °F

    In Cantonese the name Hong Kong means “Fragrant Harbor.” Maybe it was that once upon a time. Every city has a certain character, an ambience that is unique. Hong Kong, a megalopolis scattered across a dozen islands with different peoples, businesses, and socio-economic levels, is a kaleidoscope that defies description. It has three languages, two ship terminals, two governments, and half a dozen different ethnic groups. Some of Asia’s richest people live next door to some of Asia’s poorest. The only country that comes close to this kind of demography is India. Miles and miles of skyscrapers are stacked together to the horizon. So are the slums. A significant portion of Hong Kong’s population is not even allowed to come on land unless they have to go to the hospital. It’s past is British; it’s future is Communist. Yet in some sense, for Glenda and me Hong Kong feels like an old friend. It is good to be This is our second trip to Hong Kong, and just for sentimental reasons we went on the same excursions today that we took last time. The view from the top of Victoria Peak is magnificent. Our ride in a rickety old sampan was just as charming. The Stanley street market was as crowded and dingy as ever. But this is Hong Kong.

    Now we are back in our stateroom starting to pack to go back home to North Carolina. Tomorrow we will leave the ship that has been our home for over a month. We have dear friends we are leaving behind. We just made two new ones as we met the spouse and daughter of one of our friends on the crew. New friends from Oregon and England have graced us with their company. As rich as this experience has been, however, it is true that there is no place like home, and we are looking forward to returning to the place and the friends we love the best.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 36

    Bucket List 🇹🇼 Taiwan

    October 21, 2023 in Taiwan ⋅ ☁️ 73 °F

    Today I got to check off an item from my bucket list. I was a Chinese student in my early 20’s when my teachers told me about the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. When the Nationalist Chinese left the mainland in 1949, they grabbed all the national treasures they could carry. They housed them in a museum built into the side of a mountain in Taipei. Tunnels bored deep into the rock protect these ancient treasures from any assault, up to and including nuclear attack. These objects are truly part of mankind’s global cultural heritage. Seven hundred thousand artifacts are guarded here, some going back to the 8th century B. C. There are so many that they are rotated. Only two percent of the artifacts are on display at any one time, and they are rotated once every three months.

    One of my bucket list items was to see the artifacts in this museum, especially their collection of calligraphy. The items on display stagger the imagination. We saw an elaborately carved ball made of white jade. Twenty two other intricately carved balls rotate freely inside it. The whole piece was carved out of one piece of rock. It took three generations to carve—over 100 years. The Chinese are a patient people.

    An equally beautiful carved wooden box holds 121 progressively smaller carved boxes inside. In the movie The Last Emperor we see boy emperor Pu Yi playing with a pet cricket he places into the smallest interior box. What a toy!

    And the porcelain, the furniture and the paintings and bronzes!

    As if all those treasures were not sufficiently impressive, the calligraphy is beyond description. Some scrolls are fifty feet long, displayed in gleaming, illuminated cases set in dimly lit halls. Written around the time of Jesus, these scrolls are still perfectly readable to anyone who knows Chinese. As I struggled to remember characters I learned during the Nixon administration, fourth graders flanking me read these ancient analects as if they were a grocery list. The Chinese language changes very slowly. The Chinese are a patient people.

    Not only did we visit the museum, we also went to a Taoist temple, to the Chinese War Memorial, and then to the Grand Hotel, built for foreign dignitaries by Madame Chiang Kai-shek. It is the most opulent building I have ever seen outside the Vatican. Constructed according to traditional Chinese patterns, it rivals the forbidden city in Beijing. We had a lunch at a sumptuous buffet there, offering over 100 different choices of oriental and occidental delicacies.

    Finally our bus took us to to the 350-foot-tall monument to President Chiang Kai-shek. Standing high above a 250,000 square meter park, it is also the site for the National Theater, the National Concert Hall and the National Opera. Though built according to ancient Chinese architectural styles, each of these buildings is thoroughly modern and immaculately maintained.

    Returning to the Viking Orion we prepared for a delightful dinner with six new acquaintances. After dinner we listened to our friend Sophia play quiet samba music on the Steinway. We went back to our stateroom and prepared for tomorrow’s sea-journey to Hong Kong 🇭🇰

    P. S. I was somewhat delayed in posting the last couple of footprints. The wi-fi on the ship wasn’t working. When I asked about it, a crew member told me that they hoped to have it working later in the day. I found out today that the Chinese cruiser shadowing Viking Orion in the East China Sea was radio-blocking our ship’s Starlink signal.    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 34

    Nagasaki Remembers

    October 19, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 77 °F

    By the year 1945 Nagasaki had been subjected to five different waves of conventional aerial bombing by United States air forces. Air raids had sounded a few days before each of these attacks as American airplanes flew over the city. These airplanes were not dropping bombs, however, they were dropping leaflets.

    In the Nagasaki Bomb Museum we saw the charred, framed remains of such a leaflet. It displays the face of a clock with the hands set to 11:55 pm. By each of the the numbers around the clock-face are depictions of islands that had already fallen to the allies—Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Tinian, Okinawa, and so on. At the 12 o’clock midnight position there appears a tiny map of Japan. The message is: “Time is running out. You’re next. Evacuate.” The text on the leaflet urges civilians to stop aiding the Japanese war effort and to leave the city. Such leaflets were routinely dropped on all primary U. S. bombing targets a day or two before an attack.

    Unfortunately these leaflets had become all too common in Nagasaki, so the people ignored them. Nagasaki’s factories and shipyards had been bombed repeatedly, but they were still operating. Besides, civilians disillusioned by the war dared not resist the overwhelming power of the military government. The number of dissenters was growing, but everyone had to go along whether they wanted to or not. The leaflets had little effect.

    About 8 am on Thursday August 9, 1945 Major Charles W. Sweeney lifted off his B-29 bomber from the runway on Tinian Island. The aircraft carried the new secret weapon of the allies, one 10,800-pound bomb nicknamed “Fat Man.” Major Sweeney’s primary target was the large industrial city of Kokura. Upon arriving there, bad weather prevented the bombardier from identifying his target. At the same time his B-29 started receiving anti-aircraft fire. Major Sweeney decided to deliver the bomb to their secondary target, Nagasaki.

    When the B-29 arrived clouds obscured Nagasaki as well. As the airplane approached the downtown area, Captain Kermit Beahan, the bombardier, looked for his target, a bridge over the Uragami River. Through a momentary break in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of the city’s stadium, which he knew to be near the bridge, and he pulled a lever, dropping his payload. At 11:02 am a plutonium bomb with the explosive power of 21 million tons of TNT detonated 1,650 feet over downtown Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 64,000 civilians.

    We visited the Nagasaki Bombing Museum and the nearby Peace Park. A group of schoolchildren stood at attention during a ceremony to honor the dead. We heard a testimony from a survivor who was 3 years old at the time of the blast. Like the museum in Hiroshima, the one here does not attempt to blame or exonerate either side. The Japanese themselves are aware of the atrocities their government committed in China, Manchuria and in the Second World War. Like Americans, they are divided about whether the atom bombs were a necessary evil. The museum’s presentation does not argue the point. It seeks simply to depict the physical facts related to the bombing. The entrance to the museum holds an inscription summarizing its position: “May the atomic bomb that fell here be the last nuclear weapon ever to be used.”    Read more

  • Glaciers & Geishas
    Day 34

    The Port of Nagasaki

    October 19, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 63 °F

    From the 16th to the 19th century the Tokagawa Shogunate decreed that the only Japanese port open to foreigners would be Nagasaki. Beginning with the Portuguese traders in the 1500’s, Nagasaki was the only part of Japan foreigners were allowed to visit. For 300 years, to the Western world, Japan was Nagasaki, and Nagasaki was Japan. No wonder Puccini set his opera Madama Butterfly here in the grand estate of Scottish trader Thomas Blake Glover, which now overlooks the Viking Orion.

    The traders established shipyards here, some of which still operate. Although foreigners were required to live on an island outside the city, they could come into the town during daylight hours to trade. And how they did trade! There were so many foreign merchants in Nagasaki that they actually changed the culture. In Japanese there was no word for “thank you” until they heard Portuguese traders saying “obrigado.” The Japanese elided that word into “arigato,” and so it stands today.

    Because Nagasaki was such a busy trading center, shipyards sprung up on both sides of the long estuary to the south. First, sailing ships and later iron, coal-fired steamers were built, as Japan frenetically attempted to catch up with Europe. A major shipbuilder, Mitsubishi Corporation, diversified in the 20th century to build cars, weapons and airplanes. The Russo-Japanese War, World War I and the invasion of China in the 1930’s caused the conglomerate to expand exponentially. By 1935 nine-tenths of Nagasaki’s adult population was employed by Mitsubishi. The town was one of Japan’s most prosperous.

    What can be a blessing in one season can become a curse when seasons change. The shipyards of Nagasaki made it a prime target in World War II. Nagasaki’s shipyards were subjected to five different conventional bombing raids before the attack on August 9, 1945 made the name Nagasaki synonymous with “holocaust.”

    Despite the monumental tragedy, the postwar American occupation officials under General Douglas McArthur did not dissolve Japanese conglomerates. They realized that to restore the nation economically, the vigorous business generated by companies such as Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Toyota and Toshiba would be important.

    Those companies are still here, and so is Nagasaki, thriving and beautiful. The city is still challenged by Japan’s current economic woes spawned by mismanaged prosperity in the 1980’s. Judging from the way she has recovered from cataclysmic setbacks in the past, however, I would bet that Nagasaki is not out of the game yet.    Read more

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