Posts In The “Destinations” Category
Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudi is famous for his unique and fantastical designs inspired from nature. The majority of his creations are in Barcelona, with seven comprising the UNESCO World Heritage Site, “Works of Antoni Gaudi”, including his masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia. At 412 ft (125m) high, the Sagrada Familia dominates the Barcelona skyline and is…
Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter is the oldest section of the city, with ruins dating back to the Roman Empire. Narrow cobblestone lanes, wonderful to explore on foot, wind through the quarter past varied architecture. Although most of the buildings appear medieval, many actually were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of a…
May brought unseasonably warm and sunny weather to the Pacific Northwest. We started the month on a cruise to Alaska, where the clear skies and moderate temperatures were notable for that time of year. We enjoyed warm weather for much of the rest of the month in Seattle, eating outside wherever possible. Following our presentation…
Barcelona was high on the list of stops for our aborted trip to the Mediterranean in 2020. And we’re big Formula 1 fans, but hadn’t attended a race since the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2018. So when a last-minute opportunity came together to attend the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, we jumped on it….
On most of our airplane trips, we prefer to pack light and bring carry-on luggage only. This saves us time at the airport and also avoids the risk of lost bags. For our upcoming trip to Barcelona, we had one hike planned, but not enough to warrant bringing our large hiking boots as we did…
We’d normally take advantage of a long weekend and make a trip somewhere. But having just returned from Anacortes the previous weekend and scheduled to fly to Barcelona the following Wednesday, we decided that all three of us should take a staycation for Memorial Day Weekend. As luck would have it, three of Seattle’s five…
With two large marinas, Anacortes, WA is a popular boating destination close to the beautiful San Juan Islands. The city also is the gateway to the islands for those without a boat, with nearly a million arriving by ferry in 2021. That is how we visited the islands last fall. And Anacortes has been the…
One of the reasons we booked a cruise to Alaska from Vancouver, rather than from our home of Seattle, was to travel one-way through the Inside Passage all the way up, and to visit Hubbard Glacier and Seward. Ships departing from Seattle run mostly offshore, west of Vancouver Island, and generally only visit Southeast Alaska…
The 125-mile (201 km) Seward Highway, between Anchorage and Seward, is considered one of the most scenic routes in the state of Alaska. Named a National Forest Scenic Byway in 1989, the 2.5-hour journey from Seward passes through the Kenai Mountains and between Turnagain Arm and the Chugach Mountains, with numerous lakes and other attractions…
Hubbard Glacier, at the head of Yakutat Bay, is the largest tidewater glacier in North America at 76 miles (122km) long and 7 miles (11km) wide. The terminal face is 600 feet (182m) high, with 250 feet (76m) hidden below the waterline. The 350 feet (106m) visible above the waterline is actively calving, filling the…
Dramatic Glacier Bay National Park was the only overlap between our Norwegian Jewel cruise and our 2010 Southeast Alaska trip on Dirona. But we could return here every year and never tire of the amazing scenery. On another unusually clear day for early in the season, we cruised slowly up Glacier Bay under a bright…
During the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 through 1899, roughly 100,000 prospectors poured into the Yukon in northwestern Canada, in the hopes of striking it rich. The main routes to the Yukon gold fields were from the southeast Alaska towns of Skagway or Dyea, across White Pass or Chilkoot Pass respectively. No roads or railways…
Alaska’s capital, Juneau, is the only mainland US capital city with no road connections. The only way in or out is by air or sea. And despite having a population of only 32,000, it’s the second largest city in the US by area, after Sitka, also in Alaska. We arrived by boat, as do the…
On our Norwegian Encore Caribbean cruise, we didn’t take any excursions, opting instead to visit each port on foot on our own. The Jewel offered some more interesting trips, so we booked one for each port. In Ketchikan, we took an off-road UTV safari through Tongass National Forest in a Yamaha Wolverine X2. Although we…
After our second night at the Vancouver Pan Pacific hotel, we woke up to find the Norwegian Jewel, the ship we’d be taking to Alaska, docked just outside our room. We boarded later that day and spent the afternoon exploring the ship, then had a wonderful time watching from our balcony at the bow as…
While Seattle did see plenty of rain that month, April travels was the dominant theme rather than April showers. We started the month with a weekend trip to Sagecliff resort in eastern Washington and ended it on a weekend trip to Vancouver BC. Of the three weekends in between, we spent one snowshoeing at Mt….
The Canada Place cruise terminal in the Port of Vancouver handles over a million passengers a year, with 331 ships scheduled for 2023. Most are heading to Alaska, but other destinations include Hawaii, Asia, California and the South Pacific. The port is the only origin terminal supporting one-way Alaska cruises, due to Jones Act restrictions…
Jennifer loves to get pictures with team mascots and recently added another to the list with Blitz of the Seattle Seahawks at the team’s 2023 NFL Draft Party. The event was held at the Space Needle with guest appearances from several players as the 2023 NFL draft was broadcast. The party was fantastic, made even…