Tag Archives: Kuala Lumpur

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No. Sea Cruise

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by Bob Sparrow

Hamburg water statue in Alster Lake

The title seems to infer that there is no sea cruise – there is! The title is simply my way of trying to label our trip of cruising both the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea.  By the time you get this blog, we will have embarked from Hamburg, Germany, leaving all the local Hamburgers behind and will be adrift somewhere in the North Sea on a 12-day cruise aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Jade. It’s actually a 14-day cruise, but they’re throwing us off early – more about that later. What I can tell you now is that I’ve never been to any of the destinations we’re visiting, so Wi-Fi willing you’ll join us as we discover some new places.

The ‘we’ on this trip, joining Linda and me, is the same as our Baltic Sea Cruise gang (where you could always find a ‘john’), Jack & JJ Budd, John & Judy VanBoxmeer, John’s  sister and brother-in-law from Canada, John & Mary Billham, plus friends of theirs, Steen & Sue also from Canada (I believe Steen is Canadian for John).  Why so many Canadians?  Just in case we get called ‘Ugly Americans’ we can all say were from Canada, eh?

Getting to Hamburg, Germany

Our trip over started ignominiously with a European air traffic controllers strike, so our original flight to Europe was cancelled along with our up-graded seats, so we ended up in ‘steerage’.  The good news is that after 27 hours of airplanes and airports we did eventually get to Hamburg, so either the strike was settled or the pilot landed by

Jack, JJ, me, Linda, John & Judy prior to Copenhagen Segway ride in 2015

the seat of his pants. The bad news is that my luggage went to Dubai and our golf clubs went to Kuala Lumpur or at least somewhere other than Hamburg.  As of this writing I’m wearing the same shirt I started out with two days ago, no wonder no one wanted to sit with me at dinner!  Hamburg has been in the news lately as the recent meeting/protesting place for this year’s G20 Summit. All the leaders and protestors have since left the city, but the Putin-Trump “I Got You Elected Comrade” t-shirts were still available in the gift shops.  We only had one evening in Hamburg to scarf down some schnitzel and German beer, which we did as we were pretty sure we weren’t going to get much to eat or drink on the cruise.

The Ship and Her Measurements

Many of our blog readers are big cruise enthusiasts, so I don’t have to go into a great deal of detail about the Jade, but I will anyway . . .

  • 93,558 gross ton; I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds like a lot

    The ‘Jade’

  • 965 feet in length – over 3 football fields long, and while there is no football field on board (I don’t think!) there are tennis, basketball and volleyball courts. (May not get to all of those)
  • Passengers: 2,402 of our closest friends
  • 1,037 crew member (most of them will be down in the hold peddling to make the ship go faster)
  • Library (I may not find it)
  • Gym (I may not find this either)
  • On board chapel (where I will be praying that I don’t burst during the cruise from eating and drinking too much)

Dining opportunities

  • 2 Main Dining Rooms plus, O’Sheehan’s Neighborhood Bar & Grill, Cagney’s Steak House, Jasmine Garden – Asian, La Cucina – Italian, Le Bistro – French, Brazilian Steak House, Sushi & Teppanyaki (What, no fusion Thai food?!!)

They know how that salt air can make one very thirsty, so they’ve made it so you’re never too many steps away from staying hydrated.

Adult Beverage Opportunities

  • Atrium Bar, Bliss Lounge, Jade Club, Magnum’s Champagne & Wine Bar, Malting’s Beer & Whiskey Bar, Mixers Martini and Cocktail Bar, Sake Bar, Spinnaker Lounge, Sugarcane Mojito Bar, The Great Outdoors Bar, The Pit Stop, Topsiders Bar & Grill (Makes me thirsty just listing them!)

On Sunday we headed north out of Hamburg, which is pretty much the only direction you can go on a boat out of Hamburg, to our next port of call.  This is the maiden voyage of the Jade after spending the last six months in dry dock getting a total ‘face lift’ .  Wait a minute, isn’t ‘maiden voyage’ the same words they used to describe the Titanic’s historic journey?  I hope I don’t hear Celine Dion singing ‘The Heart Will Go On’ as we board. Thank goodness for global warming, the iceberg’s aren’t as big as they use to be!

It will be an adventure; welcome aboard, we hope you’re not on a diet and we hope you enjoy the journey. Thanks for joining us!

 

 

 

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Day 10/11 – Nepal Diary: The Elegant Elephant

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Disney Jungle Cruise

Disney it was not

Today in Chitwan was a day to explore elephants . . . in detail, but first our canoe trip down a muddy river. It did not stack up favorably to the Disney’s Jungle Cruise. No monkeys climbing trees, no hippos spitting at us, no alligators, not even some stupid jokes. Our guide did say that there was a Kingfisher bird way off in the distance somewhere, but I’ll be damn if I saw him. The canoe trip mercifully ended with nary a sighting if you don’t count the log that looked like part of an alligator.

We then headed to the EBC, the Elephant Birthing Center, which was actually fairly interesting and one of the premier elephant breading centers in the world and boasts the birthing of the world’s only set of elephant twins. There were several baby elephants wandering around the grounds that you could actually touch and feed grass to, which I did. We next headed to the elephant bathing area, where we watched the trainers lead the elephants into the river then jump on their back with a brush and give them a good scrubbing. It was sort of like an elephant car wash – I think a wax and pedicure was extra.

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“Does this elephant have reverse?”

After lunch we did an elephant safari. Four people crammed into a wooden orange crate on top of an elephant – very uncomfortable, especially if your elephant needed a realignment or it’s tires rotated, which ours apparently did, as it was a very bumpy ride.  I like elephants, they may be my favorite animal, what with their size, strength and good memory, but I don’t think the elephant enjoyed this any more than we did.  We spent an hour and a half wandering through the jungle in search of wild animals. We saw a dog. I was riding facing backwards, so most of the views I had were of the elephant’s ass. Actually we did see a one-horned rhino mother with her baby. The one-horned rhinos are called Indian rhinos because they are found in the Indian/Asia area, as apposed to the two-horned rhino, which are found in Africa. Unlike the India/Africa elephant, it is easy to tell the Indian from the African rhino . . . JUST COUNT THEIR HORNS!!!

DSC01382Our safari lasted an hour-and-a-half, by which time my legs were numb and we had no more chance of seeing a Bengal Tiger than we did of seeing a Detroit Tiger, or Tiger Woods or Tony the Tiger for that matter. If elephant safaris were given as prizes and the hour-and-a-half safari was the first place prize, second prize would be a three-hour safari.

The trip was made easier by our safari mates, a very fun Malaysian couple from Kuala Lumpur. They entertained us throughout our safari as well as at dinner back at the hotel that night. He says that he is a Malaysian first and a Chinese second, but that he’s really a ‘banana’. Banana? I asked. Yes, that’s an Asian (yellow on the outside), who is really like an American (white on the inside).

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A one-cart, two-ox parade

The next morning we took an oxcart ride through several villages close to our hotel – I felt like I was a runner-up for Mr. Chitwan Congeniality, waving to the masses as we passed through their village.

We boarded Buddha Airlines for the short flight (18 minutes) to Kathmandu where we checked into the Shanker Hotel – I know it doesn’t sound healthy, but it’s actually a 5-star hotel – a far cry from the teahouses in the Himalayans that we were staying in, although I miss the teahouse’s charm.

Thank you all for your prayers and well-wishes for Dana – the last I heard she had a balloon, rather than a stint, put in and is now home and feeling great.