First full sea day - Kobe to Nagasaki It was a quiet day today (we left Kobe just before midnight). We went in a golf putting competition in the morning without success. In the afternoon, we discovered that on the Volendam, the foredeck in front of the captain’s bridge was open for passengers to use right up to the front of the ship. This gave a 180 degree view of everything up front. There was lots of local sea traffic about with constant smaller cargo ships sailing past on both sides of us. A local pilot came on board at about 4.30pm and took us past some close by islands. On some of the larger islands there were shoreline cities and there was also substantial industrial areas with mills and big chimneys. We could easily see ... read more

No room on the bus for a guided tour of Kyoto... so we did a self tour... Geoff Mackie style !.... cost us a subway day pass and about 4800yen in total. Compared to the guided tour cost of 11,600yen each !!!! How's that for saving ????? We got to all the castles including The Imperial Place and Nijo Castle and Heian Shrine and we also got to even the Kyoto Museum of Traditional Crafts.Kyoto was the capital of Japan for a long time. The Imerial Plalace was monstrous; its within a missive park and has its own enclosed walls. No wanderers allowed in there, you go with an official guide and a guy in a suit with an earphone always hangs around 20m away. The gardens in there are best explained as "manicured", "sculptured" and ... read more

Raining again today.Off early.. 8am on our all day tour of Tokyo. First stop was Tokyo Tower which is Japans Eiffel tower - pretty impressive with grand views 360 degrees. Then onto Meiji Jingu shrine, its massive and was named after the Emperor Meiji who in about 1859 opened Japan to the west after handreds of years of isolation by former shogun emperors. It was also emperor Meji who handed powers to the people and set up a peoples government - he's the grandfather of modern Japan. The Shinto shrine is vast, with large gardens and massive temple and buildings - no clutter just straight lines and spotlessly clean, there was even a man sweeping the ravel streets with a bamboo broom. We had a drive past the old parliament which is now a guest place ... read more

Alarm went at 4am.....flight left Melb at 6.10am .....arrived Gold Coast 7.15am (8.15 Melb time). Departed for Tokyo at 11.30am. Flying Jetstar we had no movies to watch and food to eat.... long flight !!! Arrived Tokyo after a 9 hour flight 7.30pm (9.30 Melb) We left Queensland in wet weather and arrived Tokyo in wetter weather !! The Narita airport Tokyo was a breeze, walked straight through customs and quarantine. We did have our fingerprints and photo taken. All signage is in English as well as Japanese, very easy to find everything. We took an airport limousine to our hotel. The airport is 60 ks (about one hour drive) from Shinjuka where we are staying. Hotel rooms in Japan are very small....shoebox size ! Had late tea....very late tea.....midnight our time (2am melb time) Macca's ... read more

Neither of us slept too much on the overnight flight down from Anchorage to Denver. The stop over then was brief maybe two hours before flying on to Los Angeles. We both tried to make up more sleep time but who knows if we did. Arrived here about 10.00 ish only to find New Zealand Airways were closed until 1:30pm - not good so we had to wait because there no such thing as left baggage lockers any more. So we waited and waited but were finally rewarded when the queue opened we went straight thru booking the whole lot except our 4 carry ons that we were stuck with for the remainer of the day -our flight not leaving here until 10:30pm. We decided to go to Venice to do some camera chasing for Paul. ... read more