Blue Planet Journey

  A "veggie burger" in the Windjammer buffet.  If I wanted mashed potatoes, I'd choose mashed potatoes. After spending a month on the Anthem of the Seas , I was looking forward to a trip on a different ship. And this trip was going to include the entire family, some of whom had never cruised before, so I was looking forward to them being impressed with a week on the Voyager of the Seas. Voyager is a smaller ship than Anthem , so I knew in advance there were some missing amenities. Still, they were all part of the Royal Caribbean corporate ecosystem, so the overlapping elements, like the quality of the food and service or the accuracy of the "Cruise Compass" (a digital or paper calendar detailing everything there is to see and do onboard, from dining times to the location of trivia contests to where all the many musicians are playing) should be similar. It wasn't. The week we returned home, we canceled our future transatlantic cruise on the  Voyager. We neve...

Graffiti on rock, Dunningham reserve, Coogee, Australia.  It symbolizes my search for the ingredients in the refried beans served aboard the Celebrity Solstice . I've written about my difficulty in getting a response from the crew of the Celebrity Solstice about the ingredients in their refried beans.  It was a simple question.  Do the refried beans served in the Oceanside Cafe almost daily contain lard or other animal products?  This is a big deal to vegans and vegetarians, as well as for people with religious prohibitions against eating pork. Lard is made of pork fat. The answer is right on the ingredient label, or in the recipe if they make their refried beans from scratch.  Instead of looking, however, multiple chefs and shift supervisors would promise to "get back to me."  They never did. I don't want to leave the impression that my questions were never answered.  Here, Karol, the Food and Beverage Director, is gettin...

Caroline with a wallaby at the end of a 50 K bike ride in Port Douglas , Australia. We've returned to Logan , Utah, after 5 months on "the road" (mostly, the sea).  Let me apologize in advance if I pause before trying to answer the question, "How was your trip?"  It is a lot to process, and I am trying to articulate a coherent response.  It's funny how it is easier to comment on 1 specific event than on a trip in toto.  But as I sit in my usual seat in the North Logan Starbucks, I'm having fun reviewing some of the photos from this adventure.  Here are some that haven't found a home, from a mixture of locations. This is the last time we got to meet our dear friend Micki, who passed 2 weeks ago from pancreatic cancer. We were attending the annual meeting of Friends of Hanauma Bay. Caroline at Turtle Bay, North Shore, Oahu. What be this, you may ask?  It's a public urinal in Fremantle, Australia, and a common design down u...