The Last Post

Don’t blame me, the title was Gail’s idea. It will likely be the final post of this trip. In summary, it was the coolest and roughest Pacific crossing ever. Three out of four days in Hawaii were great, only the storm on our second day on the islands caused problems. We skipped the port of Kauai, the Captain opting to wait out the storm in Honolulu. As it turned out the weather was bad on all the islands that day.

It was still a lovely way to enjoy the holidays. The food was good as was the entertainment. We encountered quite a few passengers with whom we knew from previous Christmas cruises. Dancing was good, musically, and better when the floor was staying in one place. It turns out that roller coaster dancing is not so easy.

The disembarkation went smoothly and we were off of the ship, with luggage and on board the bus for our transfer to LAX by 8:15 AM. We arrived at LAX Terminal 2 about 9:00 AM. There was no-one at the Westjet check-in counter and we were not charged for our checked bags. I did not challenge that decision. LAX is under construction, again, and what airport is not? After the check-in process in Terminal 2 we were directed to our boarding gate in Terminal 3. It was not a long trek although we did have to walk outside to pass the construction zone.

Now all we can do is wait. Hope the weather is favourable or our return.

Edith Wharton

One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.

Carl Sagan

I don’t know where I am going, but I’m on my way.

A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was about to happen.

Mary Ritter Beard

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

Anthony Bourdain

It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.

Shirley MacLaine

The more I traveled, the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

Samuel Johnson

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, see them as they are.

Rick Steves

Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate souvenir is a broader perspective.

Paul Theroux

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

George Carlin

Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas and take your next trip in kilometers.

Mark Twain

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.

Robert Louis Stevenson

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Susan Sontag

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

Aldous Huxle

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Michael Palin

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.

Bill Bryson

I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I’ve never been before.

Matthew Karsten

Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.

Ray Bradbury

See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream.

Mark Twain

One must travel to learn.

Emile Zola

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

Augustine of Hippo

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving

Anita Desai

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow- mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

Lao Tzu

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Marcel Proust

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

G.K. Chesterton

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.

Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson’s Essays

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

Gustave Flaubert

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Mary Anne Radmacher

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

…there ain’t no journey what don’t change you some.

Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour

It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.

Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings

Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.

Paul Theroux

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Lin Yutang

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

Horace, The Odes of Horace

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
(They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Every hundred feet the world changes.

Erma Bombeck

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?

Roseanne Barr

Men read maps better than women because only men can understand the concept of an inch equaling a hundred miles.

J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Never

I wonder if the ocean smells different on the other side of the world.”

Winna Efendi, The Journeys

Most of the time, beauty lies in the simplest of things.

Paolo Coehlo

This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one.

Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone’s home and backyard.

Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.

James Russell Lowell

A wise man travels to discover himself.

Ivan Doig, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind

There is more time than there is expanse of the world and so any voyage at last will end.

Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Anthony T.Hincks

I’m here, and now, so are you.

Maarten Schafer, Around The World in 80 Brands

Quite some years ago, I started traveling the planet. I thought this would teach me something about the world we live in. I was wrong… It taught me something about myself. It changed me. And nothing will ever again be black-and-white again.

Jane Wilson- Howarth

A traveller with an open mind grows richer with each journey, with each encounter, with each conversation.

M.B. Dallocchio, The Desert Warrior

Travel can sometimes push us to lose ourselves and find ourselves at once. The shedding of old prejudices, dead skin, and the opening of one’s eyes is far better than what any mainstream news outlet could ever tell you.

Melody Lee, Moon Gypsy

I may be lost, but I’m traveling the right way.

Barnaby Allen, Pacific Viking

A port arrival makes you feel so free …To realize what it is to be a free man, with a world before him.

Rachel Wolchin

If we were meant to stay in one place, we would have roots instead of feet.

Anonymous

Travel with the wit of an adult, and the wonder of a child.

Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battutah

Traveling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.

Lailah Gifty Akita

It is never too late to take another voyage.

Marty Rubin

The secret to being a good traveler is liking a place before you get there.

Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps

There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I’m born to leave.

Pat Conroy

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.

Pico Iyer

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry

There are several ways toreact to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina’s first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you’ve misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

Jawaharlal Nehru

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

There’s a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we’ve left it.

Josh Gates, Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

Travel does not exist without home….If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world.

Paul Theroux, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.

Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.

Erol Ozan

You can’t understand a city without using its public transportation system.

Clifton Fadiman

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.

Jennifer Lee

Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.

Hans Christian Andersen

To Travel is to Live.

Wallace Stevens

The most beautiful in the world is, of course, the world itself.

T.S. Eliot

The journey not the arrival matters.

Randy Komisar

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want Lawrence Block on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

Henry Miller

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

James Michener

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

Thomas Fuller

Travel makes a wise man better but a fool worse.

Martin Buber

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Lawrence Block

Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.

Andre Gide

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Chief Seattle

Take only memories, leave only footprints.

Henry Rollins

A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.

Herman Melville

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Eugene Fodor

You don’t have to be rich to travel well.

Eric Weiner

Conventional wisdom tells us… we take our baggage with us. I’m not so sure. Travel, at its best, transforms us in ways that aren’t always apparent until we’re back home. Sometimes we do leave our baggage behind, or, even better, it’s misrouted to Cleveland and is never heard from again.

Mark Jenkins

Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self- determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. Theworld the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and- white.

Arthur Frommer

At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.

John A. Shedd

A ship in a harbor is safe, but it not what ships are build for.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Not all those who wander are lost.

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.

The second step

YYZ Snow just before boardingToday was a big step, about 4,000 km and predicted to be nearly six hours. Our departure was scheduled for 0945 Eastern time with a 1237 Pacific time arrival (1537 Eastern time). According to the airline we departed at 1022 Eastern and arrived at 1353 Pacific (1653 Eastern). The details are more fun.

Having avoided the morning traffic rush by staying at the Airport we were still up at 6 AM. That made for an easy shuttle ride to the terminal and a quick trip through check-in, airport security and US border services, leaving time for a leisurely coffee and breakfast.

We boarded the airplane as scheduled just as a reasonably heavy blast of snow hit the airport. The airline employees continued to call for passengers to voluntarily gate check luggage taking care to remind us that the plane was full and there might not be sufficient overhead room for all of our carry-on baggage.

Interestingly, the reason for the initial delay at the gate was that the ground crew was having some difficulty stowing luggage, meanwhile, inside there was still some space available overhead. Although the airline lists departure as 1022 the plane actually pushed back from the gate at 1040. Then from 1110 to 1125 we were at the anti-icing station and it was actually 1144 when the wheels left the ground. The flight was otherwise uneventful and we met our Princess Cruises representative around 1430 and arrived at the Long Beach Hilton by 1525.

LAX traffic protocols have changed. No longer do multitudes of cabs and hotel shuttles plug the road in front of the passenger terminals. Instead there is a fleet of green busses shuttling passengers and luggage to a transfer point where the taxis form long queues and vie with ride sharing vehicles for customers. The worst part of this system is that it creates an extra luggage handling step, on and off the shuttle and it is not particularly easy to throw a 20 kg (45 lb) on and off the shuttle bus. Otherwise it seems to reduce traffic on arrivals. Later we shall see what happens on the return.

During our search for a dinner venue, which we found, we came across the “Waters Edge Winery” right in downtown Long Beach. A short chat with one of their staff was intriguing and we decided to return after having dinner. Gail enjoyed her glass of sauvignon blanc while I tasted five of their offerings and all were very nice. Apparently, they are a group of franchised “mom and pop” micro winery operations. Yet another interesting concept.

We’re Home

The photo above is what greeted us as the Emerald Princess arrived in San Pedro harbour, AKA Port of Los Angeles, at about 6 AM with all aboard. Disembarkation day is always a bit of a zoo. Passengers are asked to place luggage outside of staterooms for transport ashore around dinner time on the evening before arrival and then vacate staterooms by 8 AM the next morning. Almost everyone complies so every food service, buffet, cafe and dining room is busier than normal. There are always a few passengers who are able to disembark with all their luggage so they are the first to leave, some live only a few minutes from the port. The remainder of us proceed to various lounges and common rooms to await our departure. They use a colour and number system to tag luggage and schedule departure. We were Yellow 7 scheduled for a 10:10 AM departure but that meant a two hour wait.

Everything proceeded right on schedule and our departure was very quick. Homeland Security just checked our passports and said “have a nice day”. Once outside we were directed to our bus transportation to LAX. The trip to the airport took about 20 minutes, from the time we passed the big LAX sign until we arrived at terminal 6 took another 40 minutes. If you had to drive through LAX airport you’d think Toronto airport traffic a breeze. Check-in and luggage drop, 10 minutes. TSA Pre-check, another 10 minutes, then we wait, again. Flight time, 3:40 PM.

Our Airbus 320-200 delivered us to Toronto Pearson airport on schedule at about 11:15. Thanks again to Nexus and a bit of luck at the luggage carousel we were out of the airport, picked up the car at Park’nFly and arrived home before 1 AM. There was a couple of centimetres of snow on the car but it was gone by the time we reached Burlington.

With access to home internet I have finished uploading the remainder of the photos. Some are in the sidebar, the whole trip is in the slideshow below.

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Embarkation Day

Ok, so we officially hate time changes—again. I suppose it is the rate of change that’s the real problem. We have travelled across two oceans by ship, no problem. The same distance by plane and it takes one day per hour of change to get back to normal. Despite the difference in time our bodies put us to sleep this night at about the same time as at home. Then we awoke feeling rested only to discover we’re still in the same time zone as we began and now have three hours to wait for 7 AM local time and seven hours until our cruise port transportation is ready.

There are some positives I suppose. Our luggage will depart ahead of us and may be waiting in our stateroom when we arrive. We also have considerable loyalty status with the cruise line so pier side checkin usually happens quickly. In retrospect what does the time change really matter? For the next two weeks we have virtually no time sensitive events on the calendar anyway. Ah yes, I remember now. It’s the reverse trip where we do have things scheduled only now our bodies are working three hours late.

We managed breakfast, cereal purchased at a nearby shop where we also purchased wine, the real reason for visiting the shop. Our suitcases were picked up before 8:30 AM but we had to wait several cups of coffee until 11:45 for our turn to travel to the port. The actual bus trip took 30 minutes, check in was over and done with in 15 minutes, the longest wait was on the gangway where the identity pictures seemed to be taking extra time. Never-the-less, approximately one hour got us from the hotel room to stateroom. Despite the head start our luggage did not beat us to the room, for that we had to wait until 2:30 PM, meanwhile we had our embarkation day cheeseburger…and ice cream. The only minor glitch was the room setup with twin beds rather than queen. The steward fixed that but as it turns out, that was how it was booked and neither of us noticed.

The evening unfolded with a couple more “glitches”. At dinner I presented one of our gift coupons for a bottle of wine. Apparently, the particular item is no longer stocked. I was offered a chardonnay as a replacement for the cab sauvignon. Really? No! When a couple of other suggestions (at least red) failed in my opinion I asked the head waiter to simply refund the value of the gift certificate to my room account. I think I could have asked the head waiter to punch the captain and he would have been less offended. Eventually, he promised he would find a suitable alternative and send it to our room. That was how it was left until about 9 PM. The knock at the door was from room service with a bottle of the Mondavi originally ordered but twice the volume. I both won and lost that battle.

Battle number two occurred a few minutes after the wine arrived when a person arrived to deal with the balky TV remote with only half of the buttons operational. He seemed incapable of understanding why I wanted to disable closed captioning, one of the failed buttons. After a brief “discussion” he ran away and returned in a few minutes with an almost completely working remote—except for the on/off button. Oh well!

Backing up a bit, during the evening we renewed acquaintance with entertainers Dave and Leialoha who are again operating the Hawaiian Cultural program on board. We missed the only performance by the Sun Shine Duo but as we exited the theatre to escape a rather unfunny comedian, we heard a voice call out to us, we turned and it was Anna, one of the two women who are the Sun Shine Duo who made us promise to come and dance with them on Thursday. 

I believe that pretty much finished the day.

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