Getting up to date.

 

Let’s see.  Remember the time I went to the mud volcano near Cartagena, Colombia with all my ship friends?

 

 

And the time Alex was the drunkest person on the beach in Barbados, and George was doing handstands on people.

 

 

 

And when Arik turned into IronMan in St. Kitts!

 

 

Oh, and  Dominica.  What an wonderful place.  I remember we swam through a gorge.

 

 

And later we climbed to a waterfall.

 

 

And after that, in that same valley, there was a hot spring.  More of a hot river really. 

 

 

Let’s see.  What else?  There were mangoes in Costa Rica.

 

 

And fish in Colombia.

 

 

Oh, and in Panama they have the world’s most amazing busses.

 

 

And a canal which, I was shocked to learn, is PRIVATELY OWNED!

 

 

These things, along with many beautiful animals and flowers brings us just about up to date.

 

 

More soon.

Greetings Blog Followers! Welcome to Caribbean-Mediterranean Contract 2013!

 

Hello Friends,

 

It’s been a very long time since this blog has been live, and it’s now the third cruise of my spring contract on the Celebrity Equinox.  There are lots of good people on this ship and the itinerary is, for the most part, a relaxing one.  Unlike Europe, the Caribbean is not chock full of sites that are “must see,” so there are many days of sitting on the beach or wandering around the port towns, which is great.

 

I’ll be updating this blog whenever I have exciting pictures and good stories to tell, so stay tuned and welcome to glassblower life in the Carib.

 

Iceland.

These ports are some of my favorites in all my travels on the ship.  So much of the landscape begs to be explored on foot.  There are mountains around, and particularly in the fjords of Norway, the landscape is made exclusively of mountains.

 

Iceland is two sea days away from Southampton, England, our home port.  I am in fact, currently, beginning the first of those sea days on my way back to Iceland as I write this.  We’ve had a Baltic cruise in the interim, but I and my hiking friends are very excited about getting back to where the land is the main attraction.  Iceland is unique because it is so richly volcanically active.  I took a couple tours the last time I was here and saw steam vents, bubbling mud pools, hot springs, and crazy lava fields that had only moss growing on them because there is no soil.

 

Both days in Reykjavik I took a tour to some of the natural areas near the city.  The scenery was pretty spectacular, but the tour was a bit heavy on riding in the bus for my taste.

 

This is where Iceland built its first parliament building (the white building).  I believe they convened once a year.  How sensible.

This small hill is the home of hidden people; elves, trolls, fairies and the like.  The road building machinery stopped working until the road was rerouted around the hill.

A large portion of Iceland’s energy comes from geothermal sources.  Heated water comes from this power plant and is run the Reykjavik, about 20 miles away.  The temperature only drops about 2 degrees while travelling through this pipe.

This is the blue Lagoon, a naturally heated pool where people go to soak in mineral water.  The color comes from naturally occurring sediment in the water.

 

The next day in Akureyri was all about hiking.  My friend Justin and I got off the ship as soon as we could and headed toward the closest mountains we could see.  We picked out a ridge that we thought we could make it to, but we then met a couple locals when we were walking by their horse farm that drove us a couple minutes to a trailhead and told us that it was only a couple hours to the top of a mountain that we never would have guessed was in our range.  So we hiked and jogged to the top and then ran back down, seeing some great views and snow on the way.  When we got back we convinced a newlywed couple who had been out hiking for the last couple days to give us a ride back to the ship.  It was a supremely successful adventure.

 

See the ship?

We were on the leftmost high peak in this picture, taken from the ship as we sailed away.

Rainy day recap.

What a rainy day.  Here we are in Belgium and I’ve slept through my alarm and when I do wake up I find that it is raining.  I probably won’t make it in to Brugge today, but that feels like less of a disaster because I’m feeling a bit under the weather, and also because the weather is being so uncooperative.  Just means that I’ll have to make sure to do it right in a couple weeks when we’re back here.

 

I ended up waiting for my friend Justin who had training this morning.  An excellent decision anyway.  We hopped on the shuttle and went into the little town near the dock.  I’m constantly amazed at the quality of beer and food that can be had when walking into any random café in Belgium.  At our first stop we had two interesting sour beers, one excellent, the Geuze Boon, and one ok, the Belle-vue Kreik Extra.  It was a bit sweet.  Oh and WAFFLE!  It was one of the best I’ve ever had.  Next time I’m getting it done right with strawberries and chocolate and whatnot.

The pastry shops were also out of control.  They were everywhere.  We are clearly in a town that is heavily touristed, but everything seems super high quality.

We walked along the waterfront and checking out the waterfront on a cloudy day, which, I must say, was hopping.   There were lots of school groups.  We heard one group of girls singing some sort of round in Belgian.  They all knew it and some sang louder than others but the overall effect was amazing.  The teacher was jumping around and the scene was of a public expression of joy that you don’t encounter every day.  At least where I live. 

 

After the beach we decided to get another beer.  This one was an abbey style belgian, dark, malty, sweet and strong.  Yum.

It’s a couple days later now and I’ve had another technical success!  Carl, who has replaced Tom as glassblowing team leader, brought a new battery for my computer, so I’m writing from a bus that’s headed to Berlin!  Imagine that!  It’s like I’m part of the modern world and whatnot.

 

I think today I’m going to look through my pictures and pull some good ones out that I’ve skipped over in the course of losing my ability to carry my computer to places with reasonable internet connections.

 

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is awesome.  I just finished a book, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, that was partially set here, but in the winter.  A lot of these pictures are taken in Christiania, which is quite a place to have in a major modern city.  I don’t know all the history, but at some point squatters took over the area and refused to be moved.  Not they have a very developed society and are very entrenched.  I remember they tried to kick them out a few years ago but there were massive protests, and they are  still there today.

 

The last two pics are of Tivoli, an amusement park in the middle of town.  As well as rides, they have nice gardens, a theater, and lots of decent restaurants inside, so lots of different types of people hang out in the park.  The city has so many different things going on.  There is a design scene, an amazing shopping street, and tons of parks, palaces and churches.  It’s definitely a favorite.  Oh, and free tourist bikes!