Category Archives: Travel

Sail Away

Friday, Nov 18:  We boarded the Sun Princess this afternoon and set sail late in the day for our trip to Western Australia.  It feels like home to be on board again.

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Sailing down the Brisbane river to make our way under the Gateway Bridge

 

Here is our room.  Small entry and bathroom not shown. This is an ocean view room with an obstructed view.   So you get a window but the lifeboat is obstructing it, which is fine with us, at least you get some light coming in.

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Looking forward to two sea days as we make our way up the Great Barrier Reef.

 

Northern & Western Australia Explorer

Getting excited – our next cruise starts tomorrow!

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Ports of call:  Brisbane Qld, Cairns Qld, Papua New Guinea, Darwin NT, Kimberley Coast(Scenic cruising),  Broome WA, Geraldton WA, Fremantle WA.

We will have a couple of nights in Perth and then will be hiring a car to drive to the Margaret River for a further night.

Returning to Sydney on the Indian Pacific (train) across central Australia and then flying back to Brisbane.

15 Days, 8 ports.  Should be fun, hope you will follow along!

 

Nagoya, Japan

Tuesday, 23 August – Whether or not you drive a Toyota, you will likely know Nagoya as its home city – and today we visited the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, a joint operation by Toyota Group companies.  It was established at the site of the Headquarters Plant of the former Toyoda Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd, where the group began.

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Such an interesting display over a huge area, with a lot of interactive features so you understand how everything works.  You could easily spend a day here.  I thought it was really fascinating to see the robotics at work and we had to keep our eyes on the time.

Adjoining the automobile pavilion was the textile machinery pavilion.  It houses the original loom invented in 1906 by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group.  There were also moving exhibits in this section too, but we spent so much of our time in the auto pavilion, we only had time for a quick look here.

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If we ever visit Nagoya again, we will definitely go back to this museum, which surprised me as I had expected to feel bored looking at car parts!

We also visited Nagoya Castle.  Much of it was destroyed during WWII and has since been rebuilt.  We took the elevator to the 5th floor and took the stairs down where there was access to each floor with various replicas and artificats.

Green tea icecream – what else would it be in Japan?
Nagoya Castle replica

 

Next morning we arrived back in Yokohama, ready to depart for the airport and our trip home.  Great cruise, beautiful ship.  10/10 go to the staff, entertainment, food and all the sights that we enjoyed.  What more could you ask for?