Random thoughts from the sea
Day 64, Grand World Voyage 2020 Sunday, March 8, 2020; Sydney, Australia When does the display and ownership of indigenous art cross the line into unethical appropriation? I gained an insight into this thorny issue today while on a docent-led tour of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the
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Day 63, Grand World Voyage 2020 Saturday, March 7, 2020; Sydney, Australia Sydney is all about the water, and the excitement starts before sunrise as the Amsterdam sails into the harbor. We pass between two cliffs – the headlands – and turn first to port and eventually to starboard as
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Day 61, Grand World Voyage 2020 Thursday, March 5, 2020; At Sea, Tasman Sea I don’t typically write a blog post about sea days, as most are pretty much the same and there isn’t a lot to write about. But I’ve always been a reporter at heart, so when there
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Day 60, Grand World Voyage 2020 Wednesday, March 4, 2020; Waitangi, Bay of Islands, New Zealand Today’s port call at the Bay of Islands in northeast New Zealand was remarkably similar to the one I made in late 2017. If I’m fortunate enough to come back here a third time,
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Days 58-59, Grand World Voyage 2020 Monday & Tuesday, March 2-3, 2020; Auckland, New Zealand There is so much to see and do in Auckland, but we found ourselves thoroughly enjoying a lazy afternoon — watching America’s Cup yachts come and go from the Viaduct Harbor while eating seafood chowder
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Day 55, Grand World Voyage 2020 Friday, Feb. 28, 2020; Nuku’alofa, Tonga Tonga was great (and hot) today, but more about that later. Our bigger news is changes in the itinerary, mostly due to COVID-19, aka the coronavirus. The Amsterdam will skip our Asia stops — four ports in Indonesia
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Day 54, Grand World Voyage 2020 Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020; At Sea, South Pacific Happy Ash Thursday! Yes, you read that right. Ash Thursday. After I went to bed last night after the Mardi Gras party on board, we crossed the International Date Line. We turned our clocks a whole
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Day 52, Grand World Voyage 2020 Monday, Feb. 24, 2020; Rarotonga, Cook Islands I should have realized how small Rarotonga is when I tried to download its map on my Planet Earth phone app and couldn’t find one. As it turned out, it took little more than 30 minutes to
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Day 50, Grand World Voyage 2020 Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020; Pape’ete, French Polynesia Why does Tahiti sound so much more exotic than the Cook Islands, Vanuatu or even Fiji or Tonga? We probably can credit Paul Gauguin, the artist who took up residence in Tahiti and caused quite a stir
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Day 48, Grand World Voyage 2020 Friday, Feb. 21, 2020; At Sea, South Pacific Ocean I woke up knowing this would be a red-letter day, and sure enough – there it was in our mail slot after breakfast! The notice that I had reached a new milestone in Holland America’s
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