And they are off! Seattle to Hong Kong to Xiamen

Well here we go...

First, the sailor must report in: It is Wednesday the 8th at about 5:30 in the morning.  Where are we? Somewhere in the China Sea: 23.13.49 by 117.29.73 for those of you who want to know exactly.  We have winds of about 20-30 miles per hour with gusts into the 40s and a pretty good swell.  If we were on our little boat we probably would have called the coast guard by now.

Even onboard this big ship, we are rocking around a bit (musn't dribble my espresso...) but as near as I can tell (still dark) we are screaming along up the Taiwan strait.

Not too much to tell yet: We had a pretty uneventful journey from Seattle to Hong Kong.  Made our way to a beautiful hotel and collapsed for the night.

Never underestimate the healing powers of a long hot shower, coffee, and a spectacular breakfast! Lox, bacon and dim sum!!! This is what Greg imagined when we went to Nussbaum and Woo on the upper west side in NYC.  (OK, maybe not the bacon.)  He pretty much died and went to salty breakfast heaven.







Feeling momentarily refreshed, and since we didn't board the ship until early afternoon, we force-marched Linda onto the Star ferry and across the bay to visit the Man Mo Temple.  At least we think that is what we saw...  Turns out we are still blithering idiots from the jet lag.  (We only took two really weird non-blogworthy pictures?!) At any rate, it was a cool old temple contrasting the slick towers of this bustling financial hub.

On the way back we stumbled across a food market with all kinds of live fish, frogs and other interesting stuff.  Still jetlagged = more bad pictures.

We then did the obligatory mall march through the very chic shopping center and boarded our home for the next couple of weeks.  (The ship is actually docked at said high end shopping center, or is the high end shopping center attached to the dock? Hard to tell.)





And then we were swept into the luxurious arms of our cruise.  

Ruth and Linda are already tired of getting their pictures taken... too bad!

 We will dock at Xiamen this afternoon. Should be an interesting port!

Until next time...

Greg & Ruth