How's everybody? I'm finally back home from the wonderful trip I made with my family to Vancouver and Alaska. I took about 860 pictures. I had to transfer all the pictures in the camera to my laptop about every 2 days. I'll post some hi-res pictures I took with my father's camera, after all, I've still got a 2 mega pixel camera.

Anyway, we went on board the M/V Mercury from Celebrity Cruises. I was told by our waiter in the main restaurant that the Mercury is the smallest ship of the fleet, but yet we had about 1,850 guests on board and about 900 people from the crew. It's a small ship compared to the Freedom class ships form Royal Caribbean.

The first day of the cruise was an all sea day, which we spent exploring the ship adn played some Bingo in the ship's theater.

The second day we were supposed to stop in Sitka, but a 5 year old girl had a critical medical condition, so the ship had to be turned around to evacuate her via helicopter. After a few days the captain told us that the little girl was stable in a pediatric hospital.

Afterwards, we went to the Hubbard Glacier, the highlight of the cruise, and according to the captain and the ship's naturalist, that had been the closest to the glacier the Mercury had gotten in the season. We saw a good batch of ice breaking, 2 of them as tall as the ship.

We spent the Thursday in Juneau, where we took a whale watching tour, where we saw a mother humpback whale with her calf, a group of female killer whales, and about 15 humpback whales bubble net feeding. The weather over there is a little depressing, almost all day is cloudy and rainy. After arriving in the dock we spotted some bald-eagles.

Then was on to Ketchikan, where almost all day long was raining. We had to take the umbrellas provided to us in our stateroom. There we went to the Totem Heritage Center, where they have 19th century totem poles.

Saturday was also an all sea day through the Inside Passage to arrive Sunday morning in Vancouver.

It was an incredible voyage. If you have the opportunity to make it, you should do it. The scenery is incredible and the service on board is nothing below excellent. Just one recommendation, if you're taking small children, take them in the sense of nature appreciation. i remember one small girl tell to his father when we arrived at the Hubbard Glacier: "Daddy, you brought us here just to watch a whole lot of ice?!?"

After the cruise, we spent 2 days in Vancouver. The Sunday, after we arrived, we went to Stanley Park, visit the Aquarium, had a burger for lunch and watched as the Mercury, the Statendam and the Norwegian Sun departed for another week at sea.

And with that I think I just finished mu longest Journal to date... So from now on, expect see lots of pictures from Alaska, Vancouver, and in-flight in my gallery.

Thanks for reading, and here's a & for getting this far.


To do list:

*Alaska Airlines 737 cartoon
*Glenn Air DC-10 cartoon
*Fokker 100 Mexicana Click cartoon
*Ed Force One cartoon (Iron Maiden 757)