NORTH ATLANTIC CRUISE
In 2001, Nora and I took a 16 day cruise on the Crown Princess from Copenhagen, Denmark, to New York. We spent three days in Copenhagen visiting with Dale and his family before boarding the Crown Princess for the cruise. The first day was spent at sea traveling towards Dover, in southeastern England.
Dover is best known for the white limestone cliffs on which the town is built.
The ship was scheduled to spend the day in Dover and I planned to take advantage of this time to ride the train through the Chunnel to Calais, in France. From the investigation that I did in Edmonton, I was aware that the train through the Chunnel did not go through Dover and I expected that I would have to go to London to catch the train. However, it turned out that the train stops at Folkestone, near Dover, and I was able to take a taxi there to catch the train. Nora went on a day trip to Canterbury Cathedral. This cathedral is one of the better known in England. The trip through the Chunnel was not especially exciting. It was similar to the underground part of the LRT in Edmonton and only lasted about 20 minutes. The first stop in France was at Coquelles, from here I took the bus to Calais. I was pleasantly surprised by the city of Calais. I had expected it to be a rather dingy port but in fact it was a well-planned attractive looking small city.
The Burghers of Calais 
The Calais Theatre
The departure point to catch the ferry back to Dover appeared to be about 2 km from the center of the city. I decided to walk to the station and soon discovered that it was further than I had anticipated. However, I made it in time to catch the bus to the ferry and arrived back in Dover and the Crown Princess before the ship left Dover for the next stop.
After an overnight voyage, we arrived at Falmouth the next morning. Falmouth is said to be the third-largest natural deep water harbor in the world. Although we did not explore it, the surrounding countryside of Cornwall is very attractive.
The next morning we arrived at Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland, where we spent the day ashore.
Dublin has a long history going back to Pre-Roman times when it was the only city in Western Europe that was not controlled by the barbarians from Eastern Europe. During the Roman’s attempts to occupy the British Isles, Ireland was never completely controlled. The current population of the urban area is one million. I took advantage of the visit to Dublin to visit the genealogical section of the public library. The lady in charge was very helpful but she was unable to provide any information on my Irish ancestors that I didn’t already have. She confirmed that the records had been destroyed during the rebellion in 1919.
A Dublin flower garden 
Moore St, Dublin
The next day was spent at sea traveling to Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. There was always a variety of entertainment offered on the ship, both when at sea and also in port for those who did not want to go ashore.
This statue is a depiction of the efforts underway to improve relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Next we visited Glasgow, the largest and the most important industrial city, in Scotland. Glasgow has been the site of many industrial enterprises, the most notable has been shipbuilding; for example the Titanic was built in Glasgow.
The Clyde Auditorium “The Armadillo” 
The Royal Glasgow Infirmary
After a day at sea, we arrived at Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. Despite its name, the country has a relatively mild climate, due to the warming effect of the gulf stream. The first inhabitants came from Norway in 875 AD and the country became an independent republic in 1944. The principal industry is fishing. The 270,000 Icelanders have a high standard of living.
I was interested in the geothermal power plant that uses steam from underground sources to generate electricity. We went to visit the plant and found it interesting and unusual. The steam and hot water that comes from the underground source contains too much dissolved minerals to be used directly in the steam turbines. The hot underground water is passed through heat exchangers, where pure water is heated to produce steam which is then used in the turbines. The original hot water is pumped back underground to the hot rocks where it reheated and comes back to the surface. The warm water leaving the turbines is piped to Reykjavik and used to heat the buildings there. This is a very efficient and economical use of the heat in the original hot steam and water.
Power plant with year-round swimming pool 
Iceland’s oldest parliament site
The next day was spent at sea as we traveled towards Greenland. When we arrived at Greenland, we sailed through a narrow passage, called Prins Cristian Sound, on our way to Qaqortoq. With a population of 3,400, mostly Inuit people, this is the largest town in southern Greenland. We spent the morning exploring this small town.
It seemed that the children used the arrival of the ship as an excuse to take a day off from school. They were happy to guide us around the town. In addition to the local language, they also study Danish and some English.
In the early afternoon we set sail for Newfoundland. I asked the captain why he used this term when the ship had no sails. He explained that this was a carryover from the days of sailboats. I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t have a more imaginative answer. After a day at sea we arrived in the port of St. John’s. Since we had spent some time in St. John’s the previous year when we visited the island, we did not find anything particularly new or exciting.
Downtown St. John’s as seen from the ship 
Passengers disembarking from the ship
After spending the afternoon in St. John’s, we had two days at sea on our way to Boston, Massachusetts. We landed in Boston on September 9 and left for Edmonton the next day. We arrived home on September 10 and the next day I went to the travel office to sort out some final details. I found the staff glued to the TV watching the events of September 11 unfold in New York. We had just missed being caught in the continent wide shut down of air traffic. Or even worse, at least one of the planes involved in the attack on the World Trade Center had come from Boston. We could have been passengers.
TOUR OF CHINA
My next trip was with a group from the University of Alberta in 2004. We flew to Vancouver and boarded our international flight there. On the great circle route to Asia, we passed by Japan. It happened that there was a spectacular view of Mount Fuji silhouetted against the rising sun. This was an unusual sight that I found very impressive. Our arrival at the new Hong Kong airport was the first time that I had been at this large and modern airport. It was constructed by building an island in the harbor at Hong Kong.
This is a view of the Departure Area in one of the two terminals. The buildings are very modern in design and construction. Approximately 55 million passengers pass through in a year.
After all a few hours layover in Hong Kong, we flew to Shanghai, the beginning of our visit to China. I was very impressed by the modern appearance of Shanghai. The city has a population of more than 25 million people.
In addition to the elevated roadways shown above there are modern intercity railways and urban rail facilities in the city.
On a visit to one of the museums in Shanghai, I saw artifacts that seemed similar to those I had seen in European museums. I was impressed to learn that many of these items were 3,000 to 4,000 years older than similar European artifacts.
We boarded our boat for our cruise on the Yangtze River. The boat was relatively small but very comfortable and we enjoyed the scenery along the River. After two days sailing we came to the site of the Three Gorges Dam. This project has been under consideration since 1919, as a flood control measure and later as a source of electricity, but was not approved until 1992 and the actual construction started in 1994. The construction was completed in 2012 some eight years after we visited the site. The dam is 2.3 km long and 181 m high. The dam includes locks that enable river boats to pass through. The electrical generating capacity of the site is 23,500 MW (Megawatts). As a comparison, the total generating capacity in the province of Alberta is 14,000 MW.
The project has been very controversial, mainly because of the fact that more than 1,000,000 people had to be relocated from the reservoir site. We understood that the younger people accepted the move because they were given better accommodation away from the dam site. The older people were more attached to their existing homes and objected to the move.
The next stop was the city of Chungking, probably the largest urban area in China with a population of 28 million people. For many years Chungking was the capital city of China.
We left the boat here and journeyed to Sian by bus. The main attraction at Sian is the terra cotta army. Terra cotta is unglazed clay-based earthenware. The existence of the display, which was constructed in 250 BC, was discovered by farmers digging a well at the site. It is felt that the display was intended to provide power and prestige to the emperor in the afterlife. There are three separate areas in the former structure that have been partially explored. It is not clear how the structure came to be buried. Pit number one, the largest, has more than 6,000 terra cotta statues of individual soldiers. Each of the soldiers has an individually designed face and has his weapons as part of the statue. Pit number two, which has not been as extensively excavated, contains statues of soldiers and their horses and chariots.
Foot soldiers 
Cavalry soldier and horse
From Sian we flew to Beijing, the current capital of China. The site has been inhabited for over 3000 years and currently has a population of 20 million people. The city has had a significant makeover since we were there in preparation for the Olympics in 2008. Among the problems that the city faces is the poor air quality, which is caused by a combination of urban smog and fine dust blown in from the Gobi Desert, in western China.
Traditional part of Beijing 
Modern part of Beijing 
Feature from a park
Tiananmen Square is infamous as the site where several thousand demonstrators were killed by the Chinese Army.
We spent a day visiting the Great Wall, which is about 30 km north from Beijing. This wall was built starting in 500 BC and continuing on to 1500 A.D. The prime purpose was to prevent the people in northern China and Siberia from invading the central part of the country. The wall is 6,400 km long and the portion closest to Beijing has been restored as a tourist attraction. The structure is one of the few man-made features on the earth’s surface which can be seen from space craft.
From Beijing we flew back to Vancouver and on to Edmonton.