Europe – The New Frontier

I am about to start exploring Europe, and it’s going to be an amazing whirlwind tour with a splattering of many countries. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit England and Ireland while I was on my vacation with Niamh and her family, but it’s going to be even more amazing all the places I’m about to go. Here’s a list of what’s on the menu:

France
Belgium
The Netherlands
England
Portugal
Canary Islands
Morocco
Spain
Norway
Denmark
Germany
Estonia
Russia
Finland
Sweden
Gibraltar
Italy
Monaco
Greece
Corfu
Croatia
Sicily
Tunisia
Malta

The best thing about this is that I’m going to get to go to quite a few different cities in each of these countries as my ship stops in these places more than once. I will be particularly familiar with Norway. I’m also going to get a few overnights including Stockholm Sweden, St. Petersburg Russia, Maderia Portugal, Tenerife Canary Islands, Honningsvag Norway, and Barcelona Italy.

Personally I am most excited about St. Petersburg and Barcelona. Also very high on my excitedness list is both Casablanca and Tangier in Morocco. In about 2 weeks from now I will have been to 6 of the 7 continents. Antarctica will have to wait for some other time. Holland America has had a ship go to Antarctica a lot in the past, however I think this year was the last year for this for whatever reason. I guess I’ll have to go there on my own one day.

Two places that I won’t get to go to on this contract are Venice and Istanbul – both places that I really want to visit some day. I’m not complaining too much though, I have SO many really awesome places I’m about to see.

The photo team here on the Ryndam is very good. There’s me, Niamh, Saskia, Becky and Zhou Ye. Saskia is Indian ancestry, but she was born and adopted in The Netherlands, so she speaks only English and Dutch. Becky and Niamh are British, and Zhou Ye is Chinese. She’s from a city near Changchun, so it’s really cool for me to have someone else to speak Chinese to on the ship, and this someone is even in my department. Zhou Ye is our videographer, Becky is our Black Label artist and Saskia is a photographer. Becky is leaving for vacation in a few days and will be gone for about 5 weeks, after which she is coming back here. In the meantime, our Black Label artist is going to be Joanne, who happens to be my Operations Manager with Ocean Images. This means that I’m going to be working with my boss for 5 weeks. It’s going to be very interesting to say the least. I’m sure I will learn a lot in this time.

I spent the first couple weeks on the ship getting back into the swing of things, and readjusting back to the Ryndam after nearly 10 months on the Volendam. I am feeling very good right now. I’ve had a few quiet days the last week because we’re in the middle of the Atlantic right now and there’s not much to do on the ship because the guests are all mariners. This means they’ve sailed many times in the past and aren’t too concerned with taking photos. So we don’t have a lot to do which gives me a chance to make preparations for the European season.

Posted on April 9, 2012 in Cruise Life, Europe 2012 4 Comments

Stonehenge, Windsor Castle and Oxford Oh My!

Two days ago Niamh and I took an all day tour to visit Stonehenge, Windsor Castle and Oxford. It was a fantastic trip and we both enjoyed ourselves immensely. The sky wasn’t blue but at least it wasn’t raining, so we were pretty pleased even with the weather.

There’s only so many days in 6 weeks, and sadly we only have 2 weeks left of this vacation. Tomorrow we’re off to a place called Centre Parks with a few of Niamh’s friends. We’re gonna spend 4 days there in a cabin and just hangout, play games and have fun. We’ve rented bikes so I guess we’ll be able to ride through the forest around there. Sounds like it’ll be great fun. But then after we return to London we’ll have about 4 days before we head to Ireland again. We’ll be there for about 3 days and then it’s back to London. At that point we’ll only have another 5 days or so before it’s back to ship life. The Ryndam is calling.

I’ve updated the photo gallery with some more pictures that I took recently. You can see here the proof of Niamh and I at Stonehenge though. It’s amazing how many awesome places I’ve been recently. If nothing else, working on a cruise ship is at least good for that!

Posted on March 1, 2012 in Cruise Life 3 Comments

Take It Easy!!

Well vacation so far has been absolute bliss. We’ve actually been kinda busy until recently traveling to Ireland and keeping ourselves busy in London, but it’s been positively delightful. I’ve been able to lounge around not doing a whole lot, and it’s totally fine. I could definitely get used to not working.

Niamh and I took a 6 day trip to Ireland to visit her many family members over there. Most of her mom’s side of the family lives in Ireland so there were plenty of people to meet. We also toured around the city (Dublin) and had a grand time. We went to Newgrange, an extremely old Stone Age Passage Tomb. It’s actually older than the Pyramids. We also made a stop in Kilmainham Gaol, an old prison in Dublin. They wanted to keep Niamh there but I was able to bribe them into letting her go. (joke). It’s actually not an operating prison now, it’s just a museum. Very interesting tour.

Now we’re back in London and we have nothing to do for the next 10 days or so. It’s nice to just sit around and not do much unless the desire strikes us for something. Actually, last night was a big party to welcome home Niamh from her contract on the ship. It was a lot of fun to meet many of her friends that I hadn’t met yet. I went bowling with her brothers and sister the day before when she was busy with some other friends.

We had wanted to go to Scotland during this vacation but the time is running down a little bit. We have a few other things planned that may require a trip up north to be postponed to another vacation. We’re still gonna try and fit it in but no promises at this point.

As you might have noticed I have done a major overhaul of this website. The wonders of free time! So this site is no longer going to be focused solely on my travels. I’m branching out and focusing the site on other types of photography. I’ll be writing articles on different aspects of running and creating photography businesses. I feel like I’ve had a lot of experience with both photography itself as well as the business side, seeing as I’m a photo manager working on cruise ships. That said, I will definitely still write posts on what I’ve been up to in my manic traveling around the world. The photo gallery itself is also new and upgraded so all my photos are still here and I’ll continue posting photos. So no fear! This is merely an addition to the site not a drastic change.

Well that’s about all for now. Please check out this space as I’m planning to continue to update the site more often and hopefully keep up to date a little better during my next contract back on the Ryndam.

Posted on February 19, 2012 in Cruise Life 1 Comment

Longest Flight Ever

Well I have finally finished my contract on the Volendam. What started as an 8 month contract ended as a 9 1/2 month contract. I enjoyed almost all of it and really got to see a lot of great things. Asia, Alaska, South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand ain’t bad for one contract, and now I’m in London. There are new photos in my photo gallery of New Zealand.

For my vacation I’m chilling out at Niamh’s house. We took a 9 hour flight from Sydney to Hong Kong and then a 13 hour flight from Hong Kong to London. I think that’s farther than I’ve ever flown, including going from China to the States. Needless to say I’m battling jet lag just a bit.

Our initial plans for the 6 week vacation that we have is just to sleep and eat and try to recuperate from an insane contract, but we do have some more interesting plans as well. We’re going to visit Ireland because Niamh is half Irish and has family there. We’re going to visit Scotland because it sounds awesome and Niamh hasn’t even been there. If we have time and money we may take the train to Paris. Also some highlights in the UK are Big Ben, (which Niamh loves making fun of me for wanting to see) Stonehenge, the hop-on hop-off bus in London, and any other various things we want to do. Yesterday I had the pleasure of going on the Underground.

I just bought myself a new camera, the Nikon D700. I had my previous camera stolen on the Volendam and happily Holland America reimbursed me for it, so I get to upgrade now. The shipping in the UK is insanely fast because I just bought the camera yesterday and the guy sent me an email with the tracking information saying it is supposed to be delivered today before 1pm. I guess I’m going to have to start enjoying it very soon!

My next ship is going to be the Ryndam. It’s kinda crazy how over 3 contracts I will have only been on 2 ships. Most people do 2 ships in their first contract. Well I wouldn’t say most but a large majority of people get transferred at least a couple times and I have yet to have that happen in the middle of a contract. I will join the Ryndam in Tampa and do 2 or 3 cruises down there before the ship relocates to Europe where I will spend the rest of the contract. It’s going to be doing a lot of cruises in Norway, going up extremely north. I guess it’s gonna be even colder than Alaska there. We’re also going to go to England, The Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, France, Italy and quite a few other places. As you might tell I’m VERY excited about this next contract. I hear it’s a struggle as far as making money goes, but I’m not really in it for the money this time around, I wanna see Europe!

Posted on February 3, 2012 in Australia 2011, Cruise Life 6 Comments

Seal Coast Safari

The last month since I’ve posted on here has been an incredible experience in many ways. The begin with, our printer continued to have a lot of electrical problems which has prevented us from doing any printing. We had Fuji service technicians come on board 4 times before they actually got it fixed. The first time they came and replaced some parts but the main issue wasn’t fixed. This happened a couple more times before finally a technician came and actually sailed on the ship with us from Melbourne to Sydney. He figured out that the problem was that there was a large static buildup between the printer and the computer and it was continually frying the firewire cards. We have installed a properly grounded static matt which has prevented the static from harming our equipment. So now the machine works, but we still need to figure out why there is a static build up in the first place.

So that whole situation has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. Several times I spent almost the entire night staying up late printing everything that I hadn’t been able to print so that we would have something to sell. Aside from this our ratings on the ship haven’t been the best either so Ocean Images sent out the S & R class operations manager to give our team some advise and pointers on what we can do to improve customer ratings at the end of each cruise. It has helped a lot and we are doing some things differently now. Ratings are improving so that’s always positive.

One of my photographers on the team is finishing his contract after next cruise, so he’ll be going home on January 4th. Then Niamh and I are finishing our contract on January 17th, so there will be a lot of changes in the near future.

Next cruise Niamh and I plan to go to Hobbiton, which is the place where they filmed the Shire in Lord of the Rings. Originally they had to tear the whole set down, however it has now been rebuilt because they are filming The Hobbit there. So it’s going to be pretty cool to see the set how it really should look. I’ve heard from other people who have been there that we’re not really supposed to post photos of it, but I’ll see what the rules are when I get there. I might be able to post a photo of a Hobbit hole or two.

Next cruise is also the Christmas and New Years cruise for us. I will be in Dunedin, New Zealand for Christmas and Auckland for New Years Eve. We’ll be at sea when the new year actually arrives.

A few days ago I went on a tour in Wellington to the coast and got a chance to see some amazing landscapes and some seals. We rode in some heavy duty 4 wheel drive Toyotas. The path that we took was off-road and very rough. You can see here the path that we took on the beach. The vehicle pictured is one of three that were in our group. There were only about 5 seals that I saw, I guess because in the summer they go other places. The winter is when they are here in large numbers. If you’re a little confused, it’s because it is currently summer in New Zealand, as we are south of the equator. December 1st was the first day of summer.

Posted on December 16, 2011 in Australia 2011, Cruise Life 4 Comments

More Fun On The Volendam

Back when I was still in Alaska, as you might remember I rented a car and drove up to Emerald Lake in Canada. My internet at the time wasn’t working very well and so I wasn’t able to upload photos. Here you can see Niamh at Emerald Lake. It was very beautiful, reminds me of hot springs that have really weird vibrant colors. There’s actually some of those places around here in New Zealand which I might try to go to before my contract is over.

Also, here’s a photo of me on the back deck of the Volendam in Auckland during the final match of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. There were several huge outdoor TVs setup on the docks around where the ship was and there were thousands of people watching. I can’t imagine what it must have been like in the actual stadium.

In other news, life here on the Volendam is going well. We had a bit of a hiccup last cruise when our printer had major issues and stopped working for a few days. There is a huge problem with static electricity in the lab and it fried a few firewire cards in the computer and the printer and it caused it to not work. So that was fixed in Sydney by a couple Fuji technicians, but then it got fried again about 2 hours after they left. When we got to Melbourne another tech came on board and replaced the firewire cards again, and suggested that I also replace the actual firewire cable, and get a static mat to go under the computer. It seems that one or both of those two things has fixed the problem as we are still up and running several days later. I have my fingers crossed that it won’t happen again.

I’m also starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Only the remainder of this cruise and four more cruises until the end of my contract. That means just about 2 months left. I’ll be leaving on the 17th of January. It’s been a super contract so far but I’m also very ready for vacation. Who knows where I’ll be next, but I’m hoping for a ship in Europe.

Posted on November 14, 2011 in Australia 2011, Cruise Life 7 Comments

What I’ve Done

So it’s been like a month since I’ve written anything on here, so here’s the low-down on my life recently.

Been to Hawaii.
Visited my cousin Heather in Hawaii.
Been to 5 country islands in the South Pacific.
Been to Australia and New Zealand.
Visited Jael, friend from post college, in Auckland, New Zealand. Twice.
Planning to visit Chris Loh in Melbourne, friend from high school.
Taken over as photo manager of the Volendam.
Been to glow worm caves in Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
Bought snacks in a convenience store from an extremely happy Egyptian who loves speaking to Americans. He gave us free gifts.
Witnessed New Zealand madness during the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Learned that my contract will be finishing on January 17. Niamh and I will be flying to London.
Uploaded more photos to my photo gallery.

Well that’s a pretty good list of what’s happened in the last month and a half. Please check out the photo gallery for a few photos that I took. All of the square photos were taken in Fiji and the other 4 were taken in New Zealand.

Posted on October 22, 2011 in Australia 2011, Cruise Life 7 Comments

I’m Going To Hawaii Yay!

I’ve been having a lot of fun in Alaska, but I’m so glad it’s over now. Yesterday was our last embarkation in Vancouver and we are currently somewhere along the coast of Oregon. We’re on our way down to LA, where we will embark a few hundred more guests, and from there we’ll make our way over to Hawaii. We’re gonna have 5 days at sea straight, so it’s gonna be a little boring. I think I’ll be able to catch up on a bit of sleep. After that It’s Australia and New Zealand for the next 3 months or so until the end of my contract.

My last week in Alaska was quite nice. Niamh and I rented a car in Skagway and drove up to a place in Canada called Emerald Lake. It was gorgeous. The lake is a very pleasant green color, I suppose this is why they call it Emerald Lake. Because Emerald Lake is in Canada, we needed our passports in order to get there. The ship always holds crew members’ passports though, so I had to get the Hotel Manager to sign a request form in order for me to get my passport out for the day.

I’ve been promoted to Photo Manager, and I’ll be taking over those duties on Saturday when the ship ports in LA. Tino, the current manager is going to be leaving then, and I’ll be on my own for the Australia season. Should be fun! I’ll be posting plenty of photos from the South Pacific, I’m really excited about all the new places I’m gonna get to see.

Posted on September 8, 2011 in Australia 2011, Cruise Life 6 Comments

I Drove Something!

It’s been a long time since I’ve driven, and during my last contract I didn’t drive at all for the entire 8 months. Well I just had the opportunity to drive what is called an Adventure Cart! It’s like a dune buggy, and it’s extremely fun. Apparently they are modeled after an Israeli attack vehicle that can go up to 100 mph and has a machine gun on the back. Well mine only went about 20 or 25 mph and didn’t have a machine gun. Oh well, it was still fun.

Also, besides getting to drive something, I had some AMAZING food last week. We had a team meal at this Italian Mexican restaurant. Being in Alaska however, they had some really great crab. So I ordered King Crab. One pound. That’s a lot of food. I also ate clam chowder, some spaghetti, garlic bread, meatballs, and some kind of desert. I don’t know how to spell it, but it was something like baclava. It’s a Greek desert and it tastes great. So that was lunch around 2. Then a couple hours later at 5:30 I went to the Pinnacle Grill on the ship for dinner with Niamh. If you’ve ever eaten at the Pinnacle you know that it’s extremely good food, and they also give you large proportions. I ordered some kind of beef. It turns out it was on a kabob, and the way they prepared it was really interesting. They held it up on a plate and then literally poured fire over it. I don’t know what it was doused in, but the fire just kind of fell onto the kabob and the whole thing went on fire and then went out. It was super tender and very tasty. I almost finished it even after that whole pound of crab meat just a few hours earlier.

Anyways the Alaska season is still going great. Time is going pretty quickly though. The season is already half over and it seems like we just started. We’re making lots of money, significantly better than last season. When we leave and go to Australia it will be much less, but I’m really looking forward to going to that part of the world.

Posted on July 16, 2011 in Alaska Summer 2011, Cruise Life 10 Comments

New Yet The Same

It’s kinda like saying “The road is smooth except for where it’s bumpy.” Well that’s what my life is like right now. I’m going to all the same places in Alaska as last year, and I even have the same boss. There are several other people on this ship that are the same from the Ryndam. But boy is life different. It’s so strange to think that I’m sitting on a park bench next to the Skagway library, doing exactly the same thing as a year ago. It feels so normal to be doing this and yet I would never in a million years have thought that this is something that I would have been doing. Last year at least it felt weird to be doing this. hahaha.

I don’t plan to go on so many excursions this year – last year I went on like half of them. There’s just a few that I wanna go on now that I wasn’t able to hit last year. So dad I’m sorry but there prolly won’t be all that many photos from Alaska this year. I do expect some though of course. Next week I wanna go on the Bering Sea Crab Fishing tour. Apparently there are hundreds of eagles that come around trying to catch the crabs that get thrown back into the water. Tino went on it last year and got some awesome photos. I want that.

Here’s a photo of some downright beautiful people. From left to right it’s Dorrance, Beth, Hana, Amber and Zach. Unfortunately Beth, Hana and Zach have all finished their contracts and are now either on vacation or on another ship. Dorrance and Beth were both with me on the Ryndam. It’s likely that as long as you’re working on ships you’re gonna meet someone you know on your next ship. And the longer you stay on ships the more people you start to know.

Posted on May 28, 2011 in Alaska Summer 2011, Cruise Life 2 Comments

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