Chris Around The World: Your Guide to Value Luxury Vacations
Unique, chic, boutique: Vacations for Sophisticated Travelers
As we sat on our ship’s outside veranda, passing the wooden homes and onion-domed churches of the Russian countryside along the Volga River, my husband let out a happy sigh. “I LIKE cruising,” he declared, taking another sip from his wine. Well, that’s a good thing. Because I’m thrilled to announce that as of July [...]
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If you’ve taken a look at this blog before, you’ve seen that I’ve done more than my share of small ship cruising in the past few years. My voyages have ranged from sailing adventures in the Grenadines and the Spanish Virgin Islands to a nature- and kayaking-intensive trip to Alaska’s Inside Passage to a luxury [...]
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On my most recent assignment, I took a river cruise down the Danube on the River Adagio, a ship run by Grand Circle Travel. Founded by the same woman who created the AARP, the line caters to retirees and mature travelers. My husband Don and I were the youngest passengers on board, by several decades [...]
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This is the latest in a series of travel photos inspired by #FriFotos on Twitter. The theme of this week’s Photo Friday is TWO (in honor of the hashtag’s second anniversary). At the beginning of this month, I spent 12 days on the River Adagio, a river ship operated by Grand Circle Travel that plies the Lower [...]
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We disembarked from our Wilderness Discoverer cruise in Ketchikan. While some people on the ship were flying back home that day, we decided to stay an extra night to check out the city. Ketchikan is a mega ship Mecca. We witnessed four huge cruise ships go in and out of port in a single day. [...]
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I had only kayaked once before my expedition cruise on the Wilderness Discoverer – and I hadn’t particularly cared for it. My husband and I had gone sea kayaking on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast – and I felt that we were going to be flipped into the water at every second. Not what I’d call [...]
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Our InnerSea Discoveries cruise on the Wilderness Discoverer was more about outdoor activities than port stops. The ship’s Eastern Coves itinerary does stop in one town along the Inside Passage, the outdoor activity haven of Wrangell. Unfortunately, InnerSea Discoveries told us that there weren’t any more spots on the Wrangell daytrip that we really wanted [...]
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My biggest challenge on my InnerSea Discoveries expedition cruise in Alaska wasn’t the extensive kayaking or glacier hiking or even fishing (which I did for the first time in Wrangell). No, I knew I’d have the most trouble with unplugging, in what was about to become a weeklong digital detox. The InnerSea Discoveries website makes [...]
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The day after we viewed Sawyer Glacier from a respectable distance, the expedition leaders on the Wilderness Discoverer told us that we’d get a chance to get up close and personal with our next glacier, called Baird, on a glacier trek. I signed up for the slow hike so I’d have time to take plenty [...]
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My InnerSea Discoveries expedition cruise on the Wilderness Explorer embarked in Juneau and went south toward Ketchikan. Which meant that we’d be missing Glacier Bay in the northern section of the Inside Passage. But that’s OK, as the ship’s itinerary took us to Sawyer Glacier in the Tracy Arm fjord. As our ship came around [...]
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