DE-404647

A postcrossing post card from Claus in Hamburg.

Claus says that when QM2 is in town, people go crazy, and over a million people may watch her.

She looks beautiful, Claus.

Thanks for the postcard!

BE-40049

A postcrossing post card from Judit in Belgium

The ship in the picture is “Carina” (you might be able to see the name КАРИНА in cyrillic on her bow).

Length: 122m, 7600GRT, 328 passengers.

She is currently known as “Rochale One” and operates as a static ship for student accommodation in Amsterdam.

She was built in Nantes, France in 1977 for the then Soviet government and named “Aywasowski”. She operated cruises out of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

She was renamed Carina after she was bought by German company Phoenix Reisen in 1997. She changed hands again in 2000 and was renamed “Primexpress Island”, operating out of Cyprus.

The ship was impounded in the port of Limassol (Cyprus) because of unpaid bills.

She was eventually purchased by a consortium of three Dutch housing companies acquired the vessel, towed it to Amsterdam and configured it for use as hotel accommodation for students.

Her engines are kept in working order, so she is capable of sailing as and when needed.

Thanks for the fascinating postcard, Judit!

RU-62200

A postcrossing postcard from Alla who lives in Vladivostok and actually studies at the University of Southern Qld.

Vladivostok is Russia’s largest pacific sea port, and home to the Russian Pacific Fleet. It is located near to the Russian border with China and North Korea.

Among the numerous naval vessels, you can see two cruise ships. The one on the left is Regal Princess, which was renamed Pacific Dawn in 2007. I am not able to name the cruise ship on the right.  My friend Geoff from Oz Cruise Club tells me the ship on the right is Norwegian Wind (now Superstar Aquarius), which cruises the Asia Pacific region most of the year.

Thanks for the postcard, Alla!

Here’s some slideshows and videos of our recent trip on Dawn Princess.

The thing I enjoyed most about it was being able to share it with Jonathan, see him experience the magic of his first cruise.

Thanks for being a great travel companion, Jonno!

I’ve got a load of photos and videos to upload from our recent cruise on Dawn Princess.

Jonathan and I had a great time. It was his first cruise, and I really enjoyed sharing the experience with him.

For those of you who haven’t been following my updates on Twitter and Facebook, here’s a few pictures and videos you might be interested in.

By the way, I found it really easy to post photo and video updates via twitter using my mobile phone. Last cruise I tried blogging but that needed lots of keying via the little keypad on the phone, and ended up taking ages. Tweeting was much easier.

Almost there, originally uploaded by MagicTyger.

It’s been a fantastic last day today. We couldn’t have asked for better
weather. This’ll probably be my last video from aboard Aurora, so I thought
I’d film it from my favourite place – up on the forward observation deck
overlooking the bow.

I might try and get a video of our table-mates tonight so you can see some
of the fascinating people we’ve been eating with each night.

Indians love their cricket so much that they even play it at sea!

We’re now closer to land (about 20km away) and small pleasure craft are
starting to come close to us.

Here’s a quick view of one that came pretty close this morning.

Sunset, originally uploaded by MagicTyger.

Sunsets at sea are amazing.

I saw these birds following us yesterday. We were hundreds of kilometres
from land. They weren’t flapping, just gliding behind the ship and skimming
the waves.

They almost looked like they were doing it just for fun!