destinations | Jim & Kathleen Travel

Day 10–Detroit, Michigan

by Jim Bellomo | Oct 7, 2026 | Uncategorized

Sometimes the best-laid plans go astray. For Detroit, we didn't book any excursions because we wanted to visit Greenfield Village. It's part of the Henry Ford properties. Our plan was to get off the ship, take an Uber or Lyft to the village, spend the afternoon, and then head back.

Little did we know that on October 1, they switched to Winter hours, meaning they were open only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Since we were there on Tuesday, no Greenfield for us. We tried to find another guide in town, but pretty much everyone we contacted was booked solid. So we decided to do our own little tour.

We got off the ship, walked about three blocks, and found the Detroit People Mover. It's a free, elevated light rail that makes a 20-minute circuit of the city. We got on and rode the entire line, sitting facing each other with a big window behind us. After we completed the route and were back where we boarded, we switched places and did it again. That way we could see what we missed. Total touring time: about forty minutes.

Next, we had heard really good things about The Guardian Building downtown. The entrance was less than 100 yards from where we got off the People Mover, so it was a likely stop. We are certainly glad we did. The exterior (as you can see in my pics) is pretty cool, but the interior of the HUMONGOUS lobby was awe-inspiring (again, see my pictures). After that, most of the group walked back to the ship, but Steve had seen a building that looked to have some pretty cool sculptures on the outside of it, and I could almost see it when we left the Guardian Building, so I set off to take a couple of photos (again, in the photos below).

After that, it was back to the ship for me, with a couple of pictures on the way. One was of an amazing statue of Detroit native boxer Joe Louis’s right arm. That and another statue just about covered my photography for the day…at least until later, when we were sailing away under the brand-new Gordie Howe Bridge linking Detroit, Michigan, USA, to Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Took a few of those as we sailed underneath it.

BTW: If you are wondering why you are getting two posts today, it is because today was the day we were supposed to ride the Special Operations Boats and Zodiacs, but the wind was too high, so we had a sea (lake?) day instead. This ship really isn't equipped for days with nothing happening, so besides some lectures, there was nothing else to do but work on my photos and write. So there you are. Tomorrow is Port Colburne, where we will take a “luxury motor coach” about 40 minutes away to see Niagara Falls. Everyone in our party has already been there, but if I have to stay one more full day onboard, I just might write a novel… and no one wants that.

Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell. —Marvin Gaye

Day 7–Our Last Day in Milwaukee

by Jim Bellomo | Oct 6, 2026 | Photography

We boarded Octantis on Friday, but this cruise also included an overnight in Milwaukee on the first night. So when we got up the next morning, we were scheduled to take an overview tour of the city we had spent the last two nights in. That worked for us because a "luxury motor coach" overview tour takes you to the outskirts of town and into residential areas we never got to see. That was the case with this tour, but there was a twist. It turns out that Viking hires the same group of local tour guides as the food tour we took last week, so when Kathleen and I got on the bus, who should we find in the tour guide seat but our old buddy Paul. We knew right then that even if we saw the same stuff, we were in for an entertaining tour. We weren’t wrong.

The tour took us into those residential areas and included two one-hour stops. One of the stops far exceeded my expectations, and the other was a snooze fest. They should skip it entirely, except for a drive-by. First up was the good stop—the Harley-Davidson Museum. I had no idea that Harley was based in Milwaukee, but that’s where they started, and their museum is a masterpiece showcasing everything about the coolest bikes in the world.

When we first arrived, our “luxury motor coach” dropped us off right in front of a large group of riders getting ready for a sunny Saturday run. Their bikes were gorgeous, especially one particular bike. The owner of that bike saw me shooting him and asked if I could take a couple of photos to send him. I gave him my card and hope to hear from him because I really like the photos I took of him. It was really fun connecting with him. When the group was finally all together, they roared out of the parking lot one at a time, each showing off his bike. The rider I had connected with roared past me, keeping his eye on my lens the entire time.

One thing I may not have mentioned in my previous post about our food tour was that our guide, Paul, was also a photographer. As we went into the museum, he walked over and said, “Look for the wall of gas tanks. It makes an awesome photo.” He was right. It did. And so did more of the exhibits than I expected. See the pics below.

Our second stop on the “luxury motor coach” tour was the Pabst Mansion, built by the founder of the Pabst Brewery, the maker of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer…or, as we like to call it, yellow-colored water. This is the stop I mentioned should have just been a drive-by. Inside the home (which, as you can see, is beautiful outside), the house was cluttered and typical of a rich guy’s home from the 1890s. It also had a mildew-and-rot smell. I went in but couldn’t find a single thing worth wasting a pixel on. So, as you will see below, I took all my photos in and around the Harley-Davidson museum. The rest of the tour was excellent, and much of that was due to Paul’s narration.

After we returned from our “luxury motor coach” tour, it was time for lunch. Then Octantis sailed out of Milwaukee, and we waved goodbye to a city we liked a whole lot more than we ever thought we would. We (just the October Bunch) went up to deck six, where we could take some great pics…see below. I got a couple of the Art Museum with the wings open. A beautiful building.

I love Milwaukee! I'm going to be in Milwaukee 20 years! I'll be here so long, they'll be sick of me!—Giannis Antetokounmpo

The October Bunch Ride Again

by Jim Bellomo | Sep 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

Not sure if you remember this, but we have a group of six people who travel every October. We call ourselves the October Bunch. We have traveled together every October since 2023, when we sailed on Oceania’s Vista from Montreal to Miami. Since then, we have done river cruises on both the Douro in Portugal and the Columbia River. And since it is almost October, we are off to sail again with the Bunch.

The October Bunch includes me, Kathleen, my brother Steve (of the famous Steve test of restaurants), my sister-in-law Jamie, and our incredible Florida friends Mike and Cathy. Kathleen and I have been traveling with Mike since 2005, and I consider him one of my two best friends in the world.

This year, our trip will start in Chicago this Saturday, and we will spend four days touring the city. We haven’t been there together since 2013. (I was back in 2014 to deal with my youngest brother’s death, but that doesn’t count as a city visit. Jamie and Steve have been there most recently, and our other two Bunchers haven’t been there for more than 25 years.)This should be fun.

We are in Chicago from Saturday afternoon until Wednesday morning, when we rent a car and drive north to the home of cheese and beer—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I am pretty sure none of us have been there before. We stay two nights at a really cool hotel (which you will see when we get there). Then, on Friday morning, we board the Viking Octantis for a seven-night cruise that takes us to five of the six Great Lakes (we don’t get to Superior).

We are very excited about the cruise because, after all our years of cruising, this is an entirely new kind of ship we have never been on before. In fact, as cruise ships go, only two like it exist in the world: Octantis and her sister ship, Polaris. Octantis holds only 374 passengers in 187 staterooms, so it is much smaller than a Viking Ocean ship and larger than a Viking River boat.

As an expedition ship, she spends most of the year in either the Arctic or the Antarctic. On the way between her two main destinations, she visits the Great Lakes and the Caribbean. This gives us a chance to check her out. She has a lot of very cool gear, including Special Operations Boats for exploring, Zodiacs, and even two six-man submarines (John and Paul). The ship has a scientific lab for oceanic exploration.

You can see our route at the top of this page. We love where this cruise ends… when we sail into Lake Ontario (NOT Lake America) and disembark in Toronto, one of our favorite cities. We will spend the night so we can see our good friends Tim and Perry. It’s been way too long since we last saw them.

That’s the coming two weeks. I will be blogging away, and as always, I will have photos. I hope to use what I learned in Belgium two weeks ago on this trip.

“An account of an expedition is not a novel. Therefore, an authentic account can never be given, let alone written down by someone who was not present.” —Reinhold Messner

Day 6—Ketchikan

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 21, 2026 | Uncategorized

Well, it happened. We got a tan in Ketchikan. Sunshine is almost unheard of in this town, and this is the third time we have found it here. Every other time, it has been rainy and cold. But yesterday was wonderful. We awoke to bright sunshine and an announcement at 7:00 am that whales had been spotted off the side of the ship, so everyone raced to see. I got my trusty Nikon out and got a photo of a whale (see my photos below) from a cruise ship for the first time ever. The only other time we have seen whales was on a whale-watching trip.

We did all the usual things in the morning as we sailed into Ketchikan. We were not scheduled to arrive until 1:30 pm, so we were going sloooowwww. We heard we could have lunch on the Retreat Sundeck, a very nice deck at the very top and front of the ship. So up we went, only to find two small problems. First, there were very few tables (lots of lounge chairs, (I hate eating in a lounge chair), and the food delivery method was a total failure.

When you ordered your lunch, they sent the order down to the kitchen, somewhere in the bowels of the ship. The orders were then sent up in small plastic boxes. We ordered turkey wraps with fries. It took about 40 minutes for the food to reach the Retreat deck. When we finally got it, it was cold. A cold wrap is OK, but cold French fries are basically inedible rubber. We mentioned this to our new friends Richard and Randy today, and they told us that when they had lunch on the Retreat Sundeck on an M-class ship, the food was made very close to the sundeck and was warm. They need to do that on the Solstice.

After lunch, Kathleen and I split up, she went upstairs for a quick nap and I went to walk around the city. WOW, what a change from the last time we had been here. And OMG, the crowds. There were six ships when we docked, and this town has a real hard time absorbing that many people. The sidewalks were jammed with people, and the streets were jammed with buses and tour vans as you will see from my photos below.

I took a quick walk to a local drugstore, which obviously catered to the cruising public. I kind of knew this because I needed more Aleve after hurting my shoulder on our Harv and Marv trip. They carried a 12-pill box of Aleve for $24.99. That was more than $2 a pill. When I jokingly asked the clerk how people who lived here could afford to have a headache, he said that no Ketchikan local would be caught dead shopping downtown. And if I didn’t want to pay their prices, I could find another drugstore (where the locals shop) about three miles away. I didn’t need the Aleve that badly because Cathy had some she said she would give me.

After giving up on the Aleve search, I walked from there over to the historic Creek Street area. It was slammed. I had never seen a line waiting to get into Creek Street, which is a quaint tourist area that was Ketchikan’s original downtown. All kinds of gifty, touristy places abound, along with some fun house tours of all kinds of things. See my photos below for an idea of the kind of place it is.

After that, it was back to Solstice and get ready for drinks, dinner and bed…we thought in that order. But that was not to be. I will send you a bonus post soon explaining the hilarious rest of the evening.

Don't forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping and you will be able to see the captions at the bottom of the photos.

"You should never go to Alaska as a young man. Because you'll never be satisfied with any other place as long as you live." – John Muir

Day 3—Icy Strait Point

by Jim Bellomo | Jun 18, 2026 | Uncategorized

Way back in August 2007, we last visited Icy Strait Point. Back then, it was a tiny tourist attraction featuring two things: the longest (at the time) zip line in the world and an old cannery that had been turned into a museum. Here we are, just under 20 years later, and we are back again. When we were here the first time, this was a tender port (for the non-cruisers, that means to get to the port, you get into a lifeboat and they take you to a small dock in the harbor where you get off, see everything, and then get back on). Not anymore.

We visited here with our Martini Mates that year on Celebrity’s Infinity. We came ashore and walked around for about an hour. We took the shuttle bus into the village of Hoonah (where, really, there was nothing to see), then it was back on the tender and back to the ship.

WOW! How things have changed in 19 years. Now there are two piers big enough to handle a cruise ship, so we didn’t have to tender. The two piers are fairly far apart (about a 30-minute hike on a nice trail), so they built a gondola that takes you from the pier where we docked over to the original area, which has now been built up. In 2007, there was a snack bar. Now there are at least four restaurants, a couple of snack bars, and coffee places as well. The Cannery museum is now less of a museum and more of a mini shopping mall. The zip line is still there, but sadly, it was too windy for it to be in service. And no, we were not going to ride it ourselves. Too long and too high, thank you. Plus, we are way too old.

When Solstice arrived, there was a Princess cruise ship on the pier we were to dock on, and because Celebrity has a deal with the locals and helped build the two ocean piers, they got first choice, so the Princess ship had to pull off the pier and tender the rest of her guests back to the ship. The other pier was occupied by Celebrity Summit, a ship we know well after sailing her from Newark to Québec and back in 2018.

Solstice had docked at the pier where you needed to either hike or take the gondola to see the Cannery area. So Mike, Cathy and I jumped into one of the cars and headed over. The gentleman running the gondola was very good at his job. He had three lines, and the gondola hardly ever stopped. You just got on as it slowly came through the on-and-off section. Really simple and easy to do. The ride took about 15 minutes, and we were dropped off at the gateway to the Cannery area.

It was a very short walk down to the Cannery museum and shops, along a really nice boardwalk with stairs that periodically led to the beach. There was also a great statue of an orca whale (see my pics below). We walked down, saw the shops, talked to some folks, were mistaken for someone on a whale watching tour, Mike and Cathy got a beer, and I set off to walk the trail back to the ship. Got lots of photos on the way and had a great time. There are bear warnings all over the place, but the path was well traveled and, as Bob says, “Don’t worry about bears unless you are the slowest person you can see nearby.” I stopped to buy some postcards on the way (yes, I still send paper postcards), and then it was back aboard and off to drinks and dinner.

Sadly, after an awesome sandwich we had for lunch that passed the Steve Test (see yesterday’s post if you don’t know what the Steve Test is) in Luminae, dinner was a total failure. Bob ordered a steak, and it was a huge, thick chunk of beef with absolutely no flavor whatsoever. I know, because he gave me a piece, and I tried it. It was like eating a chewy piece of nothing. No sauce, no grill marks, no nothing. Just a big hunk of beef barely seared on four sides. My cannelloni wasn’t much better. Two pasta tubes, stuffed with too much meat, too little cheese and too little sauce. This time the meal wasn’t fine. It was bad.

Lunch today was an adventure, but I will tell you about that tomorrow. And about our visit to the Hubbard Glacier.

Don't forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping. When you do that, you can also see the captions for the photos. These are the first shots of the trip where I was able to show off my photography expertise, so please check them out on a computer or tablet, not your phone.