This trip was a couple of years in the making. After our trip to China in 2015, we thought we'd like to explore another Asian culture. At first we looked for an organized tour, like the one we had done in China, but found that Japan was a whole different price bracket. While we had originally thought to just use the Transpacific repositioning of a cruise ship to get to Japan, we eventually decided that we would stay on, doing back-to-back cruises.
This is the first of 3 parts - our Transpacific from Vancouver, BC to Yokohama, Japan. We were on the Celebrity Millenium, an older Celebrity ship, but she has been nicely renovated - "Solstice-ized" as Celebrity calls it - and we really enjoyed the ship. The itinerary was a 15-night cruise, with plenty of sea days, one stop in Alaska and a couple of stops on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before we arrived for an overnight stay in Yokohama. The purpose of this blog is to provide a photo journal of our stops along the way. I won't be going into detail about the ship (there are other ships that do a similar crossing), and I won't be talking about what we did on sea days - every cruise ship has more than enough to keep you busy on sea days (if you choose), it's more about what we saw and did in our ports of call.
There are 3 parts to this trip: Part 1 - Vancouver to Japan (this part), Part 2 - Japan Explorer and finally Part 3 - Japan on Land - covering our 6 nights we spent on land after the 2 cruises.
For this leg of our trip, the 15-night Transpacific cruise had only 3 ports of call before arriving in Yokohama. We lost a day crossing the international dateline and I don't really have anything for our overnight stop in Yokohama. Mostly in Yokohama we just did laundry and visiting with friends. And we would be returning for another overnight at the end of our Japan Explorer cruise, so there was time to explore Yokohama at that time.
The links above will take you to each of our ports of call.
08-Sep-2017 (Day 1) Embarkation in Vancouver, BC
09-Sep-2017 (Day 2) At Sea
10-Sep-2017 (Day 3) Sitka, Alaska
11-Sep-2017 (Day 4) At Sea
12-Sep-2017 (Day 5) At Sea
13-Sep-2017 (Day 6) At Sea
14-Sep-2017 (Day 7) At Sea (Crossing of International Dateline)
16-Sep-2017 (Day 8) At Sea
17-Sep-2017 (Day 9) At Sea
18-Sep-2017 (Day 10) At Sea
19-Sep-2017 (Day 11) At Sea
20-Sep-2017 (Day 12) Otaru, Japan
21-Sep-2017 (Day 13) Hakodate, Japan
22-Sep-2017 (Day 14) At Sea
23-Sep-2017 (Day 15) Yokohama, Japan (overnight)
08-Sep-2017 (Day 1) Embarkation in Vancouver, BC
09-Sep-2017 (Day 2) At Sea
10-Sep-2017 (Day 3) Sitka, Alaska
11-Sep-2017 (Day 4) At Sea
12-Sep-2017 (Day 5) At Sea
13-Sep-2017 (Day 6) At Sea
14-Sep-2017 (Day 7) At Sea (Crossing of International Dateline)
16-Sep-2017 (Day 8) At Sea
17-Sep-2017 (Day 9) At Sea
18-Sep-2017 (Day 10) At Sea
19-Sep-2017 (Day 11) At Sea
20-Sep-2017 (Day 12) Otaru, Japan
21-Sep-2017 (Day 13) Hakodate, Japan
22-Sep-2017 (Day 14) At Sea
23-Sep-2017 (Day 15) Yokohama, Japan (overnight)
Above is a picture of our ship, Celebrity Millenium, as she sails out of the port of Vancouver. (I took this shot the week before we left. Trust me - we were ON the ship when she sailed away for our trip, not on shore taking a nice picture!)