The Northern Pacific calls. We answer "yes!"

In five days Emma and I set off on Grand Adventure number three, this time leaving Vancouver and sailing to Alaska, Japan, Russia and China.

Here's a map for the geographically challenged who may be wondering how you can sail from Alaska to Russia (hint: not via Moscow): 

To say we're excited is something of an understatement.

At this point regular readers of our first ground-breaking travel blog http://greatpacificadventure.blogspot.com.au/ might be thinking "Alaska? Didn't you go there on your first cruise?" and be wondering "how can you talk of adventure when you're just revisting the same old ground? Isn't that pathetically safe and unimaginitive?"

Excellent question. Rude, but an excellent question.

So to these six people I reply: to see the things we missed out on the first time, such as taking a 30 minute helicopter from Juneau followed by a two-mile trek over a glacier (which was cancelled last time due to bad weather), and seeing parts of Alaska north of Skagway we didn't make it to last time (such as Glacier Bay, College Fjord, and Anchorage).

That, and because Alaska is just so damn awesome.

We've been planning on going back to Alaska ever since our first trip, with the plan being to start in Asia and finish in Seattle or Vancouver. As it turns out the opportunity to do the trip in the opposite direction came up, and not being wedded to the idea of a counter-clockwise tour we booked it.

Besides, my first choice of a real adventure holiday, a trip to Mars, was outside of our budget, and would take a bit longer than five weeks.

This time we're sailing on the Diamond Princess, so in a few weeks this will be us:

I'll post an envy-inducing description of the Diamond Princess' facilities soon. And as cool as a trip to Mars would have been, the restaurant, entertainment and accomodation offerings on the Mars Rover are somewhat lacking in comparison:

For those of you who missed out on our previous blogs - or who simply want to relive the awesomeness - our first Pacific cruise blog can be found here http://greatpacificadventure.blogspot.com.au/ , while our adventures from New York to LA via the Panama Canal (not to mention our excursion to the wilds of Boise, Idaho) lives here http://great-panam-adventure.blogspot.com.au/.