Team Schmidt Travels

Saturday, June 21st, 2025 When you travel for weeks at a time, some days are admittedly more mundane than others. Kind of like what I imagine “taking a zero” on a through hike would be.  Today included necessities like laundry, waiting in line for guest services to arrange for all three pairs of us to get off the ship at the same time tomorrow when we disembark, packing up, and various other chores. It also included niceties like sleeping in, the culinary show, and enjoying an Irish pub lunch with live music.  But the highlight of the day was undoubtably the egg drop challenge. Our family met up with numerous contestants to try our luck dropping an egg over the side of the railing in the Grand Plaza. There were prizes for if the egg didn’t break, a prize for the best looking egg drop contraption, and a prize for who could land it closest to the center of the “X” down below.   There were so many teams!    It really should not have surprised us at this point in th...

  Friday, June 20th 2025 This morning we met up at the dining room at 7 AM to get ready for our day in Aomori. Our usual morning wait staff took good care of us, asking if we would like our usual drinks, etc.  Then we headed down through the Grand Plaza area and off the ship. It was very quick today. No lines. No customs. Since none of the taxis could fit all six of us (and each of them cost about four times as much as the taxis we had used on Korea) we started a fifteen minute walk to the train station.  About halfway there Dad was having trouble with his shoe, and was experiencing pain up his calf and into his back. He decided to stay behind today and rest up so he will be doing better for Disney later on in our trip. We tried to call him a taxi, but his app wasn’t set up for it. So Dad turned back toward the ship, with many well wishes from the rest of us.  We continued on to the train station and looked for where to get tickets to the correct stop. We were able t...