14- 22 July...ALASKAN CRUISE
JULY 14-22
THE FUN BEGINS
Some brave souls (the ladies) go swimming and the tide comes in so the gents have to move all the gear a few hundred meters LOL
Chris and Stephanie arrived in one piece and we all had to have proctored Covid tests submitted for the cruise…YAY we all tested negative which means we positively passed negatively.
Saturday, Elizabeth and I took Misty to the Alley Cats Hotel, an amazing cat boarding home in the country. This was an incredible location, suggested by some friends. Each room has a view of the country side, a web cam for us to watch her while we’re gone, great staff and they are booked 2 months out with a waiting list of 200! Good thing we booked Misty’s vacation in January.
It’s impossible to find long term parking in Vancouver and above ground to boot (Clifford is too tall for underground with a Thule on the roof) and Uber would not come and get us so we found a regular cab/van to pick us up on Sunday and off we went on the next adventure.
One difficult thing about travelling is the inability to control the weather. We had 6 days of rain and fog on our 8 day cruise. We heard that is quite normal as Alaska only gets about 80 days of sunshine a year. We were very lucky in 2018 to have seen Alaska in sunshine.
We were at sea Monday and Tuesday. We got up at 6 a.m. on Wednesday to view the Tracey Arm Fjord. It was cold and rainy. There were so many ice floes and such fog, the captain deemed it was unsafe to sail further up the fiord and headed to our first port, Sitka, early. We booked an afternoon tour with an Indigenous owned company. We went to a Raptor recovery center:
Totem National Historic site
And to a cultural center where we were treated to traditional dancing:
Jerry just had to join in. He never dances any other time.
(NO my hands are NOT touching)
It was an interesting afternoon. The Totem visitor centre had some amazing art work but we found there was not enough time to take it all in.
Our next port was Juneau, where we went on another tour. The tour company did not perform to expectations. The poor driver, a funny young woman named Briana, was told to take us to the whale watching first – wrong! The boat had already left with another tour. We had to turn around and back track to the Mendelson Glacier. Of course, this cut into our time there and we were not able to take in the visitor centre. Many cruise ships arrive in port at the same time so the places of interest are jam packed with people.
Mendelson Glacier in the background
The Nugget Waterfall to the right in the picture flows out of a tunnel
And then to the whale watching. Seeing the whales and Sterling seals was great, however the PA was not working and so the commentary was non-existent. As far as we were concerned, the tour was not up to standard but the bus driver was sooo funny we did give her a tip. She was a student from Utah and had moved up to Juneau for the summer job.
Sterling Seals
In Haines, we decided not to go ashore as we had been to Haines 4 years earlier and had seen much of the town. Instead we lounged and went to the hot tub!
On the return trip, we ventured up Endicott Arm and saw the Dawes Glacier. It was quite something watching from our balcony wearing our winter coats over our PJs at 6 a.m. After a room service breakfast, we went….back to bed!
Dawes Glacier
This is the best shot with an iPhone I could get of the glacier. I didn’t bring the Canon camera on the ship as our suitcases were overfull as it was. Neat though, the day was so sunny and bright that even the captain was taking iPhone shots on the bridge behind us.
And icebergs/iceflow. Amazing.
Royal Caribbean is an excellent cruise line with great food. We really enjoyed the music and entertainment ship wide and the production shows, individual performances etc. The service was excellent and so was the food. There was food all day long – too much food really. If you take a cruise don’t expect to lose weight! We did the opposite.
They have a room in the Spa called the Thermal Room (steam room, aroma room, etc.) with wonderful thermal beds. They are lounge shaped beds covered in ceramic tile and heated with moist heat. It feels like you are lying on a warm sand beach. The warmth seeps into your bones and feels marvellous. They are positioned in front of a huge window so you have a great view while relaxing. I went there everyday and finally convinced Jerry to try them on the last day of our cruise.
This cruise originally started 2 years ago and was going to be a “family” cruise out of Fort Lauderdale into the Caribbean. Covid cancelled that for a year and we all moved our bookings to other trips twice … waiting. Then Amie thought this cruise might be better for the group since it was sort of Canadian. We still had to clear customs for Alaska and then again to return to Canada … but no issues. In fact, Canadian Customs pretty well waved us through.
Well we’re going to try and fire this off quickly. We’ll fill you in on our Vancouver adventure in the next blog.
Wishing everyone a nice holiday long week end. It’s 32 here and the humidity makes it Hotter. Hit 35 yesterday + humidity. Too hot to do much except talk about it.
Love from,
Jerry, Elizabeth, Misty, FJ (Flat Jesus), the Guys, Miss Adventure Too, and Clifford the Big Red Truck.
p.s. here’s something we’d like to pass on:
When we were in Thunder Bay, we were in a store that sold Canadian made products (neat idea.) We bought some great locally grown, ground and made pancake mix and some other items including some chocolate bars made in Nova Scotia. (Antigonish.) He told us that a percentage of the sales this company makes go towards refugees. (3-5% to Peace on Earth Society, a Nova Scotia Charity.)
What he didn't tell us is there is a (Canadian) movie about this refugee family who fled to Canada from Syria through a church sponsorship after losing their livelihood and chocolate factory. This is an amazing "Based on a True Story" movie if you have iTunes/Apple TV. I have attached the link:
https://tv.apple.com/ca/movie/peace-by-chocolate/umc.cmc.5groe6yjcgtwp39lqk99ueeip
Also you can stream it here: Scroll down to Canada: $4.99 on Cineplex:
https://peacebychocolatefilm.com/screenings/
I can't find it on Prime or Netflix. If you can't rent it, it might still be playing somewhere. If not, here's their web page...you might try buying some of their chocolate!
Also, the chocolate was quite good!
We are still just outside of Vancouver (Port Moody/Anmore) where it is very hot. So hot, we have had to cut back on activities and tourism. It is to start cooling down after today and rain's a comin'. We will move on in a week.
Comments
Post a Comment