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| Tuesday |
| Today was our first official 'stop' on the cruise - Skagway. We got up early, I opened the curtains and was surprised to see a wall of green and graffiti covered rock greeting me. On the rock face there was over a hundred inscriptions of all the various ships which had visited the port, the year, and the name of the captain at the time. It was pretty cool. We quickly scarfed down some breakfast at the buffet and disembarked. While trying to find our tour on the dock we saw a sea lion playing around in the water. We soon found our tour mini-bus and after everyone was accounted for we took off. The trip was designed to take us just over the border into the Yukon, spend some time there, see a dog sled racing team and get pulled around on a buggy by them, have lunch there, then head back to Fraser, BC, and hop on an old rickety train for a perilous journey back through the mountains. The dogsled was pretty interesting and unlike the massive huskies you see in Disney movies real sled dogs are actually rather scrawny. But they're purposely bred for no other purpose. It was interesting talking to our sled driver who competes in both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest dogsled races. I find very cool being able to say that I visited Alaska, BC, and the Yukon all in the same afternoon. Our guide was very good and kept us entertained with all his stories and anecdotes. About the only thing that sucked about our excursion was that it was so bloody hot - it was pushing 30 degrees! We came here to get away from the heat after all. We didn't spend much time in the town itself as it was absolutely swarming with tourists - in addition to our ship, the Princess Star, a Celebrity ship, and a Holland America ship were also in port. So we just headed back to our ship to relax after our very long day out and about. That night we caught a show in the theatre - the theme was music through different time periods. We had been told previously that Princess employed world class stage productions and the highest quality dancers. Um, not exactly. Overall it was entertaining, but the first two numbers were laughably bad. At least my parents who had joined us liked it. Later at the casino I asked my dad if they would go cruising again and was frankly devastated to hear him say that no, they wouldn't. I guess they just prefer the simplicity of going to one of their timeshare resorts. Oh well, at least they got to experience cruising and now know it's not their thing. Maybe they were just having a bad day. At least we've made a convert out of Kim :) |
| Wednesday |
| Another scorching hot day. What the hell?!?!? And another day with three other cruise ships docked alongside us in Juneau. I'm really glad we got to see the northern portion of the itinerary that most people don't go on, instead opting for the shorter return trip to Vancouver. It gave us a chance to see the real Alaska, the untouched Alaska, as opposed to the touristy places. Thankfully we didn't have to deal with the crowds for to long as we soon found our guide. We had decided to go whale watching for this portion of our trip. As we now usually do, we avoided the official ship tours and instead opted to go with a smaller independent operator. In this case it allowed us to go out on a small boat with only one other couple. We could have not asked for a better experience. By our guides own admission he had never had such a successful day showing off the local wildlife. We managed to see some dolphins but they were very skittish and I didn't manage to get a picture. Still, it got us excited for what was to come. Our guide had heard that there was a pod of killer whales in the area so he took us in that direction. Sure enough, before long we saw their distinctive shapes in the water. There were actually two separate pods of around a dozen animals and we were sharing the experience with a larger tour boat and some small private boat. By law you have to stay at least 100 yards away so I got the best pictures that I could by zooming in. But just before we were about to depart the area a bunch of them surfaced only 20 - 30ft away. It was a real thrill seeing them that close. From there we set out to find some humpback whales. Now normally they are solitary animals except when they get together to do their thing and feed. We spotted their distinctive spouts in the water and headed towards them. While the killer whales were cool to watch this was simply almost indescribable. We came across a bunch of them feeding. They would suck in air and then dive and gather in a circle blowing air and creating bubbles which would disorient the fish into a tight circle - then the leader would shoot straight upwards and gather all the fish in it's mouth. Our guide also turned on the hydrophone and we got to hear them 'sing' as they moved into position to begin the ritual. It was a very moving and beautiful experience hearing them. I'll even admit that I got a bit choked up. We watched them do this several times before moving off. On the way back we watched as a bald eagle flew from a tree and snatched a fish from the water and flew back to eat it. Our final stop was a quick trip to the local glacier for some photo taking opportunities. There's a gondola downtown which runs up one of the mountains, but as much as I tried I couldn't convince Chris to go up it. So instead we ran into one of the local jewelry stores and I bought her a new ring - this made her a very happy girl. |
| Thursday |
| Today was one of those days where we didn't have anything planned and so we just slept in, got up when we felt like it, leisurely ate breakfast and then ambled ashore. Once again there was three other ships docked when we got here, much to my annoyance. We wandered to a funky old part of town called Creek Street which was a bunch of shops along a raised boardwalk with a river below it. I also got to tour an authentic whorehouse from the 1920's. All I can say is that modern prostitutes on average look a whole lot better (so I've been told). From there we were tired from all the walking and wanted to get out of the sun and so we stopped in a really great restaurant called Annabelle's. We had fish and chips, clam chowder, and a bucket of crab legs. With bellies full we headed back to the ship. We spent most of the afternoon swimming and soaking up the sun. Tomorrow is our last sea day and for some slightly disturbing reason Hailey wants to live vicariously through us and see us tie on one. So we're going to do our best to fulfill her wishes. Ok, so we didn't exactly tie one one, but we were up past midnight. We watched a band play in the Promenade and they were pretty good. Everyone was dancing and having a fun time. The only female member of the band played the saxophone and for some reason I found that to be extremely hot. At midnight a whole bunch of balloons came falling down and everyone was batting them back and forth. Afterwards Chris managed to win $500 playing the slots. So we went to bed happy campers. |
| Friday |
| Our last day at sea and we're currently just north of Vancouver island. Today will be pretty relaxed and we'll slowly get organized and start packing. We're going to take advantage of Princess' 'Walk Off' program which lets us keep our luggage. The upside is it's straightforward, the downside is that we have to lug everything around with us. However we have a fairly long stay in Vancouver before our flight home so we're just going to store everything in the terminal. We saw some more whales and dolphins today while walking around on the ship. And I managed to take a couple of really nice sunset shots of both Hailey and Vancouver Island. For our last dinner we ate at the Steak restaurant and it was extremely delicious. Mine was easily the best steak I've had in awhile. We spent the evening getting everything outstanding taken care of. We went to the photo gallery and went through all the pictures taken of us and bought those which we liked. We also cashed in our money at the casino. In fact, after we added it all up Chris ended up clearing almost $1000. Which is good as my final bill was a lot more than I expected. Damn you delicious squishy drinks and sophisticated martinis!!! |
| Saturday |
| We got up extra early so we could catch us arriving into Vancouver. I took a bunch of pictures of the Lion's Gate Bridge and the surrounding sights - as Chris had explained to me, when she used to live in Vancouver she would always see the cruise ships coming in or being docked and now she had a chance to be on one of them. It was definitely neat docking in a Canadian city for once instead of all the foreign places we've been to. The disembarkment was the usual shit show. Even though we were able to walk off with our luggage we still had to wait in a huge line to get through customs. Once we cleared we caught a limo and headed for the airport. The limo was actually really nice for a change and totally pimped out. I didn't get a chance to enjoy it however as I quickly fell asleep. We managed to get our flight changed to an earlier one so we had lunch, cleared security, and waited to board our flight home. And so ended our Alaskan adventure! |