Touch of Class

So when we woke up the final day of the trip, the ship had already landed again.  Those sneaks!  I was really sad that we missed out every time the ship came into port  

As we arrived in Seattle at about 6:00 AM and our plane didn’t leave till 5, we decided to do one last excursion.  We bought ticket for a bus ride back to the airport that made a few touristy stops on the way.  We had priority departing off the ship with this excursion, so we were able to fly past all those other people waiting in line to get off.  We also took our luggage with us so we didn’t have to search for it in the sea of suitcases.

We found our bus quickly and hopped on

Last bus ride of this trip

I felt sorry for the bus driver.  She was no spring chicken and she had to load ALL the suitcases onto the bus.  Not only was it hot already but the bus was full and I can tell you, some people have humongous suit cases and were definitely not traveling light!  She got her cardio work in that morning.

When the driver finally got back on the bus the poor girl was hot ans sweaty.  I’m sure she enjoyed the air conditioning.  Once we took off, she proceeded to give us a monologue of all the interesting sights in Seattle.  Did you know that Seattle is home to Microsoft….Google….Boeing…and Starbucks?  There are 142 Starbuck stores in Seatle.  Wowzer!  You better like coffee if you live in that town.

We passed by these domed gardens/office building

Garden

and office building

I bet only the high mucky mucks get to have their offices in there.  How peaceful.  I wonder if you have to dodge the birds and do they poop on your desk while you’re trying to work?

Seattle also has a lot of art statue around the city.  Here is a stainless steel tree 

I suppose being on the ocean they had to make it out of stainless steel so it wouldn’t rust.  Aren’t I the smart one.

We also saw this umbrella

Whoops! Windy day!

And these flowers

Reaching for the sun

That’s the kind of flowers I need, something I can’t kill.  Maybe just a little smaller though.  I don’t think the condo association would approve if I planted those on the property.

We saw this in a park

Broken heart?

along with quite a few homeless people.  I was kind of surprised as to how many homeless people there were.

We finally came to our first stop   Anyone recognize it?  It’s the Space Needle!  You can see the elevator going up on the side

Fancy dancy elevator

Our bus driver gave us a ticket to ride to the top of the Space Needle (included in the price of the excursion ya know), so we headed up.  What a view!

What a view!

Look!  There’s our ship

Hi Ship!

There was some work being done at the top.  They were revamping the whole thing.  Giving you a better view.  Of course I don’t know what the old view looked like so it is hard to compare but this view was pretty impressive.  They were installing Plexiglas benches by the outside walls.

Work guys

And look at this contraption 

I had to Google it to find out what it was used for.  Apparently they use this machine, which they had built specifically for this job, to hold the giant pieces of glass in place while the guys bolted them down.  The glass was craned up and then the machine grabbed it and placed it.  Wow!  What a machine, and the guy who worked the machine did it all with a little joy stick.  Playing  all those video games as a kid finally came in handy.  I wonder what the heck they’ll do with it once they’re all done?  And who will they hire to CLEAN those windows.  One field trip of school age children and those windows will be a mess.

Well the new glass certainly gives you a phenomenal view of Seattle and the mountains that surround it.  Good Job people!

When we got down from the Space Needle and were heading back to the bus, we saw this truck in the parking lot 

If you can’t read it, it says “Otis Elevator Company”.  Dang!  I’m glad we didn’t see that before we hopped on an elevator and took it up the 605 feet to the top.

We also noticed that they had these bikes

Rent me!

all over the place, and I mean all over.  You can just take it and drop it where ever you want.  It doesn’t have to be at a station or anything.  The bikes must have a tracking device on them so they know where they are.

Well we hopped back on the bus at our designated time and continued the tour.  As we toured around the city, I saw this billboard

Haha!

I got a pretty big chuckle out of that.  If that doesn’t make you think, I don’t know what will LOL.

Our next stop was the Pike Place Market.  It was quite a few blocks long, a few stories high and filled with a crap load of people.

OMG! Wall to Wall people!

We both hate crowds but we had some time to kill so we walked around.  This was supposed to be the place where they throw the fish around.  Didn’t see that.  We did see the huge line to get into the “first” Starbucks.  It was over a block long.  I decided I didn’t need coffee that bad.

Do you see that thing hanging from the inside of that store?  Curved blade and two handles on each corner?  They had those all over the place and in every gift shop we walked by.  I assume they are for cutting cheese.  I think I’ll stick with the old-fashioned cheese slicer  Works good for me 

To kill time we found a non “Starbucks” coffee shop and had some coffee to help kill the time.  We weren’t much into the shopping thing.  Finally we were able to hop back on the bus and she took us to the airport, that was the end of the tour of Seattle.  Mind you, if you LOVE to shop, that Pike Place market would have been the perfect place for you so don’t let us discourage you from visiting it…..if you ever get to Seattle that is .

I must say, the Seattle airport is big, and complicated.   When we arrived from Minnesota, the plane stopped in some obscure corner of the airport.  We had to exit the plane using a staircase and then there were buses for us to take back to the terminal!  This time, after we checked our luggage, we had to take a train thingie, to our gate.

The security level at this airport was so different from it was in Minneapolis.  In Minneapolis we had to take off our shoes, take the I-pad, the kindle, and our cell phones out of the back pack and lay them in a basket, not to mention, we had to take off belts, empty pockets and the glasses I had on top of my head and hanging from my shirt, I had to hold them in my hands while I stood in that big X-ray machine.  Then after all that, they had to pat down and wand my right knee, and I don’t even have a fake knee!   In Seattle, we left our shoes on, our belts on, the glasses hung from the front of my shirt, we left everything in the backpack and just put the contents of our pockets in a pocket in the backpack.  Much easier or maybe it was just because we were old people and didn’t look too much like terrorists, ya never know .

All in all, it was a fantastic vacation/cruise and for those of you with a bucket list, I definitely would add it to yours.

Before we get off the ship, I just had to show you all the cute towel animals that appeared on our bed every night.

Elephant

Crab

Crab

For our “Anniversary”

Bull Dog

And then one night I came into the cabin and there was nothing on the bed.  I was so disappointed…..until I saw THIS!

Monkey hanging

Monkey

Monkey face

So cute!

Girl on pillow

The next two were on their cleaning carts

Bear

Hog

Those were so cute.  They even had a towel folding class that I was going to go to but then I found out it was more for the kids.  Ahh shucks 

But I did find this website that shows you how to do 3 animals

https://www.google.com/search?q=making+towel+animals&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS583US583&oq=making+towel+ani&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.4761j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=1

and boy, does it look easy!

I do believe I forgot to mention these two people

Hat Makers

See the two down in the front row?  See the lady on the right has some kind of ring in her hands?  The guy has one too but you can’t see it very well.  These two were making hats!  Every time I saw them they were working these rings to make hats.  I saw them at a table once with 10 or 12 hats sitting on the table and they were offering one of them to one of the crew.  I guess they just liked to keep busy.  Idle hands are the devils work (or something like that LOL).  If you have nothing better to do and want to make these hats, here’s a website you can go to

https://www.google.com/search?q=making+hats+with+plastic+ring+and+yarn&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS583US583&oq=making+hats+with+plastic+ring+and+yarn&aqs=chrome..69i57.14445j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=1

Could come in handy for you people who live up north in the winter ;).

This was our last stop before we arrived back at Seattle.  The ship got into port around 6:30 PM and we were only going to be here for 4 1/2 hours.  Again, they said they were going to pull in at 7:30 PM but arrived an hour early so we missed the docking AGAIN   (We were stuffing our faces for our last dinner on the ship).  Our last change to see the ship dock will be in Seattle at 7:00 AM tomorrow.  Hopefully we won’t miss that one.

When we got off the ship we passed thru this building

Welcome to Canada

to get to the parking lot.  I figured they’d want to see our passports.  Nope.

The day before we arrived, we went to an informational meeting about Victoria and we were told it is about a 30 minute walk into town but we would be better off hopping on one of the forms of transportation provided so we could have every minute to explore the town.  There were a few ways to get into town.  You could walk, take a cab, go by horse-drawn carriage

Horsey ride into town

or by bus.  We chose bus.  So we paid our $26 (which was the cheapest way into town besides our feet), and got on our double-decker bus

Us on bus

I hope the guy behind us wasn’t in the Witness Protection program…I think I just blew his cover.  We thought the bus was going to stop at a few spots, maybe let us on and off a few times but it just drove to the center of town and dumped us.  The driver said a bus would be at that spot every 15 minutes and the last one would be at 11:00.  So everyone piled off and we just started walking.  Of course they dropped us by all the shops.  Is that all these people think us tourist do is shop and spend money?  Well, I guess most of them do, we are just the exception to the rule.  So where did we head off to?  Back to the water of course 

We did see a few things as we strolled along.  We saw the Parliament building

Parliament building

This building was supposed to be beautiful at night because it was all lit up.  Then we saw this whale,

whale made of plants

pretty good use of greenery.  We also saw this building.

Building going up or coming down?

The inside was all gutted out and the walls were propped up with those beams.  I couldn’t tell if they were taking it down or going to rebuild with the existing walls.

As we got closer to the water we saw this

Orca made of mosaics

Almost looks like it is glowing, doesn’t it?  There was another Canada sign.

I’m not really sure of the significance behind that but people were lining up to take a picture of it.  We saw a boat we could rent

Boat in the harbor

and a little walkway around the harbor that we checked out.  After that, we were pretty much done sight-seeing.  So we headed back to the bus stop.  The bus was waiting there for us.  We were the first people on board.  I think we surprised them on how short of a walk about we had.  We got our seats on the top of the bus, the front row and waited for the ride back.  We had a nice little chat with an older couple who sat down next to us (by older I mean, pretty close to our age).  Finally the bus took off and took us back to the ship.  Again I had our passports in hand but again, no one wanted to see them.  We did have to show our room key to security to get into the gate to get to the ship so I guess that is how they keep the riffraff out.

We stopped and got a nightcap before we headed up to our stateroom.  The ship was leaving close to midnight and that was much too late for us “old” people to stay up so we hit the hay.  As we made our final trip back to the room we could see everyone was ready for departure the next day.

Bye Bye till next time

Our final stop would be back at Seattle!

On the way into Ketchikan, we passed by homes along the way.  I think this guy gets the prize for having the most derelict boats in his yard

One, two

three, four, five

And these aren’t exactly runabouts either.  Here was another boat we saw up on the shore

Long way up

Makes me wonder how the heck they got so far up on the shore.  It’s not like they have a tide here and I’m pretty sure Alaska doesn’t get hurricanes or tsunamis.

Well we had a real short day at Ketchikan but we still had an excursion planned.  It was a Duck Tour.  Now keep in mind we were taking our Duck Tour a few days after that devastating Duck Tour accident in Missouri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMz2l7lMmk.

But it was going to be a beautiful calm day so we figured we’d be ok.

We had a little time before the Duck tour so we checked out the town.

Welcome!

This is apparently a very famous sign  and everyone who comes here takes a picture of it.  I didn’t want to disappoint any one, so here you go .  This town, again, was more touristy than Juneau.  See the guy in the orange?

Street Crossing Guard

We were told on the ship when we went to one of the information talks they had, that on this street, you NEVER cross where there isn’t a cross walk.  They had a few of these guys stationed on this street and if you tried to cross without being at the cross walk they yelled and whistled at you to not cross there.  Gary and I have always been law-abiding citizens so we made sure to cross only at the cross walk (that was of course after I forgot we weren’t supposed to and I got yelled and whistled at by a couple of those guys  .  I’m old….I forget things easily)  They also had this really cool statue there 

It had a plaque telling what it was for, probably about first settlers and all, but I didn’t get a picture of it.  You’ll just have to go there yourself to see what it’s all about.

Finally, our Duck Boat arrived.

On the Duck Boat

Pretty empty….I wonder why?  They had blankets over your seat so you could cover up your legs if you wore shorts.  I made use of that so we were all comfy cozy.  The guy in the yellow shirt in the picture was our captain.  He lives in Florida and just comes up here for the summer to work.  This was his first time doing this.  (I hoped secretly he knew how to drive this dang thing and he knew what the heck he was doing).  The girl in the blue sweatshirt lives and goes to college in Arizona and she too is up here for the first time working.  (I secretly hoped she knew where the life jackets were, just in case).   So they gave us a tour of Ketchikan and showed us Dolly’s House

Dolly’s house

It was a brothel back in the day.  Dolly even came out and waved at us as we drove by.  When they finally drove into the water, they did a little harbor cruise first

Harbor Cruise

You can see there is quite a low cloud bank today.

Low clouds

Zorro, that’s a pretty boat

So the harbor was quite big with a few working boats slipped there.  They took us past a couple of fish processing plants were we saw some BIG harbor seals sitting out front waiting for leftovers.  We saw quite a few eagles too.

bald eagle

Once we were out of the harbor, we saw some water sprays but didn’t see any actual whales.  I think they might have been camera-shy.  We only saw one tail and it was much to quick to take a picture of.  We did see this float plane taking off 

I was surprised as to how many of them there were up there but I guess when you life in a desolated spot that you can only get to by air or sea, those planes would come in pretty handy.

After the Duck Boat ride, which went off without a hitch, we decided to check out the town a little more.  We took a walk over by Dolly’s house

Creek Street

and walked along Creek Street.  They had a lot of little shops you could go into (are you sensing a theme here?).

Creek Street creek

Plus there was the creek that you walked along.  And many totem poles.    They had these all over the place.  I guess they are pretty big out here.  They were even in Seattle.

Once we were all done sight-seeing, we headed back to the ship, and a drink.  This stop was one of our shorter stops.  The next stop would be Victoria BC, Canada!

Now for those of you that don’t know, Juneau is the capital of Alaska and the only way to reach the town is by water or by air.  There are no roads that lead to Juneau.  Crazy huh?  That is why we arrived by ship .

Juneau was a bigger city than Skagway and looked more than just a tourist destination.  Of course it should, it IS the capital!

This is the dock we were tied to

On the dock

city of Juneau

City of Juneau

Juneau harbor

So you can see, a much bigger city than Skagway.

While we waited for the time for our excursion in Juneau to start, we were having some bloodies on the aft deck.  There was a ship behind us that was getting ready to ship off.

Ship in front of us

As it was pulling away I saw Bull Winkle the moose on the other ship

Is that Bull Winkle?

Boy!  That looked like a fun ship to be on 

Our excursion this time was a tour of Juneau City and a trip to the Mendenhall Glacier.  We had to go a little further along the dock to get our bus.  There we saw the cable car

Cable Car

Cable Ride

I bet that is quite the view up at the top.

We found our bus

There’s our bus!

and started our tour.  Turns out our bus driver was an actual person that lives in Juneau.  He told us how the state of Alaska pays each and every citizen of Alaska $1000 per year if they live there for a year.  That can go along way to paying for your kids education or if you don’t have kids, how about a cruise to the lower 48?  Well, anyway, the guy took us across the water so we could get a picture of our ship

There’s our ship

See all those float planes hanging around the bow?  They look like toys next to the ship.  This ship is supposed to be the length of 3 football fields.  For those of you that don’t watch football, that’s 1080 for 3 of them.  That made me feel like I was getting some exercise on the ship when we walked from end to end going to the various bars.   Anywho, our next stop was the Mendenhall Glacier.   Apparently they have had to move their visitor center twice

Mendenhall Glacier Visitor’s Center current location

because the glacier has receded so much over the years.  Here some pictures show how much

1958

1985

2003

2010

Current day

I took this one the day we were there.  Quite a difference in 60 years, or even just 15 years.

While we were there I had to use the head and I mean REALLY use the head 

As I was sitting in there doing my business I noticed this sign on the back of the door

In the bathroom at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center

WHAT???!!!!  I can’t even believe they had to put that up there to remind someone the correct way to sit on a toilet.  Is the “no” for people who have a bidet?  Is this “no” for people who are used to leaning up against their snowmobiles?  Is this “no” for people who are used to leaning again trees? Come on ladies!  This is the 21st century!  You MUST know how to use a proper toilet by now?  Well, anyway, I got a big chuckle out of that and I just had to take a picture.  I’ve never seen that before, have you?

We went back outside after I was done with my business and we could see a falls in the distance

Falls by the Mendenhall Glacier

They did have some trails you could follow around but not much shade so we just hung around the visitor center until our bus came back.  The tour of the town was nice but I found this kind of boring.  You can look up pictures on the internet to see this and go on that cable car instead .

When we got back to town we had a few hours to kill so we decided to stop into a bar for a local brew

Bar we stopped in to have a drink

The girls were dressed like 1800 bar maids and ours gave me crap when I ordered a Bud Light…”You come all the way from the lower 48 to Alaska and you order a Bud Light?”.  Ok, you got me, I ended up ordering an Alaskan brew….not to bad.  We also decided to take a little walk thru the shops.  Gary found himself a new friend

Gary’s new friend

So cute!  I, of course, had to go up and give him a squeeze.  The bear not Gary , I’ll give him a squeeze later.

When we were done checking out the town, we headed on board the ship.  Every time we went off and on the ship, we had to show them our room key.  When we first got on the ship they took our picture so that when they scanned our room key, our picture popped up.  They also have you put your cells, purses, back-packs, bags etc on a conveyor belt that is run thru an X-ray machine and you pass thru a medal detector…”Please remove your hat”, just like at the airport.  Gives you a sense of comfort knowing anyone with an AK-47 won’t be let on the boat.

So after a long day in town, we headed out for a nice cool drink

Drinks, drinks and more drinks

I think those might be Mai Tai’s.  Our next stop would be Ketchikan!

Oh BTW.  I wore out the battery in the camera I brought with us and I forgot to pack the charger for it, DUH!  Luckily, Gary’s phone has a very good camera.  All the pictures from Juneau on, are from his phone camera.  I was very impressed.

We arrive at Skagway at 6:00 AM.  That was earlier than they predicted so we couldn’t watch them pull in, darn.  We always like to judge the dockings…..reminds us of our slip at Sunnyside and doing the judging at the gas dock 

Our balcony looked right at a rock wall

Nice view….not!

but we could see the train for the train ride we’d be taking later.

There’s our train!

Well, we had a few hours to kill before we left for our excursion so we decided to hike into town and see what’s what.  It was only a few blocks into town so not a big walk.  As we headed into town we had to stop by the 

Where else does a boater want to go to?  We saw that they had what looked to be a ferry

Ferry boat (The big red thing)

Look at the cute little harbor seal

Aaaaah

And I think this boat delivered propane to some of the more desolate areas

Propane anyone?

See all those white things on the aft deck?  Those are all propane bottles.  I wonder if he uses the helicopter for the more difficult deliveries?

We passed this restaurant on the way to town

Want some crabs?

A little unusual exterior, I’d love to see the inside.  Looks like they have the wicked witch chained up.  Once we got into town we saw this building

Wood building

made of small pieces of wood.  Pretty cool looking.  The whole town reminded me of an old western town

Wild, Wild, West but what a view!

but you could tell that main street was all about tourism.  All they had were touristy stuff.  They must have had 5 jewelry stores and they were all hawking their wears.  Apparently if you are from a cruise ship, you get a free bracelet and 2 free charms at each city we stoped in, so each jewelry store you pass, there was someone by the door trying to lure you in with the free charms.  But you know they are just trying to get you to buy something expense.  Luckily for Gary, I am not a big shopper so we did most of our shopping with our eyes and stayed out on the sidewalks.

When we had seen all we could, we headed back to the ship.  We passed this on the way

Show train

Snow Plow

well….I guess they do get some snow up there, don’t they?

Here is me in front of the ship

Big Ship

Jeans, coat, long sleeve shirt, hat, yah, it’s cold here.

So it was finally time to go on our excursion.  After re-reading the details of our excursion that we bought at Costco, at a much cheaper rate than the Carnival excursions, turns out that was not our train.  We had to catch a bus first in town that would take us to the train.

As you can tell by the clothing, it warmed up some, I was able to dump the coat and the long sleeve shirt.  Our first excursion was a White Pass Summit Rail and Bus Excursion.  We were heading into Canada, so we had to bring our passports.  We had to hunt around a little to find our bus driver but once we found him and got settled, I took this picture

Oh Boy! Our first excursion!

I look like I left my teeth at home LOL.  Our bus driver just dumped us off at the train and said he’d see us later.  One of the groups on the bus wanted his phone number in case he didn’t show up at the end of the line or if we couldn’t find him.  He laughed and said there was no service where we were going but they shouldn’t worry, he’d find us.  I hope so, I wouldn’t want to be stuck up in Canada for the rest of my life

Those people who bought their excursions from Carnival had a tour guide and

Headsets?

what are those things on their heads?  Oh yah, they get the better verbalized tour by wearing those fancy headsets.  We had to settle for the guy on the train over the speakers that you could hardly hear because the train wheels were so squeeky.  Well, I guess you get what you pay for 

So here we are on our train

Our Train

Do you see that wall on the right?  That’s the bathroom.  Gary and I wonder about the people who, no matter what you’re traveling on, whether it be a plane, a bus or a train, that as soon as they are able, they have to run and use the toilet.  I mean come on!  Didn’t your mother teach you to always go to the bathroom before you left on a trip?  I have to confess, I do like to check out bathrooms, see the decor and maybe how the toilets work ya know.  Just for curiosity sake mind you, not to actually USE the toilet, but I know these people just can’t wait to tinkle.  But geez!  Have a little bladder control will ya?  Whew!  I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Anyway, back to the train ride.  I picked the seat and again, I picked the wrong side, again.  You’d think I’d learn after that train ride we took in Tennessee where we looked at a rock wall for an hour and a half up and an hour and half down.  Everything on this ride was out the left window so we had to keep standing up or go to the very front or rear of the train and stand outside on the platform to see anything.  We did learn somethings from the voice coming out of the speaker.  We learned that this is where the gold miners had to travel the White Pass Summit or the Chilkoot trail to get to the Yukon River that they would then sail down to the Klondike where all the gold was supposed to be (turns out there wasn’t much if any there).  Before the Canadian government would let these miners cross the border, they had to bring 2000 pounds of supplies with them so they wouldn’t starve getting to Klondike.  Now those miners could only carry 40 or 50 pounds at a time so it took them several trip up and down this treacherous trail.  They’d beat their mules trying to get them to haul the stuff up the mountainous path.  It was told that some of the mules jumped to their death in order to get away from the men.

They started building a railroad in 1898 to replace the path the men had to travel.  During the building of that rail, a HUGE bolder fell off the face of the mountain and crushed two miners and their mules.  No one tried to save them because they knew they were dead.  They just placed a cross at the site which is still there today.  It’s probably not the original cross, I’m sure it’s maintained by someone to keep the story alive 

Anyway, seeing as I was on the wrong side of the train I didn’t get a picture of that but I got these cool pictures

Nice steam

That’s the old bridge, keep those beavers away

That’s the front of our train on the new much better bridge

Nice River

Right before we go into a tunnel

All the excursions seemed to be handled by temporary summer workers that lived someplace else during the winter.  I don’t know, it can still get pretty cold here even in the summer.  I think I’d find some place else to get a summer job.

We got off the train and hopped on the bus.  The bus took us the rest of the way to the Canadian border.  After we crossed the border, the Canadian Border Patrol guys got on the bus and looked at our passports.  I guess we didn’t have any illegal aliens on board because the bus driver jumped on and we were off.  The driver stopped at a few non touristy spots so we could get some pictures

He also took some pictures of Gary and I together 

While we were driving down the road back to the ship, I kept seeing these

What is this?

I was wondering what they were.  Gary said it was probably to mark the road so when the show plows came they could tell where the road was and not drive off the cliff.  Mind you, these poles were 20 feet high.  Geez!  I’d hate to be up there during a big snow storm.  I guess that is why I live in Florida now .

All in all it was a great excursion.  We learned a lot about the Gold Rush, saw some beautiful scenery and had a fun train ride.  We got back to the ship and decided to have a few drinks while we waited for the ship to leave.  As we sat in one of our favorite spots, we watch helicopter after helicopter fly past, 4 at a crack, taking people on some kind of excursion.  Then we saw this one

Supply delivery

We wondered where the heck he was going to deliver supplies that way?  Oh well, we enjoyed our drinks and contemplated our next stop…..the capital of Alaska…..Juneau.

So after cruising for a full day, the first place we were going to be stopping was at was the Trace Arm Fjord and we weren’t actually stopping.  It was more like a drive by.

First, the ship had to take on 2 Pilots who would drive the ship in and out of the Fjord.

Pilot transfer boat coming in

Keep in mind, the ship didn’t stop for this transfer of people.  You can see the wake the ship is making in this picture.  If you go to https://youtu.be/RtATesu0vBY  

you can see my video I took while they were getting aboard.  (My first YouTube video BTW )

After they got on board, Gary and I went up to the top deck to take in the scenery

Buoys!

Beautiful picture but it looks like those railing need a little teak oil

Gotta be careful

Apparently you have to be careful by the ice bergs.  They are shaped like a pyramid and some can flip causing possible damage to the ship.

There were a few people who bought an excursion on a smaller boat

Excursion boat

That boat came up along side just like the boat with the Pilots on board. When they transferred the guests to that boat, the ship came to a complete stop.  Can’t have any of those paying guests falling in the water 

After they took off, we continued on our way.  We saw this cruise ship coming out of the entrance to the Fjord

Another cruise ship

Must be a popular Fjord to visit, or maybe it is the only one to be seen by the big ships.

After standing on deck for a while, we decided to move to our stateroom.  Why pay for the balcony if you’re not going to use it, right?

Cold

Colder yet

Too bad it was a little windy and cold out there, but we weren’t going to let that stop us.  We grabbed our binoculars and put on our coats (plus a towel for me, guess I should have brought some warmer clothes) and we settled down to be amazed.

Can you see the seal?

Blue Green water is from the melting Ice

Weird ice berg.

Almost looks like someone chopped this one off the hill.

The rounded landscape means there was ice flow there at one time

A lot of ice bergs

Then we finally came up to the glacier.

Pretty blue

The ship took enough time so both sides of the ship could get a good view.  Look at those people up on top of the Bridge.  I bet they REALLY have a good view.  But I have a chair and a drink so, I think I’m better off.

Wanna see where we are?

Here’s the big route

This is a picture of the I-pad with Gary’s Navionics on it.

Here’s the Fjord. See how they made it blue?

I know the pictures are not the same as being there, but it was sure beautiful.

On to our next stop……..Skagway!

I thought I’d give you a little idea of what the inside of the ship looked like.  The decor was Egyptian/Greek.  We figured when the ship was done doing the Alaskan cruises, it must go to the Med and cruised there for a while.  Every ceiling, wall and flooring had like an Egyptian/Greek feel to it.  Here are some pictures of the center of the ship

Ceiling

Center of ship

Elevator

One of our favorite bars at the center of the ship on the 2nd floor

Fancy restaurant you have to pay to eat at

Upper deck in fancy dining

Looking down to fancy restaurant

Fancy restaurant ceiling

To get up to the fancy restaurant, you could use these steps

Glass stairs

Holy Hoot!  Those were hard to walk on.  I must be part dog because I could barely walk on them. Woof!

But we couldn’t afford to eat at the pay fancy restaurants….after we bought the drink package…..so we had to settle for the buffet place.  This was their idea of pizza

So called Pizza

Worst tasting pizza I ever had, and they were open 24 hours.  Oh boy 

We did get to eat at the free fancy free restaurant.

Oysters

They served the good food there and you could have double or triple of anything they served.  Gary got the double helping of oysters.  Slurp, slurp.  I passed, too slimy for me. They pulled out your chair for you there and they didn’t even pull it all the way out so you’d fall on the floor!  Then they laid your CLOTH napkin in your lap.  No nose blowin in those napkins.  My Mama done brings me up right .

There was this bar that had a really unusual decor that we saw while walking around the ship.  It was called the Night Club.  I think maybe it opens really late cause we never saw people in it during the day and us old people went to bed pretty early.

It was early morning when we passed by it and I noticed the door that was usually closed on the revolving doors wasn’t so I just had to take some pictures

Night Club

Night Club

Bar Stools in the Night Club

Wall in the Night Club

Wall in the Night Club

Bar area in the Night Club

Ceiling in the Night Club

If you were really drunk, all these Mathusela faces could give you the whillies.   As we were walking out, one of the crew saw us walking out and locked the door behind us.  He said something in a foreign language.  Whoops, apparently we weren’t supposed to be in there, but it was unlocked when we went in.  Good thing they didn’t catch us rifling the register drawer 

The ship had 2 adult entertainment places.  Both were in the front of the ship.  The first one was like an auditorium, 3 stories high.

This is on the 2nd story of the auditorium

Just look at the details

Us ready to be entertained

Then one night after taking in the show, we wanted to see the comedian.  He was a couple of floors down so we took the stairs

Going down the stairs to the comedy club

Still going down the stairs

Crazy huh?  The the comedy bar was just as bright

This is where the comedy shows took place, on the 1st level

He had PG-13 shows and R shows, we went to both.  Actually, if the dropped the fenhimer from the R show, he could of made it a PG show.  Both were hilarious.

Bright decor in the comedy room

Fancy walls

Ceiling

I almost had to wear my sunglasses in this room.

So the ship was very decorated.  I think seeing as we were going on an Alaskan cruise we expected more bears and moose decoration and not so much with the Greek Gods.  But we got used to it.  And now our first destination stop it coming up…..the Tracy Arm Fjord!

For those of you that have never been on a cruise, they have a thing called a muster drill.  What this is, is each room is assigned to a certain part of the ship to go to in case of an emergency.  We had muster station C.  So they call this drill before they leave the port.  Here is Gary getting ready to go to the station

Gary ready to go….on 2008 cruise

Here is where we ended up

Station C Mustard Station

Now this is a requirement.  They keep everyone standing there until EVERYONE makes it to their Muster Station.  As we waited, and waited, and waited, I remembered the guy who was sitting in our favorite bar, sipping a drink and playing on his computer, on the top floor of the ship, and I just KNEW this was the lone straggler that thought he was too important to go to his Muster Station.  So the rest of us sat out there and sweated, with no drinks to cool us down.  FINALLY they found the last lone rebellion and got him/her to their station and they released us from ours.  Yaaaaah!  Bye Bye

Seattle

Hello drink!

While we were in another port, Gary and I had just gotten back from one of our excursions and the ship called another drill but it was just for the crew.  They said there was a hazardous chemical spill and someone had been sent to the infirmary.  As we sat at the bar and drank one of our 68 drinks, we watched as some of the crew lined up in their station

Crew at Drill Station

and listened as they announced various scenarios for the drill.  I’m disappointed we couldn’t wear our life jackets to our drill

At least those guys got to have their drill in the air conditioned comfort of the ship 

So….how did we end up on an Alaskan cruise you ask?  Remember that wedding and hurricane that happened last September?  When we had bought plane tickets to go to a wedding and then had to ditch the tickets, grab the cat and all our worldly possessions and high tail it out of Dodge before the hurricane made a direct hit on our condo?  Yah, those tickets.  Well, the airlines wouldn’t refund us money but gave us vouchers instead and we had to use them before September.  It just so happened our 40^th wedding anniversary was coming up and Gary and I had had an Alaskan cruise on our bucket list, so I decided to combine all 3 events and schedule a trip to Alaska while we were up north.  It was an 8 day 7 night cruise on the Carnival cruise lines.  We were going to see a fjord, Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, Victoria Canada and Seattle (Seattle is where the ship left and returned from).  We were very excited.  I packed the binoculars so we could see everything up close and Gary packed his I-Pad that had Navionics loaded on it so we could track the ships movements.  That way we’d know they weren’t trying to take us to take us to Oregon or something and then try to pass it off as Alaska.

So we went all out seeing as it was our 40th and all.  We got a balcony room

See the I-Pad?

Waiting for luggage

Our Balcony

As we cruise

We bought the drink package too because we only had to spend $60 a day to break even.  That seemed doable.  At close to $9 a drink, I figured it would be a snap, besides, it also included a tip.  We did find out that while we were in the port of Seattle they charged us some kind of tax on each drink so those drinks cost us about .80.  Those sneaky dirty dogs!  Here are some of the drinks we had

Chocolate Martini

Mudslide

Bud Light

Rum and Coke

Harvey Wallbanger

Appletini

XO

Another Chocolate Martini

Bloody

I don’t know what the drink was but it must have been good

Chocolate shake

Drambuie

Another beer

Margarita

Strawberry Margarita

Another Strawberry Margarita

Some delicious frozen concoction

Not a strawberry Margarita but equally as good

A couple more drinks on our balcony

Bloody with olives

Gin and Tonic

After a while I’d forget to take a picture of the drink and I figured you wouldn’t want to look at a bunch of empty glasses.  We did manage to pound down 68 drinks between the two of us and we certainly had our daily requirement of fresh fruit served in those drinks 

We did have a few bars that were our favorites.  One of our favorites was call “Serenity”,

Serenity – No Children Allowed!

Even a hot tub

Those have cushions in them

Gary relaxing

it was located on the stern of the boat, the top level.  There were no kids allowed and they had a lot of great places to lounge.  They did have a pool but it was to friggin cold to go swimming 

We had another spot we liked to sit

Prop your feet up and enjoy the view

This was located just around the corner from another one of our favorite bars and was on the 2nd level.   Nice comfy chairs, nice big window to look out of.  Close walking distance to the bar.  Nice and warm.  Great place to sit and drink.

We even went to a sports bar

Sports Bar

Can you believe it?  And there wasn’t a soul in it.  I guess if your on a cruise the wife is saying “No way are you sitting in front of a TV watching the game while we are on this cruise!”

Well, I must admit, I was the one who fell down on the job of drinking their quota.   I just couldn’t keep up.  I learned my lesson….I am just to old for a drink package