How To Hug A Cruise Ship

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Well, it's official. I'm a cruise-ship convert. This is not to say that I will be from now on chosing to cruise my way to every destination I have in my life travel "to-do" list, but rather I mean this to imply that I have honestly embraced the cruising experience. After the paradigm shift I mentioned previously (where I came to the realization that a cruise vacation is as much about the ship itself as it is about the destination), I was able to fully "feel the love" of being in the floating resort.

As I type right now I'm literally "at sea" and yes, I did say that I was not going to surrender to pay the crazy onboard Internet charges, but I caved. Not due to boredom or anything - trust me on that, but rather I wanted to post an update and hating that I didn't have the time while in port for our short time in Ketchikan yesterday and the fact that I'm pretty sure I'll lack the time in Victoria.

Now for the bad news, since I am on the ship, I also will be unable to post pictures until later which REALLY bummed me out since I didn't realize this until after logging on. So sadly you'll all have to wait to see my pictures of Ketchikan and the others I took in Sitka - and possibly even the ones from Victoria I'll take later.

What I wanted to make sure I did was at least chronicle the last couple of days since we're now nearing the end of the trip which has really turned into a delight despite my first day or so of not understanding exactly what it is that I'd gotten myself into!

So Sitka. Sitka was Wednesday and is known as the "Paris of the North" although, despite a exhaustive Google search, I am unable to find a source that can explain why it was given that nickname. Another off-hand question...why is it not the other way around? Why isn't Paris called instead the "Sitka of France" or something comparable? Thoughts? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

After I left the Internet cafe in Sitka, I headed over to an semi-out-of-the-way coffee shop which a local recommended called "The Back Door". Great coffee and even greater molasses cookies. Seriously the best molasses cookie I think I have ever had. It was big and warm and postively melted in my mouth. In Sitka. Who knew? In fact, I enjoyed that cookie so much that I would return to Sitka just to have another one. Perhaps the Sitka visitors bureau should add this little-exposed fact in their tourist information packets or Chamber of Commerce publications...? Just a thought.

So with cookie in hand, I meandered over to Chapel Hill for the view and ran into a couple from our group so I had some company for the rest of my wanderings. We visited St. Michael's which is a Russian Orthodox Church just about in the center of town. Apparently from 1840 to 1872, Sitka was the seat of the Russian Orthodox Diocese which goverened all of the Russian Orthodox Churches in North America. The original structure was completed in 1848, but burned down in a major fire which hit the town in 1966. The building as it currently stands is an exact replica of the original and, amazingly enough, they were able to save roughly 90% of the artifacts that still reside in the chruch (icons, paintings, chandeliers, etc.).

After St. Michaels, we walked over to the Sitka Raptor Center. I will admit here that my first thought was the raptor center had something to do with dinosaurs, although I didn't tell anyone this since I was pretty sure I was wrong. I was. The Raptor Center is in fact a wild bird rehab. They receive injured raptors (bald eagles, owls, hawks, etc.) from all over North America and work to rehabilite them for release back into the wild.

I have seen more than my share of bald eagles up-close-and-personal (as Es can attest to after our trip to Homer), but they never cease to impress me with their size and magestical presence. They command attention - and it clearly doesn't matter if they're sitting on a piling, soaring through the sky, or hangin' in a pseudo-habitat.

Realizing that we were cutting it close if we were to head back to the ship on foot, we called a cab with a rather unique list of charges posted inside including a $100 charge for "pukers". Naturally questions arose, so our driver explained that they often do a lot of shuttling of individuals home from the bars and so "pukers" became a nuicence because, well, who wants to clean up that? Hence the extra charge.

The rest of the evening onboard ship was I think the best yet, followed closely by last night - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Wednesday night first.

I went with a bunch of the group to dinner and then killed some time before the semi-finalist round of "Superstar" (this is the American Idol-esque show they do onboard that I mentioned in my last entry). Since they were having some technical difficulties, the MC for the event and the cruise director were having a time trying to come up with jokes to tell the audience. After a few rather lame ones, I ran up to the stage and stuck my head around the curtain and said, "Hey, why don't you guys ask the audience if we have any jokes to share?" Our cruise director asked if I knew any and of course I couldn't turn down an invitation like that! So I got up and shared a rendition of the best all-time Alaska catch-phrase that Janelle and I used so often I've lost count when explaining to people why we had difficulty meeting men in Alaska despite what is perceived as the exceptionally favorable ratio: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." Thankfully the audience thought this was as funny as we always have...and they don't even know how true it is!

After the "Superstar" came a ventriloquist act in the main lounge area which was really cool. Never having seen aone live before, I was thoroughly impressed and laughed so hard my face actually began to hurt. Finished out the evening relaxing with a drink (or three) in one of the ships many bars.

And that was Wednesday, more or less.

Out late, up later. We had arrived in Ketchikan early yesterday morning, but I didn't force myself out of bed until nearly 9:30. When I pulled back the balcony curtains, I was smacked in the face by bright sunshine and clear, blue skies - a welcome break from the previous few days of mostly clouds and rain...made even more amazing when you have the knowledge that Ketchikan is the city that gets the most rainfall in all of North America.

I took a shower and got myself off the ship by 10:30. Unfortunately we only had until 12:30 or so to explore which is why I didn't have time to do the Internet thing while in port. I went up and down the roads right along the port, up the infamous Creek Street - Ketchikan's former Red Light District so named for the creek that runs along its side which, as the old saying goes which was plastered across every t-shirt I saw, "is the only creek in the world both men and salmon go up to spawn".

In search of totem poles, I wandered a little further into the residental area and ended up giving some pruning feedback to a local who was staring at a flowering bush in his yard, but otherwise didn't see much in the way of residents - I think they had all retreated when they saw the approaching cruise ships, perhaps wisely.

I was back on the boat by about 11:45, ate some lunch outside on the Aft Deck by the pool and then went to a couple of events onboard. This inlcuded getting roped in by a 12-year-old to play an adjusted version of "Family Feud". I had just gone in to watch, but had a difficult time saying "no" to her when she begged and said they had to have an adult in order to play. And so I caved and so it was me and four 12-year-olds. Bet you all wish you could have seen that! I sort of felt like I was auditioning for "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" We actually didn't do too badly (all things considered) and lasted through a couple of rounds, although the question we lost on came down to one of the girls who must not have understood the question because when asked to name one of the top five creatures that people would wipe out if they could (think spiders, mosquitoes, etc.), her answer was "fireflies". Hm.

Afterwards, I wandered around the ship a little and hit dinner alone on the Lido deck (everyone else was at "formal night" which I had more-or-less boycotted since I didn't have the space to pack a cocktail dress before leaving). After dinner I met up with some people for the final show put on in total Broadway splendor - seriously. I've been to a lot of shows and what these performers did for us last night rivals much of what I've seen in and around Times Square.

After the show we hit the much ado-ed about "dessert buffet" where I'm sure one could literally drown in chocolate if one so desired which, in my book wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Then a handful of us then went dancing until...well, there's some debate as to what time it was. It was the night we changed the clocks back from AK to West Coast time, and we weren't sure whether the clocks we saw had been updated yet or not. Either way, it was late.

This morning we had our group farewell meeting and then attended the disembarkation session where just about all 800 of the cruise ship crew lined the stage and sang for us (I have some pictures of that as well which I'll surely post later). It was a little cheese, but it was fun cheese - like perhaps gouda.

We arrive in Victoria, BC tonight around 6pm. I may or may not have time to get online again before heading home on Saturday night. If not, I'll definitely post another blog (WITH pictures) when I get back home on Sunday.

So to get back to the title of this entry - how do you hug a cruise ship? Well, I haven't entirely figured that out yet...my go-go-gadget arms have been malfunctioning... I may just have to settle for hugging the crew. I doubt I'll have time for all 800 of them but perhaps a select few.

And there you have it. I'm a cruise convert and am definitely feeling a strong affinity for the ship in general - I'm only sorry it took so long for this to set in!

Thanks for reading - I know it's not as fun when there aren't any pictures to keep you entertained... I will add those when I get home.

In the meantime, hope you're all having fun in your normal, ship-less, mountain-less, Alaska-less lives...

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Photos

The Ships In Port
You can get a better idea as to the scale of them when you look at the smaller boat passing.

Sitka
This is a full pan of Sitka view I took from the balcony of my room.

In Line At The Fish House (Ketchikan)
These people were all in line to get into the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show which was in the building next door.

Creek Street (Ketchikan)
Former Ketchikan red light district - "The only creek in the world that both men and salmon go up to spawn"

Comments

[Kristin]

ironic
Hey! I'm looking up stuff on Asheville, NC for when we go to Biltmore and get this-it's called the "Paris of the South" How funny that you were in the "Paris of the North" in Alaska, I"ll be at the one in NC.. wonder where the Paris' of the East and West are.. :)

[Jo]

Paris of the West...
...is surely Minot, the Magic City