Cruising to Alaska

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17th May

We can't believe we have been away a month today, we are having the best of best times.

The coach journey, replacing the rail journey was surprisingly good, they kept us supplied with juice, muffins and newspapers, we all had to get off with luggage at the Canadian border, they glanced at us and we got back on again arriving in Vancouver nearly one hour early. The first thing that struck us was the amount of Sikhs, maybe we haven't seen any over the last month but our cab driver, originally from Pakistan said many had settled here and the road we had come in on, Highway 99 has a stretch full of various mosques and temples and everyone knows that bit as the highway to heaven!



Our hotel was overlooking the bay and we had floor to ceiling Windows with a fab view of the bay and the mountains, some still with snow on top. The bay was full of all types of boats from little rowing bows up to large container carriers so something happening all the time. A popular form of transport is seaplane and these are taking off and landing constantly throughout daylight hours and are good to watch.





We decided to make the most of the day and bought 24 hours tickets for the hop on hop off bus which covered a large area and is always good to get your bearings, we stayed on for the complete circuit which lasted 2.5 hours and we liked Vancouver instantly. Its popularity shot up after an 80s expo and the property boom has continued with downtown flats changing hands for $millions, the skyline looks like Hong Kong with loads of high rises but many of them with a bit of interesting design to them and now and again a more traditional, solid 1930's building with Art Deco features. Huge shopping area and stacks of restaurants to suit all tastes.



We had been recommended to an Italian restaurant for dinner which was good, a young lady who turned out to be an actress sat next to us and when she heard our accents, out came the pen and paper and a list of 'must sees' in Vancouver, some of which we did and it was a mix from swish restaurants to watch the sunset to the lively gay area. We were back at our hotel in time for the 9pm canon, every night at 9pm, originally a signal to Mariners, the canon goes off right opposite our room, we see the flash and then 10 seconds later we hear the boom.



18th May

Up early to get the most out of our bus ticket and we headed to Stanley Park, which is a huge park within the city with lots of different parts, some cultivated and some wild. We went to the rose garden which was pretty and in fact a wedding was going on which they saw the funny side having a tour bus in the middle of it. We walked through quite a bit of the park and it was great to see it so well used. One area had quite a few statuesque herons waiting for something tasty to pass their way and somebody pointed out to us all their nests up in the trees, we could see a dozen or more. There is a path, divided for pedestrians and cyclist that runs from Downtown right out to Stanley Park and beyond which is 17 miles long and really well used. English Bay, certainly looks a bit English, this is the place to watch the sunset and they have used up loads of fallen tree trucks along the beach to sit against or sit on.



We found a hairdresser and decided we both needed a haircut, Sal's stylist was from Bulgaria and Col thinks his was from Vietnam but she chatted away to him the entire time and he couldn't understand a word she said but they laughed a lot! End result was they both did a good job and we sneaked back on the bus even though our tickets had expired but nobody checked.



Vancouver gets its name from Captain George Vancouver, he was a Naval Officer and explored and charted the northwestern Pacific coast with Captain Cook who is also associated with the area and his statue stands at the harbour in Victoria on Vancouver Island.





Found a great place for dinner, it is part of a chain called Spaghetti Factory, really good food and really good price as well. The restaurant is in a district called Gastown, Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood and grew from a single tavern started John 'Gassy Jack' Deighton in 1867 who came from Hull. The gassy part comes from his ability to tell a good story. He offered a barrel of beer to men if they could build him a saloon in a day, which of course they did. Lots of lovely old Victorian architecture and a bit of a glimpse into the past, again though, a lot of homeless people and street begging, the problem is everywhere. There is a steam clock which is good to watch on the quarter hour.



19th May

We booked a tour to Vancouver Island, 7am departure..... Not used to alarm clocks! Half hour drive to the ferry then 1.5 hours on the ferry. There were about 20 others on the tour who were all nice and the driver was great too. We went into Victoria, the capital for British Columbia which seemed odd on an island but the story goes that Victoria and Vancouver were both vying to be the capital and it was going to be decided in Victoria by a debate of the Mayors of each area. They knew that the Mayor of Vancouver liked a bevy and proceeded to get him drunk so that he failed to arrive for the debate and Victoria won by default! We knew there was a large famous hotel, The Empress but we expected the rest to be sort of quaint and colonial but we were completely wrong, it is a bustling city, filled with all the shops we see everywhere else and the island is big, it would take 4 hours+ to drive north to south. We had plenty of time to wander around, see the sites, a bit of retail and lunch.



The driver had been talking about polite Canadians and whilst waiting to cross the road, a car drove into the back of a smart Lexus. The lady got out of the Lexus, looked at the damage and said, don't worry, there was damage there anyway which I need to get fixed, then got back in the car and drove off! We stood there with our mouths open and the Americans beside us were speechless!



We went on to Butchart Gardens in the afternoon, still owned and run by the family, it was gorgeous. It is there for no other purpose than to look pretty and it fits that bill perfectly. Great day, really enjoyed it.



20th May

Easy day today so thought a bit of retail would be good, we popped into the Hudson Bay Company department store and it was sometime before we popped out again with some bags of bargains, Hilary, you would be proud of us!



21st May

Our hotel forms the pier where the cruise ships come in. We woke early to see our ship coming in, closely followed by 2 more. Vancouver has really built up this business and is great for a stop for cruise companies as the tour buses stop nearby and you can walk to the shops. From our point of view, it couldn't be easier, we packed our bags, the hotel porters came and picked them up and next time we saw them was in our cabin on the ship. We checked out and had breakfast in a pleasant waterside restaurant. Our info said we could check in from 12, so we wandered off in that general direction, we had seen the entrances for embarkation the previous day and thought we would just amble on to the ship and the rest of the day would be ours until we sailed at 5pm. WRONG! We went through the embarkation door to this enormous holding room full of people and rather than go through all the dull details, this was the first queue of many, mostly standing in long, long, slow moving lines, the worst being American border control which we had to go through the long process we had previously done in SF. Three and a half hours later, we got on the ship, bloody hell, we were fed up and as they tried to make the queues look shorter, they were constantly shouting out 2 by 2, side by side, sounded like we were getting on Noah's bloomin' ark!! We were immediately called for lifeboat drill most people couldn't understand and even more couldn't hear what was going on, when people complained to our lifeboat 'Commander' aka singer called Chase (!) in the cruise show, they weren't really interested or perhaps didn't understand/hear either. Anyway it was fun to listen to them reading out the names of the many Chinese passengers, butchered would be the word!



Our cabin was really nice, it is amazingly well appointed with loads of space so we could unpack and not live out of a suitcase for a change! We have a verandah which we were looking forward to using as hopefully the Eagles will fly by and the whales will leap and dive right beside us. The ship was very swish and seemed huge, we left Vancouver and enjoyed the skyline from the bay. There seemed to be a number of choices of where to eat so got lucky and had a lovely meal sharing a table with a couple from Canada, she was hilarious and another nice couple from Washington State. We trekked back to our cabin, it really did seem a long way, to check on the vast list of entertainment opportunities for the evening, but decided we couldn't be bothered so checked out the TV and had a huge catalogue of films to watch, very cosy. Both of us were thinking of this cruise as more of a means of transportation and hadn't given much thought to all the entertainment and activities that go on with a cruise. Our cruise was taking us to an area known as the Inside Passage of Alaska.





22nd May

Like everywhere we have stayed, fabulously comfortable bed and really lovely quality bed clothes too and we had a great sleep. We left our curtains open so woke up early to the dawn and were surprised we could still see land and also a small boat, when we looked through the binoculars, we could see it was the pilot boat who must have had to accompany us all this way. It's a cruise so food, food and more food and joined a small queue for breakfast, a really chatty Aussie in front of us with a really miserable wife who didn't turn round to look at us or speak to us except when he said they had been on the Rocky Mountaineer and we said we were going, she asked 'gold?' The train has 3 levels with gold being the top, we wanted to say platinum, they have created that just for us! Miserable old cow. (There are 100's of people on this ship but we manage run into this couple each day, he is so friendly and chatty and she completely ignores us, no eye contact and certainly no verbal). Another couple of Aussies from Tasmania we have met up with a couple of times are great fun, they always have a tale to tell, we liked the story of their flight from somewhere in USA to Vancouver to connect with the cruise, there was a 'service' dog sitting in the aisle between them, we have noticed that there are a lot of dogs they try to pass off as working dogs, this one was to give emotional support (!) but farted for the entire flight and the woman in the row in front of them started singing Kum by yah as the flight came into land, loudly!!!! It could only happen to them!!



They have a huge list of things going on, there is a digital room full of computers where you can learn different aspects of Windows. There was a talk on the geology of Alaska which we went to and was interesting, Bridge, Ping Pong tournament, black jack lessons, flower arranging demo, a talk on acupuncture, art auction, wine tasting, every beauty treatment known to man, loads of shops...... The list goes on, we found a corner and read our books though we were probably doing more people watching. Tonight was formal night which generally means getting dressed up, we weren't going to bring a cocktail frock and penguin suit which was the requirement on previous cruise, but we changed and went to the casual dining and decided we looked smarter than anybody else! There are several different restaurants and the choice of food is mind blowing and the standard is top notch both for taste and presentation. We are beginning to find our way around and are really impressed with all the lovely furnishings, plenty of seating in lots of different areas offering various genres of music, reading, drinking or just quiet areas and everywhere is so clean. There are pieces of art, paintings and sculptures together with fabulous fresh flower arrangements dotted about. One touch we love is the carpets in the many elevators are changed everyday with the day of the week written on them which is great as you always loose track of the days when on holiday. The majority of the crew are from Philippines or Indonesia and couldn't be nicer, we know it is their job but they really do go the extra mile to make sure we have all we need...... We have far more than we need.....



23rd May

With the clocks going back an hour, we were up even earlier than usual as a beautiful sunrise streamed into our cabin. The ship navigated its way through a channel with mountains either side, mostly covered in pine trees but some of the mountains had snow on top and generally that will stay there year round. The water was really calm and we glided along but even if the water isn't so calm, we can hardly feel the ship moving. We saw some whales, you can spot their spout and then keep your eyes glued on the water for them to pop up again, very exciting!!



We arrived in our first Alaskan port of call Juneau, early afternoon, named after a gold prospector. It is the state capital and not accessible by road! We had booked a tour to see the Mendenhall Glacier and to go whale watching, to date, our whale watching careers had been similar to Pelican spotting. Again, we had a picture in our head of what an Alaskan town should look like and bits of Juneau are like this, old fashioned western town with lots of colourful buildings and it did partly fit that bill but some dreadful town planner/architect has come along in the 60/70s and built some extremely ugly brutalist style buildings that would look dreadful if they were car parks but they aren't and they are in the heart of the town.



You feel with Alaska you are travelling to a remote spot, ha! There were 4 other cruise ships in port which must have meant another 8000-10000 bods about and, for whatever reason, our ship had to anchor off shore and we were tendered across which all takes time but fairly efficient.



We joined our tour with a coach driver who thought he was a comedian and had next to zero info about the town which was a shame as we were keen to know how people lived here, but we think, he like many were here for the season which is April to September and swell the population by at least 50%. I think a grumpy miserable London coach driver is preferable to this guy with his long rambling tales that always had a disappointing end 😞. We arrived at the Glacier which was pretty impressive, it is 1.5 miles wide. There were 2 options, the shorter walk to the viewing point or a longer one to a waterfall where you could also view the glacier. Sal chose the shorter and Col the longer but unfortunately, he went the wrong way and found himself on a wilderness trail with warnings of bears so turned back, call yourself a man?! Bits of the glacier were breaking off and were floating in the crystal clear water and they were a spectacular blue colour, witnessing global warming we guess. There were so many coaches here, they had a bit of a system which was rapidly failing and becoming chaotic. We were missing 2 people, he gave them a 10 minutes and then, quite rightly set off, but somebody in the coach spotted them but he said he couldn't do anything about it (we thought he could) so he left them behind with a $60 taxi ride back to the ship and no whale watching, we felt gutted for whoever they were and maybe English wasn't their 1st language and they hadn't understood his directions.



Sal made a new friend, Robin (female) - toilet buddy. The queue for ladies for the loo was as ridiculous as ever and moving very slowly for the 2 loos that were there, she suggested we take over the gents and grabbed a guy that it didn't seem that she knew, grabbed Sal, told the man to stand guard and in we went, did what we needed to do, the ladies still in the long line looked very jealous when we reappeared, surprising they didn't follow us in, but what was funny was the poor chap she had ambushed who now was managing a long line of men waiting to go in !



Anyway, we did make it to the whale watching and we were not disappointed?. We saw quite a few and have a number of photographs of large black blobs and tails going back into the water! We stopped taking photographs so that we didn't miss anything. Even the crew got really excited when we saw them bubble feed, they circle the fish somehow and force them together and then about 6 whales leapt out of the water at the same time grabbing the fish with seagulls at the ready for the ones they miss, WOW, it really was so fantastic to watch. The area also is a breeding area for American bald eagles and there were dozens of them around, many were young that were flying about with watchful parents in the trees. Every now and again, a harbour seal would pop up too. We went to a lodge on a remote island for a wild Alaskan salmon cookout, really good The tour lasted for the entire time in Juneau which was a shame as we would have enjoyed a wander around the small town.



24th May

We cruised into Skagway and this had been one of two towns in the area that was the starting point for the Klondike Gold Rush. What a story! We had heard the name but didn't know much about it. In 1896, George Carmack and 2 indigenous or First Nations chaps, Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie, found a tiny bit of gold in the Klondike region of the Yukon in NW Canada but enough to start the stampede. Between 1896 and 1899, 100,000 men came to stake their claim to a bit of land and try their luck. Two towns Dyea pronounced Di-eee, and Skagway grew up as starting points, the route from Skagway via the White Pass Trail was longer but it was tougher from Dyea, via the Chilkoot trail. On that trail a long staircase was carved into the ice, they called it the golden staircase but it was treacherous and hard. So many were dying making the journey but usually for lack of supplies, the Canadian authorities made each man carry provisions to last a year, this with their equipment generally weighed a ton and it would take each man 40 journeys up and down this ice staircase to get their provisions to the top, but still miles of tough trekking ahead. They started to use mules and horses but worked them into the ground until they could go no further or starved to death as they couldn't carry horse supplies as well as their own, there is a pass there today called dead horse pass and a newish memorial to the animals in town. Dawson city en route, swelled from a population of 500 in 1896 to 30,000 in 1898.





In 1898, taking just two years they built The White Pass Railway. It is a narrow gauge railroad an 'International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark' along with the likes of Eiffel Tower. Today it is a tourist train and offers a breathtaking panorama of mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls but also an astonishing feat of engineering, hard work, blood, sweat and tears, it must have been so difficult and dangerous to build. For us, the scenery was fabulous but you also got to see the route up ahead as we turned and twisted our way up the mountain we could see some of the bridges and we use that word loosely, supported by trestles as they call them which is a wooden framework supporting the 'bridge' it looked a bit scary and rickety but we made it!



Skagway would have been a riotous place during the gold rush with bars and saloons and brothels everywhere with plenty of people ready to take your money on booze and women or just con you in any way they could. The most notorious was Jefferson Randolph a notorious swindler and conman more commonly known as Soapy Smith. He eventually died in a shootout and we saw his grave in the town cemetery.



Within 2 years the gold rush was over, all the land had been claimed so many just turned around and made the arduous journey home. A few got lucky and made it rich with the gold and so did others, setting up saloons, brothels, eating places in Skagway. For Dyea, it as a different story, once the railway arrived, that was the end of Dyea and today there is nothing left of a town but it is becoming a tourist destination as a wilderness and wildlife photography destination.



Today Skagway has a population of 1106 and their modern day gold rush is cruise ships with about 1.25m visitors last year. Petrol is $3 per gallon and milk is $7 a gallon, we chatted with a man in town who said he wouldn't live anywhere else but it was challenging to live in Skagway and that probably goes for most of Alaska.



The town itself looked like a traditional town from a John Wayne movie with a touch of Disney to smarten it all up but it looked good and was great to walk around, we had a beer at the Alaskan brewing company and met a nice couple from another cruise ship, Kevin and Tracey who live on an island north of Seattle. The town is small and 'parked' at the end of the Main Street was our ship! Skagway is located at the northern tip of Alaska's inside passage, the name comes from native Tlingit name Skagua which means the place that the north wind blows



25th May

Today we were on the ship all day but cruising beautiful Glacier Bay which is a national park. Out on our balcony at 6.30 am looking at the gorgeous colours on the snow covered mountains, we saw a little boat turn up, bringing Glacier Park Rangers and a lady from the local indigenous tribe on board, via a rope ladder! The locals were from a tribe called Tlingit. The scenery was spectacular and the light changed all the time to make it look different. The sea was a milky green colour. We were out on deck soon after 7am and saw quite a few whales which is just so exciting! Once you see one, they dive then you spend the next few minutes scanning the water for the next place they will pop up, usually by spotting the water spout. One of the Rangers starting giving a commentary to various parts of the ship and she was joined by the Tlingit lady. There was a biting wind but we couldn't go in and miss this, so popped backed to the cabin, put a few more layers on and waddled back on deck to watch with a little help from an Irish coffee on the way, fabulous day.



26th May

Ketchikan was our port of call, originally founded in 1885 as a salmon cannery site and was called Salmon capital of the world. Today it is known as the rain capital of Alaska, average rainfall being 200 inches, so to make it sound better, they call it liquid sunshine. We got lucky and it was a beautiful warm day when we arrived and no rain. We had no tour booked and enjoyed the town and a few Alaskan beers. Creek street is the most famous street and very attractive, when planning the street, they found they couldn't blast into the Rock, so all the buildings which were wooden were built on wooden stilts. It was very pretty though to us, it looked like some of those stilts could do with replacing. Most of these buildings were part of Ketchikan's notorious red like district with a motto 'where men and salmon come upstream to spawn' ..... Despite that, we liked Ketchikan.



27th May

Sea day today for the last day of our cruise, Sal had a pass to the hydrotherapy area which was like a large jacuzzi but much stronger, in fact, in one part of the pool which was as hot as a bath you had to hang on for grim death as it felt like at best it would sweep you off your feet and at worst it would rip your cozzie off! Once you had been boiled in the pool, you could move on to the griddle which was a shaped bed which was tiled in glitzy metallic tiles and heated up, you had to lay on a towel otherwise your skin would be griddled! We had a very enjoyable dinner with the Canadian couple from the first night then watched an illusionist who was excellent.



28th May

Can't believe the cruise is over all ready, we have loved it, the cruise was top notch and we have loved what we have seen in Alaska, particularly the wildlife. The ship berthed next to our hotel so we grabbed our suitcases and walked back to the hotel! Wonderful. We needed another trip to the launderette and the one we went to this time was the best. It was run by Mr Wong who was the world authority on all things laundry and was desperate to upgrade us to the larger machine that cost a dollar more, we succumbed. He didn't shut up so we went next door for a coffee, a couple from South Carolina had arrived by the time we returned and Mr Wong told us there was 1.5 minutes until our machine finished, he was dead right. He was going through the same routine with the new customers, then an odd young chap comes in, strips down to his t shirt and boxers and throws everything in the dryer, Mr Wong doesn't usually allow dryer only, because, because, because..... But he drew the line at this chap putting his shoes in! It was pouring with rain but God knows what he had been up to to be quite so wet. Anyway, he started to skip up and down the shop and then doing exercises for his back and he had a very weird knobbly spine. Mr Wong soon got the attention back on himself and talked and talked, he thought the whole Donald Trump fiasco was very funny indeed and was taking the p out of the Americans which they weren't enjoying much but did agree with him. We had to leave which was a shame as it was very entertaining and Mr Wongs ability to tell each person when their machine would be finished to the second was funny!



Our ship we disembarked earlier was outside our window and already loading the next passengers, the weather had improved for the fist time all day so we decided to go and wave them off from the quay, wishing it was a week ago and we were just setting off. Quite amazing how manoeuvrable this enormous 86,000 ton ship can shift so easily and speedily. The heavens opened again and we retreated to our lovely hotel though our fab view had been cut to a few yards because of the bad weather but cleared in time to see the 9pm canon fire.

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Photos

Nieuw Amsterdam
Home for a week

View of the Bay
Pan Pacific Hotel Vancouver

Disused part of White Pass Railroad
But only recently!