Enjoy!

And this was our honeymoon… I feel even closer to Wayne than I did before we left, though I would not have thought that was possible. He planned this whole trip and he was *awesome* – he took care of things but was considerate of what I wanted, he was patient with my occasional limitations, and we had a great time just being together. It almost didn’t matter what we did, but the fact that we were doing really fun stuff just made it even better.

Cruising isn’t appropriate for every vacation, and it has a few drawbacks, but I think we will definitely be doing this again. Next time to somewhere warm, so we can spend more time outside!

I finally got a good night’s sleep, but I knew as soon as I woke up that the creeping crud had finally gotten to me. I don’t know if it was the dip in the hot tub, the end of the trip, or just chance, but this was the day that the cold turned into a sinus infection. *sigh*

Regardless, there was no time to dawdle. We showered, dressed and finished packing, and headed off to get some breakfast. At the buffet, of course.

When we returned to the room we were a bit surprised to find that the steward was already cleaning it even though our stuff was still there. I know they have a very short time to turn everything around, but that seemed wrong to me. He had already cleaned the bathroom and then I used it again – I wonder if he re-cleaned it or if the next people didn’t have as clean a bathroom as they should have? Was my icky Kleenex still in the trash can when they checked in?

We had opted to carry our own bags off the ship, to make a faster getaway, so we rolled everything out into the elevator lobby. We waited for several elevators to come, but each one was full by the time it reached us. We finally decided to walk down (from deck 10 to deck 7). This was one of those moments when I probably should be more of a princess than I am, but I carried the nearly-50 pound bag down by myself.

We rolled off and got in a taxi to the Amtrak station, where we checked our bags. We then walked to the nearest Starbucks and hung out there for a couple of hours. I had initially planned on walking around downtown Seattle during that time, but I was really feeling awful. :(

The train ride back was uneventful; we both slept through most of it.

Scott and Julia (our friends who live next door) picked us up, which was *hugely* appreciated. We carried our bags in, greeted the fur kids and chatted with Juli for a few minutes, and then immediately left to take me to Kaiser Urgent Care. After returning with antibiotics, Wayne took Juli home and that finally concluded our adventure.

Wayne made a big deal out of my birthday, calling me birthday girl and asking me what I wanted to do all the time. But it was very hard to feel like the day was special, because the whole *week* was so special. Not that that’s a bad thing…

I got a bit more sleep but was still feeling crummy, so Wayne went off to the on-board store to see what they had. He got me some cold medicine and some cough syrup, and those both helped some. It was a very low-key day, which also helped; I didn’t need to expend much energy.

We had breakfast at the buffet, despite it being my special day, because we took too long getting moving and it was the only thing still serving breakfast when we rolled out of the cabin. That was really ok; breakfast at Versailles would have been served to us, but the food would have been disappointing.

After breakfast we went back to the cabin; I got caught up on my blog posts and Wayne read on his Kindle. He decided he wanted to go sit in a hot tub before we got off the ship, so we went up to the pool deck to check out the air temperatures. It was reasonably warm, considering it was overcast and we were going pretty fast, so we suited up and got in the hot tub. At first I wasn’t going to join him, not wanting to make myself sicker, but seeing as it wasn’t terribly cold outside I decided it would be ok. The hot tubs are really more like warm, not hot, so they don’t have to worry about drunk people fainting in the hot water. Wayne would have preferred it to be hotter, but I like it when it’s just comfortably warm.

Eventually we got hungry, so we got out (that was a couple of freezing moments, drying off and putting robes back on!), went back to the room to change clothes, and then back to the pool deck for hot dogs and beer. I brought my laptop up and we sat at a starboard table so we could watch Vancouver Island go by (our cabin was on the port side, which was now facing the open ocean). Sadly I didn’t have a lens that could photograph it well:

It started getting a bit colder, so we went back to the room. I sat inside and Wayne sat on the balcony with his binoculars, which he used to see some whales not too far from the ship. Late afternoon we got our suitcases out and packed everything we didn’t need that night or in the morning, so we wouldn’t have to get up so early (they wanted us on the move by 8:00 am in the morning).

Wayne had told me that morning that we had dinner reservations at 8:00 pm at Le Bistro, which was our favorite dinner place of the ones we had tried. He had requested a table in the “wine cellar”, which meant we could hear Mr Motown play while we had dinner. As soon as we got seated, he went and had a conversation with Mr Motown (whose real name is Stan Sykes, and he’s *really* good). A few minutes later I heard my name… Wayne had asked him to play “Some Kind of Wonderful” for me. Awww! :) He also had the restaurant employees sing Happy Birthday and bring a small cake. It was all very sweet, and even though it was such a low-key day, it was the best birthday I’ve had in a long time.

After dinner we went out and spent an hour or so listening to Mr Motown. When he finished for the night, we moved over to the Red Lion Pub and listened to Kenny, the other “lounge singer” onboard, for a little while. When I started getting sleepy, we headed back to the cabin.

For posterity, here are the words to “Some Kind of Wonderful”, by Grand Funk Railroad:

I don’t need a whole lots of money,

I don’t need a big fine car.

I got everything that a man could want,

I got more than I could ask for.

I don’t have to run around,

I don’t have to stay out all night.

‘Cause I got me a sweet … a sweet, lovin’ woman,

And she knows just how to treat me right.

Well my baby, she’s alright, Well my baby, she’s clean out-of-sight. Don’t you know that she’s … she’s some kind of wonderful. She’s some kind of wonderful … yes she is, she’s, She’s some kind of wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhh …

When I hold her in my arms, You know she sets my soul on fire. Oooh, when my baby kisses me, My heart becomes filled with desire. When she wraps her lovin’ arms around me, About drives me out of my mind. Yeah, when my baby kisses me, Chills run up and down my spine.

My baby, she’s alright, My baby, she’s clean out-of-sight. Don’t you know that she is … she’s some kind of wonderful. She’s some kind of wonderful … yes she is, She’s some kind of wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhh …

Now is there anybody, got a sweet little woman like mine? There got to be somebody, got a, got a sweet little woman like mine? Yeah! Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness? Yeah … Can I get a witness? Ohhh … Can I get a witness? Yeah … Can I get a witness? Yes.

I’m talkin’, talkin’ ’bout my baby. Yeah. She’s some kind of wonderful. Talkin’ ’bout my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. Talkin’ ’bout my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. I’m talkin’ ’bout my baby, my baby, my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. I’m talkin’ about my baby, my baby, my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, … my baby, my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. Talkin’ ’bout my baby, my baby, my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. I’m talkin’ ’bout my baby, my baby, my baby. She’s some kind of wonderful. (repeat to fade)

Today’s onshore activities didn’t start until 4:00 pm, which was a good thing as I still didn’t sleep very well. I was starting to feel better, though.

We had our usual breakfast at the buffet, and then headed back to our room. We took a detour to the pool to see if it was suitable hot-tub weather but it was *very* windy and cold so we decided to skip it.

For lunch we had signed up for the “Presumed Murdered” luncheon. I didn’t really know what that was going to be when I signed us up for it, but I like murder mysteries so I figured it would be fun. What it turned out to be was a little different than I was expecting. The actors were an improv troupe from Second City in Chicago, and although they had a rough plot to work from they filled in many of the details via random words shouted out by people in the audience. It turned out to be pretty entertaining, and the food was quite good too (it was held at La Cusina, the site of our first good dinner a couple of nights ago).

Back in the room I tried to nap, but wasn’t able to sleep so I ended up on the computer while Wayne sat on the balcony and watched the world go by.

When we arrived in Prince Rupert, our group got on a tour bus and headed for the trailhead. It was a nice walk, ending up at a place where you can see the rapids reverse direction twice a day as the tides change. Pretty wild stuff. Our guide was quite good and they fed us homemade granola bars and bottled water, but they couldn’t fix the fact that I wasn’t really ready to be doing a 2.8 mile hike, particularly with no rest breaks on any of the uphill sections on the way back out. I managed to keep up with the group but I was *exhausted* at the end.

One of the things the guide told us is that there’s a cow theme everywhere in Prince Rupert. The bay was named Cow Bay by their First Nation people because some white setter showed up with a barge loaded with cows, and discovered there was nowhere large enough to dock it. So he pushed the cows into the water and they swam ashore. The Indians thought this was so funny they commemorated it with the name “Cow Bay”. So, for example, our granola bars had come from a shop called Cowpuccino (groan! :).

We walked through several gift shops with no success on the pen front. I did, however, get a couple of small stuffed animals – a moose and a husky, each dressed in a Canadian Mountie uniform.

We had dinner at Cow Bay Cafe, which was excellent, albeit somewhat pricey.

I’ve read a lot of complaints online about Prince Rupert, how there isn’t enough to do there and it doesn’t seem like it’s ready to be a stop for a major cruise line. I felt the exact opposite – there weren’t too many gift shops and the ones that were there had classy, high-end stuff one could actually feel good about buying, and you felt like you got off the ship and walked right into town, not in some cruise ship universe like some of the ports. In the other towns we stopped in the businesses around the docks were all the same crap – overpriced flashy jewelry and cheap souvenirs.  Personally, Prince Rupert was my favorite of the four places we stopped.

Actually, that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to write about, and keep forgetting. One of the aspects of this ship (and I’m sure this applies to the entire industry) that really bothers me is the jewelry thing. They sell a ton of it on board, flashy gaudy stuff emblazoned with sale prices that you know are probably fake. And they have seminars to “educate” you about various stones and designers that most people aren’t “in the know” about – which just happen to be featured at the jewelry shops right at the dock! Diamonds International and Tanzaite, I’m looking right in your direction!  It seems very low rent and bordering on dishonest.

Anyway, I dragged myself back onto the ship after dinner and went to the store to buy some Advil, but they were closed. Doh!

We went right to the night’s show at the Stardust Theater – Second City, the same folks who did the murder mystery lunch. It was quite good.

It was only 9:45 when we got back to the room, but I was so tired that we just went to bed, and Wayne read his book for a while.

I slept a bit better, but still not great. For some reason we both woke up at 4:40 and really never got back to sleep. Wayne got up about 5:00, made coffee and sat out on the balcony watching the scenery go by. I stayed in bed as long as I could stand, hoping to catch up on rest if not sleep.

Even though we didn’t have to meet up with our tour until 10:35, we still opted for the buffet. It’s just easier all around, and for breakfast the food is acceptable. Once again, on our way out of the ship my brand new cabin card refused to swipe.  WTF?

Today was the helicopter/dog sledding day, the most extravagant of all the excursions we’d booked. I was a bit nervous about the helicopter ride, but really looking forward to playing with sled dog puppies. :) We knew that this was the most cancelled excursion of the whole trip, so we weren’t too surprised to be told that our morning flight had been cancelled due to poor visibility on the glacier, and that we were being rescheduled to 2:15 pm.

We took a local SMART shuttle into town, and transferred to another that took us to Jewell Gardens and Glassblowing. The same bus goes to the Klondike gold panning place and a few other tourist traps. The gardens were actually quite nice, but the $12-ish charge to get in seemed excessive to me, particularly when they’re just planting and most of the garden seems quite unfinished. You sort of get the feeling that some entrepreneur got the bright idea of charging stupid tourists to view his wife’s (admittedly quite large) kitchen garden, and put in a G-scale model railroad to make it seem less like a personal garden.

They have two glassblowing sheds and some really beautiful stuff for sale (though outrageously priced). We watched both blowers do their presentations and they did a good job, but the prominent tip jars were tacky IMHO. We’d already paid way too much to be there.

We took the shuttle back to Broadway, the main drag, and started the hunt for an appropriate Juli-pen (which sadly failed this time).

We also had lunch at a place called StarFire, which was very interesting. A very limited menu of very good Thai food. Every employee I could see was white, but most of their customers were Asian. A real twist on what we are used to seeing.

Eventually we ran out of stuff to do, so we went back to find out if the helicopter trips had started going out again. It turned out she had given us the wrong time – the dogsledding trip was supposed to leave at 1:45. But it didn’t matter, as the afternoon trips were cancelled too. :( The only thing they could offer us at that point was a Glacier Discovery tour – a helicopter ride that lands on a glacier so you can get out and walk around. Not at all the same thing, but Wayne really wanted to do it so we said yes. Figures, I ended up with the helicopter ride and no puppies! :)

I had brought my pocket camera instead of my good one thinking we’d be dog sledding and I wouldn’t want the nice one bouncing around. But with the plan change, I wanted the better camera. So I went back to the boat and to the cabin to swap cameras. With an unscheduled detour to Guest Services, because my card wouldn’t open the cabin door.

When I got back out to the tour waiting area we still had about half an hour, so I made Wayne do a quick walk back into town so I could take a few pictures. He wasn’t real happy about this; he was worried we would get back too late. But we made it with six minutes to spare!

Back at the Temsco headquarters (the folks with the helicopters), we had to watch a very silly safety film (I’m pretty sure that in an actual emergency, no-one would remember most of it well enough to use it) and put on life jackets and “overboots” with plastic spiky bottoms, which went on over our street shoes. Then they loaded us into the helicopter in a specific order, designed to balance the weight distribution, and I didn’t get to sit next to Wayne! He was in the front seat with the pilot, and I sat directly behind the pilot. Then there was another couple in the back seat with me.

Sitting in the helicopter waiting to take off seemed like it went on forever. Helicopters make me nervous; they crash way more often than airplanes, even small ones, and when something goes wrong they drop like a rock with very little opportunity for a safe crash landing. So I was nervous to begin with, and not being able to hold Wayne’s hand while waiting just made it worse. But finally we took off, and it felt a lot more stable than I expected. There was some bouncing around and drifting with the wind, but for the most part we floated along right where we were supposed to be.

We flew along the edge of a river and then turned up a canyon, over a few ridges, and then landed on the glacier. We all got out and walked around with walking sticks and our spiky overboots. I had expected it to look like a big snow field but it was actually a big ice field, with patches of incredible blue.

Yes, we actually landed and walked around on that!

After about 45 minutes we got back in the helicopters and flew back. Coming in for a landing was awesome, a hard left turn while dropping fast. It sounds scary but it wasn’t, just exhilarating.

We got back on the boat and napped for about an hour. I was feeling reasonably good, but my ears were *seriously* plugged up. They had popped properly on our way up, but not on our way back. I didn’t realize how bad it was until we sat down for dinner and I bit into a piece of crusty bread; it was like eating (and talking) with earplugs in.

Dinner this night was at Le Bistro, a French restaurant. It was excellent – still a bit salty, as everything on the ship seems to be, but still quite good.

The entertainment was “Shout! The Mod Musical”, which featured all the girls from “Band on the Run” from a couple of nights ago, singing sixties songs. They did a pretty good jobs of making fun of young women’s magazines by featuring pieces from the (probably fictitious) “Shout!” magazine, which told of the latest trends and was generally pretty ridiculous. I enjoyed it;  Wayne thought “Band on the Run” was better.

This was not my best day. I barely got any sleep, because every time I started to drop off to sleep, my own snoring woke me up. How pathetic is that? My nose was stuffy, and my voice raspy. Not a pretty sight.

We needed to meet with our excursion group just after 8:00, so we skipped the slow sit-down service at Versailles and ate at the Market Cafe buffet. The food really wasn’t much worse, and there was a pretty good selection. The worst part was finding a seat; it’s a giant cafeteria and always full of people.

When we booked this excursion, the woman at the desk said that it gets very cold at the glacier and we should be prepared. So we wore our ski pants that we had brought for dog sledding. Big mistake! It wasn’t that cold, and both of us were roasting.

On the way out, my key card didn’t work in the swiper when checking out of the boat. Odd.

The tour bus dropped us off in the visitor center parking lot, and said he’d come back in an hour and a half. So we walked out to a big waterfall, which is as close to the glacier as you can get (there’s a lake in the way), then back to the Visitor Center. The most interesting thing there was a block of ice from the glacier, which you could touch. It flakes off, like some pine bark and some rocks do. It takes 100 feet of snow to make 6 feet of glacier; that’s how compacted it is.

We got back on the bus, and he dropped us off again at the Mt Roberts Tramway. The ride itself is very cool, right up the side of a mountain. Once up there you can’t do much because everything is still covered in snow. We visited gift shops and scored the second pen of the trip for Juli, and admired the view from up there. I was ok with not being able to go anywhere else because I was pretty much exhausted by this point.

We arrived at the bottom of the tram with time to spare, so I used my cell phone to find a drug store and we hoofed it over there for Advil and Mucinex. It was a long fast walk in snow suits, and by the time we got back I was *really* tired! We came very close to missing the bus back to the boat; that would have been ok, since there are other shuttles and it is walkable. But we were still very glad to sit back down on the bus.

I went to Guest Services and got a new cabin card, and then we went to our cabin and spent the rest of the afternoon snoozing.  The highlight of the afternoon was a detour to a glacier.  Apparently we were supposed to go to a different one but there was too much ice in the water, so we went to this one instead (no idea of its name).  Considering how large and lumbering the ship is, we got pretty darn close:

I felt a little better when we got up, so we set off to La Cusina for dinner. This one is Italian, and it was actually quite good. I thought the food everywhere on ship seemed a bit salty (even the eggs at the buffet seem to be pre-salted) but aside from that La Cusina was the best we’d had so far, hands down.

After dinner we went to the Spinnaker Lounge for live dance music played by Odesea, the ship’s band, but after one fast West Coast Swing I was beat. We ended up heading over to Gatsby’s and listening to Mr. Motown until we were ready to go up for bed.

When we woke up we looked out the window to find the boat docked in Ketchikan. There’s something way cool about being on a floating hotel that takes *you* to the sights!

I also woke up with a sore throat. :( I had noticed it the night before, but it was slight and I had hoped it would just go away. Overnight it developed into an unmistakeable sign of things to come. I was determined not to let a stupid cold virus ruin our trip, though, so off we went as scheduled for our first off-ship adventure.

First stop was breakfast. There are only three options for breakfast; the Market Cafe buffet, which is crowded and the food isn’t very good, the Grill buffet, which is outside by the pool and too cold to visit most of the time, and Versailles, the place we ate breakfast yesterday. We had been so unimpressed with the buffet, we decided to do full-service instead and went back to Versailles for a second day. But the service was *very* slow, even worse than yesterday, and the food just wasn’t very good. We left determined not to make that mistake again.

We went back to the cabin before leaving the ship, and there was a flyer at our door hawking cheap Citizen watches. The continuous selling, particularly of cheap shiny junk, is the number one thing I don’t like about cruising so far.

There was a bit of time to spare between leaving the ship and needing to meet up with our canoeing tour group, so we walked around Ketchikan. Our friend Juli, who is staying at our house taking care of the fuzzes while we’re gone, collects those pens that have sort of a snow-globe built in. We always try to find her at least one of them when we go on a trip, which gives me a *great* excuse to visit all the gift shops Wayne would otherwise resist. :) So we walked around until we found one, and then went to rendezvous with our group.

Beautiful downtown Ketchikan!

I was starting to feel kind of crappy by this point, and wasn’t really looking forward to the trip. But it turned out ok. We all piled into a Sprinter van and our driver took us about 30 minutes outside of town, to the edge of a lake. We suited up with life jackets and got in the canoe (a very large one that held 12 of us and two guides). Once we started rowing, I felt ok. We rowed over to a small camp, where another guide had clam chowder and hot drinks cooking over a wood fire, and snacks (including the only smoked salmon I’ve ever actually enjoyed eating). We then went on the hike portion of the trip, which turned out to be a loop that took all of about 10 minutes. Then we got back in the canoe and went back to where we started from, but went around the lake the long way so we could circle a small island.

Remember that Newlywed show we were on last night? During the trip we got a taste of what we were in for. When we returned back to “camp” from our “hike”, the next canoe-load of people had arrived, some of whom were also from our ship. One of the couples recognized us and made a big deal out of it, like we were some kind of local celebrity.

After we got back to town, we had just enough time to have lunch at Subway, which sounded much more appealing than another trip through the lunch buffet.

The ship left for Juneau, and we decided to take a nap. I was starting to feel worse again, and thought maybe the sleep would help. Unfortunately, I felt worse still after we woke up.

We needed to choose a replacement excursion for Juneau, since ours had been cancelled. We looked at the list of what was available, but it was a long list with not much detail about what they actually entail. So we headed on down to the Shore Excursion desk to get some help. We ended up choosing something more sedate, a bus trip to the Mendenhall Glacier visitor center and a ride up the Mt Roberts Tramway.

Still in search of decent food on board, we had dinner at Endless Summer, the tex-mex restaurant. The food itself was pretty good, though making lobster tacos with box taco shells seemed a bit low-rent. but the desserts were awful. Whoever made the flan clearly has never had one made properly; the texture was slightly chunky, as though the mixture was on the verge of breaking. *sigh* the search continues…

During dinner a woman came up from behind Wayne, put her arm around his shoulders, and started gushing about having seen us on her in-room TV. This local celebrity business is strange! Wayne was very startled by the way she touched him; as he says, had he done that to a strange woman, all hell would have broken loose. My only explanation was that women hug each other all the time, so maybe it didn’t seem out of line to her. We also had several people call out “It’s the Newlyweds” as we were walking around on ship.

Cruise ships are supposed to be all about the dancing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. There’s only one bar with a dance floor, the Spinnaker Lounge and the dance area is *tiny*. We went there after dinner for pre-recorded dance music but it was mostly Latin style, so we didn’t dance much since we don’t know any of those yet. When that was over, we went to Gatsby’s, another bar, and listened to “Mr. Motown”, Stan Sykes. He’s *really* good.

Then it was off to the Stardust Theater for “Band on the Run”, a show celebrating 80s music. The performers are from all over the world, and most of them are very good.

After the show I was starting to feel a bit better, but was starting to lose my voice. The ship was starting to rock more, but so far my stomach was holding its own.

In the shameless promotion department, there was a flyer at our door advertising hot coffee drinks which can be ordered from room service.

Time for bed!

I woke up and looked out the window to see small islands going by. Pretty! It didn’t feel like we were moving fast, but seeing how fast we passed them told me that we actually were going by pretty quick.

While I was in the shower, Wayne saw a small boat pull up next to ours, and someone get onto it. As it moved away he could see that it said “Pilot” on the side. We were just about out in the open ocean by this point, so his guess is that we needed an expert in the local area to guide us through the channel, but once we got to the ocean he wasn’t needed anymore.

We had breakfast at Versailles, the fake-French restaurant that’s on our “free” list. We agreed to share our table and ended up sitting with a couple from Florida. They’re both mail carriers, he for over 30 years and her for almost 30 years. We had a nice conversation, though it took a weird turn when he said that he’d heard Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, talk about what he’d like to do as President. *shriek* :) Fortunately they were suitably appalled when I told them that one of the things he’s actually trying to do right now is privatize the public employees healthcare system so he can extract it’s surplus cash to balance the budget.

A young couple sitting by the window rescued us from more political talk by seeing several whales leap out of the water. I didn’t manage to see them, but it was nice to know they were out there.

Our food was ok – not great, but better than we would have had at the *shudder* buffet.

After breakfast we suited up in raincoats and walked all around the common areas of the ship, inside and out, so I could take pictures. We also stopped in at the spa; my feet were still tired from all that standing in line yesterday and I was hoping for a nice foot massage, but the closest I could get would be an outrageously priced pedicure.  I decided to pass.

We went back to the room after this and I worked on these posts while Wayne read on his Kindle, and then took a nap. This is his kind of vacation! :) All of our vacations up to now have been to places where I have been many times and know the area, so I tend to keep him running around to all the things i want to do and see. This time there isn’t anything to do or see, particularly since it’s cold and rainy out, so he is getting the leisure he usually misses out on.

I woke him up for lunch; we tried to go back to Versailles, but they closed right before we got there. So we ended up in the Blue Lagoon instead. Once again the food wasn’t great, but it was edible. So far the only really good food we’ve had was from Aqua.

After lunch we went to the Guest Services counter to look at the menus for the “cover charge” restaurants. One of them serves sushi and Wayne really likes that. As we were looking at them the girl working the counter came over and basically bullied us into making a reservation. This has been a recurring theme… whenever there is an opportunity to sell us something, whether it’s alcohol, jewelry, boarding photos or dinner, the ship’s employees employ a very primitive form of hard sell that we both find extremely annoying. It’s even worse because although they all speak English, most of them have such thick accents that you have to really work hard to understand them trying to sell you something. It’s probably the most annoying thing about the trip so far, right up there with the food on the buffet being *so* bad.

Dinner plans made, we headed for the Red Lion Pub, where they were taking reservations for a murder-mystery lunch on Thursday. I signed us up for that, and we settled in with my laptop, his Kindle, and a couple of bottles of Alaskan Amber. Once again, it’s Wayne’s kind of vacation! :) It’s good for me too because I’m getting these posts done in real-time, unlike the posts about our Christmas trip that I never finished writing.

Eventually Wayne got sleepy again, and he went back to the cabin to take a nap, while I stayed in the “pub”. It’s more comfortable to use the laptop on a table than actually on my lap. I went back up to the cabin when the pub started to fill up and I felt like I was hogging a table by not buying another drink. Wayne was sound asleep when I came in, so I joined him and we both had a nap.

Those of you who know me know that this is not at all how I usually vacation – I’m a go-go-go kind of person and usually want to be running around doing something local all the time. I don’t nap at home, let alone on vacation! But this is an entirely different experience; there wasn’t anything to do during a day at sea, so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything and it was easier for me to relax and do it Wayne’s way. I have a feeling we’ll be regular cruisers form now on because he’s *really* liking this. :)

We went off to our dinner at 6:00 pm, at the Asian/sushi restaurant. This was one of the fancy places with the extra cover charge. We both thought the food was good, but not outstanding. Wayne thinks it’s kind of sad that we’re so spoiled that they can no longer impress us; I think we’re still capable of being impressed, but eating in Portland has definitely changed our taste in food and we’re no longer impressed by the stuff that impresses regular folks. Since that’s the target market, not us, I’m not terribly disappointed that the food is only meh.

Also, considering the place was nearly empty the whole time we were there, I don’t think we really needed that reservation!  This might be partly an indication of what everyone else thinks of the food but I think it’s more that many cruisers like the “one price all inclusive” aspect to cruising and aren’t even going to consider anything that costs extra (except maybe alcohol :).  I think that’s why the reservations are pushed so hard;  once you have one, you’re less likely to change your mind and go to the buffet instead.

We finished dinner a bit ahead of schedule, so we hung out in the Red Lion Pub and watched the Canucks win a Stanley Cup Playoff game against the Sharks. Lots of yelling since there are plenty of Canadiens on board. After the game was over we went to the Spinnaker Lounge, where we danced last night, and did some ballroom dancing – East *and* West Coast Swing, and Nightclub Two Step. Our teacher would be proud!

Then it was time for the “Newlywed and Not So Newlywed” game, MC’d by Cruise Director Julie. Guess who was the Newlywed couple? :) We’re not exactly newlyweds, it has been eight months, but we were the most recently married people there who were willing to put their hands up. It was about what you would imagine; they asked us all a bunch of silly questions and then checked to see if our answers matched. There were three of us couples – us at eight months, another at 42 years, and a third at 3.5 years. They didn’t total up our answers, but I’m pretty sure if they had Wayne and I would have won.  They gave us a swag bag with a t-shirt, a pen, a water bottle, a kid’s pool float and (best of all) a bottle of champagne.

Last but not least was 70s night. They were filming a commercial for Norwegian Cruise Lines so we were taught a dance routine to Staying Alive, and they filmed us dancing it.

We returned to our room to find a note that the glacier float excursion we picked for Juneau had been cancelled due to low river levels. Oops. So now we needed to go pick a new excursion for Tuesday.

Part of our packing strategy, since we were limited in how much we could bring, was to pack enough clothes for half the trip and plan on doing laundry. Well, that day had arrived at this point and it turned out to be a cool $100 to have our laundry done (and there are no self-service laundromats on board). Ouch! Next time we will have to do things differently…

With that costly surprise to end the night, it was time for bed! The ship had been pitching quite a big (for a very large ship, that is) on and off through the day, but by bedtime it was smooth sailing, literally.

Today was the big day, the day we got on the cruise ship.

We had plenty of time to sleep in, so of course we both woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which was much better than yesterday at Cheers (but much more expensive, too). Packed afterwards, which didn’t take very long and so we found ourselves with nothing to do at 9:45, and the earliest we were supposed to show up at the pier was noon. So we took the bus back to Grouse Mountain and tried again to see the wolves. At first only one was visible, and it just looked like a light patch of fur. We were just about to leave when another showed up – he didn’t get very close, but we watched him sniff around, pick a nap spot, and turn around before laying down just like our dogs do.

I went into the gift shop and bought a stuffed wolf toy which is *extremely* cute, and we headed back to the hotel. They called us a cab, and we headed out about 20 minutes to twelve. We thought we ware in good shape, but this was where the day went slightly off the rails.

First of all, the driver had never heard of Ballantyne Pier. It’s not the main pier used by the cruise lines, it’s an overflow spot when too many ships need to dock at once. We knew where it was, roughly, because we could see the ship from our hotel window, but had no idea how to get there. He kept consulting his map and acting nervous. Wayne had to get his phone back on the Internet so he could get the street address, but that didn’t help much. Fortunately we did end up going pretty much straight there. But then we ended up in a long line of taxis, all with their meters running; the security people running the lot would not allow any of them to stop and drop us off. We figured it added about $10 to our bill; I talked to another woman who said that her bill should have been $7 and ended up being over $30.

Once out of the taxi, someone from the cruise line took our bags, and we got in line. We snaked through a very large room full of people, then another… finally we went through a magnometer – those machines at the airport that check for metal on your body. There were only three of these machines to check in over 2000 people, so no wonder there was a delay! Once through that, yet another full room and we finally got checked in and were issued our onboard “charge” cards, which double as our cabin door keys. We thought we were home free at that point but no, we had to wait *again* to have a US Customs agent scan and stamp our passports. *sigh*

At Customs we found out that the problem was that there were three boats docked at the main cruise ship pier, so ours got shunted off to temporary quarters. I don’t know if this was their first time at Ballantyne Pier, or what things would have been like had we been in the main terminal, but the agent said that this was the cause of the problem.

The last thing they did before sending us onto the ship was force everyone to have their picture taken, which they are now selling in the photo gallery for the low, low price of $24.95. Good grief.

We walked onto the ship into a blast of loud music, people hawking little umbrella drinks in souvenir glasses, and a general sense of chaos. The area you first walk into has a very Vegas casino look – lots of lights and cheap chrome. The effect of all this, combined with two hours of standing in line, left me feeling dazed and confused, unsure of what to do next. Fortunately Wayne had studied the ship maps online and knew which way to go to get to our cabin.

Remind you of Las Vegas a little?

I was a bit surprised at their choice of music – we walked onto the ship to (very loud) Lady Gaga, and the rest of their playlist was similar type dance music. Given that there was a forest of gray hair on this boat, this seemed like a poor choice. As we were heading to our room, I began to wonder if we’d made a mistake…

Our cabin turned out to be small but quite nice. The bathroom is tiny, but there is plenty of room for everything. We have a balcony on the starboard (right) side of the boat, which faces land as we head North. The balconies are sheltered from the wind, so you can be outside without being frozen through.

All our luggage had to be put through a scanner, one piece at a time, before it was brought on board. This meant that it was significantly late in arriving.

Normally luggage is delivered to your cabin before you arrive there yourself, but that was not the case this time. We got tired of waiting and headed to lunch.

The only thing that was open for lunch was the Market Cafe buffet. We didn’t have high expectations for the food, but it was even worse than we had expected. We both had prime rib and it was awful; everything else was over salted and over cooked.

Went back to our room to check for our luggage; it still hadn’t arrived so we hung around waiting for it. They kept making announcements for a lifeboat drill that was going to happen at 3:30, but

that time came and went and no drill. This was probably due to the fact that there was still a steady stream of people getting on the ship, even though we were all supposed to have been on board by 2:00 pm. The announcements sounded pre-recorded and I think they probably happened at a scheduled time, ready or not. We finally had the drill at about 4:15, which was 15 minutes after we were supposed to have set sail.

After the drill was over, the crew came out in full force trying to entertain the people who were milling around everywhere. A band played on the pool deck, and we had a real lunch at the outdoor grill (hamburgers and hotdogs). The band was a bit more in tune with the crowd, playing things like the Eagles.

We ended up sitting at the Beir Garten, a quasi-German beer garden that doesn’t serve a single German beer:

until I suddenly noticed that we were quietly moving away from the dock, right at 6:00 pm (two hours late). Most of the cruise ships play their horn loudly before backing up, but for some reason ours didn’t. It just went. I walked up to the bow and watched as we travelled under the bridge between downtown and North Vancouver. Because of the bumper crop of cruise ships in the area, we were in the middle between two other ships.

We went back to the cabin and collected our luggage, which was lined up in the hallway, and unpacked. At first it looked like we had way too much stuff but we actually found space for it all with room to spare. The only problem was the suitcases themselves, but we managed to cram them into the closet (and then noticed afterwards that they could also fit under the bed).

I knew Wayne had brought my birthday present, and that he wanted me to open it early in case there was an opportunity to use it on the ship. He handed me the box as we were unpacking, so I opened it. It’s a beautiful purple and gold pashmina wrap. He thought it would be nice over my dancing dress, on nights when I don’t want to bother with a coat. Great idea, sweetie!

After eating two lunches we weren’t all that hungry, but we went off to dinner anyway. There are a couple of ‘full service” restaurants that you can eat at for free, and then a bunch more that cost extra to eat at. We went to Aqua, one of the free ones, and it was quite good. The only thing we had to pay for was a bottle of wine, and they let us take the unfinished bottle back to the room with us. The service at Aqua was mostly quite good as well; the only low point was the girl who seated us. She was supposed to lay our napkins over our laps but she nearly threw them at us, and then she took our seating ticket and shoved it hard into our waiter’s shirt pocket. I have a feeling she won’t be working on the ship for very long…

We got out of dinner just in time to go to the Stardust Theater and watch a show that was a preview of the next night’s big show. Juggling and magic tricks; some pretty impressive stuff.

By this point I was pretty tired, but there was one more event to take in – 80s dancing at the Spinnaker Lounge! :) We didn’t stay long, maybe 30 minutes, but it was fun. I was hot and still feeling stuffed from dinner, so we took a walk around this ship. That took care of the being hot part, believe me! We could really see the ship behind us; they were pretty close and very brightly lit. It looked like they had either a giant projection screen or a stage with lights on the top deck – something with very bright moving lights. For the most part you could not feel that the ship was moving; now and then it was barely detectable, like a very small earthquake.

Finally, back to collapse into bed. The mattress is a bit hard, but much larger than I was expecting. We like to have a bit of space between us when we sleep, and had no trouble managing that. The movement of the ship was a bit more noticeable once laying down, but didn’t keep either of us awake.

So far service has been quite good. Our cabin steward seems to be very attentive; our bathroom trash can was emptied several times during the evening. It’s a little weird knowing they are in there all the time, but you get used to it quickly. I kind of feel sorry for them after hearing one of them tell a passenger (in response to a question) that she doesn’t get a single day off until after her 8 month contract is fulfilled. I’m sure that’s legal in the country the ship is registered in, but it shouldn’t be.

Today was our one full day in Vancouver. We had absolutely no idea what we wanted to do, or even what there was to do; we’d been so busy getting ready to leave that neither of us had taken any time to figure this out. I had asked the front desk guys when we checked in the night before and they recommended the Capilano Suspension Bridge. I also emailed a friend who lives here and he suggested Grouse Mountain. Wayne looked at the bus system and discovered that the same line went to both, so off we went.

We started out the day with breakfast at Cheers, a restaurant Wayne had found on Yelp that was near our hotel. It was exactly what it was supposed to be, that is to say, a cheap neighborhood restaurant filled with retired old men gossiping and complaining. The food wasn’t great but it was decent, and definitely cheap!  After breakfast we walked over to Lonsdale Quay, the local transit terminal, and got on bus number 236 to Grouse Mountain.

I took a couple of pictures of the bus info sign at Lonsdale Quay, because I thought this was amusing – would you ever see this detail pane on an American transit sign?

Grouse Mountain turned out to be the bottom of a sky ride that goes to the top of the mountain. It’s still snowy up there and we weren’t prepared for that, so we skipped the ride, even though it looked like fun.

We went into Starbucks for drinks, and the (extremely nice) people who worked in there told us to go across the parking lot and see if the wolves were out. They have some wolves who had to be rescued after an attempt at using them in movies, and they have been living at the park for a long time. Unfortunately they were all sleeping in the shade, so there wasn’t anyone to see.

For the most part things felt very familiar in Canada, particularly because we used a credit card instead of cash for almost everything so we didn’t have the reminder of strange money.  But there were a few differences that stuck out, such as the use of the word Washrooms instead of Restrooms pretty much everywhere.

We got back on the bus and headed back to the suspension bridge. At first I had thought this was going to be a bridge that people drive over, and I wondered how you would make a tourist attraction out of that? But it’s not that at all. It’s a walking bridge over a river gorge, and it’s *awesome*. The rest of the park consists of a bunch of raised wooden trails, some ponds and lakes, and an extra set of suspension bridges that aren’t as far off the ground or as shaky as the main attraction. That main bridge is one wild ride! On our first time over it we were clinging to the railing for dear life (ok, I know I was, Wayne would probably beg to differ :). On the way back we had our “bridge legs” a bit more but I still had to grab for the side a couple of times.

This was the only picture I took where you could really see how high up the suspension bridge is:

We took the bus back to Lonsdale Quay and had lunch there at a tiny sushi place called Little Tokyo (those who know my eating habits know that was Wayne’s idea :) and then got on the SeaBus (the water taxi to downtown Vancouver). It’s a 15 minute ride, executed spectacularly efficiently.

The plan was to visit Vanier Park, but we got sidetracked looking at cruise ships that were docked near the SeaBus port. Then I derailed us further by looking for a camera store so I could get a couple of lens cap leashes, after almost losing a lens cap on one of the suspension bridges. I found them at London Drug, not exactly where I would have expected but they had quite a camera department. By the time were were done with that, it was time for dinner and we decided to skip the park.

An aside on the quality of sales help in this town. We first went into a Staples, so I could buy some Krazy Glue (I broke my sunglasses, unforunately). I asked the cashier if she knew of a camera store in the area. She named several which might still be open, then sent us to London Drug. Knowledgeable *and* she actually seemed to care! Once there I found what I needed on my own, but I listened to several employees helping customers and once again, smart and contentious. This made me feel more like I was in a foreign country than anything else that has happened so far!

We had dinner at Steamworks, which was recommended by a friend. Excellent food and beer.

We headed back to the hotel, tired and planning on using the hot tub. But we went to check it out and found a couple of guys in it with two small children, and that it was going to close in 20 minutes anyway. So we went to the lounge and had another drink instead. I recommend the Lonsdale Green Tea – good stuff! Vodka, limoncello, ginger liqueur and green tea. Serious yum, and not too sweet.

I’m writing this from an Amtrak train heading North, somewhere between Seattle and the Canadian border. We’re on the first day of a ten day adventure; we’ll be spending most of it on a cruise ship doing the Alaskan Inland Passage. At the moment we’re headed for Vancouver, BC.

Before I start talking about the day, I want to acknowledge that Wayne planned this entire trip. This is unusual for us; I’m the planner in the family, and most of the time I’m the one who does it all. This appeals to his lazy side, but it bothers him that he never quite knows what’s coming next. Being told what the plan is isn’t the same as having done the research yourself and knowing what choices were made and why. So when I was planning the wedding I asked him to be in charge of the honeymoon, and he rose to the challenge.

The day started out well; we actually finished getting ready to leave almost two hours ahead of schedule! So, after taking the Max to Union Station and checking our bags, we had time for a leisurely lunch at Kenny & Zuke’s. We picked up a couple more sandwiches for dinner, knowing that the “Bistro” car isn’t exactly a bastion of fine dining.

I took a few shots of Cascade 519 before we left Portland. A really long train:

We had business class seats, meaning there’s wi-fi and power, and the seats have tray tables like airplane seats (and a reasonable amount of leg room, unlike airplane seats). The wi-fi is clearly cellular based, as it seemed to come and go in sync with our cell phone signals. Two different crew members came through to make sure we had our passports with us; apparently they have to pay for a hotel room for anyone who is on the train but can’t get into Canada, so they make sure it doesn’t happen.

A first-world problem developed as soon as we got settled into our seats. The people in front of us were a pair of older parents, with a boy in his mid-teens. The woman drove me absolutely up the wall! She kept pointing out picture opportunities to Josh, who was painfully clearly not interested and annoyed at the interruption of his Facebooking. My mother was like this and it made both of us miserable for many years; she never figured out that things would be fine if she would just leave me alone. Apparently Josh’s mom doesn’t get it either. Plus she talked *incessantly* about everything and nothing ; every casual thought seemed to come right out her mouth. It was even irritating to Wayne, who usually doesn’t understand why I pay so much attention to the people around me. Small comfort, I suppose.

We were on the view side of the train (the left side), which is also the sunny side. We took turns in the window seat but I spent much of my time in it squinting. When the sun is that bright, not even sunglasses help. It was still beautiful, though. The tracks alternate between the water’s edge (mostly Puget Sound) and slightly inland.

When we went to eat our dinner we discovered that there was a mixup at the deli. We got his PLT (Pastrami, Lettuce and Tomato on toast) but my Meshugaletta (the Jewish deli version of a New Orleans Muffaletta) was AWOL. In it’s place was some sort of double-decker monstrosity with four different kinds of meat. Wayne graciously switched with me, and I then spent 15 minutes prepping my sandwich to eat, since he doesn’t bother to order the lean cut. I had another half-sandwich worth of pastrami fat on my plate by the time I was done – ewww!

The woman in front of us went through a frenzy of packing, including taking away Josh’s laptop so it could be packed, a full hour before we were due to arrive. He had finally had enough, and pointed out that there was a whole hour to go. She said “I just don’t want it to be frantic at the last minute” and he responded “it’s frantic now! and it’s only frantic because you make it that way!”. We both broke out in giggles, as quietly as we could. Had I dared, I would have given Josh a standing ovation. I don’t’ know if she heard me or if the obvious annoyance of her husband and son did it, but she was very quiet for a while after that.

When we arrived at the Vancouver train station, they unloaded all our bags into a neat line along the fence. Right away you knew you were not in the US, where luggage is unloaded into a haphazard pile. We collected our bags and went through customs, which consisted of handing over a previously-filled-out form, telling the guy where we were going, and being told to sign our passports, which neither of us had done (oops :).

We got into a cab, after first making sure he took credit cards, and ran into a snag – he had never heard of our hotel! Wayne ended up having to turn on international roaming on his iPhone so he could look up the phone number; with that, the cabbie called for directions and we were off. He was the usual middle Eastern cabbie you find in most places, except he was nicely dressed in business casual and sounded a lot more educated than they usually do.

He dropped us off at the hotel and we went in. During the time it took for us to walk into the lobby, HSBC had already suspended Wayne’s credit card, for being used in a foreign country. He called and got it straightened out. No matter how well you plan, something always gets overlooked! The guys at the front desk were *extremely* nice and helpful – yes, we’re not in Canada anymore! One of them insisted on helping with our bags and didn’t show any signs of wanting a tip (which would have been in American dollars anyway).

Our room was very nice, with a harbor view:

Wayne chose this hotel (he booked the entire trip, by the way) because it is near where we need to get on the cruise ship, and also right by the water taxi into downtown Vancouver. Hotels here in North Vancouver are a lot less expensive, so we have a very nice room.

We were both too wired to sleep, so we went out and walked around, found the water taxi terminal, and then finally came back and crashed about 2:00 am. A successful first day!

However, today is the first day of a 10 day vacation, and that will at least give me something to write *about*. So here we go…

Sunday (today) we took the dogs to the Oregon Garden in Silverton. It’s about an hour drive from Portland so not exactly convenient, but well worth a visit. Especially since it’s dog-friendly. Afterwards Wayne racked up some good husband points by giving me a massage. Prrrr! :)

Tonight while watching TV I redid the “old site archive” you see linked in the sidebar. It turns out that when you use a website slurper to save the HTML for a Typepad blog, it contains links back to Typepad for things like CSS files. And when I switched littlecatfeet.com over to here, all those links stopped working. At least I found out before my Typepad account went away! I used a program called Little Snapper to take snapshots of each page and save them to PDF. Not all the formatting was preserved but it’s way more readable than the previous copy.

(note to anyone who comes here from Google – Little Snapper was quite buggy for me, crashing and hanging regularly. I ended up having to export the pages one at a time. It also makes large PDFs, that is, you have to scroll around to see the whole thing in the browser. It got the job done, but was sub-optimal in my opinion.)

Original post:

I’ve just moved this site from Typepad to Tumblr, necessitating putting the old posts into the deep freeze (I couldn’t figure out any way to move them over here as real posts, other than doing it all manually). You can get to them via that “Old Site Archive” link over there on the left (unless you’re on your phone, in which case I think you’re out of luck).

So, what’s new in my life? Well, Wayne and I got married on September 25th, after getting engaged in San Francisco in early June. So wedding planning pretty much took over the summer, but it was actually a lot of fun. Everything went well and we had a great time.

People keep asking me how married life is. To most I just say “same as it ever was”, since we’ve been living together for over a year. But in reality I do feel different, and I think he does too. There’s a deeper bond and sense of commitment, even though we both thought we were fully committed before. I can’t really explain why, but I highly recommend being married. It does make a difference.

She of the Tortie ‘Tude:

I’m watching the Olympics while writing this… spectacular skiier wipeout!  It’s amazingly compelling to watch this stuff considering I don’t know any of these people and don’t really care who wins.

FYI, I’m beta-testing a new version of the program I use for posting, so if anything looks funky, that’s probably why.