Day #6 Alaska Vacation Friday 5/15/09 Ketchikan

On this Memorial Day, please take a moment to give thanks and prayers to all who have served in the military and are currently serving our country while in the military. And especially give thanks and prayers to all that gave their lives and to their families for their loss, on this special day of remembrance.

For some reason, we have been having a problem with wake up alarm on on cell phone. This morning it went off at 2AM. Then I woke up again at 4AM and it was almost light outside, so I layed in bed for another 45 minutes and decided to go ahead and get up. We had a short day allowed for Ketchikan. The ship was going to only be in port from 6AM and we would be departing at 1:30PM. This meant that we had to be on board by 1PM for the 1:30PM sailing time. I had overheard someone talking about them missing the all aboard time and it cost them some good money to hook up with the ship at the next port. I sure did not want that to happen to us. We had scheduled and paid for an excursion called the Misty Fjord Wilderness Cruise. We got off the ship a little after 6AM and headed over to the place where we were supposed to meet our contact person for this excursion. Usually they have many different contact people for assorted excursions and they almost all want to meet in basically the same general area. The contact people hold up large card with the name of the excursion on it. You have to be careful because many of the excursion name are very similar...the various vendors just change the name a wee bit even though the actual excursion is the same. They all charge different amounts for the same excursion too. We located our contact person. When we first met her, we told here our concerns about the excursion ending later than 1PM and that we had to be on board by then. She assured us that they would have us back before 1PM. We kept relaying our concerns to her but we did not feel comfortable with the time situation nor how she was answering our questions and concerns. She then called her boss and relayed our concerns to him. She came back to us and told us that her boss said that we would be back between 11 and 11:30. Now that was a real time change compared to what she had said earlier. I was almost ready to cancel but when she came back with the early time return, we felt a little better about the situation. Unfortunately that feeling did not last the whole day. Our small group..maybe 12 of us...walked to another dock and boarded another smaller vessel. It had lines of seats and large viewing windows, a back deck area and a top deck area for viewing and photography purposes. So off we took going here there and everywhere. We finally arrived at the Misty Fjord area, which is in the Tongass National Forest. It took us quite a long time until we arrived there. We kept cruising slowly through mountainous areas. It was an ok excursion but the worst of all that we went on and I would not part with our money again for this one...once was quite enough thank you. We eventually got to a floating dock area and pulled up to the dock. As it turns out, some of the passengers paid a lot of money to take a float plane back to Ketchikan. The others would return to Katchikan by boat, which was about 2 hours away. There was just us and 2 other couples left on the boat. One of the couples were from the Pearl, just like us and they were in the same predicament that we were. If it took 2 hours to get back to Ketchikan and another 10 minute walk to the ship, it would put us well after our sailing time not mention our all aboard time. We talked to the Capt of the boat along with the narrator who was working the excursion. We explained the situation about being late for our ship sailing if we stayed on the boat. When I told them the girls name that we spoke to on the dock, they had never heard of her. They basically stated that they would pile the extra people onto the 2 float planes that had arrived for the paying customers and that they don't deal with the billing of the flight. So they took everyone's weight down to make sure the plane could handle it and put us on the bigger float plane. Now here I was...never having been on a float plane, been talking to Veronica about taking one to a remote lake in Canada when we go up there to fish and I can't really enjoy it much because I am concerned it will cost us $500 for both of us. The plane trip was kind of cool...you fly over mountains and see things from a different angle but that $500 kept gnawing at me. We ended up landing after an approximately 30 minute flight. We got back with plenty of time to spare. It was only about 11AM, so we decided to see if we could locate the girl that we had spoke to originally.We could not find her but we did walk into a building that had all kinds vendors for excursions. I had one of them that was a real jerk. He asked me if I wanted to do a float plane trip. I told him no. He stated that I had the money for it...I told him no I don't and he told me that he is the one who pre-approves people to go on the trip. By now I was getting angry...I just wanted to find someone affiliated with our trip so we wouldn't get charge extra for flying. So I walk up to the counter and spoke to the vendor that was next to Mr. Jerk After explaining what happened, the person I spoke to turned and told me that I had to speak to this guy...you got it...it was Mr. Jerk He starts giving me the ole song and dance routine. We asked him for the name of person in charge of the excursion. We had a name that was given to us earlier by the girl that we spoke to originally. We mention this name to Mr. Jerk and he said yeah, that's the guy you need to talk to. So we asked him for the guys number. Her starts throwing numbers in out direction. We had to go hunting through are stuff for a pen and paper because Mr. Jerk would not give us any. Before leaving, I asked Mr. Jerk what was the title or position that this other guy held. Mr. Jerk stated...he's my boss and that is all I know. Something really stunk about the whole thing and I know that I hadn't had an accident in my pants while flying, so that just left Mr. Jerk. Veronica ended up calling the "boss" and left a message that we don't expect to be charged for the float plane ride especially because of what the girl first told us. So I haven't seen any charges but believe me, I will keep looking. Veronica and I spent a little time shopping around in Ketchikan and then returned to our ship.

We ended up going back to Cagney's to get our complimentary meal...because of the problems with the food on an earlier visit. This time I got the NY Sirloin and Veronica got the Alaskan Crab Legs. Our meal was great this time around. We were originally planning on going to 2 shows that night plus they were having their once a cruise Chocoholic Buffet which had chocolate art and sculptures. It would have been great to photograph it all. We were even going to be allowed in early. Unfortunately I was wiped out and decided to skip it. Kind of wish I had hung on for a bit longer be it wasn't meant to be.

Here is the man that made our cruise absolutely fantastic...our Concierge Karan Arora..he treated us like royalty
Towel art left by our room steward. It was originally placed on our bed but we thought it would be better suited to have the monkey hanging out from the drapes.

Ketchikan as seen from the ship as we entered port

A Princess cruise ship heading into port and arriving at her dock. We saw 3 different boats, including ours, making port in Ketchikan

This I believe was a Holland America ship docked in front of us

Between 6,000-7,000 passengers combined are on these 3 ships

Here is a picture of the F/V Aleutian Ballad. This crab fishing boat used to be part of the show the Deadliest Catch. The boat has been converted over and now is used as a tourist attraction....The Bearing Sea Crab Fisherman's Tour Part of Ketchikan Harbor

Ketchikan as we entered port

Welcome to Ketchikan

There were blocks of buildings built up off of the water

The streets of Ketchikan

Some food signage that looked interesting

This is the rain meter sign that the keep track of the participation on. They get lots of rain here

This was taken from our boat that was taking us on our Misty Fjords excursion

This is what they called a volcanic plug which sticks up out of the water on a small island in the middle of the water

Sheer cliffs in Misty Fjords

Here are some waterfalls that we saw

This video is of the float plane that took us back to Ketchikan

Day #2 Alaska Vacation 2009 Sunday 5/10/09

Both Veronica and I are still dealing with the jet lag issues from our vacation. It was very different seeing it still daylight at 10PM and light at 4:15AM. It seems like we kept bouncing from one time zone to another. It will take a couple of more days to get back into our normal schedule. Now onto Day #2 of our Alaskan Vacation.
I got up early on this Sunday morning...it was around 5:15AM. We went down to the continental breakfast that the hotel has...it was not the best that we have ever had but it was not the worst either...it was free and that is what counts. After breakfast, around 8AM, we grabbed our cameras and headed down to Pikes Market, which was about 6 blocks from where our hotel was located. It was very busy due to it being Mothers Day. Veronica bought a Washington Rose Apple from one of the venders and something called honey sticks. Honey sticks are little plastic "straws" that are filled with different flavored honey...cinnamon, apple and peach to name just a few. During our return walk back to the hotel, we came upon a Tiffany & Co. store. Veronica loves Breakfast At Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn, so it was mandatory that we get some photos of her in from of the Tiffany's window. I accidentally put those photos on yesterdays entry. We ended up back at the hotel around 10AM. We still had some time to waste until heading to the pier. About an hour later, we called a taxi and were picked up at the hotel for our brief ride to Pier 66, where the NCL Pearl was docked. It had arrived earlier that morning from a previous cruise to Alaska. The taxis dropped us off near the pier and there was a porter right there to snatch up all of our luggage and took it to a special room where it is screened and x-rayed. We were sent to another very large room where we showed our tickets, passports and a credit card for any additional charges that we accumulated on board. We also had our photos taken and were given our suite card key. We were on board within 1/2 hour or so after first arriving in the taxi. As we board, we were given champagne and/or orange juice. We were then taken to Cagney's, which is a "specialty" steak restaurant that has a surcharge at night. The Pearl has a couple of these surcharge "specialty" restaurants($25.00 a person additional charge. The food and service seemed to be better at these restaurants compared to the others(non-surcharge) on board. Any thing that cost extra on board, is charged to you on board account. Because we were in a suite, which is category AE or higher on the Pearl, we had special perks throughout the cruise, priority seating for the restaurants, could eat breakfast and lunch at Cagney's...no surcharge for those meals, a Butler and a Concierge plus a whole bunch of other niceties. Our Concierge was Karan Arora. Karan was absolutely fabulous..I will talk about him more as the trip continues. For lunch, Veronica had Sliders..small hamburgers and I had the Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail and Crab Cakes. We ended up eating a lot of Shrimp Cocktail during this cruise. We were then told that our suite was ready for us. Our suite was really nice and had plenty of room for the 2 of us. They even had a small fridge built into one of the pieces of furniture. We requested that the fridge be emptied out of its pay bar set up so that we could put in our Coke Zero that we had purchased a bunch of the previous evening. After surveying our room briefly, we had to participate in an emergency drill muster. We had to put on our life jackets that we in our closet and head down to the Summer Palace Restaurant, where we met up with others from our muster group. While I was sitting at the table during this muster drill, I was looking around at people and I happened to notice someone whom I thought I had seen on a web site while I was at home. I had been doing research for the cruise and I stumbled upon a really cool web site about 4 people that cruise together and they tell about their journeys on their web site. The web site is called On The Seas I thought that I recognized Steve from a photo on the web site. So after the muster drill was completed and we were heading up the stairwell, I turned around and here was this guy that I thought I had recognized. So I turned around and asked him if his name was Steve and he said yes. I then explained about stumbling upon his web site. I am pretty sure that he was probably caught a little off guard by the whole introduction but he was really friendly and took it all in stride. He was traveling with Mathew, Gloria and Simone. We formally introduced ourselves to each other. We saw each other a couple of times on the cruise but we did not have any excursions together, which was a shame because they were all extremely friendly. Hopefully our paths will cross again in the future. After getting back to our room, our baggage finally arrived and we unpacked and hung everything that needed to be hung up, put our clothes in the drawers, everything else in the bathroom and done with the whole thing in about 10 minutes. The ship was supposed to leave the pier at 4PM but it was delayed until 5:30PM. After taking many photos of the ship and trying to learn our way around and taking more photos of what we could see of Seattle from the ship, we headed to the Garden Cafe for dinner. The Garden Cafe is a large sprawling food buffet area with seating all over the place. The food wasn't bad. The had a great bread and salad bar. They served all kinds of food including Indian and food for other ethnic passengers. There was something to eat for everyone. After dinner, Veronica and I came back to our room and relaxed for a bit. Around 7:45 we headed out to go to the Stardust Theater. The Stardust Theater is a rather large theater where they have many shows and performances throughout the cruise. At the Stardust Theater we got our first glimpse of Simon. Simon is the super friendly and funny Cruise Director. We had seen Simon on a tv special that they had about the NCL Pearl...I think the show was called Big Money On The High Seas Inc. or something like that. Simon was a real character throughout the whole cruise and he was very enjoyable to watch and listen to. The show that night at the Stardust Theater was a bunch of "taster" shows that gave everyone an idea of what shows they had to look forward to during the cruise. We ended up getting back to the room around 10PM and called it a night. By this time the ship was well on its way and Seattle was nothing more than a little pin point behind us. When we got back to the suite, we noticed that we had turn down service, complete with little chocolate candies. I almost forgot to tell you...that upon our entering our suite, we had been given a bottle of Champagne, some horse dervies...those little finger foods, a fruit bowl and a flower arrangement. As it turned out, this was only the beginning of our being pampered and being treated like VIPs. That night, Veronica and I slept like babies...with the sliding balcony door open and the sound of the wake lulling us to sleepyland.

Veronica happily participating in the emergency muster drill, which was held in the Summer Palace Restaurant

Artwork that was in the main atrium of the ship
This is a photo of the Princess Star. The Star was underway from its pier, that was father down than the pier that the Pearl was dock at in Seattle. We would see this ship a couple of times during our cruise. Several ships have the same itinerary as we did and we would see these ships in various ports that we went to.

Seattle Space Needle taken from the deck of the Pearl

Seattle becoming a mere memory as we cruise away

This was a typical scene that you can see off in the distance from many areas of Seattle. Seattle was a really nice city and they have all of this natural beauty surrounding it. Can't be too hard waking up every morning to this type of scenery.