Alaska Vacation 2009 Sunday 5/17/09 Homeward Bound

Unfortunately this day arrived way to soon. It was time for our cruise to end. We got up around 7AM. We had left a room service request on the outside door handle the night before and our food arrived at our cabin around 8:30AM We were supposed to meet Karan, our concierge, in the Stardust Theater at 9:30 for our priority disembarkation. It took us a little bit to get off the ship. Long lines waiting to go through customs. When we finally did hit the streets, we decided to hang out in Seattle for a bit. Our flight home wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:15PM, so we had all day and most of the evening until we even started on our way home. Our flight would take us to Newark and then onto Norfolk, where we would arrive home at 9:45AM the following morning. We hung out at Pikes Place Market, where it was extremely crowded again. It was fairly early on a Sunday morning and there were loads of people. They were having some type of cheese festival going on. Just long tables and booth after booth of cheese tasting. And the last thing that I wanted to do after eating heavily on a cruise, was to eat lots of cheese and get all bound up. So in a sign of goodwill towards my internal workings, I stayed away from the cheese lines. After an hour or so of walking around, we decided to take a cab to the airport. We ended up just camping out in a quiet area reading a book and catching some sleep. We spent an easy 10 hours at the airport before boarding our flight home. Needless to say it was a long day. It was the end of a really great vacation and now we had to get back to reality. We really loved our old reality, as temporary as it was. The memories of our cruise will linger on ...something that we can revisit as the days drift by and turn into months and then into years. The best thing about the cruise...the absolutely fantastic and beautiful scenery. Time to start over and set our sights on a new adventure. For all of the cruise photos and videos, a lot of which didn't make it on this blog, please feel free to click on my "Webshot" link that is on the upper right hand column of this blog.

Alaska Vacation 2009 Saturday 5/16/09 Victoria, BC

Well today is the last day of our cruise. We left Ketchikan yesterday afternoon at 1:30. We will arrive in Victoria at 6PM. Because of the late port of call, Veronica and I slept in a little later. We got up around 8AM, had breakfast and then came back to the room to pack up our luggage. They have something called the Bags Program. You pay $19.95 a person, leave your suitcases in the hallway by 2AM the following morning. They then take your luggage to the airport and proper airlines. Your luggage meets you at your final destination. Because our flight wasn't until 10:15PM tomorrow night, we were going to walk around Seattle and we could not do that dragging all of our luggage around. It was the first real rainy day that we had on the whole cruise. Just a very dreary day...kind of like letting you know that your cruise was almost over with and it was back to reality time. After packing our luggage up, we decided to hit the casino one last time. I had one of those coupons like Veronica had, where you use your coupon as a first card ace when playing blackjack. Well I used the first card ace coupon and my second card was a 3. Things weren't looking that great for me. I had only bet $20 on the hand. I then got another 3 and stood pat with my hand of 17. As it turned out, the dealer busted and I won...doubled my money. I then hit my favorite slot machine. the one that was good for me on an earlier casino visit. This particular slot machine was once again hot for me. I kept hitting bonuses, additional spins and of course additional winnings. By the time everything was said and done, Between Blackjack and our slot playing, we won $365. We then grabbed something quick to eat and headed back to our cabin for a nap. At 2:45PM we headed for the Stardust Theater for a Crew Talent Show. The show was ok but the final performance was funnier than heck and starred Simon, the ships cruise director. Everyone loves Simon and he is very well know in the NCL cruising world. Her is from "down Under" and is a laugh riot....I can still hear him saying, in his "down Under" accent "and have a smaaaashing day". The video of this particular performance is down below. Veronica and I went to a Japanese Teppanyaki( restaurant. The food and preparation was really good. We enjoyed it a lot and was some of the best food we had on the ship. We arrived in Victoria at the scheduled time. I first thought that the Victoria BC port of call was kind of like a waste...like they threw in an extra port just to fill up the cruising week. I felt that way because we were only in Victoria from 6PM until midnight and because it was a nigh time stop, that there wouldn't be much open during those hours. Boy was I wrong. Victoria is a beautiful city and the nightlife is something else. The city was buzzing with activity...plenty of street performers everywhere. Veronica and I walked all over the place. It was a really nice end to a great cruise. Because we were pooped out...you know how us old folks can get, we ended up taking a cab back to the ship. There were 2 other ships making Victoria their port of call...the Holland America Westerdam and the Princess Star. We had seen both ships in some of the other ports of call that we had so their itineraries were almost the same as ours was. We ended up going to bed around 11PM but found that we were so used to listening to the ships wake, that the silence of not having the ship moving and being docked in port, was actually a loud silence. Without the white noise, it took me longer to fall asleep. Maybe it was because it was our last night on the ship. Tomorrow we head home...crap...reality awaits. I don't want to leave. They will have to drag me kicking and screaming off of this ship. I am not leaving without a fight. Did someone say stowaway..I am so there. I almost forgot to mention...on our cruise we seemed to have a problem with assorted emergency alarms in our cabin. There was an emergency switch on both sides of our headboard plus a main emergency switch near the cabin door. The position of the emergency switch on Veronica's side of the bed was in a poor place. Veronica moved her pillow against the switch 3 or 4 times throughout the course of the cruise and we had people calling our room to make sure that we were ok. A couple of times they called and the switch had not been pushed at all. Must have been a faulty switch or something. Then one time I was in the shower and the next thing I know, a knock on the door and I could hear someone talking to Veronica. Veronica comes into the bathroom and tells me that because the bathroom door was ajar just a little bit, the steam from the shower set off the fire alarm. I am sure that they were happy when we got off the ship...no more false alarms to worry about and deal with.

More towel art left by our room steward

Some of the really nice homes in Victoria. There were nice older homes and then some modern architecture. Almost all of the homes had really beautiful gardens. You could really tell that the homeowners to a lot of pride in their residences.


A more modern style home
A duck family laying in the grass

City gardens

This area is right on the harbor and they had all kinds of vendors with handmade items all around this walkway
This is a parliamentary building in Victoria. Some of the architecture throughout the city was really interesting
Here is part of Victoria Harbor

A water taxi in the harbor


This is the Empress Hotel. The oldest hotel in Victoria. The hotel had moss all over it


These 2 trees were in front of the Empress Hotel. The kind of reminded me of dinosaurs...maybe protecting the entrance...what an imagination huh?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention..I opened a restaurant in Victoria while we were there

Here is the Princess Star dock in Victoria


Here is the Holland America Westerdam

Mime1.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #1

Mime2.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #2

Mime3.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #3

This is the ships wake and the sound of it. It lulled us to sleep every night. We kept the balcony sliding door open just so we could hear it

MOV00591.MPG'>Ships Wake

This is a portion of the Crews Talent Show. It is really funny. This is the part of the show that Simon participated in. He is the one in the middle. Due to the size and length of the original video, I had to divide it up into 2 sections

Special1.wmv'>Crews Talent Show With Simon Part#1

Special2.wmv'>Crews Talent Show With Simon Part#2

Day #5 Alaska Vacation Wednesday 5/13/09 Skagway

We ended up getting up early this morning. It seems that Veronica's cell phone did not pick up a time change when she turned it on to set the alarm feature. We ended getting up at 5:15AM. After having breakfast, we disembarked early...around 7AM. Our excursion, the Yukon Discovery Tour, did not start until 9:15. Because we had plenty of spare time, Veronica and I had plenty of time to walk around town , visit a few shops that had opened early and took some more photographs. Because we had a day full of travel and sightseeing planned, we decided not to drag everything that was purchased around. The people at one store were nice enough to store all of our purchases in a secured room. We went back to the dock area and waited briefly for our guide from Frontier Excursions Missy, our guide, showed up in a 24 passenger tour bus. The type with the large viewing windows. Missy was great. She was friendly, outgoing and very knowledgeable of the area. Missy told us that Skagway usually gets only about 20-40 sunny days a year and today was one of those few and rare days...at least in Skagway it was. Missy drove us through town pointing out various sights and providing us with a history lesson of Skagway. We then headed out to the Yukon with our destination to at Caribou Crossing. The scenery up and back was absolutely beautiful. We made several stops for photograph taking. We hit every kind of weather during this trip. On our way to Caribou Crossing, it rained some and when we arrived at Caribou Crossing, there was sleet and snow coming down at times. At Caribou Crossing, they had a Sled Dog area, a museum, a gift shop, a small bakery and a small structure for cooking and a larger structure for eating. We ended up eating bar-b-que chicken with some side dishes. This was part of the tour also. One of the things that I remember most was how big the mountains were and how most of them were snow covered. It really was a beautiful sight to behold. On our way back to Skagway, we saw some Dall sheep grazing on the very steep portions of some the the mountain sides. We also got very lucky and saw a black bear that was only about 10 feet off of the side of the road. W4e watched the bear for about 5-6 minutes or so. We saw him get up on his hind legs and he started to kind of dance as he was rubbing his back against a small tree. It was a sight to see. We got back to Skagway around 4PM. We did a little more shopping and then picked up our previously purchased items from that store. We decided to have something different to eat, something they did not serve on the ship. We went to a local restaurant and had Halibut and Chips..Fish and Chips. It was really good food. We got back on the ship around 6:30. Because it had been a long day for us, we decided to take a nap so that we would be refreshed for the comedy show that was to be at 8:45. The comedy show did not end up being that funny so we left early. Tomorrow was going to be an exciting day because we were going to be sailing and viewing Glacier Bay.
Scenery seen from the ship as we were heading into Skagway

Another ship off in the distance also heading to Skagway

This is a view of some rock art. It seems that years ago, when the miners were in the Skagway area, they would leave messages on the rocks in a way of communicating with their friends

Skagway, Alaska

The scenery on the way to Caribou Crossing

The poles that you see are for the snow plow trucks. It lets the driver now where the road ends and where danger begins

These are some of the living quarters for the Canadian customs personnel. We had to cross into Canada to get to Caribou Crossing in the Yukon.

Here is Caribou Crossing

A retired sled dog

A future sled dog

A future sled dogs wet nose

A future sled dog playing peek a boo

Sorry but no this isn't a sled dog...rather the backside of a woolly mammoth. This was part of the museum exhibit at Caribou Crossing

Dall sheep grazing along the mountain side

Reverse reflections of a mountain

Reflections of a mountain

Did someone say "Da Bears"

On our return to Skagway

This contraption was used at one time to clear the snow of off the tracks. Now it is used to suck up and spit out inquisitive tourists

More rock art

This takes public restrooms to a whole new level