Alaska

Day 2 Vancouver Woke at the crack of dawn. Obviously still on UK time. Spent the morning doing a recci walk for all the places we have to get too after the cruise. We also wanted to find a bottle of gin to take on board. We were directed by a very nice shop assistant to the BC Liquor store in the Yuppy area of Vancouver. In doing this we found an area full of restaurants and arty shops so have made a note to return there later in the holiday. Having at last found the gin, we has a problem then finding tonic. More street walking. The up-side of this is that we are now quite familiar with the Downtown area. Boarding the ship was quite easy and we were greeted with a lunch and entertainment. Not a bad start except alcohol is quite expensive! After the life-boat drill, we returned to the cabin to unpack. It was only then that we read that we shouldn't have brought the gin on board. Oh well - we got away with it so the obvious thing to do was then to drink it. We were a bit disappointed to find out that Wifi is not free so catching up on the rugby is not an option for Ieuan on Saturday. There is also no Sky sports on board. We are on level 3 and most of the food and activities are on level 8. We have decided to keep using the stairs in order to keep the weight down The first night was casual with a BBQ on the Lido deck. We were joined by what would appear to be real live cowboy. Wore his Stetson throughout the meal and grunted occasionally to something said. His partner did her best but it soon became clear that they were not going to become our new best friends - and vice-versa probably. They were from New Mexico. It is amazing how many kids are on this ship. Is England the only country that still has schools open in June! We managed to stay awake long enough to see the evening entertainment which was given by all the on board entertainers - advertising their itineraries for the week. It struck us that this is a bit like Butlins on sea! An early night was much needed after that. Day 3 Another early start. Having read for an hour or more, I went for a deck walk- 4 times round the deck is 1mile - whilst Ieuan went to the gym. It was still only 7am. Not bad for us. A very grey day and there is quite a swell in the water. Still, when you are used to walking around after a few drinks, this movement is nothing! We just moved from area to area, having a coffee here, reading there, talking to anyone who would listen anywhere, until lunchtime. Went to a talk on how to make the best of Alaska at each of the stops - nothing is cheap though. We are waiting to see what we can do when we get there. It may all depend on the weather. It's surprising how quickly the day passes where you just amble around. At lunch we met a couple from New Zealand who were spending their children's inheritance travelling across Canada and back through the US. They were from Christchurch and had been affected by the earthquake 5 years ago. Richard decided to join Ieuan in the beer tasting later in the afternoon. I went to a talk on the effects of fire and ice on the creation of Alaska. Not everybody's choice of activity but I enjoyed it. Ieuan enjoyed the beer tasting even more. The evening was spent going from one form of activity to another and chasing the happy hour around the boat. Day 4 Another grey day but at least some land in sight today. Yesterday was sea all day. It is like the world has lost all it's colour. It is raining and the land keeps disappearing behind cloud. In some places the mountains are above the cloud. Have been told there are whales around and several people saw some -but not me! Later hopefully. It is very bleak at the moment but you never know it might clear by the time we dock in Juneau. Juneau The Capital City! Only way in is by boat or small plane. Very wet. The 'catch the tourist' groups were waiting on the quayside like vultures but we managed to dodge them and found our own way to the tram/ cable car. The weather was just clear enough to see to the top so we took the risk. The views were great but it was too wet to do any walks. We enjoyed the scenery and the film on the wildlife of Alaska and went back down into the town. What did we see? Jewellery shop after jewellery shop, a few cafés and a few outdoor clothing shops and that was it. In one family run souvenir shop it was explained to us how much mining goes on in Alaska and that jade is one of the largest mining industries. That sort of explains the number of shops. We found one bar with the most unfriendly barmaid - almost made us feel guilty for sitting there in her almost empty bar. She was not the hostess with the mostest which of course would explain a lot! We felt we were about to leave Juneau with a bad impression of the place when we passed The Red Dog Saloon. What a difference. We were welcomed at the door, directed to seats at the bar, served with a smile and a lot of banter and all this whilst there was live music on in the corner. Needless to say we spent more money there than we did in The Triangle Bar. After a very pleasant hour and a couple of beers, we returned to the ship having had our view of Juneau and its people completely turned around. Day 5 Skagway This time we were docked by 7am so there was quite a long day ahead. Again it was quite grey but not raining and there was the occasional patch of blue sky. We found the information centre, booked a train trip into the Klondike and walked most of the town within an hour. Once again, the place was full of jewellery shops. We killed time waiting for the train by having coffee in a small local family run bakery where it was explained to us that all the jewel shops disappear in the winter and move on to the Caribbean Islands. The shops survive in the summer because as many as 10 000 people will land there everyday. There were 4 cruise ships in at the same time as us. The whole tourist industry seemed to be very well run. We went for our train at 12.15 and although approximately 7000 tourists were visiting, we had an almost empty carriage- the tours organised by the cruise ships left from a different station. This meant there was room to stand at the back of the carriage on the journey that the first gold prospectors would have taken. The train chugged on for nearly 2 hours to Frazer, with some spectacular views especially once we were above the tree line. We went over some very rickety bridges which shook a little! The whole rail line is an amazing achievement for those who built it under very hard conditions. At Frazer, we changed over to a coach for our return journey to Skagway. This time the journey only took 30 minutes. We had been told that a visit to The Red Onion Hotel was not to be missed. The Red Onion had been a brothel in the early days of settlers. The bar was an interesting experience but not as good as the one in Juneau. Day 6 Tracy Arm Very grey and wet start to the day as the ship entered this long fjord at 7am. The scenery we could see was extraordinary, the sea was very calm within this sheltered strip. Along with a few hardy mariners, I stood out on the deck listening to the running commentary on how the fjord had formed and about the other features we could see. It also seemed as if we were on ice-berg watch as a few small ones drifted past us. Apart from the constant hum of the ship, the silence was quite eerie ( when the commentary stopped). It was cold and wet and I had difficulty taking photos, looking through the binoculars ( to do this I had to remove my glasses) and also snapping some photos on the iPad whilst wearing gloves. Needless to say, Ieuan was not with me - he was in the warm watching from the front of the boat in the Crow's Nest There was so many waterfalls, even plant life growing on the steep sides. It is incredible what nature can do. It took nearly 5 hours to get through this incredible feet of nature and the ice-bergs were getting bigger. On the 'up side', it stopped raining and the sun began to peak out from behind the clouds lifting the mist off the tops of the mountains in the distance. The views were getting better and better and then we turned the last corner and were faced with the wall of the glacier. Well, not quite as we could not get too close as there was a shelf of packed ice between us but what we could see was amazing especially as the whole picture was reflected in the very still water. The captain spun the ship around slowly so that everyone had a good view of this fabulous feature. The colour was stunning with almost aquamarine blue reflecting out of it. We were also able to see seals sitting on on the icebergs described as 'sausages on mashed potato' until we got closer to some of them. The sun stayed out for the entire time we were there showing that Alaska does have other colours apart from the 50 shades of grey we had been experiencing to date. The return journey down Tracy Arm was a bit quicker and the weather changed again to wet, cold and grey. How lucky we had been to a) get as close as we did to the glacier which we were told was the first time this season and b) to have had an hour of sunshine to view the valley and glacier from all angles. We left the calm water about 3 pm. The ship seemed to speed up a bit through the now choppier waters of the Inside Passage. We sat in the Crow's Nest - which has 270 degree panoramic views and was like being on the Starship Enterprise - whale watching. There were several in the channel but no spectacular performances by the whales - just a few spouts of water and backs looming over with the final flick of a tail that meant it had disappeared for a quite a while. We were told there were some orcas off to the left - they said port side - and I managed to get a bit of a fin in my picture.