City of Victoria

Thursday 2nd June We arrived into the port of the city of Victoria around 8am. Heather and I had booked into a tour of the famous Butchant Gardens and a tour of Craigdarroch Castle. The boys had decided to make their own way into the town and look around. Heather and I loved the gardens and wished we could have spent longer there. The garden was built by the wife of a wealthy  business man who owned a limestone quarry. After all the limestone had been excavated his wife started to work on the garden. The old quarry was turned into a beautiful "sunken garden" area. Over he years the garden was extended and eventually given to the city of Victoria. It has over 500 people who work in different areas of the gardens. From the gardens, we were taken Craigdarroch Castle. This beautiful castle was built in the 1890s for the Dunsmuir family. Robert Dunsmuir was  wealthy coal barron but unfortunately he died before the castle was completed but his wife and several of his children and orphaned grandchildren lived in the home. Many of the rooms had been beautifully restored back to their original use as the castle had become a Military hospital during the first World War, then a college and finally an administration building for the education. It was decided to restore it back to a castle in 1969. We loved our visit here but it was too brief (50 minutes) to take everything in. We were taken back to the ship and met up with the boys. They had had quite an exciting day too. Paul and I headed into town by foot, found some wifi and did some up dating and then checked out fishing reels for Paul. We found a shop out of town, many reels (and guns!) but nothing to Paul's liking. Returned to town by bus, met a really friendly bus driver and "RainMan" who travelled buses daily. He knew all the facts and figures about just about anything including our ship!

In the evening we went to the final show at the theatre. It was a culmination of all the good things from the previous shows, including singing, dancing and a brilliant comedian. Quite a few of the service staff were also brought up on stage so the audience could say thank you. Lights, music, singing and streamers were there at the finale in great amounts.

Swells and Swims

Wednesday 1st June  Swells and Swims in the Spas We woke today to a fair swell. Although it didn't bother us too much, Heather chose to stay in bed rather than have breakfast. We had a late breakfast and then Rob and I went for a walk all around the ship, exploring places like the fitness centre, pools, spas, wave-rider, rock-climbing wall etc. It was quite cool outside. With a captive audience there were many "specials" on at the many shops in the mall on the ship. Paul bought himself a new watch and Rob and I bought a few souvenirs. We went to a very interesting talk from the captain, the first engineer and the director of the hotel and services aho happened to be an Australian. We learnt alot about this incredible ship and many people had questions for the captain. We found out that this is one of the biggest cruise ships sailing the world. We had a late lunch and then decided to brave the spas. The more protected hot spas were full so we had to venture outside to the hot spas. We got in very quickly and by keeping our shoulders under the water, we were comfortable. The outside temperature was about 9 degrees. We stayed in for about 15 minutes before very quickly moving into the vacated spas that were under cover, out of the wind. After another amazing dinner we went to the Palace theatre to see a fantastic dance show.

Glacier

Tuesday May 31st We were dozing when an early morning phone call came in from Paul  to let us know we were in the Tracy Arm Fjord, heading to view the Sawyer  Glaciers. Rob immediately went to our window, dressed in only his jocks and opened our curtains. Meanwhile, down on the deck in  front of us a large crowd were viewing the fjord but quite a few of our Australian friends were watching Rob. Ha, ha, he was caught out. We quickly dressed and went out onto the deck to see the beautiful sight of the small blue icebergs, the end of the huge glacier meeting the water, framed by mountains on either side and the green fir trees everywhere. We were given hot chocolate to keep us warm and many photos were taken. Our captain managed to turn the boat around, doing a 360 and then another 180 as we headed back out. We saw many seals on small icebergs and some swimming. We  also saw quite a few penguins but no bears. It was the most memorable morning of our trip. We made our way slowly out of the fjord to the inside passage and finally into the open ocean. We had a small swell develop and by the evening it was a bit bigger. It was another formal night for dinner so we dressed up again and had another beautiful dinner including lobster! After dinner we went to the palace theatre and saw two wonderful shows. The first one featured an Australian husband and wife team singing and playing musical instruments. They were quality performers and sang popular songs. This show was followed by a late night comedy show that was very funny and most entertaining.

Misreading the time

Monday 30th May We were up very early today because Rob misread the clock and instead of being 7.20am, it was 6.20am. The boys managed around of putt-putt (mini-golf) before breakfast! It’s been interesting here with the hours of daylight.  Sunrise was 3.58am this morning and sunset will be at 10.01pm so waking up when it’s been light for several hours is challenging as we tend to wake up very early and then try to go back to sleep. We docked in Skagway at 7am and after another beautiful breakfast we walked into this little, historical Alaskan town. Skagway was a quiet tranquil place until the discovery of gold in the Klondike region in 1898. The gold rush brought many people here and also caused the famous White Pass and Yukon railway through the mountains to be constructed. The town is full of restored old buildings from the gold-rush era and the population is just over 1,000, although this would increase during the summer tourist season with seasonal workers needed to cope with the huge influx of people, especially from the cruise  ships. There were 3 cruise ships in Skagway today and the locals were saying that they would have up to an 10,000 people in town.  We did a walk through the town, admiring the architecture and checking out the shops.  We had booked to go on the historic railway through the mountains and the trip did not disappoint. Again stunning scenery from the train and much excitement climbing up through the narrow pass in the train. This return trip took just over 3 hours but the time went very  quickly. When we returned to Skagway we were feeling a bit hungry as we had missed lunch. After missing the King Crab lunch in Juneau, yesterday the boys were keen to try some today. We found a shop on the mariner that was called King Crab and went in and had some Alaskan king  crab legs, crab cakes and shrimp sushi. Lovely! We returned to the ship and Paul, Heather and Rob went in one of the large heated spas but I chickened out because I thought it would be too cold getting out and returning to our room.

Jumping around Juneau

Sunday 29th May Jumping around Juneau We awoke to our ship gently making it’s way up the reasonably shallow waters of the Inside Passage to Juneau which is the capital of Alaska. We saw our first very small iceberg. It was very blue and very tiny. The scenery was just beautiful as we drew closer to Juneau with towering mountains covered in trees rose up out of the ocean and behind them you could see snow capped mountains and glaciers. We enjoyed being out on deck as our ship docked ahead of time in Juneau. It didn’t take us long to disembark and do the short walk of about 1&1/2 km into the town centre. There were buses lined up for people who didn’t want to walk and also for others who were off on different excursions. We did a bit of a walk around the shops, bought a few souvenirs and then had some lunch. As Rob was going on a helicopter ride out to a glacier to do some “dog sledding”, he returned to the ship to get ready for this and Heather, Paul and I went up on the Mount Roberts tramway gondola. This gave us spectacular views of the whole area surrounding Juneau. While at the top we were able to go for a beautiful walk, view an injured bald eagle and watch a short film about the Tlingit people who are the native people of Alaska. Once we had returned back to Juneau, Paul walked back to the ship while Heather and I finished off the shops.
Rob
I set off in the bus for the airport where they showed safety video for helicopter and fitted us with ice boots that did up over your shoes. The flight was stunning flying over a number of glaciers, including one called Suicide Glacier. It is about 3 kms long and ends at cliff where the ice drops down 1500 feet! The sled camp has 280 dogs which come to glacier as a summer camp to keep up fitness. Our driver, Michael Baker will race in  next year’s Idarod 1200 mile sled race.
The ride/driver was fantastic and interacting with the dogs was great. And of course my first trip in a helicopter made for a memorial afternoon.

Cruising

Saturday 28th May Cruising the high seas Today we woke to a bright sky and reasonably gentle seas. We were to have an “at sea” day so after a delicious breakfast in the “Sapphire Dining Room”, we set off to explore the ship a little more. We met up with many of the people from our Canada trip in one of the many bars  just to share our contacts with each other.  We did a little shopping in the shopping mall and Rob bought himself a reversible Alaskan jacket at a very good price. After another delicious lunch (I hate to think how much weight we are putting on), we went to a wonderful ice-skating show at the ice rink. It was based around that seasons and the music, costumes and  skaters were excellent. The ice-skating rink has space for an audience of about 600. We had been rostered to attend at a certain time depending on which section your cabin was in. The quality of the show was equal to shows that you would pay $100 a ticket for, back home. After this we headed to Starbucks for coffee. As our dinner tonight was classed as “formal” we thought we  better head back to our cabin to “dress up” for dinner. There are only 2 of these dinners during our trip so it wasn’t too taxing for Rob and Paul to dress up. You really don’t need to dress up if you don’t want to but it seemed that the majority of people in our dining restaurant had and some of the women were wearing long evening dresses and all their jewels. Dinner was again just amazing and after dinner, seeing we were all dressed up we headed to the palace theatre to watch a show. Again the show was spectacular. Brilliant, singers, dancers, costumes, backing band and prop sets. It was just like a show you would see at the  Festival Theatre in Adelaide. The music and songs were extremely popular songs of the last 40 years e.g. music from Fame, Saturday Night Fever, Flash dance etc. After this we headed back to our cabin for an early night ready for our excursions in Juneau tomorrow.

Northto Alaska

Friday 27th May North to Alaska We felt very spoilt this morning because we actually didn’t need to be ready until 10.15am. We were able to have a leisurely breakfast and then take our time packing ready for our cruise. Our coach took us to the cruise ship at the port and we were able to see a little more of Seattle. It seems to be a busy city but is very green with many trees. It is also the home of Microsoft and Boeing and we saw many buildings around town indicating this. Washington state is also one of the states in the USA where marijuana is legal and we saw many shops selling marijuana all around town. Have to say, seeing a gun shop followed by a marijuana shop and then a Liquor store made us all raise our eyebrows. Our tour guide told us all about the gun laws here and how two states are now trialing non-concealed  weapons.....Yes that’s right, you can walk around with you gun on your hip! While enjoying breakfast this morning we talked to a lovely couple who live in the USA. They were asking lots of questions about Australia  and especially the guns. They knew that Australia had tough gun laws and had heard that we had a gun amnesty where 1,000s of guns were handed in. They also asked if the USA was the “laughing stock” of the world with the “Trump” election trail. All the Australians there said “Yes”.  They said they wanted to come and live in Australia. We are now on our ship, in our extremely comfortable cabin. Our cabin is on level 7 in the front section of the ship and we have a window looking out to the front of the ship. There are about 2,000 guests on this ship and it has 13 levels. There are so many restaurants and shops,  bars, a casino, ice skating rink, theatres, pools etc. We have not found everything yet but hopefully we will by the end of the trip. Our ship is called the Explorer of the Seas and will be the biggest ship that has ever gone to Alaska. We’ve had a delicious 3 course dinner and after a walk around are now relaxing in our cabin.