1:20 p.m. - 2007-05-28
EAGLES, WHALES AND NO BEARS...OH MY!!!
Monday, May 28, 2007
The following are some of the highlights of our trip to Seattle, the Alaskan Cruise through the Inner Passage.
On May 9, 2007; we left at 4:30 am and drove thru Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and stayed in S. Dakota (a littlemore than half way thru SD). We stopped after about 14 hrs of driving/riding. It wasn't really too bad since I was napping or sitting all the way.
Had dinner in a very small lounge/restaurant. Good homemade food... with a scoop of ice cream with cream de menthe included with the meal! I started reading DREAM WHEN YOU'RE FEELING BLUE by Elizabeth Berg and had to adjust my butt on the hard motel chair all evening... Nice that the book was really good to keep my interest.
Great weather, in the mid 70s most of the day. We have lots of bug carcasses on the windshield and grille. The land is so green, fresh spring colors. Lots of flat land on I-90, we are going into the Badlands tomorrow,so I expect the scenery will be changing quite a bit..
Day Two: May 10, 2007
Another long day in the truck. I think we drove about 12 hrs, 850 miles..... yesterday was 14 hrs, 880 miles...the difference was we drove FASTER today! Being able to drive 75 to 80 MPH legally has a huge effect on how far you can go in one day.
We went from the lush green pastures of S. Dakota to a duller green of hilly Wyoming. We also saw the Badlands, and lots of snowcapped mountains... but spent most of our day in Montana. OMG, this is a big state to drive across and...we are not done yet. The weather was beautiful and sunny most of the day....we did run through a big rainstorm which had raindrops so big and hard that they scoured our windshield free of the bug carcasses.....of course, once we got back into sun, it didn't take too long for the bugs to start committing suicide again...
We are in Missoula, Montana tonight. I really don't care where we are....only one more very long day and we will be in Seattle and our real vacation will begin.
No mention of my gluteus maximus tonight! The chair in the room tonight is much more comfortable. However, my wrists, elbows, knees and ankles hurt. Must be the pressure of trying to stay awake all day, I only took one nap in the truck today after I took some Aleve because my legs were aching.
We saw lots of cattle, sheep, deer and antelope. I saw a hawk which Husband said was an eagle...I don't think so.
I saw a pheasant which Husband said was a roadrunner...I don't think so....and I saw some llamas at two different ranches...I didn't tell husband because he would have said they were something else.... like draft horses!!
Oh, Husband just said he saw the llamas too!
May 11,2007
We arrived in Mercer Island (Seattle) about 4:30 PM Indiana. time. It was only 1:30 here (we gained 3 hours since we left home). Although we were not in the truck as much - it still seemed like the longest day of all. We were both tired of riding and riding and trying to stay awake.
The scenery was not the way we envisioned it. We did enjoy the small part of Idaho we went through. It was lush and green and had lots of different things to look at. We went across a beautiful area as we went into Washington.
Washington, however, was rather drab and unexciting even when we went through Spokane. Maybe it was just the interstate we were driving on. Once we got nearer to Seattle, however, we saw more water. We went through our first tunnel in Washington., small and short but it perked husband's spirits because he really loves tunnels. When we went exploring for the pier and parking garage, we went through tunnels AND bridges....big bridges between Seattle and Mercer Island!!
Our GPS is amazing (Jill) did a great job in locating our motel, restaurants, a car wash and we even located the parking garage where our truck will be while we are on our cruise. The 3 hr time difference is working to our advantage today. We slept until about 10:30 AM (In. time. ). Husband was up until 2 AM watching the last hour of prime time. Now we are slowly repacking for the cruise and will have plenty of time to eat a big breakfast, park the truck and get through the process of checking in.
The weather was about 60 degrees yesterday. We both commented that the temperature seems warmer...wonder if it is the angle of sunshine rays or what? Anyhow,it is about 54 right now,and expected to reach 60 this afternoon. We can get onboard after 1:00 (4:00 Indiana time) and will sail at 4:00 (7:00 PM Indiana. time). We are hoping the cruise will reach the expectations we have for it.
Other than that, only minor irritations like service in restaurants have occurred. I have read two books already, one had 276 pages (DREAM WHEN YOU'RE FEELING BLUE by Elizabeth Berg. A story of 3 sisters during WWII and THE HEART SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (he is the son of Stephen King) 374 pages. It was one of those books that you keep on reading until it is completed.
May 12, 2007
It didn't take very long to present our passports, picture IDs and cruise documents before we actually stepped onto the cruise ship, Norwegian Star.
There was a demonstration of nautical events going on and we were able to watch Fire Boats, Rescue Boats, Harbor Control and even helicopter search and rescue before our ship left the port. The port is right by the skyscrapers and the Seattle Needle so we had a grand view of it all! It was brisk and windy but our spirits were high and we were excited to see and visit places we had never been before.
We have traveled on the Royal Carribean three times and are very familiar with their setup. This time, we were on the Norwegian Star which is part of Norwegian Cruise Lines. The cruise is a "freestyle" which means there is no seated dinner hour or special table or special attendants that serve you each day. The brochure said there are several "specialty restaurants" where you pay a cover charge to eat there.(all meals are included in the basic ticket). There are a couple of small restaurants where you may have to wait for seating but there is no cover charge. There is the buffet which is called the Market Cafe, open almost 24 hours a day. The brochure claimed there were 12 eating stations in the Cafe. I have to say, we never saw more than 3 sections open at one time and mostly there were only 2 sections open. The food was....OK. It did get better as the week went on.
However, we did not like the service by most of the attendants. They did not speak English (which we were aware of and accustomed to from previous cruises) BUT most of them did not make an effort to smile or even try to understand what you wanted and several times; they actually IGNORED the customer standing at the station waiting to be served.
(On Royal Carribean, if you eat in the Windjammer (their buffet), you can serve yourself with whatever you want or as much as you want. The food items are kept in the same place, all the time, such as condiments, beverages, sandwiches, desserts, butter, syrup and etc.) In the Market Cafe; it took me 3 days to find the syrup and butter. Also, they ran out of bacon after the third day and we didn't get any until the last 2 days. A few times there were no glasses at the beverage dispensers.
One evening, I was at the dessert table, the attendant would not come out of the back room and one of the cruise lines officials in full uniform came up. He asked where the dessert girl was. I told him I had been waiting for several minutes and I was going to help myself even though the serving utensils were on the back of the tray (on the server's side) He didn't seem to think that was a problem. I later saw another woman actually ducking underneath the "sneeze window" to get some food because no one was there to assist her either. Another odd thing was that they were stressing if you had any food allergies to be sure to make it known to the attendants yet the food trays were usually not labeled so you often didn't even know what the food item was to make a selection.
Another time when we ate in a specialty restaurant, the waiter actually took a cup of cole shaw off my plate while I was eating and gave me a cup of potato salad which I had originally ordered. I almost didn't want to continue eating my meal after that because they were stressing (as they should) using the dis-infectant alcohol cleaning liquids whenever you went into or out of an eating area and especially leaving and returning onboard. I didn't eat anything that had been by the cole slaw cup since he had touched my plate. You know, I was just thinking, I DID have an upset stomach for a couple of days early into the cruise...wonder if that was the reason? I have never been sick on the other cruises before either.
Overall, we did like the cruise ship. The bathroom was larger than on RC and the room attendants were extremely nice and very eager to please. The tv movies were very good. We saw Night at the Museum, the second Pirate of the Carribean, Dreamgirls, Matrix, Happy Feet etc. However, the bed was not comfortable and the little seating couch was terribly hard to sit on.
I didn't care much for the art auctions because the selections were usually very high priced and very large pictures. The auctioneer would tell you the base price and expect you to bid higher. On RCL, they start at $10 and go up and if you don't reach their base price, they call it a gallery buy and don't sell it. Also, in RCL's auction, you can win a free painting or get a second one - this was to draw a bigger crowd.
I don't mean to complain but I was shocked at the difference between NCL and RCL. I am sure if we had never used RCL, we would not have been as disappointed. I did make some remarks on the NCL customer satisfaction comment card... I guess it sounds like I am really whining and nit-picking about this cruise line but we never felt this way when we traveled before on RCL.
But back to the actual reason for the whole trip....we went to the Inner Passage and we enjoyed the ports, the people in the shops were very nice and seemed quite glad to have us there. It was different watching the scenery go by each day as we were accustomed to open water on previous cruises. We were very fortunate that we had such good weather. On the one bad day which was the last day at sea, we stayed inside and played in the casino, I attended the third art auction and we were able to keep busy. I read several books onboard, including one from the ship's library. I also read SISTERS by Danielle Steel, THE KNITTING CIRCLE by Ann Hood and I started THE CELL by Stephen King.
Oh, I almost forgot. During the 3 art auctions, there was a raffle and I won the second day!. I could choose between 2 different artists or take a sericell from Disney. I choose the sericel which is called Surprise Party and had Minnie and Mickey Mouse on it. It will be shipped to me in a few weeks, unframed. It is worth about $250 to $300 according to the prices during the auction. I just found it online listed as worth $395 unframed!
We arrived back in Seattle about 8:30 AM on May 19, 2007. We were running late due to a few things. There was a medical emergency on Thursday and we were told a airplane was coming into Skagway to airlift a passenger to a hospital. On Friday, we were told the "fire" in generator #1 wasn't really a fire; it was the fuel injector valve which had made a small hole in the cover and some hot oil had spilled into the room (a fine mist). They treated it as a fire with foam extinguishers and wanted to be sure there was no igniting of the oil. This meant we were running on 2 generators and couldn't go faster than 18 knots.
We got into Canada about 1/2 hr late and left 1 hr earlier than planned in an attempt to make up time to arrive in Seattle. Didn't miss much in Canada and it took longer to go through Customs into Canada and back onto the ship than it was worth. So, we got into Seattle about 2 hrs late. Oh yeah, the medical emergency turned out to be a death because we saw them remove a covered stretcher into a funeral home car while we were waiting on our balcony to disembark the last morning...
We were so lucky with the weather. In Skagway (rain spot of Alaska) we were just starting back to the shuttle bus when the wind picked up and it started to rain. And on Friday, our day at sea...it was rainy, windy and cold. But otherwise, it was good weather all week. We wore turtlenecks and jackets when we were in port,,,
We didn't take any side trips,,,too expensive. We did buy a few souvenirs and sent only a couple of postcards.
We spent quite a bit of time and some of our money in the casino. I was lucky this trip. I won just ovet $100-plus on the first day after spending about $60. I worked that $100 and played that money the rest of the time. I actually cashed out before dinner the last day with $112 and Husband had about $83. After dinner, I did everything I could to lose that money and finally got so tired of playing the same two slots (my "lucky ones") that I cashed out with over $40 in my pocket. Yeah, I know.....whine, whine. I NEVER thought I would get tired of seeing those winning icons come up! LOL!
Now we are near Portland, stopped for the day and I am doing laundry.....3 loads worth. We hope to see Mt. Hood tomorrow and then will decide where to head next,
On the cruise, we were 4 hrs earlier than at home. It really gets your body mixed up on taking rx, sleeping and eating. Hope we can sleep well tonight....
MY NEXT ENTRY WILL BE ABOUT THE TRIP BACK HOME.....
