KmomChicago

I am a thrifty one and I am happy I spent it. Def watch for a discount promotion before your voyage. We saved about $80 pp.

Thank you for your kind words. My brain is a tough place to live in sometimes. 😂 I will keep an eye out! Today at Tracy’s: Yes!! I don’t think they go to Ah-cah-pool-koh anymore, unfortunately. Too close to the cartels or something. 😢

This isn’t quite right. Bliss is here, not Encore. We’ve been catching and passing all the ships I didn’t choose and I have FOMO. Or maybe RIMO, regret I missed out. I kinda always wanted to try Princess of course, 9 years of watching them pull in to Pwair-toh Vie-arrrrr-tah courtesy of Aaron Spelling. But I have now sailed south from LA and north from the Pacific Northwest and they didn’t win, so must not be a burning desire. I think they’re too fancy for me. I’m certainly old enough but I guess I have never been able to figure if there’s enough real difference between brands to upgrade.

Mendenhall Glacier and salmon hatchery tour coming up after lunch. I’m now on LTE as we approach Juneau. Warmer and sunnier today. One of the kids wants crab legs so I will be authorizing exactly one pound, probably at Tracy’s, after the tour.

Lunch in MDR. Tomato salad app with goat cheese.

Not hard, booked same day and walked right up. Weather wasn’t nice which may have helped. Kids are too lazy for iFly.

I’m eating alone in Windjammer, spinning in turquoise water, dropping some happy tears at this beautiful moment, icebergs around us in a fjord, hearing Jim Croce on the PA, and the other kind of tears too, missing Carol gone over 20 years now.

Alpha alpha alpha call this morning at the crew cafe as we approach Dawes Glacier.

Having done the free experience in port in Sitka this pricing may be the ultimate big fat NO THANKS for me. As many have noted, it’s, well, okay.

Thank you, out of my hands now, back to our regularly scheduled vacation.

Whelp that’s over with. She learns her fate later this week.

Last night’s dinner also marked the official midpoint of this voyage. I can already see where this is headed! The sun is up this early morning here near Juneau and my job interview is in 15 minutes! 😳

They managed to sell me a photo of my kid at dinner. And they also sold us the Taste of Royal lunch later in the cruise!

I have mentioned earlier that I have no cruises booked after Alaska. I’m not planning any at the moment, don’t have a destination or a ship in mind that is screaming at me, no sense of something important left undone. My life is changing, and with a few key exceptions I have never really been a repeater. I always understood there would be more opportunities than I was going to be able to fit into a single lifetime, so I have tried to sample a lot of the best places and travel methods. It’s a huge testament to the cruise industry that I am on my 15th ship. I have sailed Carnival 6 times since 2017 and now Royal Caribbean three. Both are really excellent at what they do. Sometimes people say they’ve “had enough of that” about something and they mean, they’re sick of it, annoyed by it, fed up. It’s possible also to say it and mean, this is a successfully completed mission. One that’s been nearly perfectly executed and greatly enjoyed. If this is my last (not ready to say that with certainty), then I am satisfied to leave it right there.

The White Pass railroad exceeded my expectations by a wide margin. I assumed it would be cool, and it was, and also cold, and it was. I wondered whether the quality of the scenery would be diminished due to the travel season; we’re pre-blossoms here in the great north, for example. What I found was an up close look at a special moment in the annual cycle of Klondike-area weather. The foggy clouds kissing the mountaintops created an illusion of the earth reaching straight up and touching heaven. Closer, next to the train, rough boulders were softened, covered in multi colored lichens and mosses nourished by the constant drip and flow of snowmelt working its way to the river valley below. As we climbed higher, it became hard to believe the route was named for a man rather than for the steeply snowy landscape around us. At the peak of our journey, now in the clouds ourselves, there was no visible sign that spring had yet arrived. On the way back, I was more aware of the lush evergreen forest all around and the hundreds of small waterfalls that I assume exist only in spring and after heavy rains. Though early in the growing season, nature is clearly thriving in this place once overrun with ambitious humans, now just hosting us as curious sightseers. With all the richness of the English language, I can’t find any perfect words to describe it, though some come close. Fantastic, sublime, transcendent, glorious.

In all my travels, most places look about as good as they always did in the many photos I saw before visiting them myself. I can say this for the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, everywhere in the Caribbean, The Great Wall, and many others. Rarely I visit a place so stunning and majestic that pictures, paintings and poetry all fail to capture the reality of being in the place. I would say this of Hawaii, Machu Picchu, and this amazing and beautiful place I visited today.

White Pass train ride pics

With the exception of the appetizers, these photos don’t do the meal justice. It was delicious and a lot of fun.

Desserts “Apple” and The World.

Branzino is the way to go. Halibut in clear paper (aka plastic) is good but the branzino beats it.

Wonderland appetizers Tomato water and crab avocado cones Egg in a nest Palate cleansing spicy raw tuna in a lime shell with sorbet and roe. Just go with it, man!

Graduate and I are eating at Wonderland tonight!