A Alaska cruise (Sea Princess) from a newbies eyes

[brr5]

Too funny!! I love the part about Larry the piano guy playing Chariots of Fire!

[Colo Cruiser]

Great following along. :D

[Hellolost]

Well I will have to finish this tomorrow. The honey came home from his first day of work in 8 months. (he got a job right before we left :D) and is super tired. He wants to relax so tomorrow I will type of the last of the trip. Hopefully when I get back from picking up the dogs I can post some pictures too.

[DANofNORTH]

MDW & I have been considering an Alaska cruise for a couple years now. Your diary & descriptions make it more real for us.

 

Thanks, keep up the good job. :)

[franklin1]

So glad to hear Hubby has a new job - great news. Can't wait for the next day of your cruise. If you're not involved in the creative field, you've missed your calling. Your writing is loved by all.:rolleyes:

[Druke I]

Keep it up.

 

A very enjoyable read.

[mii]

Thanks for this review so far. You are a very entertaining lady and look forward to more of your adventures.

 

marilyn

[Hellolost]

Day 6.... Haines

We didn't have an excursion until the evening. We were going on a evening wildlife viewing around 5 so we didn't have to be up early. Felt like the first time in a long time. We went upstairs to the buffet and looked out over Haines.

Where in the heck are we? There was almost nothing there. Everything was spread out and it looked like small town America in a really pretty setting. We decided to go down and walk around for a bit. Maybe see if we could find someone to take us to the eagle park that was suppose to be here.

We ran into two of our tablemates on our way down. They didn't have anything planned for the day and they were exploring too. We decided to go somewhere together. We found a woman selling excursions on the shore privately. The eagle one started at 12 and got back to late for us to get back to our next excursion but she did have one that started in 15 minutes that was going to a lake where eagles were suppose to be. So the four of us decided why not. It was only $40

We hopped on this little rickity bus and away we went. The first thing we ran into was road construction. Felt like home lol. I am not a height person by the way and due to the road construction we ended up inches from the side of a cliff. It was at that point I was wishing I had depends. It was also at this point the woman tour guide tells us that there are no bathrooms for the next 3 hours. Ummm couldn't you say that before we left. And why is it when someone tells you that there are no bathrooms for the next three hours you suddenly feel like you are going to pee your pants?

Driving through Haines was stunning. The water is a milky blue due to glacier run off. We passed this little house with wildlife flags that sat on the inlet. Then we passed a fish weir.

Let me explain this for those who don't know what that is. When the salmon run the fish and game people set up this wier to block off the fish from going through the river except at a certain point about a foot wide. So all the way across the river is this wooden fish net type thing. Minus the middle foot. Now where this foot wide space is there is a man standing looking into the water. He has a clicker in his hand and every time a fish swims through he clicks his little clicker.

This is his job. Counting fish. For hours a day. Seriously there has GOT to be a better way to count fish then this poor man standing there with a freaking clicker in his hand.

We then get to this beautiful lake where the bus driver lets us go walk around in the forest. This is after she shows us fresh bear poop.

"ok people, look this is fresh bear poop, that means the bear is close by, have yourselves some fun walking through those woods by yourselves, see you in a 1/2 hour"

I will admit though the forest was wonderful. Lush and wet and filled with plants. After our half and hour was almost up I ran to the lake, took off my shoes and waded in.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I actually had to look down to see if I still had feet. At this point I look at the honey to make sure he took a picture of me standing in a lake in Alaska and he is gabbing with our tablemate instead.

Ummm honey... picture before my feet freeze please.

When I got out of the lake my feet were bright red LMAO!!! But I did inspire a few more people to wade in that lake. Grab life by the hands people we are in Alaska! We may never be here again!

We hopped back in the bus and started back when we saw a bear walking along the river. The lady in the bus wasn't going to let us out. You could see steam coming from some of the peoples ears. But then the bear walked under a bridge so she let us all out on the bridge to take pictures. Turns out the bear was a juvenile who had a collar on. Pretty skinny little guy. He was walking towards a fisherman who grabbed his fish in one hand and ran up the side of the river and onto the bridge. You should have seen this man standing there with a fish in one hand looking over the bridge. Funny stuff.

After taking pictures for a while we hopped back on the bus and went back to the ship where we had enough time to have lunch before we went on our princess excursion. We joked about how we were going to go on the same excursion and giggled to ourselves how funny that would be.

When we hopped on the bus for our second excursion. Sure enough what happens? We go towards the same exact place the first excursion took us. We laughed until we had tears in our eyes and figured what the hell. We will never be here again time to enjoy ourselves lol.

We actually got to stop at the house with the little wildlife flags on this tour though. We watched seals bobbing up and down in the water. Looked at a eagles nest. Took pictures of a beautiful eagle in a tree.

We drove right to that lake passing the wier. The tour guide told us we would be stopping there on the way back.

When we got to the lake they had two guided tours into the woods. We joined up with one group and away we went. For some reason we always end up in the back of these tours. I guess I like to make sure no one gets left behind. Wierd quirk of mine.

As we are walking along the tour guide is telling us about the plants in the area. "oh these are blueberries, watermellon berries, cloudberries, elderberries... all are edible"

So what are me and the honey doing as we are walking along in the back.. eating berries. Just popping those suckers in our mouths and chewing away. It was about 1/2 way through the walk that I realize we never saw her point to which berries were which because we were in the back. We were just eating random berries in the wilderness. So smart.

At this point we get back in the bus to to the wier. As we are driving down someone stops the bus driver and tells her that a bear has been sighted down the river so we went driving to go find it, bye wier and counting guy.

At the bridge (yes that same bridge) we see a bear walking back towards the wier. We hop out to take a picture of the bear (yes, it was the same bear!) The bear starts walking down the bank of the river and all of us are following along on the road.

Way in the middle of the river (wide as a 4 lane highway) there is this incredible rock. Standing on that rock is a fisherman. Standing on the shore is a bear. Standing on the road is a huge group of camera happy people.

Suddenly the bear stands straight up, puts it's nose in the air and turns to look directly at the fisherman. The fisherman looks at the bear. The bear starts walking towards the fisherman and scrunches down into a little ball on top of the rock. See now this guy is directly in the middle of this river. He has no where to go. The bear starts ambling towards the fisherman and you can see when he realized that this bear wanted him and his fish.

Somewhere around here is where I would have peed my pants and threw my fish at the bear.

The fisherman starts sliding off the rock the whole time eyeballing that bear. The bear would take to steps towards him.. amble a bit... look back at the fisherman and take another two steps.

It was around here that I also began to worry I was about to watch a bear mauling.

The fisherman was finally in the water that reached his chest (he was wearing waders) and the bear turned fully towards him. The guy started yelling and moving his arms around and trying to scare the bear. At first it didn't look like that bear was going go give up but finally it started to go back up the river towards the wier. As we passed the car from the fisherman it's plates said Washington. That guy (who by the way was out of that river and back in his car so fast I almost didn't see it) has one heck of a story when he gets home.

The bear walked all the way back up the river (with us all following him) to the wier where he reached his paw in the water, pulled out a giant fish and ran across the road into the woods.

We all got back into the bus and went back to the boat.

As we headed to the buffet the captain came on with an annoucement. Our ship was broken down, an expert was being flown in to see if the repairs were adaquate and we would be missing Tracy Arm Fjord. CRAP But! The captain says you can go ashore here until midnight.

Remember the first line of this... there was almost nothing here in Haines. So big woop.

Everyone was really disappointed at the news.

More later

[sassyredhat]

LMAO~~~this is absolutely hysterical ! :D

 

We're going on Sea Princess in Sept. 2010. Want to go again ?? We're flying up from San Diego.

 

Pat

[Hellolost]

Yes I totally want to do it again lol. I am still sad I missed the roll call meeting though.

 

My fish just arrived from fed x :D

 

Think the honey would mind if I ripped open one of those packages of smoked salmon and ate some before he got home :p

[Hellolost]

Day 7 ... at sea

 

About now I have totally gotten myself confused. I have no idea what so ever what day it is. Monday? Wednesday? No clue. I do know it is day 7 because my notes say it is lol.

We ended up getting a note in our room letting us know that we will all be getting a $150 OBC per person and 10% off of our next cruise if we book one by 2011. Not to shabby but I would have loved to seen the fjord instead.

I was totally thrilled when I found out the on board credit counted towards everything. Tips, Excursions, drinks, store purchases. We had been thinking we were going to have to go on a drinking binge in order to use up the credit lol. mmmm champagne... ahem

We decided today was a lazy day. We laid on deck and watched Yes man. We drank and ate and were generally slugs. It felt great.

That evening at dinner we all shared stories of our day in Haines since we had skipped dinner to be on the excursion. We laughed and laughed at how stupid we were to go on the same exursion twice. I tried cucumber soup. Don't try cucumber soup. YUCK. It was like they ground up a cucumber and mixed it with a glass of milk and stuck it in the freezer for a while. Nasty.

At dinner a lot of the tablemates found out we were all going to a comedy show that night. We left dinner and got a giant group of seats together. By this point I think our tablemates are wonderful.

We all grabbed a drink and waited for the comedian. He was awful. So awful that you had to laugh at how totally bad he was. Our group kept looking at each other and starting to giggle at totally inappropriate times. Oh it was bad.

After that we called it a night.

 

Told you this was a lazy day lol.

[stary]

Yes I totally want to do it again lol. I am still sad I missed the roll call meeting though.

 

My fish just arrived from fed x :D

 

Think the honey would mind if I ripped open one of those packages of smoked salmon and ate some before he got home :p

 

 

Just tell him they "forgot" to ship a package to you...darn human error... ;)

[Hellolost]

I figured I would just open a package of one of MY fish LMAO!

[wizard-of-roz]

Thanks for sharing your cruise! It made for some serious fun reading!!!! :)

[Hellolost]

I will finish the last three days after I do some errands. Be back soon.

[uppitycats]

Thanks for a lovely review -- so far!

 

I'm so glad that there are now some small tours going on in Haines! We were last there in 2003..and there was NOTHING. We got off the ship, and looked around..and there weren't any cabs, trams, buses, NOTHING. A few folks walked around, and then got back on the ship.

 

But we -- me in my wheelchair, my husband the "designated pusher" -- wandered all over town and had a lovely time! Met some really interesting people, found a small eagle museum (I wonder if that's still there?), found a grocery store where we bought "lunch",

 

then rolled on down to the ship. :)

 

I really have to book another Alaska adventure soon! We've loved our first 3 times! :)

[Hellolost]

Day 8... at sea

After a breakfast at the buffet we decided it was time to do a few ship activities. So we grabbed the paper and looked down the list to find out what we wanted to do. The first thing we came across was a tv theme game. I figured I would kick some serious butt at this since I am a tvaholic.

HA!

The minute they started playing the theme songs I totally blanked. Seriously the first song was the theme to I love Lucy and I just sat there with my mouth open and my eyes glazed. No clue what so ever. And I have watched that show a million times. It was familiar but my brain just never put two and two together. The honey however didn't have that problem. He would write down the name of the show and I would look at it and go OH YAH. I felt stupid lol.

We ended up getting 14 out of 20 right and I didn't answer a single question. Not one measly little question. Big help I was!

We wandered around the boat a while and grabbed an ice cream cone. Those things were yummy. mmmmmmm

At dinner we all talked about the excursions we were going to do in Victoria and found that all most all of us were going to see the comedian that night. We decided to go together.

This comedian was so freaking funny. We laughed and laughed and drank and drank. I love that if you order champagne they give you this little bottle that is two glasses.

Guess who drank just a tad bit to much and was tipsy. Yup that would be me.

When the lights came up from the super funny comedian I turned around and there was the unfunny comedian from the first night sitting at the bar with a big old brandy in his hand. I felt like I could read his mind. "stupid funny comedian... I'll show you....gulp" LMAO!

After the comedian there was a word game where you had to get in a group of six people and create a team name. Since we were all still sitting there we became a group. Of course they nominated me to go up and let them know we were a team. Seems like when ever there was something to do or ask for I was the one who would do it lol

I went up and named our group the tablemates. We all had a good laugh about that. Then the game started. There were 4 crew members sitting on the stage and they would give them a word to define. Three would lie and one would tell the truth. We had to figure out which one was telling the truth.

Again we sucked. We did not get one right. We laughed and laughed and talked about what a horrible team we were. They gave us 10 mercy points. *snort

Since we had to be up to go to our excursion in Victoria fairly early we called it a night.

[RickEk]

Day 7 ... at sea

 

About now I have totally gotten myself confused. I have no idea what so ever what day it is. Monday? Wednesday? No clue. I do know it is day 7 because my notes say it is lol.

We ended up getting a note in our room letting us know that we will all be getting a $150 OBC per person and 10% off of our next cruise if we book one by 2011. Not to shabby but I would have loved to seen the fjord instead.

I was totally thrilled when I found out the on board credit counted towards everything. Tips, Excursions, drinks, store purchases. We had been thinking we were going to have to go on a drinking binge in order to use up the credit lol. mmmm champagne... ahem

We decided today was a lazy day. We laid on deck and watched Yes man. We drank and ate and were generally slugs. It felt great.

That evening at dinner we all shared stories of our day in Haines since we had skipped dinner to be on the excursion. We laughed and laughed at how stupid we were to go on the same exursion twice. I tried cucumber soup. Don't try cucumber soup. YUCK. It was like they ground up a cucumber and mixed it with a glass of milk and stuck it in the freezer for a while. Nasty.

At dinner a lot of the tablemates found out we were all going to a comedy show that night. We left dinner and got a giant group of seats together. By this point I think our tablemates are wonderful.

We all grabbed a drink and waited for the comedian. He was awful. So awful that you had to laugh at how totally bad he was. Our group kept looking at each other and starting to giggle at totally inappropriate times. Oh it was bad.

After that we called it a night.

 

Told you this was a lazy day lol.

 

Great review... I'm quite enjoying it and your style of writing.. very genuine and funny. But hey, I LOVED the cucumber soup... 'twas quite yummy... must be my Armenian upbringing... my mother used to make a garlic-yogurt cucumber concoction that was very good. The ship's version was very close to her version and I loved it...:)

[fathercop]

What a great, entertaining review. Thanks so much for a delightful and humorous recounting of the cruise!

[Pachutabelle]

Hello again and thanks again for the details of your cruise. Also thanks for the link to your blog. I will begin reading as soon as I have another moment. Love your sense of humor.

[venusbello1]

Thank you for the best review I have probably ever read--you are truly charming and sound like a girl after my own heart! I suppose there is no way you and your DH can join us on the Coral in December?

 

Take care and thanks so much for a wonderful funny review!

 

VB1

[Hellolost]

Day 9... Victoria BC

Today I was so darn excited. We were off to the butterfly garden and then to Buchard garden. I was more excited about the butterflies then anything else.

We got up fairly early and went up for breakfast. We looked over the side of the ship and thought what in the heck. We sure aren't in Alaska anymore.

It was a giant parking lot and a bunch of sea type junk laying around. A pretty big disappointment. But we were going to somewhere pretty!

We hopped on the bus and started off towards the butterfly garden and our guide says "since the garden doesn't open until 9 we will be stopping at this old hotel to take pictures for a while". Ummm if the darn garden doesn't open until 9 why in the heck did the excursion start at 8:25? We walked around this hotel that had ivy growing up the sides. It was really pretty but we were in the middle of a city. Not what we expected. There was a pretty marina across the way but it just seemed a odd place to stop.

Finally we got back in the bus and away we went to the butterfly garden. We walked through the doors and it was humid but it was like walking into another world. Hundreds of butterflies were flying around everywhere. There was lush foliage everywhere. Multiple colors flew by. It was breathtaking.

We walked around a bit taking pictures of all the different type of butterflies we came across. At one point on landed on the honeys head. I tried to get the camera but it flew away to quickly. We saw button quail and these HUGE moths. They live as a pupa for 5 years only to come out and die in three days. They were bigger then the honeys hand.

They had flamingos in a pond in the middle.

I cannot describe the feeling you get walking through this area with butterflies flying everywhere. It was wonderful and something I had never before felt.

We came around a corner and there was this long beaked black bird that stood about as high as a house cat. The honey walked over to take it's picture but that bird had different ideas. First it stuck its beak into his sock, then his shoe, then his sock, back to the shoe and finally pecked his leg. We were cracking up by this point. That bird would not leave him alone. It wanted nothing to do with me but it was totally in love with him. We took a video of that.

We must have stayed with that bird exploring his feet for around 10 minutes before we decided it was time to go. That was the point the bird jumped on top of his shoe, fluffed up to twice his size and started making a really strange hrrrrrggtgggghhh noise. That darn bird was raping his shoe!!! Now we were really cracking up. He shook the bird off of his foot and we continued on.

A giant blue butterfly the size of my hand landed on my chest. We got some great pictures of it and some crazy looking white caterpillars.

To soon it was time to get back in the bus and go to the garden. If you ever get a chance to go to a butterfly garden go. Seriously!

We go to the Buchard (sp?) gardens and again walked our feet to stubs. There was an Italian garden, japanese garden, sunken garden, rose garden and bog garden. Truly incredible how they were able to make it just so perfect in there. The only problem was it was packed to the gills with people. So many people that irritation began to set in a bit. People seem ruder there. Imagine standing in front of a statue looking at it and having someone come stand directly in front of you. Did they not see me? I mean I know I am short but geez I am not that freaking short. Boooo hissssss rude people.

After what seemed like hours on my feet we went back to the bus and back to the ship. Tonight was formal night and we had devised a plan for the honey. He was going to wear a pair of nice pants and a nice shirt. If they didn't like it to freaking bad. I wanted a formal night!

So I put on my dress again..hmmmm little tighter this time... to many desserts.

We tromp on up to the dinner and everyone looked so darn nice. A woman came by and took two pictures of each of us. Later when we went to go see the pictures you could see my bra connection between my boobs. I knew it had a lot of cleavage but MY goodness that is a bit much since the stupid bra almost went to my belly button. At least the other picture didn't show that. I do have to wonder though how long that showed!

My table mates did make lots of ooo la la comments though lol.

When dinner was over we ran as fast as we could back to our room to change. We are so not formal people and we felt like trussed turkeys all through dinner.

We walked the ship and tried the casino for a few minutes. I was still bummed out at the lack of machines. After that it was off to bed. Tomorrow was our last day at sea.

[Hellolost]

I forgot to mention that yes the eagle museum is still in Haines. We didn't get to see it as we were to busy doing the same thing twice LMAO!!!

[billet]

What a terrifically entertaining account - I love your style and thank you for all the laughter it is generating.

 

When you stopped in Victoria you were just down the road from where I live. The place with ivy is the Old English Inn and the marina is West Bay. I am so glad you like Butchart Gardens. I will be passing on your comment about the giant car park etc to the appropriate tourism board!

[Hellolost]

Oh and I do have pictures! But I need to transfer them first.