Before I launch myself into any details about our trip to Alaska, I think it relevant and humorous (as probably only I would) to remind my readers that I will assume that all of you at some point in your lives took United States History, and I will assume that some, maybe, oh, 50% of you remember any of it, and that a far lesser percentage will remember that what we now call Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867 by then Secretary of State William Seward. Because Alaska, aside from the ice free coastal areas, was largely unexplored and presumed to be worthless ice fields and wilderness, the purchase, comprising 586,412 square miles for a total cost of $7,200,000 (about 1.9¢ per acre), was known by a number of sobriquets, including Seward’s Folly, Seward’s Icebox and Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden (Johnson being the President at the time, following the assassination of Lincoln. Johnson would later be impeached, although ultimately acquitted by one vote.) Now, as I said, I expect only a very small percentage of my readers to remember these details, but I do find it noteworthy that I DO remember them, burdened as I am with the shame, privation, and indignity of being saddled with a, gasp, public education as opposed to the glories of the Catholic private school world such as Tim was privileged to, and yet, he falls amongst the majority who are NOT aware of all of these details. Odd, isn’t it that one should have spent so much for so little?
Was It Really A Folly?
I have digressed to sling a few well earned arrows, they will find their intended target(s) I am sure, but the point is that Alaska was considered a folly, a ridiculous decision of a purchase for a nation emerging from a financially and emotionally wrenching and costly war. As a nation we seem to have a habit of being in that state, although large land sales no longer seem to be the vogue, instead we seem intent on buying large numbers of houses and failed banks for considerably more cash with far less potential for return. Consider that the mineral wealth pulled from Alaska’s oil and gold fields has proven to be worth its purchase price in less than a year of production and you should be able to see what I mean. Admittedly, I have great issue with the literal raping of some of the last remaining pristine and virgin wilderness left on the planet to feed the needs of idiots who insist on driving behemoth vehicles for which they have absolutely no practical use other than to feed their egos, which in turn drives us to greater and greater lengths of planetary destruction so that we can drive tank sized vehicles designed to hold 8 but usually holding 1, or insisting on carting numerous children to equally numerous events, while parking and idling to keep our air conditioners running so that we may keep our children from the horrors of the bogey-man CNN has promised us is waiting behind every curve of the sidewalk, meanwhile further nursing our nation’s obesity problems by practically prohibiting children from walking! If you doubt this behavior, I invite you, metaphorically of course because I detest house guests, to visit my part of the world and follow a school bus or drive by the elementary and middle schools to witness the gas guzzling Mommy brigades who will use several gallons of fossil fuel to spare their obese child a 5 minute walk. By the way, statistically speaking, the individuals astronomically most likely to harm, physically or sexually, or abduct a child are the child’s parents, grandparents, uncles/aunts, or religious leaders. Less than 5% of harm done to children is committed by strangers, but it seems far more fascinating to the American public than reality. From the standpoint of statistical reality, the second most dangerous place for a child to be is at home, and then when you factor in automobile accident statistics, the most dangerous place becomes in the car with Mommy. Seriously, think about it.
But, in part, Seward’s presumed folly turned out to have its benefits, along with its truly ultimate folly to date, Sarah Palin. And I wish to let it be known now why I don’t do the “dine with anyone who happens to be seated with you on the ship” on cruises. Should one board the Holland America ship the Westerdam, and visit the Pinnacle Grill restaurant, one is likely to find a table with imprints of my fingers from gripping it to prevent myself from flying at the throats of fellow diners who were proud of waiting for literally hours to see Mrs. Palin and presumably her pregnant teenage daughter, a shining example of the effectiveness of chastity pledges and purity rings à la the Jonas Brothers, meanwhile forgetting that our current President INHERITED the enormous deficits left by a president who inherited surpluses, and who further believe everything that Fox so-called News tells them, without independent investigation of their own, including the rumor that the FCC at Obama’s command would revoke the licenses of Fox-affiliated radio stations because they speak ill of him, therefore undermining our first amendment rights! Yep, you heard it here first folks, freedom of speech is threatened! Never mind the over half of the entire Bill of Rights (those pesky first 10 Amendments, but those of you with benefit of private religious education know that!) that were washed away by the Patriot Act, or the seeming fact that we lost the right to freedom of religion, including the right to not have one, long ago, or at least our money and pledge of allegiance did with Eisenhower, and the rest of the nation started down the slippery slope of losing it with the election of Ronald Reagan as the figurehead for those bastions of hatred, the religious right who would burn me and Tim at the stake given the chance. Oh but I forget: “Ronald Reagan is the greatest President we have ever had!” Repeat nightly and eventually you too might start to believe it.
All right, I admit it; I am sarcastic and biting son of a bitch. Just in case you thought I didn’t know that already. Why, you ask, am I like this? Well, in part to meet expectations of course! So many of you have cast me in a role, that, well, sort of like how Sarah Jessica Parker will always be Carrie Bradshaw no matter who she is playing in whatever movie or on whatever TV show, I will always be who I have been cast to be. After all, it was my own flesh and blood who said that I reminded her of Gregory House, M.D., a fictional character, played by Emmy award winning actor Hugh Laurie, on the eponymous TV show (and if you went to private school and need a dictionary to understand my vocabulary, the product of the failed public school system, you REALLY should start questioning your assumptions and shutting your yaps), a character described, and I do quote as “moody,” “bitter,” antagonistic,” “misanthropic,” “cynical,” “grumpy,” “maverick,” and “curmudgeon”. Feel free to look up any words you don’t know….I’ll wait. And hey, if my own FAMILY describes me this way, then who am I to disappoint the rest of you who should think even worse of me! So you see, I just living up to the expectations of the person who told me as a shy and socially awkward pre-teen child that the reason that I had so few friends and that nobody liked me was because of his own personality. Call it House, M.D., or call it just Me, it all apparently boils down to the same thing. But make no mistake, I don’t waste time on bitterness, I just tell and re-tell it the way I see it, a trait often confused with bitterness, but which in fact is quite different in intent, purpose, and motivation.
Now, having established all that, and having disposed of those of a weaker constitution, onward we go!
To Alaska, Finally
The journey to Alaska had its follies from the start. Tim is a registered travel agent for the purpose of having the agent commissions paid back to him on our cruises, which effectively provide discount. No one ever said the man wasn’t freakin’ brilliant! Technically, he can book a cruise for you too; it is just that he never has done for anyone but us. Anyhow, being a fan of all things technological and taking advantage, as I do, of anything that reduces our contact with other members of the human race (look up misanthropic if you are confused here), then using Holland America’s on-line payment system seemed like a brilliant idea. The system even issued a confirmation number. Problem was, it didn’t really work and since Tim doesn’t book travel for other people, he doesn’t read the broadcast e-mails that go out to literally thousands of travel agents across the nation, some of which, had he waded through the thousands of irrelevant messages, would have told him that he hadn’t paid, and in fact, his credit card never was charged, so technically, despite having a payment confirmation number in hand, as far as Holland America was concerned, we were a non-paying passenger group and our trip was cancelled. Turns out had we SPOKEN to a person and gotten their name when they took our payment, they would have admitted guilt, but they refused to take responsibility for their on-line payment system’s failures. We discovered this less than a month before our scheduled cruise date. In the end, we worked it out and instead of going on the first sailing, we went on the second, but to do that, we had to buy a MUCH larger cabin for close to twice the original cost of the first cruise. More on the cabin in a bit, but moral of the story is that this qualifies as folly number one as follows: using the on-line payment system without follow-up confirmation (like I do every month for every on-line payment I make) is probably a bad idea; pick up the phone and nail a cruise company employee by name for when they try to say you didn’t pay; check your credit card statement for the no doubt large charge you should see; and always, always, reconfirm your reservation!
As it was, the delay allowed me to have three surgeries and sort of heal from them before heading on the cruise. One to remove my appendix, one to remove my old dysfunctional internal intravenous catheter port, and another one to install a fancy new so-called “Power Port” to replace the old one. So now the odd lump under my skin is on the left side instead of the right side, but I have nice big scars on both sides. Geez, it is so totally sexy! But the good news is that the Power Port worked this week as it should, it gave up blood with no problem and it swallowed an entire liter of human immunoglobulin in roughly three hours. Bravo! The daily Coumadin, aka warfarin, aka rat poison, that I take every morning probably helps. And again, if you don’t know what those things are, the dictionary does (and I know because I checked), so if like me you suffer from the deprivations of public education, you too can look it up! Alas, I knew perfectly well what it was despite my educational disadvantages. Score one more for the anti-Gipper!
Since the cruise was delayed, we also had to change our air travel plans. As many of you know, that isn’t free, nor is it always easy and simple. Originally, we planned to arrive in Seattle the day prior to cruise departure because that ship will leave without you if you don’t book your air travel through the cruise company, and as we all also know, shit happens with air travel, so we figured one night at a lower end Hilton near the airport would be worth it to ensure we didn’t miss the boat, literally. Also, I confess, we figured that an extra night in Seattle would mean that we could eat at The Cedars Mediterranean/Indian restaurant again. If you don’t recall our near obsessive love of this place, re-read the narrative about the original Northwest US trip.
To further complicate matters, we had purchased a higher value Coach ticket (if anyone really wants to know, I can explain air fare classes such as U, L, T, Q, M, B, Y, A, etc…ask me and be prepared, these things affect every air traveler even if you don’t know it) and then used an upgrade certificate to ensure a First Class seat because all flights to Seattle are LONG, almost 6 hours, and Delta only uses 757 aircraft, which have an obligatory 3-3 seating configuration, which means that either Tim or I get stuck in the middle seat (although as Platinum members we get consolation miles for flying a middle seat), and when you put three grown men in a 3-3 configuration, it is totally tuna can unless the third male is a horse jockey or Asian. Now, for a flight to DC, all of maybe 2 hours, I can live with it, but for 6 hours, we both say the hell with that. Using the certificate lowered the cost of the First Class seat to half of the regular “A” fare class price, but still more than the bottom tier “U,” “L,” or “T” fares (and my dear friend Melissa A, she of Zumba fame, is laughing in horror now, because she used to work for American Airlines and has a professional reason to know this stuff, whereas I am just a geek!).
So, to change out dates, we had to have seats not only available in First, but also eligible for upgrade certificates, and an empty seat doesn’t automatically qualify as an upgrade seat if the airline, based on previous flight data, believes they can sell it. SO, we had to arrive in Seattle TWO days early and stay one day AFTER the cruise, making our 7 day cruise a TEN day trip. Doesn’t this start to sound like Gilligan’s Island with Tim as the professor and me as, well, we will say Gilligan but you know I am really Mary Anne at heart with longings to be Ginger…(I so totally hope you find the humor in that!).
Now that our flights are selected and secured, we change our hotel arrangements, which were easy, or so we thought. For the outbound to Seattle, we chose the last flight out of Atlanta to Seattle, arriving in Seattle at 11:50pm. We thought this would prove less stressful than getting up early, or not sleeping at all the night before, and we didn’t really need two full days in Seattle anyway especially since I was still technically recovering from surgery. Reality was that we were ready the day before the trip and just fidgeted all day waiting for the time to leave for the airport. Not less stressful at all! Plus, in the South, thunderstorms come up usually in the afternoon, and that grounds flights, creating delays for both incoming and outgoing. So, we were delayed, but only by about 30 minutes. BUT to fly around the thunderstorms, we flew due west, NOT northwest as we normally would have. We flew all the way west to New Mexico, just like a flight to LAX, and the made a sharp right turn over Tucumcari, NM, which meant we were WAY far south of where we should have been, which of course added time to the flight. So, we landed late, by maybe an hour, and baggage at Seattle takes forever since Delta lands at the far end of the A concourse and you ride, literally three of those huge moving walkways to get to the down escalator for baggage. Then back up three flights, across the skybridge, then back DOWN the elevator to car rental. Totally a maze. And at this hour, the Hertz desk is closed and Tim has an issue with the rate, so he is trying to work with a recent Somali immigrant, who was naturally chosen to work car rental coming from a country without cars, to get that changed, so about 30 minutes more goes by before we are moving. Another lesson learned about last flight out: even though it was only 9:30pm in Atlanta, Delta deems that you should have eaten dinner BEFORE you get on the plane, so even in First there was no food for 6 hours. We DIDN’T eat before leaving. I had to resort to buying M&M’s from Coach! Recalling that the West coast is three hours behind the East, we arrived in Seattle after 3am EDT, so we were starving! So we ate at Denny’s because it was right next to the airport and open. Not great cuisine, but it was food.
Hotel Room, Anyone?
Now comes the next lesson learned: The TRUE meaning of “your hotel room has been guaranteed using your American Express Card.” Yes, the cost of your room has been guaranteed to be collected by the property if you don’t show up, but even if you tell them when making a reservation that you will be late arriving on a late flight, and even if you give them a credit card so they get paid regardless, and even if you have Gold Elite Hilton status, if you arrive late and someone else arrived earlier and wanted the room that already has your name on it, they WILL and DID give it away. So here we are, in Seattle, at 2am PDT, but 5am to us, with some rude and insolent night auditor who is all accounting and no customer service, telling me that my room has been given away but he will put me up across the street at a comparable property, BUT that I have to then come back to them for the next night which they have not yet given away. Yeah right! You really expect me to go to one hotel tonight because you gave my room away, and then change hotels for the next night? FUCK YOU!! He was so obnoxious, so rude, and so unrealistic, that I cancelled my stays with that property, including the return from the cruise night, and just stayed across the street to spite them, and I am not yet certain that I won’t call Hilton corporate, cancel ALL my reservations, including Tokyo in November, AND tell them why. If this is the way they treat a Gold member, then screw them, I don’t need their status, because it doesn’t amount to shit.
The hotel across the street, Larkspur Landing, is run by a small hotel group called Larkspur Hotels, and while the room wasn’t huge, it was nice enough and the staff, including the night staff, were delightful even though the Hilton guy was an ass to him on the phone as I could easily hear when he called to tell him he was shoving us off on him, and we were not the first reservation that Hilton had done that to that night! As we would discover, when cruise season starts in Seattle, which it had the week before, all bets are off. GET TO YOUR HOTEL EARLY because they WILL have no trouble giving that room away. Even the dives right next to the airport, the ones where you wouldn’t sit on the toilet much less the bed, those hooker hotels, yeah, even those are full on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights because the 7 and 14 day Alaska cruises all leave and or arrive on those days.
But if you need a hotel where Larkspur has one, and they don’t have a great number of them, give them a try. Book them at: http://www.larkspurhotels.com/
The ONLY complaint I had about them was the hardware on the furniture. They had these rectangular pulls that were arranged such that one side, the narrow side of the rectangle is up, while on the other side the wide side of the rectangle is up, which to me looked like they had made a manufacturing error, or that a guest had screwed about with the furniture, until I realized there was an intentional pattern to it, which still annoyed me, so I was pulling open drawers checking to see if I could change them back to an orderly arrangement! Had I had a power drill and screwdriver, I could have, but admittedly that would have left an ugly hole and I really wasn’t in the mood to use wood filler and refinish the drawers. The very first photo will show what I am referring to.
But we lazed about the next day, ate at Cedars, and were ready to board the ship on Sunday morning. Now, part of being ready to board the ship meant having at least one bottle of Vueve Clicquot (the site is in French, but if in the first drop down, “choisissez votre pays,” meaning “choose your country,” you choose USA, it will come up in English, then you have to enter your birth date to prove to the hysterical alcohol Nazi’s of this country that you are 21 to even view a WEB PHOTO of alcohol apparently, you can learn more about the champagne of our choice). The best place to buy this is at Costco where it is only roughly $42 a bottle, or in a duty free shop at the international airport of your arrival if your cruise leaves from a non-US port that you have flown into. The price fluctuates with the strength of the Euro of course, along with local alcohol taxes, so it is more expensive than it once was, but less so than when the dollar compared roughly to the Guatemalan Quetzal in value. My preference was to go to the holy of all holy lands for Costco acolytes, which is the original store in Kirkland, Washington, just east of Seattle proper (you worship where you choose and we will worship where we choose. Some chose a cathedral, some choose Manolo Blahnik, some choose Chanel, whatever, be happy), but that was pretty far out of the way, so we settled for the one closest to us. From the moment we walked in, I almost thought I had discovered a time/space tunnel that had transported us to Taipei or Shanghai! Living in Georgia, one is used to seeing many people of color about, especially African-Americans, but honestly, Asian people, not so much. I had forgotten that Seattle has a very large Asian presence but I quickly remembered. This is true of Vancouver, British Columbia as well, but then Canada has a much more liberal immigration policy than the US, and a WHOLE LOT of space! Anyway, it was momentarily a culture shock, but Veuve was to be had and so we were happy. By the way, if any of you presume that NOTICING that there were people of other ethnicities in a store equates to racism or any other “ism” you need to check your dictionaries yet again and get a grip on reality before name calling, thank you very much!
Which reminds me of something else. Cruise ships will NOT allow you to carry aboard hard liquor or bottled water, but you can carry soda, beer, or wine. I know they would prefer to sell all of these things to you, so I don’t know why some you can bring and some you can’t, but if headed on a cruise, check with your particular line to find out their special rules. Suffice it to say, that I had a glimpse into what sort of passengers I would be sharing the cruise with given the quantities of Bud Light being carried aboard. If you don’t know, Bud Light to me equates to total white trash, at least in Georgia. So, if I like you and you drink Bud Light, no offense intended, the behavior of the majority does NOT specifically indicate the behavior or character of any one person, a statistical FACT that some choose to conveniently ignore, or perhaps the Church doesn’t teach statistics, I just am not sure about that. So when I point out that it is a statistical FACT that low IQ and more than 1 child are statistically linked, it does NOT mean that every woman with more than 1 child is has low IQ, it just means that she is more LIKELY to. Again, a statistical trend does not predict any one individual’s characteristics. So, apply the same principle to my GENERAL observation about who drinks Bud Light and we can move on to my next point.
On Board
Believe it or not, cruise ship cabin pricing and classifications are more complicated by far than even airline tickets. In order to get a cabin, we had to spring for the SA cabin class, which is only one step below the Penthouse Suites. So, at check-in and boarding, you have priority access, and are escorted to your exclusive Neptune Lounge on deck 7, which was mostly entertaining for the neat Star Trek-like domed food chiller and the fact that we had comfortable sofas and relative peace from bratty children and cranky oldsters while waiting for our cabins to open. We would have access to the lounge the entire trip, and while the concierge staffing the lounge was delightful and took of care anything and everything you wanted, we didn’t actually use the lounge much. This also meant that our cabin was 510 square feet, compared to 389 square feet in the next cabin down. I am almost certain I have LIVED for years in apartments in New York City and San Francisco that were no bigger, if not in fact smaller than 510 square feet, so by comparison to other cabins we have had, it was huge. But most of the extra space is taken up by 3 closets designed to hold floor length Balenciaga gowns along with a three-way lighted make-up mirror and dressing table. Sorry to disappoint you who presume otherwise, but neither of Tim nor I had any use for those amenities. The only products I use are shampoo and deodorant! Our formal wear hangs on hangers, yes, but tuxedo pants hang in half and the jackets are not floor length. The balcony as well is twice as long, but since we didn’t host a balcony party for 10, this wasn’t much use to us, and the rest of the space holds the same furniture but with just more floor to cross to get and from the bed or bathroom. Don’t get me totally wrong, the room was lovely and the FREE unlimited laundry, pressing, high end binoculars for wildlife viewing, complimentary champagne in the room on night one, two free cocktail parties, and priority boarding and off-loading was nice and all, but for our purposes, since those cabins cost roughly the equivalent of another complete cruise in the next cabin size down, the one we usually get, it probably wouldn’t be worth it in the future. But, now I know about the “mysteries” of deck 7, the Neptune Lounge, etc, and I can live without I think.
Of course there are other people on the ship with you, and in the early Alaska season that meant really cranky old people with LOTS of walkers and electric scooters, white trash (yep, I said white trash, and I’ll say it again, don’t you DARE correct me woman!) with permanent waved mullet style haircuts that came down to between their shoulder blades, and the largest collection of Finnish people I have ever seen. The later was because “Finn Fest 2009” was taking place on board the ship, and while having never heard of this particular gathering, not being Finnish, apparently it is a mass gathering of Finns in the US once per year or so and they hang out together and talk about all things Finnish I guess. I really only know 1 or 2 Finnish people, who are delightful as far as I know, so no problem with the Finns. Note that the Finns and the white trash did not overlap, they were very separate populations. There were also those who wouldn’t appreciate anything even if you hit them upside the head with it, such as the woman who declared in Glacier Bay that “it just looks like a bunch of mud and ice to me, so what’s the big deal” as she made her way to her inside cabin on deck 1, where she belonged. I figured she must see plenty of “mud and ice” during winter in whatever ghetto she got dragged out from and I was only too happy to send her nasty ass back given the chance. Or perhaps she was from a more temperate ghetto where the only ice that interested her was in her cheap “cognac” so heavily marketed to her kind. There were of course nice people as well, but you don’t notice them so much somehow, they don’t stand out like “mullet man” did. You get some right wing freaks, and you get a few of us too, so it is an interesting melting pot for a few days.
This was only my second 7 day cruise and I have concluded that the standards for everything from ship maintenance (there were multiple buckets collecting dripping water from overhead pipes presumably when we boarded, our bathtub didn’t work properly and the grout was missing from many bathroom floor tiles) to the food (unspeakably bad, gassy, lukewarm, and repetitive) is just not of the same quality as the longer trips. And this sort of makes sense to me. You can get a cheap inside cabin for about $300 per person, especially in this economy, which draws people who don’t know any better, eat crap at home anyway, and think Hometown Buffet or Appleby’s is akin to culinary heaven. The cruise companies do better on longer trips because they have you with them for too long for you to get too cranky and you paid more, so they make more effort I think. It is another lesson learned no cruise shorter than 15 days from now on!
The first day was at sea, which we like, because we take lots of movies to watch on the ship for sea days, and aside from emerging for lunch, we tend to hibernate on sea days. The shops on the ship are not our thing, tending toward ticky tacky tourist crap or insanely priced jewelry that I wouldn’t wear if I could afford it and was female (three strikes, the store is out), we don’t swim or sunbathe, play basketball, or shuffleboard, or bridge, etc, so we quite literally vegetate and we LOVE IT! At home, since we work at home, there is always something to do that probably actually needs to be done, but at sea, what are you going to do about it? Cell phones don’t work except in port, and while you can pay for internet access to let the outside world annoy you, we didn’t on this short trip, so that first day of no responsibility, no ports, no nothing, was heaven.
For those of you not familiar with cruise ships, the dining attire is set ahead of time, and on a 7 night cruise, 2 nights will be listed as “formal” and the rest as “smart casual.” And this is where you also notice a big difference in the types of passengers on board. Tim owns three complete tuxedos and I own two. Between the two of us, we have practically a bag of ties, vests, and cummerbunds of various colors and patterns. We even have formal wear silk hose and patent leather shoes! I received several very nice and pointed compliments on my choice of the lavender patterned vest and tie combination along with the mother of pearl studs and cuff links my parents brought me from Bangkok, I believe primarily because lavender makes my eyes stand out almost as much as the blue vest and tie combination I would wear on the next formal night. Tim would rather die I believe than voluntarily wear anything other than blue, brown, black, or dark green, but he did actually wear a dark red and black patterned vest and tie one night and then a silver and black set the next. In case you were wondering, we find that cummerbunds draw attention to our guts, and we can see no reason to do that, so we use the vest concept instead. The vests also sort of act as a girdle, as Tim can attest to!
On longer cruises, we would have been in the norm in terms of formal night dress, but imagine our surprise and horror when we were among maybe the 5% of passengers who actually wore the recommended tuxedos! Many of the men didn’t even wear a dark suit! And the outfits the women had on are not describable except to say that they were despicable. I personally overheard one woman referring to her “open toe Italian shoes” and naturally looked down (we were watching all of seasons 3 and 4 of Sex and the City on board after all) and to my dismay discovered that she was referring to something my grandmother might have worn to mop the floors in because suffice it to say that whatever died to make her shoes died billions of years ago, became oil, and then was turned into “pleather” and the closest those shoes got to Italy was in her mind, because those babies came over by the tens of thousands straight from China! Ugh! On longer cruises, and even on our first 7 night cruise, formal meant exactly that, while it might include kilts or formal military uniforms, it was still sequins, glitter, shiny shoes, bow ties, the works. Given that the cruise companies are not planning or selling cruises past roughly April 2010, methinks the economic downturn has caused a level of caution in planning (verified by Vladka, the on-board future cruise consultant) and also opened up cabins to those who shouldn’t be in them, turning cruise ships into something more akin to busses on the oceans, much like air travel is now the Greyhound of the skies. People even bring their wretched spoiled ill-behaved children or grandchildren on board, and are PROUD of their total stupidity in dragging those monsters about with them. I wanted to trail them off the anchor personally, but apparently there are rules against that.
“Smart Casual” was a definition of dress that escaped most everyone. Tim and I at least changed out of jeans into slacks and long sleeves, but one was assured to see much wider interpretations of this dress code. Part of the issue, beyond lower prices and less desirable cruise passengers (sounds snobby, but really just reflects that I think a cruise should be more of an elegant experience, not a floating Greyhound, I pay for that experience and I expect to have it! Why must poor people be allowed everywhere these days! There was a girl in First Class to Seattle who not only wasn’t wearing shoes, she apparently didn’t even have them since she was to be seen in Baggage Claim still shoeless! And given the stench of urine in the SEATAC baggage claim area, I really thought that was a bad decision on her part) is that in response to demand, half of the dining room is now given over to “when you like dining” instead of the traditional 4 seating times. I have to believe that the whenever arrival of tables affects service and food quality because the staff can’t plan on needing to serve ¼ of the ship at a specific time. I realize that less experienced cruise passengers wanted this feature, but damn Norwegian Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean for starting this horrid trend!
When packing for the cruise, I discovered that I seem to have a crazy fondness for cuff links. Meaning, I have a lot of them, including my two most recent acquisitions, lapis lazuli cuff links from Chile and Turkey. This would make total sense if a) I had occasion to wear French cuffed shirts which I rarely do outside of a cruise (maybe about a month per year), funeral, wedding, etc since work is at home in shorts, or b) had more than one French cuffed shirt aside from the tuxedo shirts, but in those cases the links match the studs, which are incredibly hard to find aside from basic black. By the way, we found some in Alaska, but at $1,800 for the set, we left them there as well.
So, I need more occasions to wear French cuffed shirts and I need more French cuffed shirts should those occasions arise. I figure the 29 day Singapore to New Zealand cruise in November will give me plenty of occasion to wear every cuff link I own, so now I just have to get the shirts!
Why the Cufflinks?
But this left me to reflect as to why I like cufflinks, and as sometimes happens with me, I remembered the long past because my mind is increasingly uncluttered with the recent past. This is a benefit of losing my short-term memory; memories from the long past become more readily available to me. And then I remembered that when I was very young, my Dad had a small black leather jewelry case with a red velvet interior and there were specially made slots for holding cuff links, which along with a few tie tacks, were the only jewelry that my Dad kept in there. For some reason, as is peculiar to all children, this box fascinated me and I liked to play with it. So, the only reason I can think of to account for my ridiculous fondness for cufflinks which I rarely have occasion to wear and only one shirt that can use them, has to be my long past association of cuff links with my Dad. It may, or may not, be worth noting, that I can’t recall every actually seeing Dad wear cuff links, but presumably this will be remedied on board the winter cruise during that 29 day period.
Finally, Something About Alaska
Now, to be sure, Alaska, the reason we went on this cruise, was totally worth it. Not only did setting foot ashore in Juneau complete my travels to all 50 states, it happens that Alaska is a stunningly beautiful place, at least what we saw of it, bearing in mind that it is the largest state, and if superimposed on the continental US, would stretch from Maine to California (assuming you include the Aleutian Islands chain). Travel to or around Alaska just isn’t easy, and even the capital is only accessible by air or sea, no highways run in or out of Juneau, and this is more the norm than the exception. There is even an Alaskan town that uses Canadian money and the Canadian postal system (and health care too!) because they have no links to the US at all except by driving for HOURS through Canada to get to the continental US. So, a cruise ship is a good way to get to Alaska and provides actually good bargain given hotel prices and airfare to Anchorage, from where you would have to connect to somewhere interesting, as I have been assured that Anchorage, whatever it may be, is not fun or interesting.
Alaska is wild, wooded, and rugged, glaciated, and has more wildlife than people. And those parts of Alaska that I could see from my balcony were stunning. One could do the same sort of thing, for the most part, but in far less comfort, on the Alaska Marine Highway ferries from Seattle. What disappointed me about the Alaska cruise was not the state itself, nor ultimately even the ship, as much as the ports. Alaska is very clear that with only 2-3 exceptions, every Holland America ship in the fleet is currently doing Alaska cruises, and this is true of every cruise line. We were never the only ship in a port and in fact we saw other Holland America line ships going the opposite direction, and followed, literally trailed a Princess Line ship out of Seattle. So, as one might expect, what these towns have are row after row of tacky gifts shops, including in Juneau, a “Turkish” rug store! Now, having been to Istanbul for week in February, I assure you, that was NOT a Turkish rug store. There are also primarily lots and lots of jewelry stores, most of which open for the season and then close, meaning that half the town must be unemployed half the year. Some of these stores, such as Diamonds International or Tanzanite International, are HEAVILY promoted on board the ships, and for the first time, the ships are now confessing that these stores have paid promotional fees to the cruise line. And it further appears that the “Port and Shopping Ambassador” who so aggressively steers you to these specific stores is an employee of a contractor in Florida who may well actually own these stores, if in fact the stores are not ultimately owned by the cruise lines themselves. They each have their own “private” islands in the sovereign nation state of the Bahamas, so if you can buy an island, I suspect you can buy a jewelry store. Tim and I really are not big jewelry wearers, so that doesn’t interest us, and while we did each get an Alaska t-shirt, we otherwise just wandered away from the tourist traps and looked briefly at most of the towns. One thing we have noticed about northern towns, such as Winnipeg, Regina, northern Michigan anywhere, and now Alaska too, is that when winters are harsh and long, it shows on the buildings which seem to rapidly deteriorate and get run down. This isn’t meant as a negative, just an observation of reality, and when you consider that the economic opportunity of most of these places, accessible only by boat or plane, which means that what they consume or export has to go the same way, is limited, making Alaskan ports seem most like much cooler Caribbean island towns, surviving the best they can off the few months of the year tourists flock to them, and then battening down the shutters against either snow or hurricanes, depending on where you are.
As it turns out, the only real shopping we did was for Tim’s grandmother, who will now have some Alaskan items for Christmas or Grandparent’s Day, or both. And a word to those who believe me evil incarnate, mean, or just thoughtless, I must impress upon your minds that these gifts were my idea and purchased at my insistence, not in opposition to Tim’s wishes, but rather as a result of knowing that Tim needs prompting to think about purchasing gifts for others. I also must note that I convinced Tim to at least LOOK at some tanzanite jewelry, knowing that it is his mother’s favorite, so even in that occasionally problematic corner of my life, my better gift-giving and generous nature reared its head, a point I think VERY important to remember before judging me. We didn’t buy any tanzanite, surprise spoiler I know, because we don’t know squat about jewelry and would probably have been taken advantage of hugely, and because we figured that giving Tim’s Mom even a fraction of the money it would have cost us to buy something we didn’t understand would afford her the chance to enjoy the process of finding something she wanted that was of a quality that was acceptable, both things we could not provide by buying the jewelry itself.
Other than being my first touch of Alaskan soil, Juneau struck me as not much of a town, including the capital building which looks like an office high rise. It is one of only ten state capitols (along with Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee) that does not feature a dome. There were lots of the requisite jewelry stores and tourist havens selling varnished moose turds coated in glitter and turned into earrings, and sadly, no, I am not joking. All we bought was anti-gas and antacid medications at the drug store to try to combat the food, and FOOD as well so that we could lessen our dependence on whatever crap they were feeding us.
Sitka I liked better since it was smaller and harder to get into and out of, meaning primarily that one has to use “tenders,” otherwise known as life boats, to get to and from the pier. This is also where we saw the reality of Alaskan flight, meaning an Alaska Airlines jet on jetty runway built out into the bay to provide a flat place to land! I confess that I, of all people, became annoyed with the rules of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which mandates equal access to everything, meaning in this case, requiring four crew members to lift someone’s motorized scooter on and off the tender, which seemed to me to succeed primarily in endangering the crew, other passengers, and the scooter, more than anything else. I’m sorry, but I do feel entitled to say this, there are just some things that people with certain disabilities just can’t do. That is sort of what disability means isn’t it? Will we next mandate that we allow the blind to touch the Monet’s or Van Gogh’s in museums so that they can “see” the paintings with their fingers? At some point, legislation and best intentions can’t erase reality, and all too often, well intentioned legislation is abused and misused by people in ways never imagined. If you doubt this, ask someone who works with the public schools, who unlike private schools, can’t cherry pick students and avoid those that might legally require ramps, special bathrooms, aides, nurses, etc. Being able to ignore the law is about the only special advantage I have yet to find accorded to private schools, i.e., no mandatory qualifications for instructional staff, no standardized and equitable salaries, and as we now better understand from the Brown University student who went undercover to Jerry Falwell’s so called “Liberty University,” they don’t even have to provide accurate and widely accepted as fact information to their “students.”
Aside from that though, Sitka’s location is stunning, as is Juneau’s, but Sitka’s more so with its resident snow capped volcano, and much smaller town feel, less affected perhaps than Juneau and Ketchikan, by the tourist ships that arrive, and it was perhaps this difference that prompted me to spend money here on Lucille’s gifts and our t-shirts.
Sadly it was also here that the ugliness of the American traveling public was on best display, when the store clerk who rang up Lucille’s gifts was loudly and humiliatingly berated by a customer making a purchase of several hundred dollars over a mistake involving, you guessed it, a penny. I felt badly for the clerk who was probably only a seasonal worker making minimum wage and embarrassed that I come from a nation of people who seem to feel that behaving like asses in public is a national right guaranteed to them by right of birth and a stateroom key on board a cruise vessel.
Ketchikan, our last Alaskan port, was honestly much the same as the other ports, with perhaps the exception of being a bit bigger than Sitka but smaller than Juneau, with the added attractions of some in-town totem poles, a lovely stream and wooden bridge, and an owl, bald eagle , and hawk, from the licensed rehabilitation facility. That is about as close to a bald eagle as you are likely to get, and trust me on this one, that is a BIG bird and I wouldn’t want one flying at me!
The ship did stop, very briefly and at night, in Victoria, British Columbia, but since Tim and I both had been there before on different occasions, we decided to not leave the ship on our last night, which at least as far as the dining room was concerned, was a mistake. Our regular seating was cancelled, but no one told us that, so we showed up for dinner on the usual deck at the usual time to find the doors locked. We were able to get a table downstairs, but most of the staff were busy clearly preparing for the next boatload of passengers, which did feel like being cheated since we had paid for 7 nights, not just 6, but again, this is a lesson learned about the reality of Alaska cruises.
That is not to say, again, that one shouldn’t take an Alaska cruise or that I didn’t enjoy it, rather, it is just to say that the experience is different, and in my perception, not as positive as others I have had. But the reality of Alaska is such that a cruise is often the only quotidian and financially reasonable way to approach seeing the state. If you are truly a wilderness addict and are prepared to pay for and participate in a wilderness adventure, then by all means go for it!
The Best Part
Now, in the great tradition of storytelling, I have saved the best part of the journey for last, even though it was actually the second day of the journey. I am referring to Glacier Bay National Park, which surprisingly, you can drive to the very tip of, but the majority of it is only accessible by boat or plane. We entered the park early in the morning and by 10am a park ranger had boarded the boat and gave a talk about life in the park as seen through the eyes of a grizzly bear. I know, it sounds silly, but really, it made sense and helped the park come alive for us. For example, he explained how bears eat the spawning salmon, then leave droppings on the mountains, which get flushed by rain, snow, and ice into the water, creating nutrients for the next generation of salmon, such that the bear, by eating the salmon, is actually doing the overall species a favor! He was followed by a member of one of the Tlingit clans who talked about the life of native peoples in the area, and told us the native story about how the glaciers came to be. He also showed some slide photos of local wildlife, including a seal, noting that when cruise ship passengers saw that photo they invariably said, “aw, how cute,” but that his viewing of the photo prompted him to say “yum!” since seal is a traditional native food of which he is fond. He also claimed to think that calves were cute and charming, so to each his own, and that while he would eat beef, seal was still better eats. I would be lying if I said that the idea of eating a seal didn’t disturb me, but I have to also see his point. Traditional foods and ways of life are important to many people, and I tell myself this every time I fry catfish or chicken and potatoes, knowing it isn’t good for me, but also knowing it is my heritage and tradition regardless of everything else implied or realized by the action.
We were able to have another ranger on board all day with us who would point out and discuss various features of the glacial landscape we were sailing through. Hopefully you all realize that the ice is retreating, at least in part due to our own actions as people (one of those widely accepted concepts that Falwell would dispute), especially the actions of industry, those who drive Ford Extinctions and the like, and the infamous and much despised, at least by us, Mommy Brigades. But one of the things the ranger pointed out was how the land, scoured and scarred by literally thousands of tons of ice scrapping along, comes back to life in a specific sequence of plants and animals, and how wind borne seeds and spores grow into plants that birds seek, leading to bird borne seeds of other trees, etc, demonstrating in a very real world way how our existences are all connected, even when we don’t realize it and seem to do everything in our power to destroy the only planet we currently have to live on.
We viewed several glaciers of course, and even witnessed a glacier “calving” multiple times into the water, meaning that ice fell in and became floating “icebergs,” a term I put in quotes because having seen icebergs in Antarctica, trust me, these were not icebergs. Icebergs, technically speaking, have to be of a certain size and we saw them in Antarctica that were as large as two aircraft carriers! What you see in Alaska are mostly bergy bits and growlers, truly technical terms believe it or not, but not true icebergs. Having seen Antarctica and the glaciers of Chile, Alaska’s glaciers are small potatoes, true, but they are still lovely in their own right and for most Americans are the most ice they will ever see in one place at one time! But if you have aspirations to go to Alaska and Antarctica, I would go to Alaska first, spend a day in Glacier Bay, and if you like it, then go see the granddaddy’s in Antarctica. Doing it the other way about doesn’t really allow Alaska to shine as much as it might otherwise do.
Going Home Again
Our return and departure from the ship in Seattle was uneventful. Because we were on deck 7, we could pick our departure time, so we picked the latest we could since we had no where to go or be at a specific time. We rode the shuttle bus to the airport, even though our flight was not until the following day. We checked availability on that day’s flight, but with only two seats available, it was just too risky. So, we followed through with our intention to rent a car for less than a day, the sole purpose of which was to avoid having to pay expensive cab fares to and from, you guessed it, the Cedars Restaurant. Without doubt, we paid more for the car than dinner cost, but when you have two people who are obsessed with excellent Indian food, it happens. Tim actually makes Indian dishes at home now, and as good as his Chicken Chetinand actually was, Cedars still has him beat.
Overall, this trip is a tough call. Alaska is beautiful, but presents real transportation, time, and cost challenges, making a cruise, that may not consistently reveal the best of Alaska due to steering you, quite literally, to some of the worst of the tourist tack, your only viable option. In that light, for us it made economic, time, and even medical sense, the scenery we did see was gorgeous, and I have now officially visited all 50 states! I have to wonder what percentage of Americans can make that claim.
For those of you who enjoy the photos, they are in the same place as always, but I will insert the link again just in case:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life_in_pictures/collections/
First collection in list is 2009 – Alaska Cruise. You can also see the photos from any other voyage we have taken on this site as well. It is part of the new electronic era of socialism! Seriously, just ask Wired Magazine.
Enjoy, live long and prosper (watching Star Trek through Netflix here) and my next narrative adventure will come to you from the gorgeous and fabulous state of Colorado where we venture in a few weeks time.