Headed to the ship

We found a nice breakfast place while walking back yesterday, The Crumpet Shop.  It's only 1/2 block away from our hotel and has hot egg, cheese and ham crumpets. What's a crumpet?  It's the size of an english muffin only with a smoother surface.  Very tasty!  If we come back, we plan to visit them again. 

Next up is packing and getting ready to head to the ship. We have not unpacked very much, but you still need to get it all back in the suitcase.  Lyft does not pickup at this hotel anymore, but the front desk says that Uber does so we'll be using them to head to the ship around 11am.  We have a target boarding time of 11:30 so that should work out just fine.  Princess and Holland-America share the same dock as you can see from their picture on the right that I took yesterday.  We'll have the Star Princess next to us today.   We sail  way at 3pm.   More to come once we are on board!

No issues getting to the ship.  Uber pickup was smooth, but, having been spoiled by priority boarding on Princess, today we had to get a boarding group card and wait about 1/2 hour before going on board.  But the good news was that by the time we were called, all cabins were ready. We dropped off our carry-ons and headed to lunch in the buffet.  

After lunch, we did the mandatory muster drill tasks, then said good bye to Seattle.  Not many ship pictures today, just the Lido deck pool.  

I spent much of the afternoon spending on board credit $$ on two additional shore excursions, getting our online access setup and other cruise day1 tasks.

The picture on the left is one that Mary took this afternoon of the sailboat we rode yesterday.  

Dinner went well, if a bit slow. Mary had a salmon linguini and I had pork medallions, all very good.   

There was a Welcome Show in the evening to introduce the entertainers.  The band played a nice medley of hits  followed by the singers and dancers performing several numbers.  They were quite good and it sounds like we'll have production shows every second or third evening.

So we are on the ship and have two sea days before we reach Kodiak on Wednesday.

A Day in Seattle

I found a nice pastry shop for breakfast and coffee. In spite of everything being in french I found some good eats.   Next we wandered around Pikes Market area. There is quite a lot to see.  Always on the lookout for interesting jams or jellies, after a taste test, I bought some Marionberry jam.  We also visited the Pikes Place Fish Market, famous for throwing fish back and forth; It was cool to see.   I took a short video, but am unable to add it to my blog post 8-(

After wandering around many shops, we headed back to our hotel. We grabbed lunch at Sister's European Cafe before heading to our sailboat. 

We thoroughly enjoy the ride. Yesterday the weather forecast was predicting some rain, but today was absolutely gorgeous! Sunny and warm with a nice breeze.  The sailboat was a 4 sail, two masted schooner.  I helped raise both the mainsail and the mizzen sail.  

Check out these pictures from the cruise. We had some great conversations with other passengers, including one family from Fort Wayne IN, my home town! 

After our Puget Sound sail,  we walked along the Seattle waterfront to Ivar's for dinner. It was a very pleasant walk and we stopped a couple of times to enjoy the views and passersbys, as it was rather crowded on a beautiful Saturday.  Mary enjoyed her clams while I had fish and chips.  

After supper, it was time to walk back to our hotel. If anyone has been to Seattle, you know ther is no such thing as a level road,  We took an elevator part way up, but still had several blocks of an uphill sidewalk to go to reach our hotel. We ended up walking over 10,000 steps today, which is close to 5 miles.  All I can say is that this walk seemed a lot harder than when we did the same thing 2 years agi!  

Tomorrow we head to the ship, and sail away about 3pm for Kodiak, AK. 

Heading to Seattle

Today was the first day of our 6th Alaska cruise vacation, with a flight to Seattle.  Nothing too special to note on this travel day; the Delta flight was on time and we were picked up at the airport by a driver from our hotel, so a relatively easy transportation day.  The hotel is in a great location, just 1/2 block from the iconic Pike's Market. 

Mary got some pictures of the northern Rocky Mountains on our flight; here's two for you to see.

For dinner we went to Pike Place Chowder and enjoyed their specialty, clam chowder.  We also checked out a breakfast place for tomorrow morning.

Speaking of tomorrow, we plan to walk around Pike's Place and have booked a 2 hour sailboat ride on Puget Sound followed by dinner at Ivar's (fried clams!)

Sunday we head out on our 14-day cruise.  If you want to know where were going, check out the itinerary on the right. 

Heading Home

Our main activity for today was to visit the National WWII Museum. We did not have to rush this morning since it opened at 9:00 am. So after a leisurely breakfast, we headed there.

The museum was much larger than I ever imagined. It was comprised of 5 buildings and had many excellent exhibits. 

The second floor of one building focused on the war in the Pacific and was very interesting.  Due to time constraints we did not have time to take in many of the movies but we did watch a few short testimonials by and about some soldiers and sailors.  All the major events of both the European and Pacific theaters were covered in great depth. 

Top right I was looking at a map of the Pacific showing how much territory Japan had controlled.  My dad served in the Pacific in the battles around the Philippines and Okinawa.  Bottom right shows the Battle of the Bulge. Mary's dad was a part of Patton's army that moved up from he south to free Bastogne. The picture on the left shows the equipment a soldier in Europe carried. 

Due to time constraints, we only spent a couple of hours there, but you could easily spend an entire day to take in all the exhibits.  If you ever get to New Orleans, I highly recommend visiting it!

So we are ready to board our flight back to DTW.  But you can't visit New Orleans without getting a beignet from Cafe DuMonde!  YUM!

So that wraps up my blogs for this trip.  I hope you enjoyed following along.  Both Mary and I appreciate reading all the comments, even if we don't respond individually.

Disembarkation Day

All good things do come to an end.  We had to be out of our cabin by 8:30 am and were scheduled to disembark around 9:45.  We followed our morning routine and had a little time after breakfast before heading to a public area to wait for our group to be called.  We ended up being called at 9:15 to pick up our luggage.  My plan was to walk about 1/2 mile to  Café Du Monde Riverwalk for Beignets before heading a short distance to pick up our rental car. Well, the rain that was supposed to stop by 9am now looked to be continuing until 11am so we took a taxi to the Avis desk in a Hilton hotel. I had reserved the car for noon and most car rental agencies let you pick up your car before your scheduled time, but not Avis!  So we cooled our heels for 1 1/2 hours as our day got off to a rocky start.

Once we got the car we drove through he French Quarter. Here are two pictures of the buildings.  Love the french architecture with the railings. But a festival was about to begin so we did not stick around, but headed to our next destination.

That being the state of Mississippi!  For good measure we had lunch in MS. Neither Mary nor I had been in that state before so now the states that we have not visited is down to 1 state for me and 2 for Mary, with Arkansas on both our lists. 

Our other destination was to drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.  So we circled back to the west and were amazed to find it was 24 miles long!  That lake is immense! 

So with those goals accomplished, we headed to our hotel for the night. 

On to the WWII museum tomorrow!

Music - Day 6

It's hard to find the adjectives to describe Jay White's Neil Diamond Tribute Show last night!  Fast-paced, continuous top hits like Love on the Rocks, Forever in Blue Jeans, Song Sung Blue and he closed with America and Sweet Caroline.  He shortened a few of them in order to fit 12 songs into a 1 hour concert, including some dialogue.    He had the audience standing, clapping and participating in the concert. Mary and I came back to the room on a major "high" from the experience. It was clearly the best concert so far.

Kathy Lill - we know you would have loved this show.  I hope you can see it if he comes to your area.  

This afternoon was a 2 1/2 hour concert with all the musicians.  Each performed some of their own songs, then a duet with the next artist.  Carole King and James Taylor, James and Jim Curry, Jim and Neil Diamond.  It wasn't the high power of last night's concert, but was very smooth, and enjoyable to hear the popular hits from each artist's portfolio. Chris Nole came on stage with Jim Curry and got to play a piano solo of "I'm Sorry".
The group gathered for a final song together and sang  "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys.  A great ending for a super show!

The week's activities closed with a Goodbye Again style event in the evening.  Jim Curry used this event to promote his next music cruise - Alaska in May 2027 - as well as to individually recognize all the performers and the support staff for this event.  Afterwards we talked to a few friends, took some pictures, then headed back to our cabin to finalize packing and put our suitcases out in the hallway for the ship to take on shore for us to pick up in the morning.

The ship is now heading up the Mississippi river to New Orleans so we can get off the ship tomorrow. We are staying an extra day in New Orleans to see some of the sights and visit the National WWII Museum on Monday morning before heading to the airport for the flight home.

 

Music - Day 5

Last night's Jim Curry show was excellent, as expected.  All John Denver music and all familiar songs.  Jim had his regular band there along with Chris Nole.  No technical issues and a very enjoyable concert.  

Not much else to add, but the room was packed (also as expected).

Today we are stopping at Costa Maya. It's our third time here, once in 2005 on our second cruise and again in 2015 on the first of two back-to-back cruises that earned us Elite status. Not much here, just a long, hot walk to a busy shopping area with semi-aggressive Mexican shop keepers.  Not much to see, but they did have a group of flamingos.  

We walked around for a while, then headed back to the ship to avoid the heat and humidity.

The James Taylor performer was interviewed today.  He did a good job of telling about his background and covering some lesser known James Taylor songs. He also performed a couple of his own that were in the James Taylor style.   He was joined on stage by Gordon Lustig who pays guitar for Jim Curry and others.  

While the show was interesting, the highlight was hearing Gordon play his  song "I am Not James Taylor".  That brought the house down.  

We had dinner at Cagney's, the ship's steak specialty restaurant, tonight.  It was delicious!  We both had filets and I had a grilled bacon appetizer which was amazingly good. 

I had apple pie for dessert while Mary had the delicious 7 layer chocolate cake pictured on the right.

Next up is the Neil Diamond tribute concert which I will cover tomorrow.