Cruise Day 3

 We had a quiet and, thankfully, a very smooth day.  Very little ship movement which is very good. 

This morning I attended  "Coffee With Clare" where the cruise director interviews various officers.  Today was the First Officer in the Engineering department.   He spoke about the various challenges of keeping a cruise ship running.   His best line was that once they've processed the waste water it is clean enough to drink --- but then added "we don't recycle"!  That got him some appreciative applause.

Our ship had an Alaska Brunch from 9:30 - 12:30 today which we attended and enjoyed very much.  Mary had Blueberry pancakes while I had Bananas Foster pancakes. Our waiter was kind enough to bring me a whole pot of coffee! 

In the afternoon I tried to attend a Corn hole event.  It was on the top deck and with the ship doing 22 mph into a wind, if I threw the bags has hard as I could, they would barely reach the other board!  No crew member showed up to run it so I left after a few attempts.  I did finally land one on the board but it took 12 tosses.. Oh well...

Dinner tonight was very tasty.   Mary had a favorite, parmesan crusted chicken, while I had short rib stroganoff.   

Dessert was blueberry cheesecake and nutella cream pie. Service was pleasantly quick as we were in and out in 1 hour.  

We both agree the food on ths cruise is  excellent.

Tonight's production show was "Curtain Up", a look across Broadway shows from the 1920's to 1970's.  Everything from Singing in the Rain to  Mary Poppins to Wicked to Jersey Boys to Saturday Night Fever. 
It was very energetic and entertaining. 

Later we watched a hilarious movie called "Swimming With Men".  If you need a good laugh some time, give it a try!

On to Kodiak tomorrow!

Cruise Day 2

Today was a typically quiet day at sea.  We enjoyed made to order omelets for breakfast, I played bridge from 10am until 11:30, then after lunch we attended a port talk about Kodiak and Anchorage . We found out we do have to tender into Kodiak as well as Valdez, later in the cruise. 

We've been discussing our room size and layout, looking ahead to our Nieuw Amsterdam cruise next February.  The room on the Nieuw Amsterdam looks to be about the same as this one which is also nearly the same as we experienced last year on the Westerdam where we had no major complaints.  But this criuse, we find it a bit crowded, storage lacks convenient shelves, and desk offers much less storage space than we would like.  In the end we attributed it to downsizing from a Princess mini-suite ,and are sticking with the planned February cruise.  Holland, unlike Princess,  has only one basic size for their verandah (balcony) cabins. 

The seas were a bit rough this morning, but are very calm as of this evening.  Mary even took off her anti-nausea bracelets!

Our Have-It-All package included two premium dinners and the first one was tonight in the Pinnacle Grill,  We had an excellent meal with an appetizer, main course of filet mignon with mashed potatoes, and dessert.  Check out my Clothesline Candied Bacon appetizer!  YUM! 

Mary had a special Alaska dessert - Strawberries Romanoff. One thing HAL does very well is customize their menus for the region you are sailing in.  So on this cruise we have lots of special Alaska menu items.

Later this evening when we got back to our room, this little fella was waiting for us!  Very cute!

After dinner we went to the Captain's Welcome where he introduced himself and his senior officers. All of the senior officers are very experienced, having 20 -30 years experience with HAL. So we are in good hands. 

Another sea day tomorrow since we are scheduled to arrive in Kodiak at 11:00 am Wednesday.

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!