All good things must come to an end… and I’m actually ready. Did I just say I was ready for a cruise to
end??? OMG. What is wrong with me??!! It’s not the cruise, the ship, the food, or
the people that I’m tired of, it’s the weather. We definitely prefer warm, sunny beaches and
time up on deck. I detest being bundled
up and having to wear long sleeves (because my short arms allow sleeves to dangle
down to my fingers, which drives me crazy).
We usually cruise to escape cold, snow, and yuck. This was just too far out of our comfort zone.
We enjoyed our last day on board. I took some pictures of the new features on
the ship. She underwent a complete
facelift recently and she looks mah-va-lous.
The new aerial show in the Centrum area is pretty spectacular. Here are a few shots of a rehearsal. We never seemed to catch the real
performance.
Yes, honey, it’s a looooooong way down! One of the aerialists getting ready…
Some perspective of the height…
I don’t care how secure that harness is, you won’t catch me
doing this…
There’s live entertainment going on somewhere on the ship
all the time…
The pool we hardly saw now has a big screen TV. They show movies under the stars each
night. I doubt anyone used it on this
trip, but maybe there were a few Eskimos…
The dining room…
And here’s the theater, where Captain Rob and the cruise
director were doing their “Captain’s Corner” talk. It’s a chance to hear about life on the ship
and to ask questions.
For the first time in our cruising history, I actually
packed our bags in the afternoon. Wow – I was getting excited about the warm,
sunny skies of home. Colorado is a great place to be in the
summer time.
Just before Happy Hour, we had our tour of the navigational
bridge. Captain Rob was waiting for the
four of us who attended. We had all been
on lots of bridge tours before, so he dispensed with the usual show-and-tell
about the operations and just visited with us.
It was casual and candid, allowing his very dry sense of humor to entertain
us. He’s hands-down our favorite of all
the captains.
We said our good-byes to all our friends, had a nice sleep, and woke up in Seattle – in the rain.
Our flight home was bumpy (from wind) but we
arrived to glorious, wonderful SUNSHINE!! I won’t mention that it was cool and rainy the
next day, but that was short-lived.
Alaska
is beautiful and I’m so grateful that I got to see all the sights that we did. I will cherish the memory of the Hubbard
Glacier calving and all the sea life we enjoyed: whales, sea lions, seals, and even the eagles
soaring above. We’ll probably visit
again someday – but definitely not in May. I’m thinking late July or early August would
have been more pleasant and we probably would’ve seen more whale and bear
activity. There are so many other places
we want to go, which returns Alaska
to the back-burner where it had been for a long time.
Where will we go next? We’re booked on the Jewel of the Seas out of Boston on Oct 21 for a Fall colors tour north to Maine and Nova Scotia
for a week followed by 2 weeks of repositioning the ship to Tampa
via the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. Then we’re also booked on Adventure of the
Seas on Jan 20 for 2 weeks with my sister and niece for more Southern
Caribbean. It’ll be my
sister’s first cruise, so it’s always exciting to teach a newbie the ropes. And you never know about us –
if I see a sale, we sail!
I hope you enjoyed traveling with us. I’ll close with one last photo of us at the Sawyer Glacier…
Stay tuned…
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