Well we are onboard & I am sitting on our balcony in shorts and t-shirt. It is pleasantly warm and sunny. Pleased we packed summer clothes as well. We had a relaxing morning and it didn't take long to repack our bags and go down for breakfast. I uploaded the photos (previous post) and it is amazing how much I had forgotten about the process since the last cruise. All set now thankfully. Anyway, we were doing that when we were visited by a Fox Terrier (& handler), to to bedbug sniffer search. I must say that I have never heard of that before. Apparently the hotel does it every 3 months. So we learn something every day.
We left the hotel about 10.30 & it was less than 15 minutes to the cruise ship terminal. Considering that there were 3 ships in port, the process was extremely smooth and we were aboard not long after 11.00. We actually made it to the main dining room for lunch! We had our first experience of US Border officials and were duly fingerprinted and photographed. Vivian was unimpressed, but I suspect that we' all go through this a few more times. Funny that our "Aliens" queue was !such smaller than the US/Canadian one.
Thursday 22 May
Spoke too soon 😣 No sooner had we moved away from the dock, then the sky darkened and the temperature dropped. We decided to do the sailaway from our balcony with a coffee in hand. It was lovely, but by the time we cleared the heads, we too headed inside as it was decidedly cold - hey we've got plenty of warm clothes. Headed off for dinner about 7.15 - we are Anytime Dining this time (set dinners were all booked out and anyway the first sitting is 5.15, which is really far too early, particularly up here where the sun rises at 5.30 and sets at almost 9.00). We only had to wait about 10 minutes for a table, as we elect to share with others. Funnily, on other cruises the tables have been 6/10, but this was just 4. Had a very interesting time with a couple of teachers from Utah, who we keep bumping into now.
This morning we are about half way to Ketchican and the temperature has dropped to 13 degrees, it is cloudy and now misty with a swell of 5 odd metres. The ship's foghorn is sounding constantly. The Captain assures us that as we turn towards land and our next port the swell will subside. The ship was built for the Panama Canal, so is a little narrower (but longer) so a following swell is amplified a bit and there is a reasonable amount of roll. All adds to the excitement. We are only in Ketchikan for half a day and have a City tour on amphibious "duck". Oh, we did our walk around the deck this morning and it is 2.8 circuits for 1 mile. Not many others on the circuit I must say.
It is formal night tonight, so hopefully we can slip into dinner while the rest fight over their free champagne. There are 2 theatres on this ship as well as a performance lounge, so not quite the same congestion for shows later on. Both theatres have comedians tonight, so it probably depends on time/length of dinner which one we may do (or none!). As we enter US territory overnight, our clocks go back 1 hour, but that is not going to worry us as we are still waking up early.
No comments:
Post a Comment