Sunday, September 15 was a bad weather day, so I decided to stay on the ship and get caught up with my work.  Andrea went whale watching, a thing I had done in 2017 with Joan Westgate and JoAnn Dery.  It was good but I prefer to remember it on the better weather day.  Andrea returned underwhelmed.  She did see some whales but she wasn’t sure they were worth all the effort on the nasty day. 

I had some client work to do.  I had two cabins waitlisted on my 43-day Singapore to Hong Kong cruise and the waitlist had cleared for the very nice price of about $12,000, all in, all done, with a single person in the cabin.  To my chagrin, neither of my singles found a way to commit to 43 days, though, and I had to cancel them.  Anybody else want to come on that with me, now that we know the price?  Those were for one person, alone in the cabin, ocean view.  A couple won’t be much more.  It looks like a bargain to me, and you all know what I can show you in Hong Kong, by now.  Chinese New Year will be over by the time we get there and everything will be open and vibrating.  Enough with that commercial.

I churned through the paperwork on my computer, saw the ship’s personnel that I needed to see and had tea at 4:00pm in The Arts Café.  I like that place, and so does almost everyone else.  It’s always lively.  They serve croissants and such for breakfast, add more substantial contents to the croissants and call it lunch, then finger sandwiches, scones, and desserts for afternoon tea.  The Arts Café specializes in tea, so there is a lot of choice and it comes in a proper teapot.  My 4PM breakfast is either 2 finger sandwiches or a cheese plate, 2 mini-scones, a dessert and a pot of tea.  Very civilized.

We have drinks and dinner with Serge and Barbara Rand , pretty much every night.  They have been buying SilverSea cruises from me for many years, but SilverSea just joined Distinctive Voyages recently and this is the first time our schedules have managed to mesh.  It’s great.  Serge is an accountant by trade and is convinced SilverSea is the best bargain at sea.  It sure is very nice, indeed.  We met in the Panorama lounge, to try it out because it had been suggested to me for my Happy Hours and I had published same in my first newsletter, so we had to try it out.  It was great. The band was playing but we could sit far enough away to hear ourselves talk.

We also tried S.A.L.T. kitchen that night and it worked for us, too.  Barbara is in the enviable position of needing to gain some weight, so she has a standing order for foie-gras poelé every night.  That’s the diet I want to be on.  I’ll be having it tomorrow night.  Anyone can, but you have to order it the night before, if you don’t want it every night.  I forgot to mention I had had caviar a couple of nights ago.  You can order that any night.  Life is very hard here.  We weren’t sailing until 10:30pm, so we had a local show the “Alaskan String Band” a family operation, complete with terrific slides on the big screen behind them. 

On Monday, September 16th, Andrea and I had booked the Skagway City Streetcar tour. It reminded me of when Kathy Stefano was doing “Mr. Toad’s Tours” in San Francisco.  I could have pictured Kathy doing this one, too.  Our guide, Anna, was a kick.  She was dressed in period costume and had, or put on, a husky, saloon, tobacco ravaged drawl.  It was plenty loud, even without a mike, and she sure knew her stuff.  The Skagway “trams” are the oldest fleet of sightseeing buses in the USA.  Skagway/Haines is the only place in Alaska with roads out.  You can drive 24 kilometers to Canada, a very remote part of Canada, mind you.  People do it.  There are RV parks and people do drive up here for a pretty unique holiday.  Of course, some people live in the RVs year-round, but I would imagine they are expensive to heat in the winter.  If you don’t use a road, it’s four days to Washington on a ferry. 

It’s warmer than you would think.  Skagway is an ice-free, deep-water port.  We get worse weather in winter in Montreal.  During the gold rush, there were 120 men here for every woman.  At this point there are 800 year-round residents, but 1.2 million tourists come through, most of them on cruise ships.  A lot of the RV people come up to work in the service industries.  It costs them $700 to park the RV.

We met the Rands for cocktails, in the Panorama Lounge, again, but this time the ship had “Name that Tune” in the middle of it and we fled to the piano lounge, “La Dolce Vita”, to hear ourselves think.  I’ll be moving our Happy Hours.  We had dinner in “Atlantide”, the main dining room.  I had foie gras poelé and it was wonderful, oink.

The next day, September 17, we, and the Rands, took the Sitka walking tour, which was interesting and informative, and not very taxing.  Mind you, I pay dearly, the next day, for all the standing.  My left ankle is a mess, thanks to having stood on it for more than 50 years, favouring my right knee.  And old habits die hard.  Even now when my mind knows it will pay if I stand on it, my body seems not to, and I just go ahead and do myself in. 

When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia; the actual transfer ceremony occurred on October 18, 1867, Canada having refused the Russians’ offer to sell to it first.  Our government has been dumb since its inception.  In its defense, it was a tad busy in 1867, setting itself up.  We definitely should have bought Alaska, though.  The place is still sparsely inhabited, rich as it is.  People get paid to live there.  I would love a check from the government every year, instead of giving it half of my net income, which is the case, where I am now.

This lovely old building is the Sitka Pioneer Home and you can still go live there if you have been a resident of Sitka for a few years prior to needing to,  Hmmm. 

Again, our guide was a permanent resident, who knew all these things and the walk was interesting.  What the place lacked, were a few nice terrasses to enjoy fish ‘n chips and a beer in the sunlight.  I think that is probably because we were getting a lot more sunlight than was normal, in these parts.  After Juneau’s rainy day, we have had nothing but glorious sunshine. 

We poked around the shops a bit and I want to take some credit for the glorious sunshine.  I bought a can of waterproofing stuff and sprayed all of our outerwear.  I had found out that my raincoat was anything but, one night when I got soaked to the skin on the way to Sakura, which is one block over and one block down from my apartment.   Now that it is waterproof again, I haven’t needed it.  Good investment.

We had another very nice dinner with the Rands at Atlantide and were well entertained by the SilverSea Singers and Dancers in “Dance on Fire”.  This troupe gives more performances than any I have seen on any other ship, and that’s saying a lot, with my cruise history.  I have over 1,000 days at sea. 

Finally, Wednesday, September 18 was a sea day, after three days in port.  It was time to write a newsletter.  I had plenty to say.  Happy Hours had to be moved, and it had dawned on me that I could have more official cocktail parties, as drinks are free on board here anyway.  All I have to do is pay a few tips and, if Distinctive Voyages doesn’t pick those up, I can do it myself.  I had also tee’d up a couple more dinners together.  So, I put all that together and wrote Newsletter No 2.  I distributed it myself since Andrea is now playing Duplicate Bridge in the afternoons.  That’s the thing I’d like to do, if I ever stop working and blogging.  One of these days, I will.  Deliveries are short and easy on this ship, as there is only one aisle on each deck, which makes them half the work, and my ankle actively likes walking on a moving ship, even after a day like yesterday.  It seems to fix it.  Eight people came for cocktails and we met another six in the show after, where we have taken to sitting together.  Tonight’s entertainer was Douglas Ladnier, a male vocalist, who had spent a long time on Broadway and knew well how to sing and entertain.  We liked him a lot. 

Thursday, September 19, we were in Kdiak.  There was a “Self-Guided Wildlife Walking Tour” on offer, and Andrea and I decided to take it.  I figured I would do better on that and Andrea could range farther if she wanted to.  It was a beautiful day and the trail was easy.  Like much of Alaska, it’s a rain forest.  Just look at the moss on these trees. 

They gave us a map, showing the main trails, which park vehicles drove on, and the side paths which went out to the cliffs.  We only had an hour and twenty minutes to walk, though, and after we spent half an hour of that in a WWII bunker than contained interesting things, like a Willys Jeep, and an old telephone switchboard that still worked, there wasn’t much time for deviation.  I stayed on the straight and wide and got back to the bus with 10 minutes to spare and Andrea went off-road and just made it.  As far as wild life went, I saw a squirrel.  

SilverSea hadn’t been having Sailway parties up to now, but they did have one for leaving Alaska, before 5 or 6 days at sea.  The ship sailed at 4pm.  Andrea got up there early, but I needed to line my stomach at the Arts Café, as I wasn’t sure there would be enough hors d’oeuvres to make breakfast for me.  By the time I got there I could tell it had been a good party, but it was thinning out.  That meant I got to dance with the crew and that wasn’t a bad thing.  It meant I got to renew my nodding acquaintance with singer Ryann, from South Africa.  He’s gorgeous.  I was able to ask him if they ever came out to have dinner with the passengers, and would he like to join a group of us one night?  He would.  Be still my heart.  All I had to do was work with J.P., the Cruise Director, and it would happen. 

We had cocktails with the Rands in the Observation Lounge to check it out and it was just fine.  Then we had dinner in La Terrazza, which continues to mystify us, as it’s largely empty, but oh, so protected, when you go to book.  Anyway, it was pretty good, and certainly bountiful.  The show that night showcased the talents of another of the cast singers, Lelo Ramasimong, also from South Africa, and a real powerhouse of a voice.  It was my lucky night, too, as sitting right behind me was Douglas Ladnier, the heart throb from the night before.  I asked him if he would join our gang for dinner one night, too, and got the same delightful answer.  I’ll be stalking J.P. in the morning to set up the dinners.  I went to bed happy, looking forward to an extra hour of sleep.  Life is good.