The Zen Leaf

Our last stop in Alaska was to Skagway, a tiny town heavily influenced by the gold rush. The tour we took there was the Ghosts and Goodtime Girls Walking Tour hosted by the Red Onion Saloon. This was another small group tour, with ten people in total. Our host was Madame Lavinia Moore, a “professional streetwalker” in full costume. The majority of the tour was related to the prostitution boom that exploded alongside gold fever, with a few ghost stories mixed in.

While the costume and stage name may make the whole thing sound campy and lighthearted, the tour itself was actually focused on history (especially women’s history), sociology, and politics. We learned plenty about the grim circumstances that caused so many women to turn to prostitution, and the often grim outcomes that followed. But we also learned the creative ways women survived the era. Our guide didn’t shy away from serious discussion: discrimination against indigenous people, the horrific lack of access to women’s health care, wage discrepancies, the marking of women with syphilis (which led them to be unable to get work in any field), and more. The costumes and stage names and silly marches across the street added a levity to the subject that made the entire tour extremely well-rounded.

We ended the tour at the Red Onion Saloon, which is not in the same location it was originally built, but still made up of the same essential pieces (walls, floors, etc). The upper floor acts as a museum, with everything from wallpaper samples to a glass-encased mesh dress that was one solution for advertising wares while adhering to “morality” laws. I wish I’d had more time in the museum part, but there were several tours that needed to get through.

After our tour was over, we walked back to the ship. I would have loved to spend more time in Skagway. It was the smallest town we visited and I could have spent a long time walking around taking pictures and seeing fascinating things, like in Ketchikan. (I was particularly enamored by the rock-paintings that were everywhere on the cliff sides.) However, this was my third tour day in a row, there had been a lot of standing around, and I was at at the end of 48 hours sick. I just wanted to sleep. I hadn’t been able to nap when we got in from Juneau the day before, so that’s what I did in Skagway. Jason left the ship again and spent a few hours in town, which makes me happy. He loves to visit museums and always feels self-conscious going with anyone else, so that time alone was good for him. And I got in a really good nap!

The Ghost and Goodtime Girls tour was our last on this trip. Technically, we were supposed to go on another excursion in Victoria, BC. This one was a bit weird, though. First, our original excursion was canceled about a month before our trip due to some weird technicality that wasn’t explained to us. We thought perhaps not enough people had signed up, but when we went to go look up a new excursion, we saw that every choice that included the Craigdarroch Castle had been removed. I’m not sure if the castle itself was going to be closed for that day, or if the contract with the tour company had been discontinued, or what. That’s what we really wanted to do, though, so it was with a bit less enthusiasm that we signed up for a tour of the Butchart Gardens.

What we didn’t realize until getting onboard was that this particular excursion was going to take up the entire time we were docked in Victoria. It was a large group, with likely long, uncomfortable bus rides, and there would be no chance to eat from 4 to 9pm. It was the last night of our trip and we were pretty tired, not to mention not terribly interested in Butchart. Maybe if I hadn’t spent a few days sick, or if we had another day at sea before we’d have to get up super early the next morning to get off the boat. I think we were just done at that point.

So for the second cruise in a row, we didn’t leave the ship in Victoria. In 2018, it was due to rain (and oh the irony, last time we planned to make our way to Butchart on our own, sans excursion, if it hadn’t been raining!). This time, we just flat-out ghosted the city (ha!).

I did try to take some night photos of Victoria while we were docked. I thought I might get some fun light-streak photos where the city would be still and the boats in and out of the port would be moving. However, even moored at the pier, the cruise ship still moves ever so slightly, so even with my camera perfectly stabilized, there was up and down shaky movement in the background. I would have had to get off the boat had I wanted to take any night photos that actually worked. Oh well!

All in all, it was a good trip. I know I’ve now talked about it at length, and I hope no one is too bored. But mostly it’s for my own recollection. This should be the end of it, though! And as it’s been said in the rest of these posts: for more/better photos, see my Instagram: @pookasluagh (where I continue to post slowly so that I’m not overwhelming my feed all in a couple days!).

Our three stops in Alaska were all back to back days. Unfortunately, the middle day was the day when I was sickest, and the lack of sleep I got the night before didn’t help. I’m not sure why I was so fitful – maybe just because I was sick – but it was the only night when I was pretty much up all night long, and then I woke up super early for a special event that was my most-looked-forward-to part of the trip.

Back when Jason and I first planned our Planniversary, we booked our cruise for May 2020 on Royal Caribbean. We’d always sailed Celebrity before, but on the dates we needed, Celebrity didn’t have any itineraries that took a side passage down Endicott Arm to see Dawes Glacier. I’d heard about this particular side trip, and how you could see the glacier and potentially see it calve, and that was a definite Must on our trip. So we booked RC, and then there was covid, and then our trip was canceled and rescheduled over and over again, each time losing money in our RC account until it was just not worth it to book with them. Honestly, Royal Caribbean left a really bad taste in both our mouths, so with the last booking, we went back to our standby. (Since then, I’ve seen photos of the food on RC, and bleagh, I’m glad we go Celebrity!!) Happily, Celebrity had available itineraries that went to Dawes and also sailed in/out of Seattle this time around!

Anyway, we had to get up super early for this part of the trip. It was very cold, and we were all dressed in jackets and beanies and such. I wished so badly for gloves, the only cold-weather gear I hadn’t brought! The ship doesn’t go all the way to the glacier, but instead it goes as far as it can safely before turning around, and you see Dawes in the distance. Ice chunks from previous calving float all around you, and the landscape is awe-inspiring.

Tbh, I was initially a bit disappointed in Dawes. We were far enough away that it was hard to see, and there was no calving – or so I thought. Later, when I uploaded my photos, it turned out that I actually managed to capture a moment when several chunks of ice had just dropped off the glacier into the water, creating a huge splash (photo with boat above). I just hadn’t seen it with the naked eye. Now that was cool! Plus, I got some of my favorite photos on this part of the trip.

That portion of the day took place around 6am, and we got into Juneau about midday. By this point, I was in the worst part of my cold, and considered bowing out of the excursion completely. The tour sounded a lot more strenuous than I could handle while sick – a mile trek into the rainforest up a 600-foot elevation gain during one stop. But the tour was also listed as “mild” (our photo safari the day before had been “medium”) and so I realized that the elevation gain and “trek” were all going to be done via vehicle. Not what I’d planned when we signed up, but doable for sick-Manda. We loaded up on a (very crowded, not particularly comfy) bus and headed off to Mendenhal Glacier and the Tongass National Forest.

Of the excursions we went on this time around, most were small-group tours. This one was the exception, taking two busloads of about 80 total people out to the two locations. It was four hours long, lots of driving, and nothing like I’d been expecting. If I hadn’t been sick, I would’ve been extremely disappointed. As it was, I just wanted to take some pictures, go back to the boat, and sleep. Heh. The glacier was beautiful, but we had less than 45 mins to explore the park. The rainforest and the gardens we went to were also beautiful, but we literally had five mins of free time to take photos at the top of the mountain and about ten mins down in the gardens. Four hours of excursion, and a total of an hour of it wasn’t sitting in uncomfortable vehicles.

Lesson learned: large group excursions aren’t really the way to go. We definitely preferred our small group excursions in Ketchikan and Skagway! At least I got a few good photos out of it, even if there weren’t nearly as many as I would have liked to have time for!

For more/better photos, see my Instagram: @pookasluagh

I have been so ridiculously busy over the last week between dealing with kittens and trying to sort through and edit around 500 photos. Oy. It hasn’t left me a lot of time for putting down my thoughts on this trip, but now it’s time!

Jason and I flew out to Seattle the day before our cruise. Travel was (almost) completely uneventful on the way there, and we made it to our hotel in good time. The Moore Hotel is an old, quirky place with all the remnants of being an old, quirky place: clawfoot tubs, old chandeliers and radiators, physical key locks, no a/c. As it was an extremely hot day in Seattle, we were warned profusely about the a/c issue, but honestly, it was the same temp as current San Antonio mornings, so while it wasn’t the most comfortable in the late afternoon, we were fine. We kept the windows open and a rotating fan on us throughout the night, and it was perfect.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews that complain about the Moore, but honestly, it comes down to one thing: if you want modern conveniences, don’t go to a historic hotel. Period. We loved it, and the front desk staff was extremely knowledgeable. They set us up to go to the pier for a decent price the next day, and they helped us out with the one glitch from our travels. The airline completely broke my suitcase. I mean, they snapped one of the long poles holding the side together into two pieces, so if I rolled it along, the suitcase would bend in half. The Moore staff was able to help us find a place within walking distance to replace my case and to pick up a few things we needed that were either forgotten, or got damaged by the broken case. I have nothing but good things to say about them, and I’d gladly stay there again.

Bonus, the hotel was on the edge of the Pike Place Market district, so we were literally a couple blocks from the fish market, flower market, the original Starbucks, etc. We found this awesome restaurant called The Pink Door for dinner (no actual signage that we could see, just a literal pink door to let you know you’d arrived), and there was live tango music while we ate. Apparently, there are acrobatic shows (from hoops and swings on the ceiling) on certain days, but we missed that. Again, 10 out of 10 recommend, but if you go, be forewarned: it is definitely pricey. It was our one big splurge meal.

Lots of exploring, crumpets for breakfast, so many photos, and then we were off to the pier in a van with a bunch of other cruisers, some who were also going to be on our ship. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet (forgive me if I have – I’ve been posting across four different social medias!), but we were on the same exact ship as our last cruise in 2018! The Solstice is definitely more rundown now than six years ago, as you might imagine, so there were a few hmmm moments along the way – lights that went out through the whole ship mid-dinner one night; seats in the theatres sagging and broken; a few large windows cracked or with broken seals, etc. Still, it’s a good ship, and we were amused to see that one of the two copies of Oathbringer (that were brand new in the ship’s library in 2018) was still there, with book cover gone and half the spine pulled off. Poor, well-loved Oathbringer.

Because we’d been on the ship before, we already knew all the good places to hang out. Jason and I tend to avoid the loud, chaotic areas (like the shops and casino). Because this was a cold-weather cruise, the library and card rooms where a lot fuller than usual, so we ended up spending time up in the sky lounge or in the earth room, which were mostly empty. There were also mornings at the specialty coffee place (I was completely enamored with their iced bianco). A movie (A Man Called Otto) in the hidden little theatre. (There’s a literal joke about people being unable to find this spot despite events being set there.) A “musical Shakespeare mystery,” which I thought was going to be a singing kind of musical but instead was a mystery with pop songs played at intervals that we had to guess the names of. A world wine tour where I learned so much!

Jason and I didn’t attend any of the big evening shows. Most of them were uninteresting, and the one I really wanted to go to was on the night I was super sick and needed to sleep. After three years of avoiding crowds, I got a cold after our trip to Ketchikan that lasted 48 hours. It was just a cold, but it sucked. I napped a lot. The rocking of the boat, which was quite strong at times, was the perfect lull-me-to-sleep tonic. (I don’t get seasick on cruises and actually adore the way the rocking feels!) Being sick meant that I missed most of the events I wanted to attend (like dance and archery classes), but at the same time, it gave me time to read and play murder mystery board games with Jason. Super laid back trip!!

I think the last thing I wanted to mention about the cruise itself was the food. We’ve always cruised on Celebrity, and I’ve been told by a travel-agent friend that they have the best food. I was also told by another friend who cruises a lot that many cruise lines cut back on food quality heavily during the pandemic. I was worried that would be the case with Celebrity, too, but for the most part, it wasn’t. Or, if they have cut back, it’s only to a level that’s still superior to what I get at home, so I didn’t really notice. My favorite thing that I ate onboard was a panna cotta in strawberry puree, which was divine. I wish I’d gotten a second serving.

Post-cruise, we traveled back to San Antonio on a trip that was far more eventful, with extreme delays, an incredibly dirty Denver airport, lots of turbulence as we flew through tons of lightning strikes, and an eventual arrival back at home around 2am the next day. I kinda wish we’d stayed another night at the Moore before traveling home!! But it’s done now, and most of the rest of the trip was good (minus the stupid cold). After five years, I remember why I enjoy cruising so much. It’s unfortunate, because the cruise industry is an environmental disaster, but still. I loved it.

Random notes from onboard:

• we saw whales breaching beside the ship!
• it was so cold and foggy every night that being out on the decks was madness
• we bought regular wifi on the ship, which was meant to be on one device, but they upgraded us to two devices out of nowhere, no extra charge!
• they also upgraded our drinks package from Zero Proof (just sodas, juices, and specialty coffees) to a Classic package, so I could have wine at dinner without it costing anything – I have no idea why they did that, but I’ll take it!
• at breakfast one morning, a waitress sang a song to a couple celebrating their anniversary
• the staff did a really good job helping J avoid nuts on the trip – so good, in fact, that when he ordered peanut butter ice cream (he’s not allergic to peanuts, just tree nuts), they brought him a different dessert altogether, ha!

For more/better photos, see my Instagram: @pookasluagh