Tag: Alaska

Part 9 of 9: Going Home & Musings About The Trip

In August of 2009, I (Sharon) deserted my husband Joe and our puppy Dobby (at the time we had had her for about a month and a half) to go on a cruise to Alaska with the choir of which I was a member at the time (we were booked to sing on the ship). Some of my writing style has changed since 2009, some of my snark is exactly the same and heaven knows that cameras and photos have improved in the past 8 years, but here is the trip report I wrote about those adventures…the good, the bad and the ugly! To get up-to-date on the trip:

Part 1 – Arriving in Vancouver
Part 2 – On board and getting my bearings
Part 3 – Rehearsals and relaxing
Part 4 – Juneau – Nature Trails & Humpback Whales
Part 5 – Skagway – Walking on A Glacier and Taking A Train Ride to Canada
Part 6 – Day at Sea – Hangin’ Around the Ship, Enjoyin’ Doing’ Not much…
Part 7 – Ketchikan – Salmon Fishing!
Part 8 – Performing on the Cruise Ship!

Today was supposed to be a long but easy day. It certainly was long. Easy, not so much.

My first problem was my own fault – I had forgotten to hand in my “tell us what time you want to disembark” form for several days. So by the time I handed it in to say I wanted to leave at 8:00am, they had already scheduled me for 9:10am…which was exactly 5 minutes before my shuttle bus was leaving. Knowing that I wasn’t the first person in the world to hand the form in late, and with several hours before the end of the trip, I asked to be switched to 8:00am. The girl at the Zuiderdam office said it wouldn’t be a problem though, because all the luggage would be out early anyway.

She lied.

I had a quick breakfast at the buffet and disembarked at 8:00am…only to see that they were just bringing out the luggage that needed to be out at 8:00am. Ugh. So I sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Meanwhile, Carlene, Stewart and Celeste, who were all on the same shuttle bus as me (Esther had different plans and the Brits were flying out of Canada), had gotten their luggage long ago. At 8:50am, I asked one of the security ladies when the luggage with the green tags were scheduled to come out. She asked why and I explained my situation. She very nicely allowed me to stand right next to where the luggage carts come out so when I saw my 2 pieces, I could grab them and be on my way. It all worked out…I got to my shuttle bus with one (ONE!) minute to spare.

The ride to Seattle wasn’t noteworthy, especially since I slept through 90 minutes of the 4-hour ride. Our driver did manage to bypass the 5+ hour wait at Customs by stretching the truth a little, which was nice…and as it was, we were stuck there for an hour! But one hour is better than five.

We finally arrived at SEA a little before 3:00pm, bid goodbye to Celeste and tried to check our luggage…only to find out that we couldn’t check in until 4 hours before the plane. So not until 6:45pm. ARGH! With plenty (PLENTY!) of time to spare, we found a restaurant, had lunch, and essentially became squatters for the next 4 hours. We managed to figure out some ways to make the time go by faster but even so, it wasn’t the most pleasant or comfortable way to spend an afternoon.

They let us check our luggage in 5 whole minutes early (yee haw) and then sat at the gate for another 4 hours. Yeah, not exactly the most fun day in the world. But I got a good 4 hours of sleep on the plane going home, which was nice.

We landed about 15 minutes early on on Sunday morning and Joe picked me up, Dobby in tow. I managed to stay awake for the car ride home and even started to unpack a little. Lack of sleep finally caught up with me though and I napped from 9:30am to 3pm. And then from midnight to noon Monday.

Afterthoughts And Musings…

As much as I missed Joe and Dobby, I had a REALLY fantastic time. It was my first trip with this choir and it was wonderful to meet all of these people who I barely knew, or often didn’t know at all, yet we still had this “connection” in the form of the choir that allowed us to have full conversations. It was very neat!

The highlights of the trip were the salmon fishing, walking on the glacier and the concert. In that order.

Having to be at rehearsal at 8:00am SUCKED, hehehehe!

I thought Holland America was lovely. Not quite as good as the Disney Cruise line (the only other cruises I’ve gone on…yes, all to the Caribbean), but certainly high quality. Except for the food, which was just adequate to OK, as far as I was concerned. Nothing was bad (although that “chocolate pudding” was a bit questionable) but none of the meals, not even the “special” ones, stood out as being particularly wonderful, either.

There were only 5 of us Americans and everyone else was from the U.K. Learning 50-odd peoples’ names was HARD and I’m afraid I only eventually memorized about 2 dozen of them…some of which I only got right ‘some’ of the time (my apologies to the various Janes/Jeans/Paulas/Paulines). I wound up using mnemonics for some of them…I already mentioned that (Lord) James reminded me of Christopher Lloyd, who played “Reverend Jim” on Taxi (so I had the James/Jim thing going). And Bob looked like Reverend Alden from Little House on the Prairie, so I thought of him floating in the water, with his head “bobbing” (I didn’t get a decent picture of Bob so you’ll have to take my word for it).

Caroline and I bumped into each other a grand total of 11 times over the course of the week. It got to the point where it had happened so much early on in the trip (4 times on the first day) that I just started keeping track (and yeah, I am indeed OCD like that anyway, LOL!). There was no rhyme or reason to it, either – sometimes I would show up, sometimes her. That didn’t even count the times when we were supposed to be at the same place at the same time, like for a rehearsal or dinner. I mean “just walking along, minding my own business, when WHOOSH, there she was.” Good thing I liked her, huh?

I was admittedly not a cruise fan and really wasn’t thrilled with the idea of cruising but Alaska sounded intriguing, so I was willing to make the sacrifice. As it turned out, I finally figured out my issue…it’s not that I dislike cruising at all…I just dislike cruising to the Caribbean, LOL! As long as there are cool people to hang out with (because playing Bingo and learning how to carve a watermelon or cucumber into a flower are still LAME, no matter what ship you’re on), cruising can be great!

Part 8 of 9: Performing on the Cruise Ship!

In August of 2009, I (Sharon) deserted my husband Joe and our puppy Dobby (at the time we had had her for about a month and a half) to go on a cruise to Alaska with the choir of which I was a member at the time (we were booked to sing on the ship). Some of my writing style has changed since 2009, some of my snark is exactly the same and heaven knows that cameras and photos have improved in the past 8 years, but here is the trip report I wrote about those adventures…the good, the bad and the ugly! To get up-to-date on the trip:

Part 1 – Arriving in Vancouver
Part 2 – On board and getting my bearings
Part 3 – Rehearsals and relaxing
Part 4 – Juneau – Nature Trails & Humpback Whales
Part 5 – Skagway – Walking on A Glacier and Taking A Train Ride to Canada
Part 6 – Day at Sea – Hangin’ Around the Ship, Enjoyin’ Doing’ Not much…
Part 7 – Ketchikan – Salmon Fishing!

Another day at sea, this time on our way back to Vancouver so we could disembark for good and go home.

We were scheduled for a 2-hour technical rehearsal at 8am so I set my alarm for 6:45am and woke up at 5:30am. Argh! I figured it was a good thing though…I’d have to wake up early to disembark on Saturday and with Florida being 3 or 4 hours ahead, it gave me the opportunity to get closer to an Eastern Time sleep schedule.

I had ordered some whole wheat toast, a grapefruit half and coffee from room service and then off I went to the rehearsal.

We still had Gabriel the piano player from 8a to 9a and then our bass player and drummer arrived at 9a. We did 2 complete (or near-complete, time allowing) run throughs, including soloists (all of whom totally rocked!). We sounded good and we hoped to get a good audience. Unfortunately, we were disappointed to find out that, due to their company policy, Holland America would not advertise our show in any way, shape or form…not in their daily booklet, nor via announcement, so our audience was going to only be based on the word of mouth we generated (and the flyers some of the Sing Live people handed out and left on tables and in mailboxes). Awesomesauce (she said sarcastically).

I had an appointment at the spa for a foot and leg massage at 11am, which was provided by Patricia from Jamaica. I didn’t have anything else on my agenda until we needed to be around for our concert, so I went back to my chair, caught up on some blogging and watched the outside world go by. I also spent some more time doing the jigsaw puzzle and *almost* catching a nap (I think I actually did sleep for about 20 minutes but then Jessie woke me up…GRRRRR…good thing I like her, LOL!).

With a 3:00pm concert, we were told to meet in our formal attire (which is what we were going to sing in) at A Deck by the forward elevators at 2:25pm. I wound up getting there WAY early…2:10pm or so and there was NOBODY there. Nor was there anyplace to sit. So I went back up to Deck 1, where they was at least a bench. Some others got there a few minutes after me and once we had a big group, we took a bunch of pictures on the bench, on the stair landing, etc. Anyway, at 2:24pm, we went downstairs to A Deck to meet our conductor and one of the ship’s crew, who brought us “backstage” to access the stage area of the Vista Lounge.

3 o’clock finally came and our show went off without a hitch. We’re sure we lost potential audience members because of the lack of advertising (AND we were up against Bingo and 3pm High Tea) but still managed to get probably between 150 and 200 people in the house. We didn’t care though…we just had a good time singing!

Once the show was over, I went back to my cabin so I could put “real” clothes on again. I then tried to take a nap but it never did happen. Pity.

Dinner was going to be a “special” one because it was our last night. The meal began at 7:30pm instead of 8pm and the menu had more limited, but generally more fancy choices (oxtail soup, duck breast, etc.) We each got a paper chef’s hat with the menu written on a separate piece of paper that was stuck into the hat – those who put the hat on (not everyone did) looked simply lovely!

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As part of the “special” meal, the servers put on some little shows for us for different parts of the meal…even for the napkins!

We all lingered after dinner – it was the last time we would all be together and it was REALLY hard to say goodbye to so many of my new friends. Jessie had mentioned that a bunch of people were going to the piano bar, in case I wanted to come. I was already tired but figured I would have PLENTY of time to sleep on Saturday, between the bus ride back to Seattle and the 5+ hours on the red eye home. So after going back to the Explorations Cafe to check in our flight electronically, off I went. The woman at the piano was very good…she had a nice, contralto voice and knew a LOT of songs. Apparently a lot of people had been visiting her all week long because she knew just about EVERYONE in the place and had written a “final evening” song that mentioned all of her “regulars”, including most of our choir people (although I hadn’t gone to the piano bar all week, she recognized me as soon as I walked in because she had gone to our concert). Anyway, there were about a half-dozen of us from the choir at any given time, until they closed up shop at 1:30am…when the last 5 of us (me, Nancy, Anne, Jane and John – who had been falling asleep on his barstool for the last hour, LOL) finally called it a night. With my alarm set for 6:30am, I was (not surprisingly) asleep before my head even hit the pillow.