Alaska, Part 3

(As a reminder, previous blogs dealt with Part 1 and Part 2.)

Thursday, May 30
This was our last full day on the cruise, and unfortunately it would be entirely at sea along the British Columbia coastline before heading into Vancouver, our final destination.  We set our clocks back 1 hour to get on Pacific Coast time, and slept in a bit to past 9 am.  The boat was obviously in the open water more as we could both feel the ship ROCKING big time.  (In fact the night before, right around midnight when I was at the poker table, I felt the entire ship do a huge rock.  Everyone kind of looked at each other, and many of us had the same thought:  Did the ship just do a huge motion, or are we all drunk?  Thankfully the answer was the former.)  After getting up and having breakfast we went down to the 2nd part of Progressive Trivia (that we had started on the 1st day on the cruise).  We did well during this 2nd round, but we were still in 2nd place against a team that called themselves simply “Us”.  Or “U.S.” Either way, their complete lack of ambition in choosing a witty, sardonic name should have been enough to prohibit them from ever winning, but apparently the trivia master didn’t have the same attitude as I did.  On top of that, the team that called themselves “Us” seemed to have ALL the answers, almost as if they knew the questions ahead of time. Don’t believe me? Here are 2 of the questions that they got EXACTLY correct.  1) In the book “The Joy of Cooking”, how many people can an ostrich feed?  Answer: 24.  2) How many movies did John Wayne appear in?  Answer: 153.  Now on both of those answers, I have a hard time believing that anyone A) knew each answer EXACTLY correct, or B) would have randomly guessed answers like 24 or 153.  So I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I sure as hell didn’t like it.

After trivia was over, we heard an announcement that the chef was hosting a “barbecue cookout” on the top deck of the ship.  We had only eaten breakfast about 2 hours before this, we weren’t hungry at all, but of course we headed up and ended up stuffing in more food because, well, IT WAS THERE.  (That seemed to be the theme of the boat…eat all the time JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN.)  After eating and feeling sick, we went back to the room to pack/organize for departure the next day, and then back to the final Progressive Trivia round at 2 pm.  We did not do very well at all in this round, and ended up tied for 3rd place overall. That team “Us” won first place, and again knew the exact answers to random questions, such as “What did a McDonald’s hamburger cost in 1963?”  (Answer: $0.15.)  Later in the day I was talking to my friend Rosario at the Quill and Compass pub, and he mentioned that they rarely ever change the trivia questions from cruise to cruise, so it’s entirely possible they were on the cruise previously and remembered all the questions/answers.  Not sure why that would be fun at all for them, but apparently that team wanted the cheap trophy that badly.  Whatever…we won hats.

Later in the afternoon, Sage stayed in the room to pack some more as well as to watch the Inside Passage go by outside the balcony, while I headed to the casino and to the final table for the poker tournament I won entry to earlier in the cruise.  As I mentioned in the earlier blog, I was going to start with the chip count I ended with at the qualifier, and we were playing for a free cruise in 2014 which included entry into the Royal Poker Tour Championship to take place on the free cruise.  However, when I sat down at the table I found out that the final table only ended up being 5 people; therefore, there weren’t enough entries in the qualifiers to make a full table, and we’d be playing for cash instead of the free cruise (which sounded better to me).  I started as the short stack with only 2,000 chips, while there were 2 of the table that had over 13,000 chips. I ended up finishing 4th out of 5, but only the top 3 were paid, so I was what they refer to as the “bubble boy”.  I wasn’t too disappointed, as it was still fun, and afterwards I hit the Q&C pub for my nightly drink.  After heading back to the room to get ready for dinner, we met up with the family at 6:30 at Giovanni’s Table, another of the specialty dining rooms on board, for our last dinner together.  When we sat down we found out that at Bingo that afternoon, Steve won!  He walked away with almost $1,000, so dinner was on him this night – woo hoo!  Giovanni’s Table was Italian, and we had a really good meal.  We said our goodbyes to everyone, as we didn’t think we’d catch up with them on the way off the boat or in Vancouver, and all agreed that we had a really nice time getting together.

After dinner Sage went back to the room to watch the sunset while I ended the week at the casino on a bad streak.  I met back up with Sage around 10 pm at the Starquest Lounge for the last party night where the music was a mix of Motown, 60’s and 70’s music.  The boat was really close to shore and we had nice views of the islands all along the Inner Passage.  As we were getting closer to Vancouver, more lights and towns began to show up on the lands, and it was obvious we were getting closer to civilization.  We headed back to the room around 11 pm and set the alarm to get up early for our morning docking in Vancouver.

Inside Passage

Inside Passage

Friday, May 31
Our alarm went off early, like 6:30 am.  We had signed up for “Express Check Out”, which meant we were able to carry all our bags off the boat with us.  Most people have to put their bags out by their room the night before, then they get a certain time between 7:45 am and 10 am when they can disembark the boat.  Once they leave, they pick up their bags in the large terminal on the docks.  We hated that idea, as we always prefer to do our own thing on our own time, so we were happy they allowed us to walk off on “our own time”, supposedly starting at 7:15 am.  However, when we looked out at 6:30, we couldn’t see Vancouver or the pier at all. We thought at first that we must be docking on the other side of the boat and we just couldn’t see the pier, but when I turned on the TV which showed the boat’s position, it showed we were not even close to the dock yet.  Around 7 they made an announcement that the ship was delayed and we’d be an hour late, and asked everyone to simply add 1 hour to their departure times.  This really wasn’t so bad, as it allowed us to sit and watch the boat come through the inlet into Vancouver.  We had great views of the city, and the extra hour was probably worth it in the long run.

Vancouver from a distance

Closer to Vancouver, with Stanley Park in the foreground

The boat tied up around 8 am, and we decided to head down to our “cluster area”  at that time (15 minutes early), as we figured it would be a little crazy.  We got on the elevator, and as the doors opened on the floor we were to get off the boat on, we say it wasn’t a little crazy – it was full-on nuts.  The area was packed with people, most with their bags (which took up a lot of room), all standing around, and we weren’t sure where we should go or what we should do.  But before we could even talk about next steps, figure out if there’s a line, or do we wait somewhere else, we heard someone who worked on the boat say something about leaving the boat, and a mass of people began moving toward the exit door.  So we simply got in with that group and headed out!  We got stuck for a few minutes outside before the gangplank, and we heard people talking about this being “an early flight line”.  It appeared that this group, which was the first off the boat, was supposed to be for those who had early flights, and since the boat was delayed an hour, needed priority to get off to make the airport in time.  So it appeared that we may have jumped the line, so to speak, but it worked out for us, and the boat could have been a LOT more communicative with instructions, so bad form to them.  We ended up walking off the boat right around 8:15, and we got ushered through the huge terminal in a blur.  There were just a constant line of people working in the terminal, all just waving us to keep going in a certain direction, all very friendly, just saying “keep walking this way, have your customs forms out” (which we did).  We finally got to the customs/border agents, who took our form, asked us to fill out a survey, and that was it.  No checking of passports or looking through bags, and we were through it all in less than 5 minutes.  Being one of the first people off the boat, we got right into a cab and had a 10 minute cab ride to our hotel.  (Thankfully the cabbie took US dollars, and we never had to withdraw or exchange money into Canadian dollars the entire time we were there.)  At the hotel, we knew we were really early and were expecting to simply check our bags while we did our stuff for the day, but lo and behold, they actually had a room available for us already!  So by 8:30 we had: disembarked; gotten through the terminal, customs, etc; gotten a cab; and checked in to our hotel room.  In fact, the breakfast in the hotel went until 9 am, so we even had time to grab a bite before got on with our day.  Lucky us!

After breakfast we walked over to a Hertz place that was near the hotel where I had reserved a car. We were staying in Vancouver for 2 days/nights, and had a few places outside of town we wanted to go to, so renting a car seemed like the way to go, even if we did have to navigate downtown Vancouver and find parking.  Thankfully grabbing the car was quick and easy, and Vancouver’s streets are very straightforward and easy to navigate, with visible and legible street signs and no strange merges or intersections.  (Yes, I’m looking at you, Boston.)  We headed out to North Vancouver and Lynn Canyon Park, a city park we heard had good hiking and a very cool suspension bridge.  It only took about 30 minutes to get there, and it was actually kind of crowded (seemed to be overrun with school kids).  The bridge we read about was very cool, and the trails went through a rain forest-type woodland, and it was nice, but after an hour or so we felt we got a sense of it and didn’t feel the need to stick around.  (I think I may have been getting crabby too. Shocker.)

Sage on the suspension bridge

Waterfall in Lynn Canyon

Lynn Canyon

After the park we tried to figure out what to do next, and I had NO ideas, and didn’t really feel like using the miniscule amount of brain power required to come up with an idea (yep, I was definitely crabby), so I went with the sampler.  What does that mean?  So, if I’m out to dinner and I can’t figure out what I want to eat, AND they have a “Sampler Platter” on the menu, that’s what I go with.  That way I don’t have to think too hard about it, and I figure there’s more of a chance that I won’t hate the entire meal. So what does the sampler mean in this instance? It meant CITY BUS TOUR TIME!

We drove back to the hotel, changed clothes (the sun started peaking out of the clouds and it was warming up a bit), went online and found a city tour bus company that had a stop only a couple blocks away at another hotel.  The website also said you can buy tickets from the driver, so we walked over, waited on the wrong side of the street, and when the bus showed up we crossed and noticed there was a group of about 6 others waiting to get on.  They couldn’t make it on the bus, as the trolley only had 3 seats available, but since we were only 2, we were able to jump the line and get on.  As we did, I asked the driver if we could buy tickets from him.  He said no, but he’d tell us where we could get off to buy tickets.  So we got on, and our seats were in the last row in the back.  The path took us all over the city, but the tour kind of sucked.  First, we couldn’t hear the driver’s narration very well at all way in the back, and what we did hear was very boring.  We’ve done city tours in other places, and usually the drivers have funny anecdotes, interesting stories, and bad puns/jokes, but this guy was as dry as the martinis Rosario made for me on the cruise.  Also, the trolley was stuck in traffic quite a bit, and at one point the driver just stopped, got off the bus, and walked away for about 5 minutes without even telling us why.  One interesting thing we noticed while on the trolley were the "Smells of Vancouver".  Three really stuck out for us, and we thought they were perfect smells for Canada.  The first was hops, and that was when we drove by the Molson Factory in town.  The second was bacon, and we smelled that as we drove by a restaurant that had a full pig on a spit, ON THE SIDEWALK, roasting away.  The last smell was maple, and to be honest, we weren’t sure WHERE the maple smell came from, but we would literally smell maple or maple syrup every once in a while.  It was like they pipe it in or something! So beer, bacon and maple syrup.  Because, Canada.

Tree growing on top of Telly Savalas's condo.

Molson Brewery

Pig on spit, ON THE SIDEWALK

After an hour or so we got to the part of the city called Gastown, and the driver said the bus was going out of service and we were supposed to switch to a new bus.  We had gone almost a full loop by this time, and the driver must had forgotten that we were supposed to get off to pay for our tickets at some point, as he never mentioned it.  Either way, we were hungry for lunch, and Gastown had lots of restaurants, so we got off and didn’t feel bad about not paying since the A) the tour was pretty lame, B) we couldn’t hear any of it, and C) the tickets were $40 each!

For lunch in Gastown we ate at The Old Spaghetti Factory, which was a good meal in a really cool old warehouse, and my crabbiness began to melt away.  It was then a short walk to Canada Place (which is where the cruise ship docked), and that is where the Vancouver Olympic Cauldron is located.  We got photos of the cauldron and walked around the area a bit.  There was something called a “Digital Orca” piece of artwork, which was strange and I can’t really explain it (but there's a photo below); and also a “Walk of Canada”, whose highlight was the “War of 1812 Experience”.  We didn’t go in, but I’m guessing it was a lot of “We kicked American ass!” propaganda.

Olympic Cauldron

Digital Orca

View of Stanley Park from Canada Place

We walked back to our hotel, which was only about a mile away, and got back at the hotel close to 4 pm.  Luckily this meant it was 7 pm back on the east coast, and we were able to watch the Red Sox/Yankees game on YES (which the hotel carried for some reason).  Later in the afternoon we decided to head out for some drinks, and Sage found a place called Johnny Fox’s Irish Snug, an Irish pub nearby.  We had Harp and chips, and it was a really great, nice place, even if it seemed to be located in the heart of the red-light district of Vancouver.  Afterwards we went back to the hotel to figure out what we wanted to do the next day, and then went to bed early to try to get our bodies back on East Coast time.

Saturday, June 1
We made ourselves get up at 6 am, again to try to get our bodies back on East Coast time, and when we did, neither of us had any desire to either A) get up or B) go hiking.  But we forced ourselves to do it.  Getting into the car, we drove north out of town with Whistler as our destination for the day.  Most of the hikes we had looked over the night before were really steep, and we knew we didn’t have the legs or energy for them.  But one we found sounded right up our alley.  It was called Alice Lakes Provincial Park, and it had a 4.5 mile loop trail that was relatively flat and meandered around 4 different lakes in the park.  The weather this day was very cloudy and overcast, but thankfully there weren't any showers or rain during the hike, and the trail was just what we needed.  It had great smells (hemlock and cedar, I think), and we were done by 10 am.

Trail through Alice Lakes Provincial Park

One of the 4 lakes we saw in the park

The forest was lovely, dark and deep.

After Alice Lakes our plan was to drive up to Whistler to look around, but on the way up we saw a sign that said “Whistler Olympic Park” outside of town.  We took the turn, not knowing what to expect.  It cost $10 to get in, but there wasn’t much of anything going on there.  We saw the ski jumps they used in the Olympics, as well as the cross country course (which was paved and used as a summer training ground), and we saw lots of bear poops.  Our last stop there was the biathlon course, where one could even shoot a biathlon rifle at the same targets the Olympic athletes shoot at (supervised, of course).  We decided against the shooting, but watched a few others take part.  On the way out of the park we were looking at the side of the hill by the ski jumps and I saw something black.  We stopped, and sure enough, it moved – it was a black bear!  It was pretty far away on the hill, but we could see it pretty well through our binoculars for a few minutes before he moved on into the woods.  But at least Sage got to see her bear in the wild that she wanted to on this trip!

Olympic Ski Jumps

Olympic Rings and Biathlon range

Bear seen under the ski jumps

Back on the main road we drove on to Whistler Village, which is a cute little town, made to look like a Swiss mountain village.  Whistler is known for its skiing, but it gets huge crowds year round, as the crowded town attested to this day.  There was more Olympic stuff in town (Olympic rings; flags; etc), and we only had an hour on our parking meter so we walked and looked around before leaving to find somewhere else to eat lunch.  That ended up stopping at Boston Pizza on the way out of town.  If you’ve never heard of Boston Pizza, then you must not watch a lot of hockey, as I always see it advertised on the dasher boards of Canadian hockey teams.  I’ve always wanted to try it because of that, and also to find out what “Boston-style pizza” was.  Turns out the place is like an Uno’s crossed with a sports bar– it’s a sit-down restaurant with lots of burgers, sandwiches, entrees, plus pizza, and tons of sports memorabilia on the walls.  We both got the pizza, which was pretty good, but we had to ask our waiter what the connection was with Boston.  He said there was no connection to the city of Boston, that they just call it that “for name recognition”.  We left it at that, but weren’t convinced he knew what he was talking about.

Olympic relic at Whistler Village

Olympic Rings at Whistler

Village of Whistler

We left Whistler around 1:30 pm, drove back to the city and dropped off the car at Hertz.  Once back to the hotel it was time for a final organization and packing as we were flying out first thing in the morning.  Once everything was in place, we settled in to watch game 1 of the Bruins/Penguins Conference Finals, which turned out great for the Beantown team with a 3-0 win!  We were in bed soon thereafter for our last night away from town.

Sunday, June 2
Our last day was nothing more than a travel day, and it wasn’t real interesting.  We checked out, got a cab to Vancouver airport, and made our way to our flight. But not before stopping for Tim Hortons in the airport – our one and only stop the entire time in Canada!  Not sure how that was even possible.  Air Canada brought us to Toronto, on a flight that was pretty uneventful but did feature a woman in our row (thankfully across the aisle) who got sick several times on the way in to Toronto.  Once in Toronto we had to clear customs before getting on our flight to Boston.  The procedure was kind of a pain and took 45 minutes or so, but at least we wouldn’t be stuck going through customs in Boston once we arrived.  We had time to stop at the Molson Pub for lunch before making our connection, and thankfully the flight to Boston was on time.  I don’t think we finally actually arrived home until close to 9:30 pm…and we were both up and off to work in the morning.

Looking back, I had a really fun time -- more fun than I thought I would have. We've always wanted to visit Alaska, but cruising wasn't our first choice.  But in Alaska, where it's difficult -- if not impossible -- to get to some places with a car, cruising was a really convenient way of getting from place to place.  And thankfully the weather was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS for us.  We can't wait to go back!