Left - Chris’s view of the msWesterdam from the Space Needle.
Right - My view of the Space needle from the msWesterdam.

The first few days were pretty normal. The seas were calm, so the rocking was minimal and you could hardly tell you were on a boat. I spent some of my time checking out the teen program, and the rest of it learning where everything on the boat was.

Tuesday was the first day we actually saw anything. Pulling into the bay and seeing the ice in the water was quite the memorable experience. Watching the caving was fun, too. It was noted that we saw “the biggest caving”, “out of all the Alaskan cruises” the crew had been on. It was nice weather, too - nice and sunny, and only in the 60s or so, so I didn’t even need a jacket. In the bay, we also saw a seal or two, and a bald eagle swooping around at some other bird.

I woke up on Wednesday, looked out my window, and was greeted with the sight of a dock. It took me by surprise, after watching two days of water out the window. In Juneau, we went off the ship and did a number of things, the first of which being the Mount Roberts Tramway. Basically, it’s a skyway ride up the mountain, giving you a great view of the entire valley and the town below. They had a ‘raptor center’, which consisted of a 4′x3′ cage with an injured bald eagle inside. At the top, we also met up with Jess Crane, who’s working out there as a tour guide. After catching lunch back aboard the ship, (since it is free, after-all) we headed toward our planned excursion, the Mendenhall Glacier & Alaska-Style Salmon Bake. Jess decided to tag along, and since she happened to know our tour guide, he didn’t mind her coming along for the ride either. We went out to Mendenhall first, which was not quite as cool, just because we had just seen Hubbard, but it was still cool. There was a cool waterfall near it which we hiked out to, and just hiking out on the mountains like that was a refreshing experience. After about an hour or out there, we headed back to the bus, and went to the Salmon Bake, which was alittle different than I expected. It was basically like a picnic, or a restaurant out-doors. Picnic tables were set up, and you went and got your own food, and it was all-you-can-eat. Similar to eating in Busch-Gardens, backstage 2003, but better food haha. Anyway, after that we headed back to the boat and I dont remember doing anything after that.

Thursday we slept in alittle longer, if I remember correctly. In Sitka, we had to anchor off-shore because there was no dock which could accomodate our ship. Tenders (also known as Lifeboats, when used for their alternate purpose) were used to ferry people between the boat and the ship (120 people to a tender). After eating lunch on-board, we took one ashore, and walked downtown, since we were early. We did the mandatory gift-shopping, and, as usual, spent more time than we needed to / should have buying souvenirs. We headed back to the dock, to meet our boat/tour group, and were taken to our first stop, Historic Russian America. Here we watched our first film on the Tlingit people and Alaska history, and we looked at some of the exibits and such, etc. etc. Our second stop was just as thrilling - the New Archangel Russian Dancers, who, ironically, are not Russian. They’re a group of local women who decided to start a cultural-interest group around Russian Traditional Dance, and I guess they’re not too bad at it. I think my mom fell asleep at this point. Next was the Raptor Center, which was pretty cool. They had out-door cages/exhibits as well as indoor habitats for some birds, and there was a little talk/Q&A with a trainer and a bald eagle that was informative. I got some decent pictures from here. On the way home, we saw a number of wild bald eagles, including a tree with 3 of them in it. We were dropped back off in downtown Sitka, and made our way to the dock/tenders, and back on the ship for dinner. Dinner was informal, and we came back to our cabin to find our towels folded into a monkey, hanging from a hanger. I stopped by the Lido deck pool to see the Dessert Extravaganza, but there wasn’t too much I was in the mood for (mostly cakes and pies and such). I almost went to Country Line Dancing at the ship’s nightclub, but my fatigue got the better of me and I fell asleep after eating afew chocolate-covered strawberries.

Friday was also quite the eventful day. We docked at Ketchikan very early, so we were in a rush to get breakfast and get to shore and such. First we went to the Saxman Native Village, which was interesting. They had a number of Totem polls, and explained alot about them - the stories behind them, how long they took to make, what they were made with, etc etc. We were also brought into a ‘clan house’ and shown some of the tribal dances, which I didn’t consider all too impressive. We spent some free time in downtown Ketchikan, exploring… the gift shops, of course. After the shops, we walked across the street to The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, which was suprisingly entertaining. They had men do different events of lumberjacking-skill, etc. etc. After the show, we headed back to the ship for lunch, and after lunch, I spent some time in the afternoon doing webdev. We the ship’s Farewell Formal Dinner (farewell, because not everyone would be on the ship the next day), where they served us Baked Alaska cake with sparklers. All the chefs came out in a parade (to Radetzky’s March, which made the night that much cooler), lighting the sparklers as they came out. For those of you who’ve never had it, Baked Alaska s basically like an ice-cream cake with a brownie at the bottom, and covered in a 1″ thick layer of whipped cream. It was good - although I’m not really a fan of that much whipped cream. Tonight was the first time in the cruise where I approached that familiar feeling we all know as ’sea-sickness’. The wind was up to 80+Kts, and the Sea Condition was ‘Rough’, with 12-16′ waves. Some of the waves were hitting our cabin window, and the boat was rocking pretty much the entire night. I dont think I was ever really naseous, but it did make me feel alittle sick, and I remedied that by promptly falling asleep.

Saturday was a slower day. We were at sea most of the day, and finally docked at Victoria around 8PM. I decided not to go ashore (4 in our party decided to hit-up historic Chinatown and all the shops, naturally though), because I was still tired from waking up so early the day before. As I write this, my sister tells me that they bought me a moose pen, though I have yet to have seen such a thing. I spent some of the late afternoon using my free 10-minutes of internet access, won at some seminar. We spent the day packing and such, and I attended Karaoke at night. I didn’t actually get to sing anything, but my brother, Katie, and my Dad did, and that was fun to watch.

Sunday - boring. We disembarked early, after being the last group of people to be called on the entire boat. We took a shuttle to the airport, and got lunch. I war-walked without leaving our Gate, and found an open, HSIA, wifi network (what luck!).

While I’m sitting here on the plane home writing this, I’d like to note that lighting on the same altitude as you looks pretty darn cool. I wish I had the willpower to get the camera out and take a time-lapse photo, even if the cloud in question wasn’t obstructed by the wing. Too bad.

Now for some general comments…

Food - Wow - I didn’t expect what the boat had to offer. The first place I learned the location of was the Lido Deck dining hall. Every dining room was all-you-can-eat, including room service! Drinks were free too [water, iced tea, juices]. We paid for these cards that would get you a certain number of soft-drinks from any bar, and none of us came close to using all of them up. I preferred breakfast and dinner to lunch. Breakfast, I dont know why, and dinner, just because of the whole full-service aspect, and the wonderful dishes to choose from, and the level of quality. Also, the displays/presentation of the food was very impressive - everything was done to impress.

Entertainment - This was mediocre. The night-time programming could have been better - I saw the “Westerdam Cast” the first night, and they were nothing more than singers and dancers going from song to song. Nothing better than what you’d get at a theme-park or something. It might just be me, but I really dont like those kinda shows. There was a ventriliquist the first night also, and he was rather entertaining. The teen program didn’t interest me much, but since it was geared at 13-17 year olds, and I’m an extreme, I dont think that was exactly my fault. The sports activities were decent - I was disapointed that they did not, in fact, have tennis (I had read somewhere that they did). But there were pools, ping-pong, basketball, and volleyball (sort-of). The video arcades weren’t anthing to write home about either. They cost extra, and they they were generally out-dated games. No DDR machine :(.

Service - Was very impressive. We came back to a cleaned cabin after the evening’s festivities, and some of the time we’d have a different animal folded from our clean towels. Our dinner stewards were equally as nice. Interestingly, anyone below management was Asian (very few exceptions), which might explain things ;-).

In general, the cruise was a very enjoyable experience, and I’d definately consider going back to do another one! I’d also highly recommend it to anyone considering it in the future. Hopefully they’ll have free high-speed internet access in a few years, too ;-).