Day 2 - September 7, 2008
Sep. 26th, 2008 at 7:51 PM
10:56 Vancouver Time / 9:56 Alaska Time
It's almost Ketchikan (AK) time. We had a relaxing but full day at sea today. But first I'll recap the rest of last night. We got to the show about 25 minutes before it started. Got good seats in the surprisingly large theater.
The show was decent once it started. My eyelids were verrrry heavy leading up to it, though! First the ship's entertainers sang and danced -- great choreography and mostly great singing. The cruise entertainment director introduced himself and the rest of the "specialty" directors. The comic came on after that and was quite funny. A considerable feat considering a) the crowd was uber-tired and b) he himself had been up since 3 a.m. Eastern. Came back to the room after the show ended and crashed most blissfully. I later heard that a lot of people thought the singing/dancing weren't very good. Maybe it was my exhaustion evaluating their performance...
Back to today! I woke up around sunrise and glanced outside at a gorgeous day. Went back to sleep until the alarm went off at 7:45. Look out the window to an impenetrable fog so thick there was absolutely no horizon. Weird.
Took a shower and was pleasantly surprised by the water temperature and pressure. Shower is barely big enough to turn around in, and the toilet sounds like an airplane potty, so I didn't have high hopes for the shower experience. After freshening, we headed for breakfast.
I guess they're catering to an international taste since we have travelers from all over the world -- U.S. of course, a lot of Aussies and Brits, Germans, French, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. So the breakfast buffet had a ton of unfamiliar options. They had your standard American selection of sausage, bacon, eggs, cereal, pancakes, hashbrowns, oatmeal and bagels. They also had lots of fresh fruit, yogurt, boiled tomatoes (which I'm coming to love), rice pudding, Muesli mush, fried rice and baked pears. Good stuff.
Following breakfast, we headed back to the theater for a presentation given by the ship's "local shopping expert." Yeah... We thought it was going to cover good local places to visit, maybe include some detail about our port city histories and cultures. Turned out to be a realllly long infomercial for chain jewelry stores that, incidentally, have some ties to our cruise company. By the end, we were sick of hearing about Diamonds International (sounds totally local, doesn't it?). I think the "local shopping expert" gets a commission from them.
Once that presentation finished, we stuck around for the naturalist's talk about Alaskan wildlife. Having just sat through a painful infomercial, we were worried that he would be discussing canary diamonds or something. He was awesome, though. Funny, engaging and super informative. And not selling anything. That presentation lasted about an hour, after which we headed up to the Calypso Deck for a SUSHI BUFFET! It was a step above grocery store sushi, but not quite as good as restaurant sushi. Some rolls were better than others. Can't go wrong with salmon, but the ones with royal purple rice and picked veggies weren't so fabulous. Overall it was decent and very filling. A very nice older couple joined our table, and we chatted for about 15 minutes. I love how friendly everyone is on this boat! Joining strangers' tables isn't something you usually see back home. It's just easy to talk to people here.
Justin and I went to the naturalist's 3:00 show about whales after finishing lunch. Again, hilarious, interesting and educational. Aaaand Justin and I got to be on TV. All the presentations are taped and played back on the ship's channel on all our room TVs. The naturalist, Rob, asked for 4 kid volunteers. There was ONE KID under 15 in this room of 200ish people. So he asked for people 25 and under... Justin and I slowwwwly raised our hands when it became evident that there weren't going to be many other U25ers. We joined the little kid and another kid who looked about 18 onstage.
Me & the 2 other guys got to play the role of krill (tiny shrimp that whales eat). Justin played the whale. Our newly assembled troupe did a Broadway-worthy rendition of whales casting bubblenets to corral and eat krill. In nature, whales will swim in tight circles to out the less-than-brilliant krill, who bunch together in their panic... creating a tasty krill meatball for said whales to easily eat. I'll let you imagine this scene onstage. Justin "swam" around us and made some awesome bubble noises into the mic while we screamed in tiny shrimp voices. Needless to say, our performance garnered laughs, compliments and a horde of devoted admirers. One guy told Justin, "I took a picture of you onstage, and you might be the only whale I see on this trip!" I wish we'd thought to ask him to email the photo to us, as we have no lasting evidence of our epic moment in the limelight.
Once the show finished and our 15 minutes of fame concluded, we hung out in the lobby with Rob the Naturalist for awhile. Conversation ranged widely, and we discussed the politics of native whale hunting, ANWR drilling and Sarah Palin.
Got all gussied up after that for our first formal dinner. Went to the Savoy tonight and sat very near a window this time. The two couples next to us ended up being very nice, and we had a great time chatting about travel, families, etc. Not long after we sat down, a large pod of tiny dolphins started playing next to the boat. Like RIGHT outside our window! They were incredible - leaping over waves, flipping and generally being happy. Food was quite delicious tonight. We started with a free bottle of wine, courtesy of our travel agent (thanks again, Cruise Holidays!). We picked an Italian red that was surprisingly awesome (usually we drink white -if any- wine, but tonight we thought we'd go for something different).
The first course included the MOST AMAZING crab quiche on the face of this beautiful planet and sliced duck with a raspberry saucy drizzle. Our soup course: lobster bisque with big lobstery chunks and a chilled yogurt & tamarind soup with lemon zest. Tasted like a melty lemon creamcicle. Dinner course: grilled Ketchikan silver salmon in dill butter for moi (I'm eating all the fish I can fit in my face) and a crawfish dish with a light tomato base & saffron for Justin. Dessert: Justin got an assortment of petit fours - fudge, compressed nut, cream puff and a weird chocolately liqueur ball covered in sprinkles. Our waiter, Yves, ROCKED. Just pleasant and really funny. He gave one of our table friends a trick spoon for his souffle. I also got the souffle, which was a decadent chocolate and hazelnut creation. So light and super moist, plus the million calorie buttery vanilla cream sauce that came on the side. I drowned mine in the vanilla goodness and devoured every bite. I thought about eating the rest of the creamy sauce with my spoon, but I managed to resist. Though in our defense, we've been taking the stairs instead of elevators, so I'm sure we're working off all this lard (hah).
After dinner, we went to 7-aft to whale watch. Saw a sea lion or seal (he was only viewable with binoculars) playing in a floating kelp bed.
And very briefly, we saw our first WHALE! He was fairly close, and we could see him spraying water at the surface. Suuuuper cool. Hoping to see more this week. We hung out in a hot tub after that - there are four tubs to choose from in various outdoor locations. We stayed until it started to sprinkle on us. All the hot tubs and pools are heated, of course, but that doesn't make getting out any easier. Ouch, my friends. Ouch.
We're up really early tomorrow for our first port day in Ketchikan. I'm exhaustified and very glad we gain an hour as we pass into the Alaska time zone tonight!
