Back “outside”

  • Well, I’m back in the lower 48 states — or “out­side”, as I’ve heard the Alaskans refer to it.

    Things I’ve learned:

    • On an Alaskan cruise, the scenery is really the star. Our ship sailed down nar­row inlets most of the time, and moun­tains rose up on either side of us. On our last day, the cap­tain sailed into Col­lege Fjord, which has glac­i­ers named after dif­fer­ent col­leges. I’m still sort­ing out the pic­tures, but the thing to know is that I could have been tak­ing pic­tures non-stop in 360-degrees — it was just unbe­liev­ably beau­ti­ful. Other cruises I’ve taken have been about hav­ing fun on the boat or get­ting to great cities — this one was def­i­nitely about the scenery. Here’s the type of thing I mean. (By the way, though that is ice in the water, it wasn’t that cold on-deck.)
      mist-covered-mtn-and-ice-chunk.jpg
    • Fel­low cruis­ers can be very tire­some. There’s just some­thing about all that Old World ser­vice, abun­dant food and non-stop enter­tain­ment that brings out the worst in some peo­ple. Our shut­tle from the ship to Anchor­age Air­port was very well done by a 20-year-old who was inter­est­ing, infor­ma­tive and friendly. And he was tak­ing us from the fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle town of Seward where the entire res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion of 300 lives in one apart­ment build­ing. We went through a one-lane tun­nel two miles long through solid rock — the traf­fic goes in on the half hour and out on the hour — and by enor­mous sea inlets where bald eagles sat on the shore look­ing for food. The ongo­ing topic of con­ver­sa­tion for the group sit­ting behind us on the bus? Their lug­gage, and how it wouldn’t be wait­ing at the air­port like it was sup­posed to be, and how the peo­ple in charge knew that but just didn’t care. A per­son could just cry.
    • Trav­el­ing with a group is fun, fun, fun. We usu­ally cruise with our des­ig­nated cruise bud­dies, so it was some­thing dif­fer­ent to do this with an Ortho­dox group (some were old friends and some new faces). But really, things like that make for good times. You can mix and match, you see each other here and there and com­pare notes. (And by the way, major kudos to C. Sue who put it all together and who — inex­plic­a­bly — really wanted to be blogged about at some point.)
    • You can still for­get about get­ting a decent cell phone sig­nal or inter­net con­nec­tion. That can be a bless­ing, of course, but it also made blog­ging at sea and stay­ing in touch with Greg on the boat kind of a chore. No doubt cruise lines will even­tu­ally fix these issues and then I’ll prob­a­bly be sorry they did.
    • Com­ing back home is an adjustment.
    1. For one thing, you’ve got this “sea legs” thing going on. Because you spend the whole time on the ship mak­ing sub­tle cor­rec­tions in order to stay upright and move around, you get in the habit of not stay­ing entirely still when you’re still. And so when you get off the boat, it’s hard to stop sort of rock­ing to and fro. And if you walk up a long hall­way (as I did last night at the hotel) you have the feel­ing that you’re walk­ing up and down a lit­tle series of hills. It’s weird.
    2. You can’t help but notice that when you leave clothes strewn around or dishes in the sink … they stay there. It’s really just ter­ri­bly harsh.
    3. On the other hand, I’m finally in charge of my own tea and cof­fee again, and that’s a bit of a relief. Get­ting good tea when trav­el­ing only seems to hap­pen if you’re going to Great Britain (though maybe other tea-drinking coun­tries would work just as well).
    4. On the plus side, no wait­ing for ele­va­tors around my house. You want to be upstairs — get your lazy butt up the stairs!
    June 7th, 2007 | Grace | 9 Comments |

9 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 06.07.2007

    You ALMOST make me want to try a cruise… :)

  • Word­mama

    So you up for SF next week?

  • s-p

    San Fran­cisco? Oh yeah! Love it there!

  • Grace

    See, s-p even wants to come. Heck yeah, I’m up for it. Can’t wait!

  • Grace

    s-p:
    Well, if you’re the intre­pid type you might pre­fer the types of travel things where you’re more active and adven­tur­ous. My mom — the one who doesn’t like cruis­ing — told me about one, but I for­get the name. Her recent trip is an exam­ple, though. The group was on a river­boat going down the Ama­zon. Smaller boat, less frills, more thrills or some­thing like that. I’ll try and get the name for you if you want.

  • Mimi

    Wel­come back!

  • Grace

    I’m fol­low­ing up on that last com­ment. Checked with my mom — the name of those travel pack­ages is Over­seas Adven­ture Travel. Lit­tle less posh, lit­tle more of an adventure.

  • C. Sue B.

    You men­tioned my name! Yippee-doodles!

    The cruise will be a high­light of our 2007, undoubt­edly. The scenery was out­ra­geously gor­geous. All the cruisey stuff spoiled us — like the towel ani­mals on the bed each night with the mints and freshly straight­ened up cabin, and the waiter, Cal­isto, greet­ing me with “Hello, Miss Su-san!” A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing — spend­ing hun­dreds of dol­lars on a fish­ing boat in which we got not ONE bite all day. They said the salmon were bit­ing the day before, so we were con­vinced that word got out amongst the fishies, and they scat­tered on the day of our salmon quest.

    How­ever, zip-lining through the trees in Ketchikan was way awe­some! Pan­ning for gold was cool, too. We took home about $35 worth of gold dust. Not too shabby. A word about the weird art­work on the ship — I think the design­ers may have ingested expired LSD from the 60’s. It was bizarre — whim­si­cally strange — if you will. Over our 12-year-old son’s bed there was a print of a pre-pubescent Cupid embrac­ing Venus’ … ahem … naked chest area. It made for inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion. In the arena of art, the towel ani­mals ruled!

    Being with Ortho­dox folks and say­ing prayers in the strange lit­tle “chapel” and see­ing a cou­ple of old ortho­dox churches where we were warmly greeted … well, it was truly delightful.

    Spend­ing time with you, Grace and Greg, on the cruise was the BEST! We love you guys!

    Air­fare for three Brauns: $1600
    Cruise with all the extras like goofy pic­tures and bingo: $3500
    Laugh­ing with you guys with Michele, the ship’s nat­u­ral­ist, spout­ing off about whales in the back­ground: PRICELESS

  • Grace

    What a fine sum-up! And good for you for putting num­bers to the expe­ri­ence. I never think of doing that part, but it’s some­thing that peo­ple who are inves­ti­gat­ing cruis­ing want to know.

    I agree — the whole thing was just priceless!

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