Under Ice, There’s A World
Moving slow, carnelian stars and the bars down below…
Today is our last at-sea day and tomorrow we’re going home. Nooo! I’ll be a bit happy to get off the boat, but vacation being over is sad.
Anyways, on Sunday we cruised through Glacier Bay. There were glaciers. A funny thing happened though… they were so beautiful and I stared at the glaciers for a long time. Later, I found that I couldn’t focus on anything closer than about two feet from my face. I think my focus got stuck! It was so strange. Later that day I found out that there was Mega Team Trivia Challenge being held in the Explorations Cafe so I basically forced the family to go. I thought we’d clean up, but we got in third place. It’s the downside to being on a ship with an average passenger age of 65. Too much wisdom, arrgh! In any case, that night was another formal night so I was able to break out the black dress and arm gloves! I love those gloves so much.
My focus was all back to normal yesterday, so that was a relief. We stopped in Ketchikan and did lots of walking and shopping! We were going to do an excursion to see some eagles and reindeer, but the weather was awful and that one included a hike. It’s too bad, but shopping is fun too. In Alaska, every other store is a jewelry store. These don’t interest me much because I don’t have $700 to spend on a necklace, but it’s fun to look. In one store, I was happily singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from Moulin Rouge before I realized that the Moulin Rouge soundtrack was actually playing in the shop! (But at the end of the soundtrack.) So awesome.
Today was pretty laid back. We sat in the hot tub and lazed around on the Lido deck. Aunt Anne wanted a gambling partner so I thought that’d be a good time and it was! I won $40 playing the Sherwood Forest VLT, which was clearly lucky for me because it involved archery. Aunt Anne was not quite so lucky, but she tried a lot more machines and I watched. So fun!
At dinner they had a special chef’s dinner event where all the kitchen staff and waiters were juggling things and performing. When they handed out glowsticks I was convinced they were going to turn out all the lights and waltz around carrying flaming baked Alaskas (like they did in Greece) but alas, no! I was genuinely surprised. Still, the dinner was fun because we saw a whole bunch of Orca whales swim right by our window!
Tomorrow is pretty much going to be waking up, eating breakfast really early and then getting off the ship. This trip has been great overall, although it probably would have been quite different if the weather had been sunny. Still, I’d do it again. The next adventure will be… talking Josh into coming with me to visit Hank and Anne at their place in Qualicum Beach!
