Alaska Cruise Day 3 At Sea - "I Cannot See Clearly Now"

I love at sea days. I should clarify, I love sea days when I can roam freely and I am not sailing past ports that we had planned to visit. Anyway, there is so much to do on a cruise and today I think that we tried to do all of it. Rob is still waking up on EDT, this morning he was up and dressed by 4:30. He was already going down to the front desk to check on a crossword puzzle. I saw the light on and checked the time. 5:15 am, seriously? OK fine, I will get up. Rob was heading up to the fitness center to work out, that opens at 6:00. To save room in my suitcase I did not bring workout clothes but did bring my swimsuit so that I could swim laps and/or do water walking. The pools open at 7:00. Rob is coming back down the hall as I am leaving. He told me that I should make someone take the net off the pool, it is almost 7:00. OK, fine. I get to the pool. When the ship is at sea the water in the pool kind of splashes around. It is fairly quiet so I decided that the waves must be quieter. Um, no, there is no water in the pool. Drat. I climbed into the hot tub and follow the yoga class that is happening on the pool deck. This feels good. I do not work on my knees and a few other exercises. Not exactly the same as 45 minutes of swimming or walking in the water, but it is something. I have been waiting for my eggs Benedict since our last cruise. It was worth the wait. There is no self serve. You cannot even get your own coffee, everything is handed to you. I saw tomato juice and opened the door to get it. Oops, sorry, I was told very politely to ask someone to get it for me. They are taking this seriously. When you walk into the Lido or the dining room there is someone standing at the hand sanitizer stand to make sure that you use it. I thought that this cruise was being run at 50%, it turns out that it is at 2/3 capacity. Even with fewer people on board there are still times that you have people wandering trying to figure out what they are doing or what food they want. Rob went to “Meet the Cruise Director” and I went to something on coloring in the Digital Workshop. When I looked in the night before I saw that they did not have any computers in there. I thought that maybe they had gotten them in overnight. Nope, they were handing out coloring pages and color pencils. Oh, well, I guess that I will stay. I understand, they are trying to eliminate things being touched by multiple people. Computers would be hard to sanitize between classes. Either that or Microsoft ended their deal with Holland America on running these workshops. It took Rob and I a while to find each other after our different events. They have a message app, but it does not always alert you that you have gotten a message so you have to keep on checking. This is like having a phone that you have to keep picking up to see if there is anyone on the line. We attend a program on the history of Holland America. There is one video of the Westerdam in Glacier Bay on a very clear day. The day that we were in Glacier Bay back in 2013 it was so nice that they sent a helicopter out to shoot photos and take video. I swear that when you watch that video you will see one bright blue dot. Remember the blue fleece that I was wearing in the famous penguin photo? Yeah, I was wearing that jacket the day that they took that video. When we were leaving lunch we saw Seth Wayne. He was talking to someone sitting at a table. I kind of stood off to the side for him to finish his conversation. He saw us and got excited. He said “Oh, I am so glad to see you.” The person he was talking to kind of looked at me like “who is this and is she important?” I joked about how he was wondering if I was someone famous and did he want my autograph. Seth finished up with him then talked to us. He asked us if we would be willing to do an interview. He took us outside to the aft pool and asked us to talk about what it was like being on the ship and what we wanted to say to everyone who was thinking about cruising. I will post the link when I get it. Seth asked us what we were doing the rest of the day and if he could take us out to eat at the Canaletto, the Italian specialty restaurant onboard. Cool. After lunch I go back to Carol and Tony’s cabin, they are having a few technical issues. Their TV thinks that they are German and she has no idea how to sign on to wifi. They took a package that we did not take. They get wifi. I have two different reporters who want to do interviews with me while I am on the cruise. The wifi is too unstable. I will try with the hotspot on my phone tomorrow when we are in Juneau. The problem is that we will be 4 hours behind EDT so not sure who will be around when I can contact them. We also have plans for what to do in Juneau if the weather is decent. Right now the cloud cover is pretty heavy and we have sailed through a lot of fog. We did get an unwelcome letter from the captain today. “Due to the increasing cases of COVID-19 in Alaska caused by they spread of the Delta variant, the health authorities have strongly recommended that when ashore, all persons, including those fully vaccinated, wear a face mask at all times while indoors and also if outside when physical distancing cannot be maintained. US regulations require all persons to wear a face mask on public transportations including buses, trains, vans, airports, aircraft and dayboats.” Yup, not want I wanted. I can already hear Victoria “If you get trapped on this cruise you are getting yourself home.” We played trivia and only lost by one point. Then we went to the Lincoln Center Stage. This has become a favorite of ours. They play a wide variety of classical and popular music. This was music from around the world. Tonight was Gala Night. They used to call it Formal Night, but have relaxed the dress code for men. Rob is thrilled that he no longer has to wear a jacket and good shoes for these nights. I wore my squash blossom necklace, it did get a lot of notice. After dinner we went back to the Lincoln Center Stage to catch the last part of their New York composers presentation. We did not sit in the main section but could hear the music. Suddenly Seth shows up to tell us what time our reservation is for. OK, I am impressed that he remembered that we were going to the Lincoln Center. The piano bar was doing music from the 60’s, ah, my kind of music. I knew the words for all of them. Nice to just relax and get into the music. Now it is time for game night. We find it and look for an open chair. We find two up front and are told that if we sit there we are playing. We are fine with that. They have two teams of 3 people each so we are split up. I am on a team with three other women, two of whom are from the Cincinnati area. Rob is on a team with three of the crew. The first game there is a word displayed behind you and your team can each give you one word clues. I played this before, I got 11 points. The other three on my team got a total of 15 points. Another game was acting out dances. I got down on the floor and did the worm, not well, and was wondering if I was going to get up. My team did loose the entire night by one point, but they ran out of clues for us on one section so…. It was a fun night. We are both tired, but we gain another hour overnight and as it is Rob is still getting up too early. I would ask him to play cribbage, but he is already nodding off.

Alaska Cruise Day 2 "Yes, We are Back on a Ship"

After going to bed late for us, not even considering the time zone difference we of course wake up early. The hotel has a free breakfast, which was definitely worth the price. If you were looking for high sugar carbs this was for you. They did have a sign explaining that due to current health department COVID restrictions they could not offer their normal breakfast. OK, fine, but some sort of protein would be nice. In the past you were allowed to bring on a limited amount of soda, water, wine on with you. This is stated in our contract. However they have a new rule, you are not allowed to bring on soda or water. We have usually bought a soda card, $25.00 for $50.00 of fountain drinks. It is now $50.00 for $50.00. Yeah, I think that I will pass. Rob has found a couple of stores at which we can buy soda. One is a 7-11 near our hotel. We go to check it out. $7.99 for a 12 pack of Diet Coke, they do not even have Coke Zero. Rob knows of another store, but it is “quite a hike.” I head back to the hotel and he heads to the store. It turns out that this store is now a 7-11 and the soda is the same price. He hauls it back in a large tote bag. We finalize our packing and check out. We have a 1:00 embarkation time and an 11:00 check out time. It will not take us two hours to get there. Last night Rob had asked about walking to the Light Rail station. Oh, the hotel shuttle will drive us there. We get out there and they drive us to the station. Yes, we could have driven there but Seattle is a lot of hills and this station is on the top of one of those hills. We go to pay our fares. They have machines for this. The machines do not like any of our credit cards. We finally resort to cash and get our tickets. We are at the end of the line so we do not have to worry about which way to go. The train comes and we board with all of our stuff. We ride and ride and ride. We had time to kill and this is a cost effective way to get there. We get to our stop, wrestle our stuff off and figure out which exit we want. We ride up a long escalator, then another long escalator. Rob asks if we are ever getting to the top. I say no, we will be riding escalator after escalator until we are to the top of the Space Needle. We finally see daylight and head for a corner. Our plan is to get a taxi to ride to the cruise terminal. We cross the street and I can see a yellow cab down a hill. I stand at the edge of the curb to signal the cab. Um, it is just a yellow car. I am sure that man was wondering why I was waving at him. We wait a while and there are no cabs in sight. We call for a Lyft. He is there in less than five minutes. They have changed their system, I have a number. The Lyft driver can recite the number so it is him. We drive to the terminal. We have to give our embarkation time to get admitted. We are dropped off and we have to show our boarding pass, on my phone and our vaccination cards. Oops, time to dig them out. They are trying to do this as efficiently as with as little contact as possible. We pass the first hurdle and are sent on to the next one. Our luggage has to go through the scanner. They pause when our bag with 2 12 packs of soda comes through. Rob is all set for a battle. They back the soda up, call someone over, she shrugs and says that is OK. That is a nice surprise. We get in the long line, they have a shorter line for people with a higher ratings than we have. If the cruises had not been canceled we would be almost there by now. The long moves quickly. Rob has his passport out and I have my drivers license with a birth certificate since the passport office still has my passport 3 months later. Rob goes up, the scanner recognizes him, they scan his passport and he is all set. I go to the scanner, it recognizes me and I put up my license. Oh, I am so sorry, it cannot read that, you will have to go into this other very slow line. Rob wants to head to our room, no sir, stay with your wife. We wait and wait. The people behind us have the enhanced Washington State license and were told that would work, but they are in this line. I finally get to the counter. He looks at my license and my birth certificate and finds my photo on the computer. OK, we are set. They have groups of chairs with signs for “Group A” and “Group B.” We are group D. We sit down and Carol calls me, they are on and she said that she just walked on. OK, what is the worst that can happen. We go through and are aimed to the ship. There is this lovely group of crew members welcoming us back.

We find our cabin. Rob is really ready to put the soda down and the backpack. He has been carrying my DSLR and keeps reminding me how heavy it is. I guess that I had better figure out how to fit that into my suitcase for the trip home. I have heard from two more reporters who want to do interviews on our return to sailing. I will see about “borrowing” someone’s wifi for this. We have lunch with Carol and Tony. Great to catch up. We both get lunch from the Asian Bistro, our favorite place to eat. There is no general muster drill. They would have everyone at an appointed time show up at your muster station. This is where you go if there is an emergency. They would either scan your card or call names. To avoid all of those people standing around close to each other you just show up at your muster station and get your card scanned. We are told to go back to our cabin to watch the safety video. On our way we meet two women. One has one bottle of wine and one has two bottles of wine. They are going to have a fun afternoon. We make our reservations for dinner. We like open dining but like to choose our table. If we like the table and the waiter we go back to that table every night. Now it is time to unpack. We are only on this cruise for 7 nights, how is it this hard to put our clothes away, we did this for a 31 day cruise, but there were more drawers in that cabin. Now it is time to relax and have a soda on the veranda. We are on the back of the ship. We can see Mt Rainier from the ship. It is a beautiful day and feels so nice to just sit out there and enjoy it. They kept announcing that everyone needed to report to the muster station. People must have listened because we pull away from the dock ten minutes early. There is a lot of fan fare for this. The fire boat puts on quite show. We are off, we just stand out there and watch Seattle fade away.

In the dining room they had a QR Code on our table to scan for the menu. This reduces the number of people touching the menus. Well, my phone will not load the menu. The waiter told me to not tell anyone and he handed me a menu. In the past you got a dessert menu after dinner. Now you order dessert when you order dinner. Again, fewer touches. Dinner was great, seafood cocktail and rockfish for the entree. Yum. We had planned to go back to our room for a little bit. Rob laid down for just a bit to check out the blanket that the room steward brought. Yeah, the rocking of the ship puts him to sleep pretty fast. It might be 8:30, but my body is thinking that it is 11:30. We did make it to a talk about the History of Holland America in Alaska, very interesting, Rob did not sleep throught that much of it.

Day 1 - Travel is so Much Fun

We will be getting on a cruise ship tomorrow. We were on the very last Holland America cruise after the pandemic started so we figured that we should be on the first one back. Victoria has stated that if we get stuck on this cruise we will be getting ourselves home. This ship will sail with a 50% capacity and everyone on board will be fully vaccinated. Holland America does not have the full self serve buffet that other cruise lines have so we already know to not expect that. After a week on our last cruise anything that was self serve was now behind plexiglass. We have been assigned an embarkation time and will not be allowed in the building before that time to reduce crowds. Our boarding passes are on our phones and we have uploaded our photos. Hopefully the process goes smoothly and we do not have to hang around too long. There is some worry about COVID cases rising in Alaska. Sitka is already looking iffy. We have a 6:30 pm flight. I am so used to taking off early that this feels weird. We are pretty much packed, still having discussions about me bringing my DSLR camera. We are taking only carryon bags since this is a one week cruise. I will tell you one thing that you do not want to find out 4 hours before you leave home, that your TSA PreCheck has expired. It seems that it expired on my birthday, but they did not send anything to me. This explains why I had issues in Albuquerque, but not how I got through TSA PreCheck in Cincinnati. Then again in Cincinnati they had to search my right shoulder instead of my right knee because it is an artificial joint. We get online, Rob is attempting to renew his since it will expire while we are on the cruise. I am attempting to get mine reinstated. We finally get everything filled out. They will let us know. Fine, I separate my liquids and prepare for going through regular TSA. Rob loads the suitcases into the van. We had decided that when I got home from the Ann Arbor Art Fair we would just pull out the garment bags and hang everything in the garage. I did not want it all packed away while we were gone and to be honest I wanted to make sure that everything dried out. We left everything else in the van. I popped the lids on my bins and left it at that. This meant that putting suitcases in was not the easiest thing to do. We get to the off site parking and for once we find a spot that is not somewhere in the next county. The shuttle is right there and we head for the airport. Rob checks the departure board, after I aim him away from the arrival board. We are going out of gate A 1. Wait, I do not have to walk 2 miles to get to the gate? Wow. Rob heads for TSA PreCheck and I head for the regular TSA. I am trying to figure out which line will be best. I guess pretty well. I have an Asian woman with her son in front of me. They do not speak a lot of English, the TSA agent actually works well with them through gestures and patience. It is my turn, my boarding pass will not scan the first three times. Please do not do this to me and then suddenly "beep" it goes through. I get to the table to put our stuff through the scanner. We are being told to pull all electronics out and to put them in their own bin. I have a laptop and a tablet, do they go in the same bin or in their own bin? It does not matter, we are out of bins. There is only the bottom thisn that read "Do Not Use." I keep saying to the agent that we are out of bins. The Asian mother and son grab one of the "Do Not Use" bins and get told that they cannot use that. They are confused. I now pull out my best teacher voice. "We are out of bins." Oh, you need more bins? A woman behind me says that she heard me say that at least 4 times. I pull my laptop and tablet and put my phone in with them. I put my bag in a bin and ask about the Cpap, no, it can stay in its case. I am pushing things forward, they appear to be attempting to make up time. The agent asks me about my shoes. Doh! I explain that my PreCheck has expired. He understands. I go through the scanner and they pull me aside. Oh, my knee. Nope, my shirt has these little decorative studs on it and they need to find a woman to pat the studs down. OK, memo to self, do not wear this shirt when flying. I head for gate A 1 and get there quickly, and there is no one there. Sigh, back out to the main concourse. I do not see any departure boards. I step to the side and pull up Alaska Air on my phone and find that it is A 7. Again, not far, but I am a little stressed. I find Rob and he goes to fill our water bottles. We are in the last boarding group so no big hurry. They are holding people up because it is hot in the jetway and do not want people to stand their too long. We finally get on the plane and the aisle is backed up. I sigh and the flight attendant chuckles and said that people appear to be a little slow today. I comment that it is not that hard, suitcase up in the bins, body down in the seat. She tells another attendant to give me the mic. These new planes have different luggage bins, you put your suitcase on its side instead of on its back. They made the announcement about this twice in the waiting area and have little diagrams showing people how to do this. Do you know how many people still put their suitcase on the back? I tell the guy ahead of me in the aisle, he looks confused so I point to the diagram. Oh, wow. There is one suitcase in the bin above us, and it is on its back, I turn it and put mine in. The flight attendant thanks me. I have been assigned the center seat and Rob the aisle and based on experience he switches with me. This flight has a lot of kids on it, I mean little kids. We have a kicker behind us, but the parents keep attempting to stop it. I get it 4.5 hours is a long time to not swing your legs. We have an amazingly quiet baby ahead of us. I make faces at the baby and she giggles. It is hard to make faces with a face mask on. The flight attendants are very vigillant of the face masks. They keep telling people to put them back on or to pull it up over their nose. The flight is not too bad, a few crying babies and one idiot playing a video game with shotting without muting it. A little turbulance but I have had worse. The landing is smooth and we get off. This is a huge airport and there are a lot of people here. We have an airport for the night with a free shuttle. Rob calls to tell them that we have landed and need the shuttle. They ask where we are. We are not in the correct spot so we go downstairs and go through luggage return as told. We get out to the curb and this does not look right. Rob calls again. We have to go back in, go up and go across. OK, now we are at A1 as told. NOW they will send the van. We keep watching and waiting. We are near the spot for parking pick up. We see a lot of other hotels. To us it is now after midnight. We are tired. After 25 minutes the shuttle pulls up. We are the only ones on. The hotel is fairly close to the airport and we check in easily. We get our room cards and get to the room. We are tired and take a bit to figure out the lock. You do not insert it, you tap and it opens the lock. It keeps beeping, but does not open. We try both cards, nope. I finally ask for the card holder. We are tyring to get into 301 and we are supposed to be in 307. Oops. I hope that whoever was in the room did not hear us attempting to enter. Finally we are in bed. How do I know that I will still wake up on Eastern time?