The original reason for this journey was that my sister called and asked if I wanted to go with her family on a cruise. She has asked this question before but, since she lives in Florida and her cruises are to the Bahamas and such, I have always declined, not being much of a sun bunny, after all. My favorite joke to tell, of course, is that when I take my clothes off and lie on the beach Greenpeace comes up and starts dousing me with buckets of water like a stranded beluga. But this time she had an answer. This time they were going to Alaska, and on Norwegian, a cruise line with one of the better reputations. So I agreed and paid over two grand for an inside cabin, swallowing hard. The Norwegian Jewel is about eight years old and very nice but not grandiose. I didn't spend my time taking too many pictures of the ship, since they have professionals who can do that much better than I. Here's a link to the website, my room was mid-ship inside.
http://www.ncl.com/cruise-ship/jewel/decks/2/11#tab_detail
You can poke around on this site to see the layout and amenities. Like all cruise ships, of course, it was literally awash in food. There were, if I counted correctly, three main places included in the price: the Garden Café, which is actually a large cafeteria where the choices were staggering, and the Azura and Tsar's Palace, which were sit-down restaurant types where you would get essentially the same food as the Garden Café. In addition there was a food line in the pool area where, weather permitting, you could get burgers and such. They had a salmon bake out there one afternoon (it was Alaska, after all - salmon was on most menus). And there was the Blue Moon, which had a normal menu during the day but offered a limited list of 'bar food' all night. And yes, I did have need of it at 3am one morning. There are also half-dozen or so 'specialty' restaurants, were you eat for an extra fee (both booze and soft-drinks are extra as well). We went to the Japanese one for my nephew Adam's birthday, where they prepare the food in front of you with a little comedic song and dance. The food was better than the entertainment, but it was a fun time regardless. This is Adam. He's an elementary school teacher in Florida and apparently a confirmed bachelor. He's also the spitting image of his father.
Speaking of entertainment, there was a pretty good-sized theater in the forward section (the Starlight Lounge) where there was a pretty standard mix of shipboard shows. We didn't have any headliners, and most of this didn't appeal to me, but I did watch one magician with excellent close-up magic skills and a patter filled with (somewhat) comedic innuendo, and a pair of remarkably flexible acrobats who did bits with the long curtains and big rings. The female, by the way, was stronger than her well-muscled partner. He would wrap the material around his wrists three and four times, while she did many of the same poses and tricks with a single wrapping.
The staff was uniformly efficient and polite. There was the usual mix of Asian and Caribbean nationalities, with about a dozen European officers. Here is one of the most memorable - the Director of Food and Beverage Services.
His first name (can you say current events!) is actually Messiah, he's from Germany, and he got rather tired of being told how much he resembled David Suchet playing Agatha Christie's character Hercule Poirot.
By the way, the stewards had an odd trick; they would leave animal figures made from towels in the room when they made it up. This was the most inventive example, an ape hanging from the ceiling vent.
Now, there was a class (for a fee) in making this so-called toweligami, so maybe the creatures they left in our rooms were a kind of advertising, but they were fun none the less.
As a former Navy guy, there was one room I visited on a daily basis, and that was the observation room behind the bridge. There were rarely more than three officers on the bridge, and not much to see in the way of action, but the observation room also had displays of the radar picture and the engineering station, which gave course, speed, rpms, etc. A regular ship-geek's paradise. These leviathans have a sophisticated computerized version of cruise control. There was rarely anyone at the actual wheel when at sea; the ship drives itself most of the time.
Coming into and out of port, of course, we would have to have a local pilot aboard, and there was more action on the bridge. But these ships are remarkably agile, and never needed to use tugboats. They can quite literally pivot around their own centers, and can travel sideways as easily as fore and aft. We would come into a harbor and rotate around so we were facing out, then sidle up to the pier as neat as you please.
A cruise is not the ideal environment for an old single guy. Most passengers were families, and I would have had to be traveling in much more luxurious accommodations to be of any interest to the few single women aboard, all of whom were rather younger than I. But if you can sit down and say hello, you'll make some friends. There were Lemour, Peyton, and Sarah, all of whom loved to dance, Padmaja and Anita, who were hard to pry from their Indian travel companions, and Rosie and Jim from Sacramento .
Jim was the undisputed king of the Karaoke lounge, with a really good voice and a willingness to get up several times a night to display it. Plus he's a definite romantic. I'm sure one of the highlights of the cruise for Rosie is when he got her out on the dance floor and sang her a ballad (without the prompter) in front of an enthusiastic crowd. When he heard I was retired he started thinking about his own, coming up in November. It sure sounded like he'll be on pins and needles (hard to do when you're a bus driver) until then.
The ships visit the various ports in bunches, but don't actually travel together. This is the Holland America ship following us out of Seattle.
Here is Mt. Rainier in the distance as we left port, and my first sunset at sea in over four decades.
Other posts will give details of the ports and the glaciers.
