Renew Your Mind

Day 5:

After setting our clocks back one hour due to the time zone change, we woke up at 6:30am to have a quick breakfast before heading out (some people eat slower than others). The ship arrived and docked in Ketchikan at 7:00am and our kayaking trip with Southeast Sea Kayaks wasn’t until 8:00am. We were booked on the Orca Cove excursion. We finished our “quick” breakfast at the Oceanside restarant by 7:30am where I always had some combination of eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, corned beef hash, yogurt, granola and fruit. When we disembarked we were greeting by a large eagle. It was actually someone in costume and the ever present Celebrity photographers were there to capture the meeting. My wife’s sister saw a moose on the other side and took a picture with the moose as well. She tried to take a picture with moose with her own camera but was told that it wasn’t allowed. I still don’t understand why they charge so much for those pictures. I bet they would sell a lot more if they lowered their prices, not to mention the “digital processing,” they do… but i’ll get into that later. Since we were out a little early, we walked through a couple shops right by the dock and noticed that almost everything was 50 percent off. When it was time, we headed back to our ship to meet with our guide and found our man from the Southeast Sea Kayaks holding a Kayaking paddle. It was much easier to spot than reading the little signs that I saw some of the other excursions leaders holding. After making contact, he went off to another the Holland America Statendam ship to look for a couple who had also signed up, then we walked about six blocks to Southeast Sea Kayak office. The other couple was from Florida. Luckily they made it out before Hurricane Frances. They spent 6 hours driving to find an airport they could fly out of. I hope they made it back to Florida before Hurricane Ivan. Once we arrived at the office, we took a bathroom break because we were told the kayaks did not have bathroom facilities. *grin* Then we boarded a small boat and took a 20 minute boat ride out to meet with a larger boat which had the kayaks attached to it. We took the double kayaks and the other couple had singles. The kayaks were much fancier than what I have seen before. The person in the back of the double was able to control a rudder by pushing down with the left or right foot to go left and right respectively. The weather was overcast and it rained on an off. It was a very light rain so it didn’t bother us and it helped keep us cool since we were all bundled up with rainjackets and life preservers. The water was pretty calm as we maneuvered around the islands. Our guide pointed out several bald eagles and we were able to paddle up to two bald eagles who were perched on a large rock before they flew off to a nearby tree. When we followed the eagles we found a group of seals in the distance. The seals would pop their head out of the water to check us out. We drifted for a while to check them out. One seal popped up a few feet away from one of the other kayaks. We then started to head back and my wife kept turning around to see one of the seals following us until we made the turn around the island. Our guide also pointed out some bright green sea anemones and purple and orange sea stars. He even pulled a sea star off and passed it around so we could examine it up close. So far, kayaking was pretty easy going but when we were heading back to the main boat, it was against the current. It was a very tiresome experience but eventually we made it. When we boarded the ship we were offered some grapes, cheese, crackers and smoked salmon. After the snack we boarded the smaller boat and it took us back to the office. Overall this was a fantastic and quite enjoyable experience. It is highly recommended. The weather wasn’t the greatest but I think it worked to our advantage. We walked around town four a couple more hours and did some shopping. My wife bought a pair of Alexandra earrings for 80% off at a going out of business sale. After we boarded the ship, we changed our clothes and went to the Trellis Restaurant for High Tea. We meet some interesting couples there, One couple had been on over 100 cruises (not counting any cruise under 7 days). The longest being five months from the East Coast (US) to the Mediterranean. They live in Vancouver go to Alaska once a month during the summer. They used to travel on Holland America but have recently switched to Celebrity. This was only their 13th cruise on Celebrity. I guess we have a long way to go to catch up! The tea sandwiches were good but I think I liked the sandwiches at the Huntington Library better. I later found that going to high tea wasn’t’ a great idea as dinner was only two hours later. I think I had sirloin steak for dinner and I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t have room for the late night sushi either. The food never ends.

Day 3: (continued)

I forgot to mention that I did go to the fitness center the first night on the ship. Unfortunatly, that was the only time I went to the fitness center. The fitness center was pretty nice and had most of the machines you would find at a fitness club. There were about ten treadmills, ten eliptical machines, bikes for spinning and several weight machines. The freeweight area was a little small but I imagine that there aren’t too many people that use the free weights especially since the ship can get rocky at times.

Day 4:

I woke up with a dry, scratchy throat. I couldn’t tell if I was getting sick or if it was just from the motion sickness patch. It didn’t help that the air vent in our room was blowing on my all night and there wasn’t a way to turn it off. The following nights I ended up using our bathroom towels to block the vent so it wouldn’t blow on me while I slept while still letting the air circulate. We had our only breakfast in the Trellis restraunt where we met two other couples from Texas. When our conversation turned to housing prices, one of the couples mentioned that the house was on acre of land. It’s hard to imagine owning that much land in Los Angeles. The food and service was good but breakfast took about hour since it was served rather than buffet style. Later that morning, we had our Cruise Critic Party and we had the chance to meet the people that had been eagarly anticipating and planning for the cruise on the Cruise Critic forums. Melanie, the onboard harpist, played for us in the Cova Tea Room (5th deck) and we had tea, coffee and small pastries. The harpist normally plays in the S.S. United States restraunt which costs $30 extra per person so it was nice that Celebrity treated us to something special. It was fun get together and we got to meet another couple in our age group which was a rarity. Then we hit up the casino (Fortunes) and I ended up $40 richer (only to lose it later in the cruise). Besides enjoying the inside passage scenery, we booked a “couples massage” for later that afternoon which included a 25 minute bath soak, a massage and 6 roses delivered to our stateroom. The massage was great and I felt like my vacation had really began.

Day 3:
We had dim sum at the Victoria Chinese Restraunt for brunch. I guess we needed our fill of Chinese food before heading on our cruise. (Who would have guessed that the cruise would serve congee for breakfast?) Anyway, after checking out of the Hyatt we took two taxis to Canada Place. There were five of us and we wouldn’t fit into one taxi with all our luggage. It cost about 8 Canadian dollars each even though it was only four blocks away (but who wants to walk four blocks with a ton of luggage… at least it would have been downhill though). At Canada Place, we dropped off our luggage and headed through the security checkpoints. It didn’t take very long and then we had to wait to go through immigration. While waiting they served us sandwiches and cookies. I was still full from dim sum but I tried a cookie and it was very dry. After a 20 minute wait, we got through immigration, had our picture taken by the ever present Celebrity photographers and boarded the Infinity. Once onboard, we were treated to champange and orange juice. We took a quick tour of the ship and checked out our inside room and found our luggage didn’t arrive yet so we headed up to the Oceanside Cafe for the first of many meals. The Oceanside Cafe (10th Deck) was just like eating in a dorm. The food was decent, there was a lot of it and a decent variety. We ate breakfast and lunch there most days as it was much quicker than eating in the Trellis restaurant since it was buffet style. Dinner at the Trillis which was quite an experience. I had Prime Rib the first night along with an appetizer, soup, salad and dessert. After that one meal, I knew I would not be able to leave the ship without gaining some weight. Our waiter, Osvin Reyes was the best. We had table 500 which was on the upper level. When we were escorted to our table we found it was in the very back overlooking the tables below and right next to the large windows at the back of the boat. We couldn’t have asked for better seats. We shared our table with one other couple who were from Thousand Oaks, CA. Our table was glad to be able to get away from the California heat and was looking forward to experiencing beautiful Alaska.