| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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At the tip of the peninsula is Siwash Rock, a fifty-foot pinnacle of rock which legend says is Skalsh the Unselfish, who was turned into stone by Q'uas the Transformer as a reward for his unselfishness. (It doesn't sound like a great reward to me, unless maybe it was after he died.)
We walked from English Bay to the totem pole area. This has about ten totem poles in a small clearing and a mess of tourists. (Mark says that 'mess' is the right collective term for tourists.) The books say this a great photo stop and apparently every tourist in Vancouver thought so, or at least all the tourist bus drivers.
Crossing over to the eastern side of the park we could see the Vancouver skyline and off in the distance our ship, the Dawn Princess. That was a relief, although I'm sure it's not like worrying if the plane will arrive for your flight.
However, it was only 10:30 AM and we didn't board until 2:30 PM, so we went to the Vancouver Aquarium instead. The admission seems a bit steep (at C$12 each) and we spent some time counting money to make sure we'd have enough for the taxi to the pier if we paid cash rather than charging it. (It's always a challenge to not run short of foreign currency, but at the same time not have lots left over to change back.)
The main attractions at the Vancouver Aquarium seem to be the killer whales and the beluga whales, along with the sea lions and the otters. The sharks and the octopus are the next tier, and the fish come in pretty much last (possibly even behind the sea anemones, though ahead of the kelp). Given this, it's easy to see why a place like the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden is having problems. When they started they had only New Jersey fish, but no one wanted to see a bunch of brown fish, so they finally decided to have some tropical fish as well. But they clearly lack the aquatic mammals that make museums like this popular. (The best aquarium I can recall was the one in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, but that may have been for the open pavilion-style architecture as well as the gorgeous fish. It was only US$0.50, or C$0.37.)
There was also an Amazon rain forest exhibit, similar to the one we saw in the aquarium in Stockholm. This makes little sense, since they don't show you much in the water at all. I guess they figure the 'rain' part implies water, so it is appropriate for an aquarium.
We finished at the aquarium about 1 PM, walked back to our hotel, and took a taxi to the Ballantyne Pier. Unlike the downtown Canada Pier, the Ballantyne Pier is way out of the downtown area, though the seediest section of Vancouver. We had thought of taking a bus, but we would have had to change buses and walk a few blocks, and given the combination of luggage and neighborhood I'm glad we didn't.
We handed over our luggage to the luggage handlers and went into a huge hanger-like building. We spent our last three Canadian dollars on Coffee Crisp candy bars, than checked in (right next to David L and Susan!), a fairly quick procedure. We got our boarding pass/ship charge card/room key and proceeded on to the ship.
Our room was on the Emerald Deck (Deck 6). This is two decks above the water line, and has a window. However, the window doesn't open and there is no balcony. We met our cabin steward, Rudy, familiarized ourselves with the room and safety regulations, and freshened up a bit. Our luggage hadn't arrived yet (no big problem, though I would have liked to be able to change my shirt).
The Dawn Princess has 24-hour dining. It's not for dieters but it did mean we could eat lunch at 3 PM in the Horizon Court (buffet restaurant). This is on Deck 14. There are 14 decks, with Deck 15, the Sun Deck, being the highest. There is no Deck 13, and there is a small area above Deck 15, but I don't think it's officially a deck.
After lunch we walked around the ship and changed clothes before emergency muster. This is what used to be lifeboat drill, but now everyone gathers at 'muster stations' (one of the large rooms) from which we will be directed to lifeboats if necessary. Even though everyone was told repeatedly just to bring their lifejackets and not put them on until told to, a fair percentage put them on anyway. These are the same people who think the announcement to remain in their seats until the airplane comes to a full stop is the signal to jump up and start opening compartments and shifting luggage.
The ship itself is new, and very fancy (so far as I can tell, having nothing to compare it with). Lots of gleaming wood and chrome, and stained glass and glitz. Not perfect, though: the six co-located elevators are split into two sets and work independently (you push one button and it won't call the other bank). And the standard creamer for coffee in the Horizon Court is non-dairy. (To get milk you need to take a pint of milk and use that; there is no half-and-half.) More annoying was the fact the there was no rubber door stop for the closet door nearest the cabin door. So when you opened it, it would eventually swing against the cabin door, and sound exactly like someone knocking. The library's selection was okay, but heavily slanted toward best-sellers and show-business biographies. Strangely, they didn't have any copies of Michener's Alaska; perhaps they think it's too long to stock for a one-week cruise. The reading lights in the library had a most annoying flicker.
David L and Susan were bothered by the fact that neither Teen Center nor the children's area was open when the ship was in port, meaning if you didn't schedule a port excursion for your children, you had to find some way to entertain them when all the children's entertainment was closed.
I admit most of these are minor complaints, but I'm hardly going to list everything that works perfectly. There were also many positive touches: a hair dryer, bathrobes, pool towels (though only one bath towel per person), and a room safe only slightly less complex than a Lithuanian luggage locker. (See my Baltics log for details on how those work. The safes on the Dawn Princess do not require tokens.)
At dinner, we met our waiter Guido and our assistant waiter Daniel. I also overheard one passenger talking about his 'Cabin Yahoo,' which sort of crystallized my discomfort with the very classist structure here. This may seem somewhat strange, because there is a definite effort for the staff to joke with the passengers. But that's only some of the staff (waiters in the main dining rooms and entertainment staff such as tour specialists, but not the staff in the Horizon Court). And I'm sure Guido gets tired of all the Italian jokes he gets to hear.
The staff is apparently grouped by country: Italians in the main dining rooms, Jamaicans and Romanians in the Horizon Court and other eating areas, Nepalese and Filipino security staff, and so on. I found this peculiar, and unexplained.
We were scheduled to sail at 5:30 PM, but had to wait for some late-arriving passengers (I wonder how often this happens?), so didn't sail until 6:30 PM, right about when dinner started. We were all at the same table in the first seating, which is normally 6 PM but was a half hour later the first night. On the whole, I would recommend the second seating, not so much because you have to rush back early from shore excursions (which is less of a problem on this cruise than the Caribbean ones, I suspect), but because you're probably not going to be hungry by 6 PM, especially if you have gone to afternoon tea. (We took the early seating because of the children.)
There were several choices for each course at dinner. I had Tiger Prawn and Rock Shrimp Cocktail with Mango-Tomatillo Salsa, Iced Piña Colada with a Splash of Rum (this was theoretically a soup), Sautéed Flounder with Asparagus Tips, Profitiroles (Cream Puffs with Berries Soaked in Liqueur), and coffee. You can get grilled salmon, steak, or chicken at every dinner, and there was a salad and a pasta course that I skipped.
We didn't sail very far, but anchored in English Bay so that we could watch the fireworks. Spain, the United States, and China were competing in the areas of music synchronization, overall design, music, color, architecture, and something else (I know there were six categories). I think this was connected with the international competition we saw in Schveningen in the Netherlands, though now these competitions are more 'Pyro-Musicals' as the Captain called them, than just fireworks competitions. There is more emphasis on the whole show, complete with rhythm, structure, etc., which is partly why not having the sound for the first number was a trifle annoying. They did broadcast the rest of the music, though. This night's entry was from the Ricardo Caballe firm from Spain (which has been in business for over a hundred years) and was titled 'Lights of Valencia.' Unfortunately, any breeze that there had been had completely died down and the smoke failed to dissipate at all, meaning that after about ten minutes all the fireworks were going off within a black cloud. Only the finale was really visible after that.
July 27 (49N, 123W, sunrise 5:36 PDT, sunset 21:45 PDT): We got up early to sign up for the tours. Various places said this would start at 6:30, 6:45, or 7 AM, but when we arrived at 6:25 AM they had already started. The room had comfortable chairs and they handed out numbers as people arrived, so we didn't have to stand in line. We had decided to take the Mendenhall Glacier Helicopter Tour in Juneau and the Horseback Riding Adventure in Skagway. We didn't have any problem getting the times we wanted, though I heard people complaining that the tours sold out very quickly. David G and Sherry signed up for kayaking in Ketchikan and Mom, Dad, and David L for a city tour in Ketchikan, but we decided to just do a self-guided walking tour of Ketchikan with the tourist bureau map. (Partly this was because we were scheduled to leave Ketchikan at 2 PM, which didn't leave much time for walking around if we took a tour, and partly this was because none of the tours sounded that good.)
After finishing this we had breakfast at the Horizon Court, then sat on the deck (deck 7 port side, our favorite location) reading and writing. I was still reading Daniel Deronda, which I had started on the plane but had no time to read in Vancouver.
At 9 AM we went into the library to see what their 'Brain-Waves Quiz' was. It was a word search, with all the words to be found listed-not exactly mind-stretching material. I did check out a copy of Lonely Planet's Alaska guide, so it wasn't a wasted trip. I figured it would come in handy during the port stops.
At 10:15 AM we went to a presentation on 'Wild Alaska' given by the ship's naturalist, Dean De Phillipo. He began by talking a little about how the wilderness nature of Alaska affected the people living there. For example, of our three ports in Alaska, only Skagway is connected by road to anywhere else. The result is that one person in fifty-eight in Alaska has a pilot's license. Boats are also heavily used; as he said, 'Water is really the story here.' (Alaska has three million lakes, and I forget how many miles of rivers.)
Twenty thousand years ago, the whole southeastern part of Alaska was covered a sheet of ice by four to five thousand feet thick. The glaciers are just a small remnant of this. There are two kinds of glacier. There is a hanging glacier and a tidewater glacier, the latter being the more spectacular. They are formed not by rivers freezing, but by ice forming in a bowl, building up, and finally overflowing. At the lower end we may see calving, 'the birth of the icebergs.'
There are also blue moulons created by rocks which melt their way through the glacier. Don't drop your camera down one of these.
Icebergs can be white ice and or blue ice; the latter is much more compacted and has far fewer air bubbles. The pressure equalization of the ice in the icebergs after having been under tons of ice causes a lot of noise. And while icebergs may look stable because of their mass, they are not. The underside is constantly being melted and an iceberg may turn over at any time. |
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