| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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These little dwellers were the original Haidas, the first humans.'
The art piece shows the raven on a clam shell and people-all male-crawling out of the clam shell.
Another unusual point of this museum is its keeping most of its storage in cases where it can be seen by visitors. They have cases with drawers, open the drawers and you can see more of their collection.
Following the museum we had a small snack of some sandwiches and cokes. They were sold by and for the benefit of people from the First Nations.
Around the back of the museum was an outdoor display of more First Nation art, particularly totem poles. On our way back to the bus we stopped at the Geology Museum to see their skeleton of a Lambeosaurus.
On the bus on the way back I see a place that advertises erotic body piercings. I guess people will pay to watch just about anything these days. They don't say if the victims know they are the entertainment.
We stopped into Duthies, supposedly a really good bookstore. Supposedly. I was impressed only by certain sections. I thought they had a really good history section but only a mediocre science section. I did get a book, THE AXEMAKER'S GIFT by James 'Connections' Burke and Robert Ornstein.
In a department store we bought our Canada chachka, a small tin of maple syrup.
From there we went back to the room to rest up. I tried calling my parents about dinner, but could not reach them. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant called the Saigon and had curried seafood hotpot and Grandma's Chicken. The latter was a pressed chicken dish that showed signs of becoming chicken loaf.
Well now most of the Canada part of the trip was over. I bought three Coffee Crisps to use up money and went back too the room to write. Actually I ended up watching MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Apparently they still show reruns here.
I cannot complain about the weather. We have had really good weather for Vancouver. It is usually rainy but today and the day before were just beautiful.
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07/26/97 The Aquarium and the Dawn Princess
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Well again I woke at about 5 in the morning. Evelyn did also. I wrote a little while in my log, but I was anxious to get the day going. This was the day we would be seeing our cruise ship. It was also the last we would spend in Vancouver. Early we went out to find breakfast, going back to the Bread Garden. I had Pan du chocolate and fruit salad. Then we went back to our room, checked both out and our luggage, and headed out to explore Stanley Park, the wooded portion of Vancouver. We returned to the sea-wall we walked yesterday but this time we went to the right to follow the sea-wall promenade six miles around the peninsula that composes Stanley Park.
It was Saturday morning and people were out jogging, walking dogs, roller-blading, and even fishing. Evelyn walked along macabrely reading benches and plaques which often dedicated the benches in the memories of someone dead. We looked out to the barge that was to be the home of the Symphony of Fire.
I should explain the Symphony of Fire. This was to be an international fireworks competition. Three countries are competing this year, Spain, China, and the US. The first presentation is tonight with the world champion Spanish team. Each team is given three days to prepare the display. Unfortunately we will have sailed by the time the display starts tonight.
Walking by the water I see a Blue Heron standing by the water's edge. I am watching him close up with my field glasses. He drops into the water and I see he got a fish. He holds the fish in his beak for a few seconds, perhaps waiting for it to stop struggling, then swallows it. This is one more fish learning about the world above the surface.
A way further on there appears to be a flock of geese on the ground pecking away. Actually there seems to be a goose territorial dispute going on. The geese do not seem to get along very well. They are as bad as humans. Almost.
But it is a nice walk. You have nature on one side and can look out at tankers in harbor. One of the sites passed is Siwash rock. This is a tall narrow rock sticking out of the water that the brave use as a diving point. It is about 20 feet high, if I remember right. There is a plaque to commemorate a high school student who dived off not knowing it was low tide. Just how he could dive off not knowing he was diving onto wet rocks is unclear from the plaque. In the shadow of Siwash a jogger asked if we would like our pictures taken. We did and we talked a little while. She agreed that the great weather we were having was typical. Meaning, of course, that it wasn't at all.
We passed some Chinese fishermen who wished us a good morning and I responded 'Zao an.' The end of the six-mile walk is a park-like area (well the whole thing is park, I guess) with a collection of ten or twelve totem pole with the ugliest creatures on them you could imagine. I mean the tourists who were letting their children climb on them, were standing in front of them forever to get their pictures taken and who were making rude comments.
I see the tourist trolley my parents would have taken. It is some sort of trolley-form bus. It does not ride on a track and get pulled by a cable. It has a gasoline internal combustion engine. It is a faux trolley.
So seeking for further amusement we paid and went into the aquarium. I had been to SeaWorld in San Francisco and this was what I was expecting there. Yes there were show, but the animals were not asked to do many special tricks and it was much more educational than pure entertainment. The first thing we saw was the killer whales. We went into an underwater observation area. Unfortunately it was mobbed. Fortunately they were just starting the killer whale show and the room emptied out. We were the only ones left and since we could hear the loudspeakers above we decided to watch the show from the underside. It was probably much more spectacular watching a whale jump as seen from under water that seen from the surface. You see the force it exerts, not just the result. They still had it do the silly tricks like jumping out to bite a fish, but we got a better view of how the whale did it. The whale did some sort of surface trick it looked at me in view port, sort of shrugged, and gave me a 'what the heck, it's a living' sort of look.
One thing I did not understand. The whales I saw took particular interest in swimming upside-down. I don't know why. But underneath they were doing a lot of swimming belly to the surface. There was a male and female orca and a much smaller dolphin. The female orca is the dominant. She decides what friends the males can have and what they will do. If she decides he cannot have the dolphin as a friend, we were told, the male will obey.
The aquarium has a good collection of other animals. Of course there were sea otters whose intelligence has apparently been measured and compares favorably with that of fans of Iggy Pop and Smashing Pumpkins.
We watched a show with Beluga whales but this time there were a lot of people watching from the underwater viewports. So many that it was difficult to see anything. Luckily the program got educational so people started to leave.
There are tanks in which sushi fans can see ebi, uni, and tako on the hoof. There is a nice steamy Amazon area where you can get a close look at birds and butterflies of the region and perhaps even see some creatures more shy. There are sharks roaming some tanks. We saw caimons, turtles, and an ananconda.
Well, it started to get late. And if the truth be known, I wanted it to get late. The next thing we were going to do was to go to the ship. This was the exciting part of the trip coming up. Just not fast enough. We walked back to the Sylvia, that took about 20 minutes. We got our luggage and called for a taxi. It was there in two minutes, driven by a Sikh. I was listening in the cab. We passed a kid about six years old talking to his mother. 'And all vampires need blood to live, right?' I would have been curious to hear the rest of the conversation.
It seemed like a long ride through the city until we got to the dock. But from the cab we could see the ship a good distance away. It must be ten or eleven stories above the water. (Actually it is 11 stories above the water line. Some facts: The ship was built in Malfalcone, Italy in the year 1997. It is registers in Monrovia, Liberia. It ways 77,000 tons. That is 154 MILLION pounds. It is 856 feet long 24 feet short of a 1/6 mile, 106 feet wide.)
The cab stopped and our luggage was taken. We walked in, spent our last $3 on Coffee Crisps. We showed our tickets and got admitted to a large room with airport style security to get in.
We line up by deck number. My brother's family, was lined up next to us but did not see us. I said 'Hello, Jack' to my nephew. They all looked around. There were the customary handshakes and greetings. Then we were at the head of our line. We got cards that said just about everything relevant about us. It has a picture of the ship, the name of the ship, my name, my stateroom, my starting and endpoints, the dates, the voyage number, our assigned dining room, our dinner seating, our table number, my hat size, my favorite color, what I had for dinner the night before, and my favorite flavor of ice cream. Once you have that you go up an escalator, you get your picture taken in the hopes it is so bad and you are so distracted and flustered you will look terrible and you can be blackmailed into buying it back from them.
From there we continued up the gangway and onto the ship. There are people to direct you to Your stateroom. The room is about 9'x18'. The bed is under the port window. And is about 5 ½' wide. One side there is a chest of drawers. Beyond the foot of the bed is a desk and mirror on the side without the chest. The side with the chest has a small bottles bar with a refrigerator and a TV on the top shelf. Continuing to the door there is a closet 18 inches deep, the passage to the door down the center, and a small bathroom with shower opposite the closets. There is a safe in the room that every time you close it you key in what will be the combination next time. That bothers me a little since I could make a mistake. But I guess they can electronically reset it.
The ship has a crew of 880 taking care of 2000 passengers. The passengers pay on the average $500/day. So I would say the ship grosses a million dollars a day. With that they are able to provide pretty top-notch service. The very worst interactions with staff seem to be cordial and most are at least friendly.
There is a daily newsletter to keep people up with what is happening on the ship. It is called the Princess Patter. They do the same thing at science fiction conventions, but the newsletters are more frequent.
The first newsletter said that the ship would anchor in English Bay to give passengers the opportunity to see the Symphony of Fire fireworks display that night. It went over very well.
We had a quick lunch on deck 14. This is the Horizon Court, a restaurant that never closes. I had a platter of fish. Afterwards we explored the ship briefly and found a basketball court and hot tubs. After a little while we headed back to the room to see the broadcast of a tape on the day tours available.
At 5pm we had a drill on what to do in case of emergency. We all went to our assigned muster stations and tried on our life-vests.
We went back to our room to try to see more of the tape on the day excursions. We did see a bit more but got interrupted more than we would have liked. After about an hour it was time for our first dinner. |
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