| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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The waiters are very good and solicitous, but I could not help feeling they had a patter all set up more high roller passengers. Somehow having servile waiters at my beck and call is just not my thing. I started with shrimp and prawn salad, the 'soup' choice I chose tuned out to be not a soup at all but a pina colada, light on the rum. I was expecting some sort of a cross between a pina colada drink and a soup. No it came as a drink, period. Evelyn and I had some idea of what a pina colada was and it was just the two of us who ordered it. Other people at the table said it looked good when it came and they requested ones also. It think they made a hit. I can't believe that Evelyn and I were the only ones who knew what a pina colada was, and I don't drink any drink with enough alcohol to be detected with a spectroscope. I had a salad with tomato dressing. The main course was a seafood pastry. Dessert was profitroles, a cream-filled pastry with fresh berries. The latter usually comes with alcohol, but I asked for an alcohol free version and got it. In fact they put in a double load of berries. I think there is a general acknowledgment that people have paid a great deal of money to travel this way and in return deserve a high level of service. Service personnel were chosen who could appear always cheerful and helpful at a minimum, humor is a bonus. Evelyn calls this service servile. It is not my idea of what servile means. To be servile means to do something demeaning. This is not demeaning.
At we went out early to see the fireworks. Little local boats came by mainly to see the fireworks but also to talk to us. When the time came for the display the Captain or one of the mates apparently studied up on the event and gave a commentary. 10,000 tons of sand was loaded on the barge and mortars for the fireworks placed in the sand. 600 staff hours are needed in setup time for each show.
The Spanish had a few effects I had not seen before. One seems to create what looks like a perfect sphere of embers from the explosion. The other is to have the embers from an explosion and from their midst a little meteor seems to flash out. One of the things any fireworks display needs is luck. The Spanish display was missing that commodity. They also has no wind at all. Each rocket that exploded added to a veil of smoke that no wind dissipated. Eventually there was little to see, just flashes behind a cloud of black. The other problem that was more their fault was that they supposedly synchronized the effects to music. But that almost always is a failure. There seems to be no relation between the music and the explosions. When the display was over, most of us went to sleep while the engines came to life.
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07/27/97 The Lectures and the Play
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I woke up a little past sunrise at about 5:35. I looked out window and saw shoreline. Now we are on the post side of the ship. That means left. If we were going north I would expect to see land to the starboard side. But the shore going by is on the port side. Evelyn thinks that we are threading our way between an island and the shore. But what does she know? She thinks she knows everything. I know that we are going the wrong way and I have to get a message to the captain somehow. Quick. Well maybe after breakfast.
When we came back from dinner last night there was a bowl of fruit in the room. Two bananas, two oranges, two nectarines. Perfect, I thought. This morning would be our monoversary and I needed something to give Evelyn. By monoversary, I mean that it is the 27th of the month and we were married on the 27th of the month. So I give Evelyn breakfast in bed. This morning we shared a banana. This is our 299th monoversary.
Well we threw on our clothes early because supposedly they start the tour registration early. Officially they start registration at 6:30, 6:45, or 7:00, depending or where you look. Actually they were already well into the process when we arrived at 6:25. They must have started at 6. They have made it comfortable by having you take a number when you come in. You then take a seat and only about 10 or 20 of the next people actually stand in line, The rest sit in comfort. While you sit there people come around to make sure that you have filled you form out correctly. They call you to line up when they get near your number, then you go to one of the 12 or so servers on computers. The actual registering took about three minutes. The whole process took twenty minutes, from 6:25 to 6:45. Very nice and well thought out.
We went up to the top floor to have breakfast. Actually we should have gone aft to fore first and then taken the elevator in the fore section. Since we did vertical first we had to walk across outside. The ship was threading its way between pine-covered mountains on each side. I guess this was our first view of the scenery close without a window between us. Outstanding.
We went to breakfast. I was a bad boy and had a bit of the Brie. I had a bagel and cream cheese. And they have lox! Some out of the way places don't have it. I wonder if they ship it in. (OK, before I get eight people writing me to explain to me how ignorant I am, that was a joke. By the end of this week I expect to have salmon out the wazoo. Actually, this was not even good lox. I think it wasn't very smoked. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, there is always an option to have salmon. The shop has chocolate covered salmon pieces. I passed up the salmon granola for breakfast. The ice cream parlor has a flavor Salmon Almond Crunch.)
I found the pineapple, the lox and the cream cheese did not have much flavor. The food was OK, but not as good as the dinner food. I do have to be careful. The claim is that the average person gains eight pounds a week on a Princess Cruise. Maybe they are just saying that so you can gain five and still feel proud of yourself.
Well after breakfast we went out on the deck and watched the passing scenery and wrote. Not an unpleasant way to spend a morning.
We went back to the room to see if there was a new Patter and warm up a bit. Then at 10:15 we went to a presentation on Wild Alaska by photographer Dean DeFillipo. It was just a high level look at glaciers and animals of Alaska. I guess his major point where that Alaska is always changing and that everything is intimately connected with water.
Alaska is unique in a lot of ways, by far it has the highest number of pilots per capita. There is one pilot for every 58 people. The area was covered with a 5000 foot thick glacier in the ice age and of course the glaciers have not entirely receded. There are two kinds of glaciers, the hanging glaciers on the mountains and the tidewater glaciers somewhat lower down. The latter are more of interest to us this trip. When a tidewater glacier warms up, bits of the edges break off and become icebergs. This process is called 'calving.' It can be pretty spectacular to see and not a little dangerous. Seeing a few hundred tons of ice fall into water gives you a new perspective on nature. There are people who will land a plane or helicopter on a glacier, but not on an iceberg. Icebergs are unstable and easily roll over. A glacier comes in a sheet that abrades at mountains and picks up grit and stone. Another feature of glaciers is a cave-like hole called the moulon. It is just a melted hole from a sun-heated stone on top of a glacier. Ice we are used to seeing is white and has air trapped in it. If it is compressed it reflects light differently and appears to be blue.
After the talk we returned to our rooms, wrote a while then had lunch with the family.
After lunch was spent with log-writing and perhaps napped just a bit. We also visited the library. They have a library with big comfortable seats and a reasonable collection of books and some CDs. There are big easy-chairs that play the CDs in front of windows that have a view out to sea. It is just about perfect. A lot of thought has been given to the question of what it would be nice to have and on this ship you have it. The ship itself is of a sort of unique design, looking more like a floating hotel than a traditional cruise ship. Evelyn borrowed the Lonely Planet book on Alaska and I borrowed the Oxford Book of Sea Stories. Geez, am I an optimist. When will I ever read it?
After that there was a talk on whales by Dean DeFillipo. Since I am falling further and further behind in my log writing I will just list facts gleaned and written in notes.
The largest animal that every lived on Earth is alive right now, the 110 foot blue whale which weighs 190 tons.
Whales evolved from furry land animals who returned to the sea, traded fur for fat, and their nostrils migrated to the backs of their necks. Now they vary in size from little dolphins to the blue (see above). (Actually if you see a blue whale above you, be VERRRRRY CAREFUL).
Gray whales are the species seen the most.
Whales have baleen plates that they use to strain krill out of the water. It is the largest animal on earth eating one of the smallest. (I suspect one krill does not go very far.)
A whale may put just on fin out of the water and let the wind carry it. This is called 'sailing.'
Whales are safe to swim around most of the year. However, the males go a little nuts at mating time.
Some whales throw out sound and travel by sonar.
The sperm whale eats giant squid.
DeFillipo told a story of having had one Beluga follow his boat all day, staying around the back near the prop. It never seemed to do anything there, it just hung around there. Finally he decided to put his head under and just watch the Beluga. It seems whenever the prop would stop spinning the whale would spit water on it to make it spin the other way. The Beluga using prop as a pinwheel.
A killer whale is very social.
Whale society is dominated by the female who makes the rules. When the dominant female becomes a grandmother, she baby-sits and is very much like a human grandmother.
He told a story of watching a pair of Orcas and they would look a little at him and then continue what they were doing. Toward the end the female just pointed down and the male swam down and disappeared from sight. He waited wondering what would happen. The male came up 30 seconds later with and 8-foot shark in its mouth. Like cats playing with mice they would let the shark go, then grab it again. DeFillipo was a bit afraid because the shark still had enough life left to go after him. Finally they pulled the shark in half and each ate half. Then they gave him one last look and both dived down out of sight.
He said that we are in the right waters and we could start watching for whales. You look first for the geyser as they blow. One statistic that would have been interesting would have been to hear is how many hours of watching is expected to your first whale viewing.
The whale talk went a little late so we were late to the classical music concert that was our next event. They played some Hayden, some Dvorak, and then got to the popular section of the concert with the song 'It Had to be You.' Somehow this portion was distinctly unpopular with Evelyn and me and we left. Do popular musical concerts ever get to a classical section?
Much of the rest of the day was low-key. It was spent log writing.
My dinner was Rock Cornish Game Hen. My parents and the Glotzers went to the show while Evelyn and I sat on the deck and wrote. They came out an hour later really raving about how good the show was. Each show is given four times and you see it depending on what your assigned dining room is and whether you have early and or late seating, but you really can go to any of the performances.
There was a lot of farbling about what people wanted to do the rest of the evening. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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