It is another Tracy Arm/Juneau day, just like last week, except with spectacularly good weather. We'll be seeing vistas that were invisible last time, and walking/running in Juneau without any driving rain.
The town day went well. Breakfast, and then lunch, were in the buffet, and perfect. Afterwards, we played a trivia game up in the lounge with the best view of the approaching town. We did well, but didn't win. Lola and Bernie headed off to do their own thing, and Helen got ready to go to town. I put on my running gear, and was one of the first ashore. I ran south from the cruise docks away from town.
The route was pleasant enough, but I was boiling. The temperature was officially 22, but felt ten degrees hotter than that. By the time I turned around at the 4.5km mark, my clothing was soaked with sweat. I was overheating by the time I got back, and was glad I hadn't tried to go further.
Showered, and left a note for Helen as to where I'd be, then wedged myself comfortably into one of the low-slung library chairs with my pair of iPads. I sat down, and let the beautiful scene laid out beyond the massive window before me lull me to sleep.
I awoke to find Lola and Bernie in the matching chairs beside me, and we were joined a while later by Helen. We all described our activities; my run, Lola and Bernie's shopping, and Helen's expedition to the library to find wifi.
Somewhere in all that, I sauntered over to the dining room and returned with iPad photos of the evening menu. Can't go cold into dinner. One needs to consider all the menu options.
As our suppertime is 5:30pm, and our ship only got to Juneau after 1pm, we had cancelled Happy Hour. Just not enough hours in the day. The plan got modified into having Happy Hour after dinner rather than before. As the show isn't until 8pm, that should work well. We do NEED a Happy Hour, as we have all that booze to work our way through. Tonight I intend to crack open a bottle of Sheridans. The closest drink I can compare it to is Bailey's Cream, but it's yummier than that. It is about 1% stronger than wine and has a delicious creamy fountain-drink kind of appeal.
Of course, you can't get it in either Canada or the USA, except on cruise ships. I would buy a case, and just pay the duty, but BC has the most Byzantine rules in Canada about such things. Sheridans doesn't fit any normal category, and there is absolutely no way to know what tariff the border people might slap onto it. 25% would be fine, and fair, but maybe it would be 100%, or even double that. There's no way to know, and so I'm not bringing in any more that our tax-free allowance. Happily, our booze system has some for me to glug while on board.
A perfect weather day awaited me as I awoke early for our second Skagway day. We did well during week one, but week two has been unbelievable.
I do have a few pet peeves with cruising. The biggest of these is how they do the internet. The first thing to know is that it is crappy, being delivered to the ship by satellite. The next issue is that travelers staying in even the cheapest budget motels get better internet, and have come to expect it to be free of charge.
Let's take a real-world example. Holland America has a 111 day round-the-world cruise starting next January. Outside cabins start at $20,000 per person. It is my opinion that internet should be provided free, or at a very nominal cost. Let's just say you want to do that, and that your normal routine includes a little interneting every day; check the email, message a couple of friends, check Facebook, look something up about the next port. Buying tiny bundles of minutes wouldn't work, as they aren't the same as real internet minutes. I can get a remarkable amount done in 15 minutes at home, but with a ship-slow and intermittent connection a quarter hour is a uselessly small time budget. One would need a half-hour a day to get anything done at all. Their absolute cheapest package is $0.25 per minute. At that rate, you'd have to add $900 to the price of the cruise... to get spotty, slow, minimal internet for a single device. Rat bastards.
There are a few other things that this ship does that bugs me. Take the pool situation. They have a small one outside, and the main one is in the center of deck 8, and has a retractable roof. This is a wonderful idea. In places like the Caribbean, they can open it up, and in Alaska, close it. We've been on tons of Alaska cruises, and spent many happy hours in and around the pools with retractable roofs. They are great, but this one sucks. They never totally close it. Sometimes it is fully open, sometimes about halfway, and the tightest they've ever shut it has left about a six-foot-wide gap in the middle clear across the ship. It has never gotten anywhere near warm, and as a result, the pool is always empty, except for a very few brave souls. The area around the pool is all set up for sunbathing, but people don't use those lounge chairs. It is too cold.
At one point in Skagway, they had the roof in its almost-closed, six-foot-wide position, and there were a handful of folks on the lounge chairs as it was a very warm day for Alaska. That didn't last long, as somebody soon cranked the roof out to the fully-open position, and the lounging guest all ran for cover.
They also have some kind of fetish about authentic varnish. There are wooden rails everywhere covered with it. All very well and good, except to keep it looking nice there have to be crew members aboard whose only task is to be constantly sanding and varnishing. The smell is pretty intense, and drives people away. We had one spa day when everybody present was complaining about it. I don't mind fumes much, but my eyes were watering. The funny thing is, there are more modern products that look exactly like varnish, are more durable, and don't stink when applied.
Why the real, old-school varnish?
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