I thought I would use this blog post to sum things up. This was one of the most amazing holidays I have been on, based on the scenery and the pure awe of what mother nature is capable of. We drove over 2800 miles in 8 days, from Los Angeles, California, all the way up to Seattle, Washington. During this drive we experienced some of the most beautiful coast lines in the world (The Big Sur, Monterey etc) and the Giant Tree’s of the Redwood National Park, onto just feet and feet of Snow in Oregon. We also got to visit Crater Lake, which is just awe inspiring, and another piece of mother natures art works. We got to drive through Portland in Oregon, which is a beautiful city (with not much to do) and made our way up into Seattle.

On the cruise aboard the Carnival Spirit, we got to visit Alaska, the last Frontier! Alaska has to be the most beautiful state in America, and very likely the most beautiful place in the world. The sheer mighty force that the Glaciers once had is amazing, and they make a 88,000 ton ship (10 stories) look like a toy model. There is over 65% of land in Alaska that is owned by the US Government and is protected land, they are really taking there preservation of this land seriously. When you smell the air, there is no polution, it is clean crisp air.

We where also fortunate enough to be able to take a train ride from Skagway to Fraser, BC (Canada) on the Yukon Trail and White pass, and then take bicycles back down the other side, ok it took us an hour to go downhill, but you have to cater for everyone!

It is without a doubt, that I would recommend this trip to anybody, however it would have to be in the May / June (very early June) time frame, while the snow is still around. While I am sure that it is just as beautiful and awe inspiring in the later months (up until September is when the season closes) I cannot imagine doing this without the beautiful white blankets of snow that covered most Alaska, it was absolutely beautiful to experience this, and my first time seeing snow

It was also nice to see that global warming has not taken a full effect, and there are still a couple of glaciers around that are still growing, after seeing the pure beauty of Alaska, maybe the world isn’t such a bad place after all, mother nature is still in control over there, even though she might be getting pissed off in other places (earth quakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis etc).

To wrap it all up, this was one of the most beautiful holidays I have ever been on, incredibly relaxing and breathtaking. I have been very fortunate to experience this all, and I hope you enjoyed the blog updates, thanks for reading, until next year June (next planned Holiday)!

Arividerchi, Chow!

The weather in Seattle is really unpredictable, this morning was cold and rainy, and then it was just cold, then it was hot, then hot and windy, then rainy, then hot, then hot and windy, and then windy.. it really changes so often, you really never know what is going to be next.

We tried to check into the hotel early (straight from the boat), but unfortunately our room was not ready, so we left our baggage in the hotel and made our way into Seattle. We made our way into the famous Pike Place Market. Now Pike Place Market has the famous flying fish, which is where you order your fish in one place of the shop, and the shop staff toss the fish across the shop to another person in the shop for packaging, in busy times its flying fish with these really big fish being tossed around, pretty impressive, but smelly!

Walking around Seattle, killing some time so we could check into the hotel, we came upon a street which had bright green signs on the tree’s, these signs say that the tree is protected, and that any construction etc has to save the tree, or they will be liable for the replacement, the tree’s range from $5000 to $14000 each!

We then made our way to the Seattle Space Needle. The Space Needle was built for the World Trade Fair in 1962, and it was the tallest building in Seattle. It is 184m at its highest point, and the view from the top is beautiful. You get a view of the entire city. For the first time in 7 cruises, we managed to watch the boat leave on its next cruise, we usually leave the same day and miss the boat leaving again. It was beautiful to watch the Carnival Spirit leaving the Port of Seattle from the Space needle, it really gives you a good view.

After finishing up on the Space Needle, it was time for dinner, and I picked hooters, of course! They really make the best chips (curly fries) and I felt like a plate before coming home, and of course the lovely girls that work there! hahaha! After that we made our way back up the Space Needle as we purchased a day and night visit, to see Seattle by night, it was really cold and windy on top, so we didn’t hang around for long!

Tomorrow we begin the very long journey home, I will make a final blog post on Friday when I get home, I have also updated all the cruise posts with pictures that I was unable to post from the boat, so feel free to use the “Older Entries” button right at the bottom of the blog page, to go back and view them, they will also be available by clicking Holiday Photographs from the top of the blog. Goodnight for now!

Sadly the above means that our Carnival cruise has come to a finish, it has been one of the most beautiful cruise’s in term of scenery, and we have been fortunate enough to see some of mother natures most majestic creations, truly beautiful and majestic, there are not enough words that actually describe some of the sights we have seen on this cruise.

The boat has a lot of South African crew, and they have all been fantastic and friendly, they all love it here onboard, and most say they wouldn’t come home in a rush, I don’t blame them, as mentioned already, the cruises that this boat does, are truly beautiful.

After dinner, we arrived in our final port of call, Victoria B.C (British Columbia), Canada. We arrived at 8pm and left at midnight, so it was a really short night time stop. The town is really beautiful, and the lighting up of there buildings is done so beautifully. Within 5minutes of being in this town, I realised that this is one of those places that I can add to my “I could live in this city”, there is just something about it that is so inviting. Not really much to say about the town, we just walked the 1 mile into town and roamed around the streets for awhile, and then made our way back to the ship, for our final night aboard.

Tomorrow morning (very early) we will be arriving in Seattle, our final destination. We will be spending the day in Seattle and then making our way home on Wednesday, which I am not looking forward to, just because of the 26 hours odd of flying that its going to take to get home, hopefully we get upgrades from Virgin like we did on the way to USA. Will make an update after tomorrow in Seattle, will have decent internet in the hotel, which will make a change!

Until tomorrow! Sweet dreams!

Today’s shore excursion was the Misty Fjords and Wilderness explorer, which was a high speed boat that took us into the Misty Fjords. Now to be honest when this tour first started, i was very disappointed, as we had seen so many beautiful sights on this holiday, and then for the first odd hour, it was just tree after tree after tree, and I was starting to think that we had been conned a little bit. And then it happened… we arrived in the Misty Fjords and it was again a magnificent sight, it was beautiful! The water was so still it mirrored the scenery, so many beautiful waterfalls and rock cliffs. Misty Fjords is full of canals, but none of them are man made. They where all created many hundreds of years ago by glaciers that have since retreated. It truly shows how powerful these glaciers where, just carving away at the walls and creating these canals, amazing!

It was a very short stop in Ketchikan today, only around 5 hours. The town has a very strong Red Indian tribal background, with many clans of Indian tribes, including the bear and beaver that used to live (and still have a presence) in Ketchikan. Due to there presence in Ketchikan, there are many totem poles around in the area, and they really are beautiful. There are also markings (stained not painting) on the walls of some of the islands of the tribes, which was how they marked there land. Ketchikan survives on tourism of the cruise ships, they have no roads into the town, the only access is via sea or plane. The shops only get stocked up once a month, and most houses are powered by generator. Apparently Alaskan girls are in demand, as they are no sissys! Life in Alaska is beautiful, but I do not imagine it to be an easy life in some of these small towns, where basics that we become accustomed to, are not around, also keeping in mind they have 30 days of almost no light (maybe 2 hours of sunlight) in winter, and 30 days of daylight in summer.

So tomorrow we will be arriving in Victoria, British Columbia Canada, our 4th port of call, and final stop for the cruise, its also the last cruise day, and then we begin the long trek home. Watching the news on CNN it seems that the Volcano might be causing problems again, lets hope I don’t get stuck again!

Update tomorrow after Victoria, bye for now leave some comments!!

So this morning was a very wet and cold morning, and we had booked a helicopter tour, it was the four glacier helicopter adventure, and it was amazing. It included a 65 mile helicopter trip (45 minutes) and we landed on one of the glaciers. The ice fields of Juneau are MASSIVE with over 20 major glaciers around the Juneau ice fields. We had the chance to visit 4 of these amazing sights, the Norris Glacier, Hole in the Wall glacier, floating dead branch glacier and also the Taku Glacier.

The Taku Glacier is the only advancing glacier (out of the 20) in Juneau, and has advanced 7.5km since 1890 (it might be a really long time, but 7.5km of ice is really large), and is now only 1.5km from Taku point, if the glacier continues to advance, it will block the river again, it is currently advancing at 17m per year. Taku glacier is currently 92km long, and covers an area of 428 square kilometres). This is the glacier that the helicopter landed on, and then we got to walk around on the glacier for a couple of minutes. Its an amazing experience to be able to walk on this breathtaking work of mother nature. It was incredibly slippery due to the amount of rain that we had today, but it was still an amazing experience.

Once our helicopter took us back to the heliport, we walked around the city of Juneau for about an hour and did some shopping. The city is very beautiful and clean, with bald headed eagles flying around the city (I was lucky enough to see one fly above, but not quick enough to capture it on camera). It was just a pity it rained so much, which made it very cold, so we ended up back on the boat a little early.

Tomorrow morning we will be arriving in Ketchikan, our last stop in Alaska, and 2nd last stop of the cruise. But more on Ketchikan tomorrow

We have just left the enclosed waters, and we having a bumpy night on the big ocean, which I enjoy, its kinda like rock-a-bye baby in the bed, with the motion of the waves!

Even for such a small town, it has a HUGE history, and there is so much to see and do to keep yourself busy. Our shore excursion for today, was the White Pass and Yukon Rail Bicycle tour, to start the tour we boarded the White Pass and Yukon Rail line, which took us into British Columbia, Canada, which is a 27 mile stretch from Skagway, and an elevation of 2885 feet (880m), keeping in mind, that Skagway is at sea level.

The White Pass and Yukon Route is a Canadian and U.S. Class II narrow gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon, Canada. The line was built for the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, and it was the most popular route taken to Yukon by the prospectors. The scenery of the white pass was amazing, there is just so much snow on the mountains at the moment, which makes it really cold, but really really beautiful and majestic! I cannot imagine doing this cruise later in the year, when the snow has melted, I just don’t think that the scenery will look anywhere as beautiful without the blanket of the white snow. The original steam engines still run on this route, but unfortunately only on weekends (Friday to Sunday) and only from next Friday onwards, so Craig, I didn’t get to see the steam engines! I do however have your engineer hats

Once we arrived in British Columbia, and went through Canadian Immigration, we boarded a bus which took us back to the White Pass (highest point) where we got our bicycles. Now there are not enough words to describe what an amazing adventure this was, we got to see a mountain goat, and then we got to see a brown bear on the side of the road (we had to stop and wait for him, he has just woken up from hibernation, and was very hungry) so we waited for him to finish on the side of the road before riding past). We then continued down the 14 mile hill, which included a 950m elevation drop, it was such a spectacular ride, and one to remember! There is a section on the bike ride, which was called shadow valley, and this is where, unfortunately over 3000 horses (pack mules) met there demise. They where usually horse on there last legs, and they where to loaded, that by the time they reached this point, exhaustion made them fall from the steep and narrow path.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Skagway, and as I mentioned earlier, the town is still stuck in the Western era, but it was an amazing day on our first port of call.

Tomorrow we will be arriving in Juneau, and we will be doing a Four Glacier Helicopter tour, and landing on a glacier, Its going to be another spectacular day I am sure, but for now its bedtime!

The weather was incredibly cold, as we sailed down the Fjord, we managed to see some more humpback whales, but nothing like the numbers of yesterday. Some people managed to spot some black bears on the shore of the Fjord, but we where not so lucky, even though I looked really hard for them! As we got closer to the end of the Fjord, there were more and more icebergs floating around the water, and then it became clear on why, this magnificent and HUGE glacier come into view, the south Sawyer Glacier! There are two “twin” glaciers, the North and South Sawyer glaciers, one at the end of Tracy Arm, and the other at the end of Edicott Arm. It was spectacular, and very very cold.

This is really mother nature at her best. The boat is not even allowed to use its PA announcement system, as it will disturb the wildlife, and the speed which we travel is so slow, to not disturb the water. It is so quiet and peaceful, its amazing!

Tomorrow morning we will be arriving in Skagway, Alaska. We will be doing a shore tour, which includes a train ride up the White Pass and Yukon railway, and then we doing a bicycle ride down the hill! Should be a lot of fun, and i am imagining its going to be very cold!

Anyway, I have a very early morning, time to take my anti-flu medicine (it was that cold today, my nose was numb!!) and then off to lala land! Tomorrow should be another beautiful day in Alaska!

Unfortunately still not able to post pictures, updating the blog is hard enough as it is with this horrible horrible internet connection!

We where very fortunate today, as around 5pm, they managed to spot some whale’s around the boat, they are the humpback whales who where returning to Alaska waters for the summer, now that they have warmed up slightly. They estimate that there were roughly 250 whales around the boat at one stage. Unfortunately the Hump Back whale isn’t a jumper, so you would only see them surface for a few seconds and then back down, but all around the boat you could see water being shot into the air from there blow holes, amazing sights!

We have just finished for the night, and now in bed, they had a Vegas style show in the theatre today, and it was really good!

Tomorrow morning we will be arriving in Tracey Arm Fjord.. OR.. Endicott Arm Fjord. Now the reason I say OR, is that they have not worked out yet if we will be able to sail up the Tracey Arm Fjord as planned, as last week when they cruise ships tried, it was still to icy for the cruise ship to sail safely, so we will only know when we arrive tomorrow.

The scenery and nature is meant to be spectacular tomorrow for both Fjords, we will be arriving at 11am and leaving at 6pm, I guess we going to be sailing really slowly, as the Fjord is only 30 miles long

The internet connection on this boat has been really bad, I am hoping to update daily, but picture updates are seeming impossible at the moment, and if there is no update, well, you know why!

Bed time for now, sleep tight and don’t bite the bed bugs!

So right now I am in my bed aboard the Carnival Spirit, she is a beautiful ship, but a lot smaller then some of there others. The Spirit class (this is the 2nd one we have been on, Pride being the first) was designed and built in Finland, and not the normal location of Carnival’s boats, which is Italy. The Spirit class boats are smaller, they only have one restaurant (they normally have two) which does make walking through the ship easier, as there is nothing blocking 2 floors in the middle of the ship. The Carnival Spirit is also a lot narrower then the others, as they where designed as “Panama” class ships, so they can cruise up and down the Panama canal. They are also said to be more “classier” then the ships built in Italy, with more expensive fittings etc.

So other then the above, there is very little to say for tonight’s blog, there has been very little done today, and tomorrow will be much of the same, as its the one and only “Fun Day at Sea”, from Thursday onwards the fun begins, and on Friday we will be taking a helicopter trip over the glaciers, I cannot wait!!

The scenery as we have been sailing out has been spectacular, with so much snow around on the mountains, it is however making it very cold! Its bed time for us (11:35pm – 9 hours difference behind) and tomorrow we will be changing to 10 hours behind

Well, this morning we found out why we got a very funny look, the first reason is nothing is open in Portland on a Monday.. it seems to be there day off! The second reason is that there is nothing really to do in Portland, its a very beautiful city, but there is nothing much to do except admire the scenery! First thing this morning we went to Multnomah Falls, they where incredibly beautiful, and we went for the walk to the top of the falls. It was a really long walk (4km of really steep uphill’s) and the view was amazing. Oregon is an incredibly green state, but then again they have so much snow and rain its not surprising that its so lush and green!

After we finished walking up the Falls, we made our way into Portland, which is were we found that there is nothing to do in Portland, we drove around for awhile and took a walk down the “waterfront” which runs along the banks of the Columbia river (by volume, the 4th largest river in the USA). After this we ran out of things to do, and drove up to Vancouver, which strangely enough is not in Canada, its a city in Washington State (same as Seattle) and is a mirror city of the Vancouver in Canada, we did some shopping there and then went and watched Iron Man 2, which was an awesome movie!

So now the road trip has come to an end (except the last 250km into Seattle in the morning) and we have seen some of the most amazing and majestic sights! We have been incredibly fortunate to see these works of mother nature, and it just shows that man will never tame her, from the Big Sur to Crater Lake, they are magnificent pieces of art!

So we have covered 1650 miles (2,650km) and we just need to complete the drive to Seattle in the morning which is 155 miles! Tomorrow lunch time we will be getting onto the Carnival Spirit, which will be 7 days of pampering and luxury, I cannot wait! And being Alaska, we are expecting some more incredibly sights!