by Bryan Brown Jr.
Chapter 46 - Journeys End #3
We feel like Cher or Barbra Streisand with their 'final’ concert tours—we keep going on our final travel tour. The doctors said Jean could go on an easy tour and we found a 7-day cruise (29) to Alaska (4) in May of 2007 that sailed out of Seattle, Wash. Jean's goddaughter and husband, who had sailed with us on our 'final tour #2’ to the Bahamas in 2006, and their son had never visited Alaska so they decided to join us.
Our daughter drove us to Seattle where we boarded Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) "Norwegian Pearl", a new ship of 90,000 GTS that could hold 2,385 passengers.
The ship sailed out of Seattle and headed north, past Vancouver, British Columbia, to the "Inside Passage". The first stop was Juneau, the State Capital of Alaska, which we had visited previously so we stayed on board. The next stop was Skagway where we did get off the ship and took a package tour by train and bus to Fraser, Canada. After the ride on the White Pass & Yukon Route train we had a BBQ, lunch and show in Liarsville and a city tour of Skagway with a drink in the historic bordello "Green Onion”.
After a day of cruising in the magnificent Glacier Bay National Park, viewing Margerie, Grand Pacific and Johns Hopkins glaciers we headed south and made our final Alaskan stop in Ketchikan. The ship had to anchor in the Bay and the passengers had to take a tender to shore. Again, since we had been there previously, we opted to stay on board. The last stop of the cruise was Victoria on the Island of Victoria, British Columbia. The dock was quite a distance from the center of town and one had to take a bus into town. Again we opted to stay on board since we had visited Victoria previously.
We arrived back in Seattle in good shape and our daughter picked us up and drove us back to Portland. We prefer smaller ships but we did enjoy the "Pearl" even though it was big and had 2,000 passengers on board. There were 3 banks of 5 elevators each that kept the traffic flowing. NCL has what they call "Freestyle Cruising" and the entire cruise was casual - no formal dining. There were restaurants including: 2 main dining rooms, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, a Steak House and a buffet that was open 24 hours - plus 11 bars and lounges. We ate in a different restaurant every night. The cabin was comfortable and the toilet and shower were as large as in most motels.
As time goes by and everything changes we also change. Since there are few cruise 'ships' left we now accept the floating hotel resorts. The “Pearl” also had a basketball court, a tennis court and a bowling alley. We did see one sightseeing problem.- our entire cruise was made in a convoy of 3 or 4 'cruise ships’ with 2,000 passengers each and at each stop there were 6,000 to 8,000 people invading towns of 750 to several thousand habitants. The stores were overcrowded and local sightseeing tours were quickly sold out.