First of all, for your viewing pleasure, we’ve included some photos of Alaska scenery from throughout the cruise. They’re not all from our last days.
Now: I last left you on Thursday morning, our last full day of the cruise. We had received our final delivery of chocolate covered strawberries, and I had gone to the shops and taken our cruise credit down to minus 84 cents with the purchase of L’Occitane products. When it came time for lunch we had to decide whether to go to the buffet or the dining room. You may remember that Mary preferred the former while I preferred the latter. At lunchtime, Mary said she would have one meal in the dining room, but couldn’t abide two. This seemed a reasonable position to me. I went down to deck 5 and photographed the lunch and dinner menus. (They are on display each day outside the dining room.) Neither were particularly interesting, so I suggested we go to the buffet for lunch.
Interestingly, even though we were at sea, the buffet was not a complete madhouse. By now we had developed a routine, in which we would separate, gather the parts of our various meals, and then I would find Mary outside because it always took me longer than Mary to figure out my meal. Most of the time we were able to find seats on the outside deck of the buffet. On Thursday as we sat outside there was some screaming from the inside seating area and Mary said, “Someone’s spotted something.” We both ran over to where everybody else was running and saw some whales – my first whales of the cruise. They were very far away, but now I can say I saw whales in Alaska.
I was torn about what to do after lunch. I wanted to swim again while the ship was in motion. I loved the rollicking waves in the pool. But I also wanted to spend the afternoon on our balcony because it would be our last 3 or 4 hours of being on the balcony at sea. We were scheduled to arrive in Victoria at 5 pm. Mary was planning to swim after dinner once everyone was off the ship. This seemed like a good plan but I also wanted to sauna and I wasn’t sure what time they closed the spa locker room where the sauna is located. We decided to walk over to the spa to get that information and on the way we passed the pool. As we passed, Mary pointed out that there wasn’t actually very much motion in the pool because the seas were calmer than they had been the day before. This was an excellent point. I was disappointed to learn the locker room closed at 8, but I figured if we ate dinner early enough we could still have a nice swim and sauna.
So back to the room we went where the sun was shining on the balcony. I went out in my jeans and long-sleeve t-shirt and covered the tiny bit of ankle that was exposed to the sun and spent the entire afternoon on the balcony, alternately dozing and reading “Secrets of Six-Figure Women” which I have to admit was a bit of a slog. That afternoon on the balcony though – sublime. Around 4:30 everyone around us began to gather on their balconies and yell across their balconies to each other. (There was a lot of this cross-balcony communication, which was both kind of sweet, and also kind of loud and annoying. I heard from another passenger that there was a large group of people who had been on this ship since it left Australia more than a month earlier and I wondered if these were the people who had become balcony buddies.) Mary came out to join me and we stood at the railing watching our arrival into Victoria. At one point I was startled by a head appearing right next to mine on my left and a loud, “Hello! How are you?” It was the loud next-door man. He asked if we were getting off the ship in Victoria.
“Nah,” I said. “Are you?”
“Got to go buy a shot glass and a t-shirt,” he said. “But first we’ll have dinner on the ship.” This was disappointing news to me. They’re not even going to dine in Victoria? And how long will it take to buy a shot glass and a t-shirt? He left shortly after this exchange and Mary said to me, “Look at you! Conversing with your nemesis!” I wonder, can he be my nemesis if he didn’t even know I existed until 10 minutes ago?
We stayed on the balcony until we were docked in Victoria and then I came up with the brilliant idea to swim first and THEN go to dinner. The pool area was empty; the locker room was empty; it was a lovely, lovely swim. I went straight from my swim to the sauna and Mary went to sit in this big round 2-person canopy chair that we had been eyeing for most of the cruise. The plan was that once I was done in the sauna, she would shower in the spa and I would go back to the room to shower (because I loved the stateroom shower so much) and then we would meet at the buffet. (By now I had lost interest in having dinner in the dining room.)
But once I was done with my sauna I was starving and I realized I didn’t need to shower right away so I went to the solarium and sat in the other big round 2-person canopy chair (the first one was now wet after Mary’s post-pool time in it) and it was lovely. When Mary was done with her shower we went to the buffet. I had “paella” and roast turkey breast and a greek salad which I added to more fixings from the salad bar, and a “sourdough” roll. “Paella” is in quotation marks because it tasted like rice-a-roni with some shrimp and bits of chicken thrown in. I had “paella” twice. On Spanish night at the buffet they had three different kinds including one that was black squid ink. They all tasted exactly the same. That was one thing I learned early on in the cruise was that most things tasted exactly the same even though they looked different. I suppose that’s a skill, or maybe they make everything out of the same mix and they just shape and color it to look like different things. Mary and I both loved the “sourdough” rolls which were not sourdough at all but nice soft floury white rolls. One night in the restaurant we had “sun-dried tomato foccacia” which was orange bread that tasted just like all the other breads. I found the food to be extremely underwhelming but edible whereas Mary said she thought it wasn’t so bad. She had a strategy to find a few good things and stick with them. I, on the other hand, kept trying new things, expecting them not to taste exactly like everything else.
Here’s what I did love about the food: the room-service chocolate covered strawberries (but you already knew that), the coconut sorbet that was available one day (ditto), the “sourdough” rolls, the papadum in the always available Indian food section of the buffet, the Rooibos tea always available in the buffet. That’s it. Not a lot of delicious sustenance there.
At some point during our last day Mary surprised me by saying, “I could do a Celebrity cruise again.” We discussed it throughout the day and decided that we probably could only do Alaska. There was a bar area on the deck outside the Oceanview Cafe that was never open during our cruise. If it had been open, our special deck area would have been ruined, and it is most likely open on warmer cruises. Also, I remembered that Alaska cruises attract fewer partiers and this cruise was already loud. So, no Caribbean on Celebrity. Still, I decided to go after dinner to the OnBoard Cruise Specialist and look into pricing for next year. The lowest priced balcony was $3800 for 2 and that was all I needed to know. For $3800 we can have a really luxurious vacation where the food doesn’t taste all the same and we don’t have to listen to our neighbors whenever they’re in their room. Plus, I’m not a six-figure woman yet! (Though I might be a two-figure woman from the amount of overeating I did on this cruise. I was a little disappointed in myself. I kept eating crap that didn’t even taste good in the hope that something would taste different, better.)
After dinner we went back to our stateroom and I took an hour and a half to pack. When our neighbors returned I turned on the tv to a new age music channel and that blocked them out nicely. When I was done packing Mary packed in 20 minutes. So annoying! We left our balcony door open and listened to the sounds of seagulls in Victoria. We decided not to close the door when we went to sleep (though the curtains were closed) and it was nice to listen to the birds outside and feel the cool air.
A few days earlier we had been asked to fill out a form about our plans upon debarkation. One of the options, which we learned about on our last cruise on the Queen Mary, is self-disembarkation, which means you do not put your suitcases out the night before. I have always hated putting suitcases out the night before. What if I need something from my suitcase? What about my toiletries? So when we learned on the Queen Mary that we could keep our suitcases with us and walk off the ship whenever we wanted we were astonished that more people did not take advantage of this. On our Celebrity cruise we were lax in returning our form. We returned it a day late but did say we would do self-disembarkation. On Thursday we recieved a note that said we were in Group 20 and would meet at such and such lounge at such and such time and get off the ship at 8:30. I said, “We’re just going to do self-disembarkation.”
“Don’t we need to tell them?” Mary asked.
“No. We’re just going to do it.” But then I read further and it said all self-disembarkation people had to leave the ship at 7:30. Way too early! So we decided maybe we’ll just go with our group. Or maybe we’ll just decide in the morning.
No matter what time we got off the ship, we had to be out of our stateroom by 8 am the next morning so we had set our alarm for 7. We woke up, opened the curtains and there was the Space Needle. The magic of cruising! You go to sleep in one place and wake up in another! We went up to breakfast and got back to the stateroom with 10 minutes to spare. We left the stateroom, said goodbye to our lovely stateroom attendant Oscar, and went down to deck 5. We had decided that we were going to do self-disembarkation and just pretend that we were confused if they pointed out that we were supposed to have gotten off the ship at 7:30. There was a group exiting and we waited for that group to exit and then we headed off the ship. “Aren’t we butting?” Mary asked.
“There’s no one in line,” I said. “We’re fine.”
“But it feels like we’re breaking the rules.”
“We’re fine. The only reason all these people have numbers is because they need to get their luggage.” We walked right off the ship, no questions asked, and right through the terminal. There were stacks and stacks of luggage to our left and people standing around waiting for said luggage. Outside there were lines of taxis.
“Maybe we should just take a taxi. It will be easier,” Mary suggested.
“No, no.” I had a plan. I had signed up with Lyft right before we left Portland and as a result we had 5 free rides available to us, up to $10 value each. I opened the Lyft app on my phone. Told it we wanted to go to Amtrak King Street Station. Omar was there in his very clean car within 5 minutes. Total price for the ride after our free $10 was $3.96 to which I added a $3.00 tip. Our plan at the train station was to check our bags and then go to Pike Place Market, specifically Ellenos Greek Yogurt, and then just hang out until we needed to get back to the station for our 11:15 train to Portland. At least I thought that was our plan. But Mary told me she was not planning to check her bag. I went to the baggage check and learned that Mary could store her bag for $4.00. “But,” the attendant said, “There’s an earlier train for Portland at 9:30. Would you like to get on that one?” That sounded like a great idea, so I stood in the ticket line to inquire about changing. It would cost $40 to change, so we decided to stick with our original plan. We went back to the baggage check line and Mary decided to check her bag after all because we had no cash and the only way we could use a credit card to pay to store her bag was to get back in the ticket line which had grown long. As you might suspect, Mary was not feeling amenable to lines.
Back outside I again opened the Lyft app, requested a car, and S.M. was there to pick us up within 3 minutes. She had a basket of snacks in her backseat! “Have a breakfast treat!” she suggested. Mary took some sort of gummy bear thing and I declined. S.M. took us to the exact spot of the Ellenos stand. That was a $6.08 ride, which was covered by our Lyft credit. I added a $5.00 tip, which the Lyft credit did not cover. We each got a container of yummy Ellenos yogurt, found a quiet place to sit – rather amazing at Pike Place Market, but it was still early in the morning. I went to find a restroom and on the way found the dried fruit stand that sells amazing dried HoneyCrisp apples. I also found a Chase ATM. After using the restroom I went back to Mary to see if she had an ATM card. I chose not to have my ATM cards replaced after I lost my wallet a few months back and now I was wondering if that was such a smart idea. Mary did have an ATM card so we headed back to the ATM. By now, the fish guys were doing their schtick of yelling and throwing whole fish to each other and there were hordes of people gathered around making it hard for us to get to the stairs that led down to the ATM. I could already feel the crowd anxiety beginning to eminate off of Mary. We got some cash, bought some dried apples and decided to walk back to the station. On the way we stopped at Subway for me to get a sandwich for lunch. Mary had a bagel and some peanut butter she had purloined from the ship.
The train ride back was lovely, as it almost always is. Sadly, we could not go straight home from the train station. Last Friday, when we left Portland, we had planned to use Lyft to get to the airport. However, one of us (me) chose to lie in bed reading for 45 minutes after the alarm went off and thus was not actually ready to go when it was time to leave the house. Not having any experience with Lyft we decided not to risk waiting for a ride and instead drove to the airport and parked in economy parking. We cut it very close that day. Mary had to drop me off at the terminal so I could check my bag and the plan was that I would meet her at the gate. Shortly after I got to the gate, the gate attendant called Mary’s name. I went up to see what was going on and they said they needed to see her passport. I told them she was parking the car. “Oh, she’s not going to make it!” the gate attendant said. I’m sure my face reflected what I was feeling and another attendant said, “Is she checking a bag?” When I said no she said, “Maybe she’ll be alright.” She was alright, but in hindsight, we would have been better off using Lyft.
So once we got to Union Station in Portland, we still had to get to the airport to retrieve our car. While on the train I had downloaded a Tri-Met app (free and fairly speedy wifi on Amtrak Cascades). I thought it might just be easiest to take Tri-Met to the airport given that we were heading into rush hour. But the Tri-Met web site said that there was some track work going on and to expect crowds and delays on several lines, including the Red line to the airport. So we decided to use Lyft. We got our luggage ahead of everyone else because our checked bags had apparently travelled on the 9:30 train and they were just sitting there when we went to the area where everyone else was waiting for their bags.
I opened the Lyft app and learned that rush hour pricing put our airport ride at between $20 and $40. “I think we should try MAX,” I said, and Mary agreed. MAX, it turned out, was not bad at all. We had to wait about 10 minutes for a train and then it took about 40 minutes to get to the airport. At the airport we walked to the shuttle bus for the Blue parking lot, rode to our car, and then drove to Panera Bread where we picked up the most tasty meal of the entire week. We were home by 5 and surrounded by needy cats, one of whom has been trying to climb into my lap or onto my shoulders the entire time I’ve been writing this post and is now sitting a bit away from me looking very wounded.
Summary of Friday’s transportation: ship, Lyft car, Lyft car, Amtrak train, Max train, airport shuttle bus, our car.
By the way, our final debt on our cruise account was $6.66 after Mary’s beer on Thursday night. That number, along with the fact that we were disembarking on Friday the 13th, was worrisome to Mary. We made it though. We find we are really, really tired, strangely so, and doing a lot of sleeping. Overall it was a really nice trip, but I’m not sure I would put out that kind of money again for the experience. I’d rather save twice as much and sail on Crystal.
