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.

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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.

Faithful readers may recall we had some trepidation heading into our Sea Day yesterday. For years Mary has been trying to get me to try another mass-market cruise after our 2 previous unhappy attempts. We were both hoping that I might actually enjoy it so we could maybe cruise more often for less money. If you know us well, you will know that I am the one who is sometimes (unfairly) called a princess. I am the one who is sensitive to noise and abhors crowds and is picky about food. So it never occured to us that Mary would be the one who suffered on the mass-market cruise. But there you have it. I had a mostly lovely day yesterday whereas La Grumpia resurfaced and is definitely ready to get off this ship. I was amazed that it turns out Mary is the one who can’t handle the mass-market cruise, but Mary pointed out that she hates crowds even more than I do whereas I get more upset about people misbehaving and not following the rules. When I thought about it, I realized she was right. I can tolerate a crowd better than she can, but I am becoming more and more unable to tolerate the loud man next door and his loud tv, and I get very angry every time I see someone wave off the Purel lady and walk into the buffet without sanitizing their hands. Hello idiots! Norovirus! My main irritants though, are not constant, while the crowds are.

As for yesterday, we began the morning with our chocolate covered strawberries which are becoming better and better (i.e. less green, less ginormous) every morning. At breakfast the day before I had noticed, after eating, that there is an omelette station, and since the breakfast items are in general quite sub-par, I thought I would try an omelette on our Sea Day. So yesterday, at breakfast, I stood at the very disorganized omelette station and waited 10 or 15 minutes for my omelette. Then I had to wait another 10 minutes for someone to bring me a bowl of Greek yogurt. Every morning I ask for it and every morning it throws them. Then I had to weave through the crowds to find Mary. Mary had decided to get up from the table to get some more of something at the exact time I was searching for her on the deck, so I had to make two circles through the crowd with my very heavy plates before I found her. Many people have complained about the weight of the plates. It’s crazy how heavy they are and there are no trays available so getting a meal together always takes more than one trip. Once I found Mary I said, “From now on, we’re eating in the dining room. I can’t take this anymore.” She nodded or something which I took as agreement.

For lunch we went to the dining room. You can ask for a table for two or if you’re willing to share you can join another table. The people ahead of us looked to both of us like people we couldn’t bear to join, so we waited for a table for two and were given, just one minute later, a table for two right at the window! Soon they brought the couple who had been in line behind us to sit at the table for two right next to us. That couple talked with the couple on the other side of them and we were left alone. I did a little eavesdropping and learned that the couple next to us were from Victoria. I wondered if they would be allowed to leave the cruise in Victoria (tonight) rather than in Seattle tomorrow morning. So once the people they had been talking to left, I struck up a conversation. I thought we had a quite pleasant conversation and yes, they are allowed to leave the ship in Victoria tonight.

After lunch I wanted to swim so we headed to the solarium. There were hordes of people in the chairs around the pool, but no one actually in the pool, so we headed to the locker room. Most of the lockers were taken and it was difficult to find an empty one that actually locked. I went to the front desk to ask if I could have some rubber slippers which are in the lockers in the mornings but not in the afternoon. The front desk attendant came back and could not find any slippers. She told me to ask a locker room attendant if I saw one. She was attempting to get back to her job at the front desk when a woman who was attempting to lock a broken locker said, “It won’t lock.”

“It’s broken,” I told her.

“It’s broken,” the desk attendant said. The desk attendant seemed flustered and I felt responsible for taking her away from her duties so I attempted to help the broken locker woman. I found her a locker that wasn’t broken and was going to show her how to lock it, but I suddenly really had to pee.

“Mary can you show this woman how to lock her locker?” I asked. Mary looked confused but seemed to assent. “I’ll be right back,” I said and headed to the toilet stall. That was my second strike of the day. (The first one, which I didn’t yet know about, I will divulge later.) When I returned, Mary had managed to lock the woman’s things into the locker and now was unable to unlock it. Fortunately, the locker room attendant appeared and she unlocked the woman’s locker and gave me some rubber slippers.

We headed out to the pool where there were two pot-bellied men standing in the water on the side doing nothing and two other men acting like they might swim, but not actually moving. “Oh no!” Mary said. “I’m going back to the room.”

“I’m swimming laps,” I said. “Come on, it will be fine.”

“I’ll see you later,” Mary said.

As soon as I got into the pool and swam one lap, the theoretical swimmers left, and the pot-bellied men stayed out of my way. Because the ship was moving, the water in the pool was not calm and with each lap when I hit the mid-point of the pool there were a few seconds where it felt like I was in one of those swimming in place pools, not moving anywhere at all. Then, magically I would break through the resistance and continue on my way. I thought it was really great. I saw Mary walking through the pool area towards the elevator. “Hey Mary!” I called to her. “This is really cool. It’s like one of those swimming in place pools!”

She gave me a weak smile, pointed, said “Look!” and then something I could not understand.

“What?” I asked?

Again she said something I couldn’t understand. “What?” I asked. She turned her back to me and walked away. I thought she might be taking a strange route to come closer to the pool and explain to me what I was supposed to be seeing, but she was gone. Later I told her she had turned her back on me and walked away while I was talking to her and she said, “Oh, I didn’t think you were listening to me.” Once I got out of the pool I saw she had been pointing out that we were in sight of land.

My swim was lovely, though I may have overdone it. My right elbow is a bit sore today. After the swim I had a lovely lie in the sauna. There was only one other woman in there and she was appropriately silent. A few people opened the door and said things like, “Wow, this is too hot!” and then left, but I was able to tune them out.

I went to the OceanView cafe to peruse the ice cream flavors, and went back to the room with a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of peanut butter. Then I showered. I really like our bathroom. It is large for a cruise ship bathroom. The shower is also large with glass walls. If you leave the bathroom door open while you’re showering, you can see the reflection of the sea in the artwork on the wall, and it is really fabulous to watch the ocean while you are showering. It was such a sunny day that if I had sat out on the balcony I would have gotten a sunburn so instead I lay inside reading, “Secrets of Six Figure Women” This book is about how I can earn a six-figure income and afford to do the luxury cruises rather than the mass-market ones. Eventually I fell asleep and Mary woke me up when it was dinner-time.

We sat at our table for two and they offered us some sort of complimentary rum cocktail with four different kinds of fruit juices in it. I will rarely turn down a fruit juice rum cocktail so I accepted. It was interesting and most likely had 1/4 teaspoon of rum or less in it. I am a lightweight and I felt NO alcohol in my system. Early on in the dinner Mary started coughing because she had swallowed wrong. She abruptly got up and walked away from the table and as I was watching her go, wondering if she was okay, the man at the table next to us started up a conversation with me, and we were well in conversation when Mary returned. This dinner was what used to be called Formal night – now it is Elegant Casual. Lobster and beef wellington were the featured main courses. I chose beef wellington, along with a kale – squash salad. Both were quite good. Mary chose chicken. For dessert they had baked Alaska which I was curious about. Mary ordered apple pie a la mode. I ate a bite or two of my baked Alaska and almost all of Mary’s pie and I was really, really full! And, it was time for my massage. Bad planning!

I headed up to Deck 11 for my massage and Mary headed back to the room. Once I got to the waiting area and was reading about the different offerings I remembered that we had a coupon in the room for a free add-on treatment. I went to the front desk to ask if I could have the free add-on treatment and he said I would need the coupon. At that point my massage therapist came out to meet me, so I asked if I could call my room and ask my partner to bring the coupon to me. My partner was VERY resistant to bringing it to me. She was already in her jammies. However, I begged, “Please! Please! You just need to leave it at the front desk!” and she relented. Thank you Mary! (This was Strike 3 against me – more on this later.)

You may recall I met my massage therapist, Punika, yesterday when she gave me a complimentary 20 minute shoulder massage in the hallway outside the Oceanview Cafe (i.e. buffet). She was adorable and gave an excellent massage so had not needed much of a sales pitch to convince me. Last night, she took me to a room where there was a mat on the floor. She had me lie on the mat with a sheet over me and then she massaged and manipulated my body – had me take deep breaths as she moved my body in certain ways. It felt a little like assisted Pilates. I was a little worried about my back but I mostly trusted her and it was an excellent massage. She gave me a foot exfoliant and massage add-on, which was also excellent. I was quite, quite happy. And my back feels a little bit better today.

Every time I have ever had a spa treatment on a cruise ship they have ended by trying to sell me a bunch of crap. I was prepared for this and had already decided that I wasn’t going to buy anything but was going to add $20 on to the 18% required service charge. After all, she gave me 20 minutes on Tuesday, and I’m pretty sure the 8:00 time she gave me was not a normally scheduled time and she only did it to get the sale. Once the massage ended, Punika recommended some sort of essential oil something something for my feet. “You can read the box,” she said. “Because my English is poor.”

“Your English is excellent!” I told her. “It is better than any second language I can speak!”

She seemed very pleased by this compliment. I told her that I use something called SuperSalve that has a number of different essential oils in it and she said, “Oh, then you don’t need to buy ours.” I was stunned. Usually there is a really, really hard sell. I asked her how long she had been on the ship and she told me three months. She’s been working on cruise ships for a year and a half, and works six months and then has two months off during which she goes back to Thailand.

“Do you have children?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “I am single. But I talk to my mother every single day. It is so great now that we have internet!” I asked her if this was her first time in Alaska. She and her fellow massage therapist had been bemoaning the cold the day before when they were giving me and another woman our free massages. She said yes, and I said I hoped she got used to the cold eventually. She told me that Wednesday was the first time she had ever seen snow on mountains and it was so beautiful. Then she said, “Yesterday when they made us do promotion near Oceanview Cafe I heard some people say they saw bear and me and my friend we just left our spot and ran to see bear!”

“Did you get to see the bear?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said. “Very small but we saw it!” I told her I was glad she had left her spot and that she had gotten to see a bear.

Punika left the room so I could get dressed and when she came back she had the coupon for the add-on treatment. “Your husband brought coupon!” she said. I didn’t bother correcting her and she then told me that if my husband wanted the same treatment she would give him the thai massage and the foot treatment without any coupon for the in-port price at any time he wanted. Plus, he could wear his gym clothes, because men aren’t comfortable taking off their clothes.

“Thank you!” I said, knowing that my “husband” would not have any interest in getting a massage the next day. Punika escorted me out to the spa reception desk and said, “Tell your husband!”

“I’ll tell him!” I said, smiling and waving. The man at the reception desk looked at me and smiled. I’m pretty sure he was the person Mary brought the coupon to so he knew I have no husband. But it just seemed easier, and kinder, to pretend.

I found a phone and called Mary to see if I could bring her anything to thank her for bringing me the coupon. “No thank you,” she said. When I got back to the room she was still fairly grumpy. I learned that I had two BIG strikes against me for the day, along with one smaller one. One: assigning her to show a woman who didn’t speak English how to operate a locker; Two: asking her to bring me a coupon in the evening when she was already in her pajamas. She put shorts and a nice top on to bring me the coupon, but apparently endured a lot of stinkeye from snobby people in the elevator who felt that she wasn’t well-dressed enough on Elegant Casual night and who thought that it is good manners to give dirty looks to people whose outfits you do not approve of. My first strike of the day had been striking up convesration with our neighbors at lunch. Mary said last night that she hates eating in the dining room – “because you have to talk to people” – and that she was planning to have the rest of her meals in the buffet. That’s a shame because I think I like the dining room much more than the hectic buffet.

When I decided to tip Punika an extra $20 I knew I was depleting our on-board credit and would not be able to buy all the L’Occitane goodies I had planned to spend the balance of our credit on. Easy come, easy go. But shortly after I returned to our cabin, there was a knock on the door and our stateroom attendant, Oscar, handed me a notice apologizing for the nightmarish embarkation on Friday. In compensation, they were adding an additional $50 to our stateroom credit. Magically, my L’Occitane Happy Hands lotion set came back into the equation. I did think it was interesting that they waited until late Wednesday night to compensate us for something that happened on Friday. All the shops will close once we get into Victoria at 5:00. Cynically, I wonder if they are counting on many passengers not actually managing to spend their newfound $50.

Our next door neighbors had decided to stay in and blast their tv all night rather than go do something elsewhere, so I resorted to earplugs. I hate that man more and more every time I hear his loud voice. But the earplugs were effective and I fell asleep fairly early. I sleep so well on a cruise ship. I’m going to miss that!

This morning we had our now standard-delivery of 6 chocolate covered strawberries – I mean, really, how cool is that!!!! – and then we went up to the buffet. This time I ordered my omelette and then while it was being prepared I went in search of Greek yogurt. By the time I got my yogurt my omelette was ready. “Mary?” the omelette chef asked. I smiled and moved forward “You took a very long time,” he said. I apologized. I do hate to throw them off their game. I just have to have my own survival game too. You may wonder why I used the name Mary. It’s because yesterday when I gave him my own name he asked how to spell it. I hesitated, and then decided my actual spelling would confuse him so I said, “L I Z,” and watched him write down “L I C.” I had no idea how he was going to pronounce it when my omelette was ready and this caused me a bit of angst. It turns out that Lic is pronounced “Lis” like the beginning of “lisp” (whereas my name is pronounced “Lis” like “his”). But Mary suggested that today I just use her name.

After breakfast I went down to the shops – rushed down, in fact, because they were having a “mega-sale” at 10:30 and I wanted to avoid those crowds. At the perfume store I bought L’Occitane almond shower oil and a L’Occitane happy hands lotion set. It is the same set I bought last year on the Queen Mary and it definitely made my hands happy. We now have used up all our cruise credit and owe 84 cents. Mary will probably get a beer tonight leaving us with a grand total of around 10 bucks.

A couple of days ago we got a notice that if we book a future cruise on the ship we will get an extra $100 cruise credit. The deposit is refundable and I have been going back and forth ever since as to whether or not to put down a deposit. There have been some sublime moments in this cruise: sitting out on the balcony, swimming in the solarium, the spa sauna, my thai massage, the most excellent ice cream. But then there are the crowds, and the loud people, and the thin walls. I have mostly loved this cruise, but it was not inexpensive. And Mary is fairly unhappy and mildly unpleasant on sea days. So there’s that. I think we probably won’t put down a deposit. Maybe we’ll try a different mass-market line and hope for thicker walls and better crowd management. Or maybe I will become a six-figure woman and we can sail Crystal, which we know we love.

Today is Tuesday. We are in Skagway. I am sitting on our balcony listening to the sounds of the port and some very loud work being done on the ship. It was sunny here about 30 minutes ago and Mary pointed out that the sun would not be on our balcony for long, so we both decided to sit in the sun and meditate. I had some difficulty with my meditation app so Mary finished before me and went back inside. When I finished my meditation I opened my eyes and took in the beauty of the trees and the water in front of me and then I saw a bald eagle fly from one set of trees to another. I wanted my binoculars so I called Mary on her phone because I knew if I took my eyes off the eagle I would lose him. She didn’t answer, so I banged on the balcony door and motioned and she came out with binocs and we both watched the eagle for a little while. He didn’t move and I marveled that I had spotted him all by myself. I don’t have the best vision and am terrible at seeing things when people point them out to me. Mary pointed out whale blowholes to me about 10 or 15 times on Saturday night and I saw nothing. So it was so wonderful that I had seen this eagle all on my own and that I could put my binocs down and look away and look back and he was still there. I looked at him over and over again. I actually got a little teary.

Moments like this are why Mary and I love to cruise. We love to sit out on our balcony and see things and listen to the water. This cruise, however, is a bit of an experiment, because it is a mass-market cruise. We try to do luxury small-ship cruises when we can because they are so completely different from the huge mass-market cruises. No crowds, no lines, amazing food, no nickle and diming – everything is included, a completely serene experience. But we can only afford to do a luxury cruise once every 7 years or so, and we had such a nice time on the Queen Mary sailing from Southampton to New York last year (a mass market), that we (especially me) were jonesing for another cruise.

Back in September I saw this cruise on sale. It was $1400 per person for a balcony, and included gratuities and $400 cruise credit. We put down a deposit of $250 and had until late February to change our minds. And then we got more and more excited about the cruise, even though we knew there were many things we would not like and that we should keep our expectations low.

We cruised Alaska once before at a travel agent rate, on Regent, a very high-end line that is now incredibly expensive and we will probably never be able to afford again. We were stunned by the scenery right outside our window. We’ve been wanting to do it again ever since. But we knew from our experience in the Caribbean on the Queen Mary and from a short Celebrity Pacific Northwest cruise that getting on and off a mass-market ship can be really trying. So we decided that we wouldn’t get off the ship this go-around, other than in Juneau, where I wanted to see my friend Jeannie. For us, cruising has become about being on the ship. It’s not like you have enough time to really experience the town you are in with 10,000 other people for 5 or 6 hours. And once the majority of the people get off the ship, the ship becomes a much more tranqil place to be.

So I’m going to tell you about some of our more lovely moments of the past few days and some of our less lovely. I’ll start with Ketchikan, our first stop, on Sunday. It was not yet 7 am when we were woken up by the sounds of first our aft neighbors and then our forward neighbors getting ready to do whatever shore excursions they had signed up for for the day. I was very disappointed that the walls are so thin, and I have continued to be disappointed. Though we haven’t heard much more from our aft neighbors, we hear A LOT of our forward neighbors – their tv, their conversations, the man coughing. The man has a very loud voice. I learned this when he came out on his balcony with a beer yesterday morning at 6:45 as we were watching the fabulous ice show of Tracy Arm. (We were also treated yesterday morning to a view of the man below us in nothing but his undies. His wife pointed out that we were above him and could see him but apparently he considered this to be an incentive. (Note from Mary: since we are above them, and since his undies were of the speedo variety, this view included some butt crack – scenic, indeed.)) This is probably my biggest complaint so far. I am really sensitive to noise and hate that we hear our neighbors whenever they are in their stateroom. Luckily for me, most normal people (i.e. not us) do not spend much time in their staterooms so it’s really not a huge issue.

On Sunday, after our neigbors left there was brief silence before we heard a loud hubub coming from the area of our balcony. At that point we gave up, got out of bed, and opened the curtains. Our stateroom was directly above the spot where passengers were getting off the ship and vendors were setting up to sell tours. I was very disappointed that we were on the side of the ship looking out on the port. There are two sides to a ship, starboard (right) and port (left). On our last Alaska cruise we had been told to book port because they view is better from that side. I had forgotten that advice, but in reading about Celebrity I had learned that there are outdoor smoking areas on the port side. So I specifically chose starboard because I did not want cigarette smoke wafting onto our balcony. Alas, starboard has always been the side facing the dock when we are in port so it is louder and a little less lovely. Yesterday, in Juneau, we overlooked a bunch of shipping containers. Today our view is fabulous, but there’s still a fair amount of noise from the dock. So that’s my second beef against Celebrity. Why do the smokers get the port side? I wish everyone would just use e-cigarettes.

Ok, I’m going to stop my anti-smoking rant and get back to Sunday morning. I love chocolate covered strawberries and I saw on the room service menu that I could order an unspecified number of chocolate covered strawberries for breakfast for $5. Or I could order 12 chocolate covered strawberries at any other time during the day for $24. I decided to go for the $5 strawberries. We put out our room service breakfast order on Saturday night – in addition to the strawberries, Mary ordered a basket of pastries and coffee. The order came promptly at 9 am and Mary immediately dove into her pastries. When I came to get my strawberries I saw there weren’t any. Apparently they had missed that part of the order. I had to wait another half-hour but eventually I was rewarded with six humungous, slightly green chocolate covered strawberries, which we put in the refrigerator and enjoyed over the next 2 days. We ordered some more for this morning and they were better than the first batch. I’m loving the room service chocolate covered strawberries and I’m marveling over the math. It is a 240% markup if you order your strawberries after 9 am!

After breakfast on Sunday we decided to go for a swim. On the way to the pool I saw this really cool-looking hammock for two and I thought we should try it. I did what I consider to be a Mary D’ish thing. That is, to charge ahead into something without considering the consequences. I tumbled into the hammock and said, “Come on!” Mary said, “I’m not sure that will hold both of us,” and declined to join me. I then had to figure out how to get out of the hammock. In doing so, I tweaked something in my back and it’s been HURTING ever since. It hurts to bend over or roll over in bed or put my jeans on. It’s a sad story.

We chose to swim in the Solarium pool, an indoor swimming pool long enough to do laps. We swam for about 10 minutes, the only people in the pool, and then we spent some time in the jacuzzi and then went into the spa locker room and showered and saunaed. The sauna is huge and we were the only people in the pool, the sauna, and the jacuzzi. The sauna is in the women’s locker room which I think is fabulous since I like to sauna au natural. There was a woman in the locker room bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t sauna with her husband (he had to use the one in the men’s locker room), and I saw her point but could not truly share her pain.

Mary wanted to eat at the pool grill, but there was a huge line, so instead we got lunch at the buffet and sat outside enjoying the sun and watching the tourists down below. I was tempted to get off the ship, because there is a hardware store in Ketchikan that I love, Tongass Trading Company, but ultimately it just seemed better to lounge around in our stateroom.

Mary has created categories for the food: bad, tasteless, OK, good, and excellent. So far most of the food has been in the tasteless to good categories. A big exception is the ice cream. There are two venues for ice cream. One is in the buffet – there are about 8 rotating flavors and you can choose toppings including chocolate sprinkles, oreos, reeses pieces, and chocolate sauce. This ice cream is free. The other area is the Cafe Al Bacio gelato bar where the price is $5 for two scoops. As past Celebrity guests we were given coupons for one free gelato each. The first day I saw that they were offering 2 for 1 gelato from 4-7 pm. They would not honor our coupons so we couldn’t get 2 for 1 for free, but I figured we would like it so much that we could use our coupons later. I did not know that there is 2 for 1 gelato every day from 4-7. Also I did not know that I would not really like the gelato. It was too rich for me. So we paid for our gelato and still have the free coupons.

The upstairs free ice cream, however, is excellent. On the day they had coconut sorbet I had coconut sorbet at both lunch and dinner. It was flaky and perfect and reminded me a little of Hawaiian shave ice. Mary had guava sorbet and felt the same way. Today I had one scoop of peanut butter ice cream and one scoop of pina colada frozen yogurt, both muy delicioso.

We’ve been eating mostly in the buffet and while there is a great variety and excellent signage indicating whether items are lactose-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, and/or sugar-free, most things look better than they taste. Last night we ate dinner in the dining room for a change. We had requested a table for two and received a table for two – yay! I had a grilled asparagus salad, and lamb wrapped in phyllo with roasted root vegetables. I thought both items were excellent. Prior to dinner we went to the Molecular Bar where they make fancy, creative drinks and I ordered some sort of strawberry something something with ginger foam. I brought this concoction with me to dinner. It was delicious and very strong and perhaps that is why I thought our dinner was so wonderful!

Tonight we are going to order room service and spend the evening on the balcony as Mary believes the scenery will be very beautiful leaving Skagway.

I know I’m jumping all over the place. Are you even still reading? I’m trying to cover a lot of ground. Yesterday, as you know, I got off the ship and spent the afternoon with my friend Jeannie while El Grumpio (Note from Mary: Hey! That’s La Grumpia, por favor!) stayed on the ship. I had a lovely time with Jeannie. We went to her beautiful, secluded house and I met her husband, Tim, and her dog and then we drove to the boat ramp and helped Tim launch his boat and watched him motor away in said boat and then we took a short scenic hike to a beach where we had a great view of the Mendenhall Glacier and then Jeannie took me back to the ship and we called Mary and asked her to go out to the balcony and wave to us, and then Jeannie left and I got back on the ship and Mary and I had the lovely dinner I just mentioned. I had been worried a little about walking too much with my injured back and injured foot, but I noticed as we walked that my back began to feel better, and Jeannie reminded me that walking is very good for a bad back.

That takes me to this morning. We docked in Skagway, I woke up (in that order) and my back REALLY, REALLY hurt. I thought more walking might help and I decided to get off the ship and walk into town to get an Alaska t-shirt since the one I bought last time we were in Alaska is faded with holes in unseemly places. There were no crowds getting off the ship and it was a mostly pleasant walk to downtown. The t-shirt store was a madhouse, but I managed to find a shirt that kind of fits and for spending more than $10 I also got an enormous Skagway tote bag and a caboose whistle. You never know when you’re going to need a caboose whistle. I also bought a lip balm that said it was lemon-flavored and locally made. It wasn’t until I got back to our room that I noticed that it was called “Yellow Snow” and had a picture of a bear peeing in the snow. Classy. The tote bag was big enough that I could shove my heavy jacket and my binoculars and my phone and purse in it and just put the whole thing through security when getting back on the ship. As I was walking up the gangway a passenger getting off the ship said to me, “Wow, look at you! You got all your shopping done and it’s only 11 am! Where are the best bargains?”

This brings me to a question Jeannie asked me yesterday which was, “Can you explain to me why all the people get off the ship and go to all these jewelry stores? There are SO MANY jewelry stores!” I could not answer this question. I was able to tell her that on one of our free travel agent cruises years ago we were required to sit at dinner every night with other travel agents and the main topic of conversation was which free charm they had picked up in port that day for their charm bracelet from Diamonds International. It made no sense to me then and it doesn’t now.

Back on the ship Mary and I had lunch at the pool grill (no line, but a bossy man behind me) and then we went to the Solarium and had a swim. (Mary had ridden an exercise bike while I was battling tourists at the Alaska T-shirt company so I pointed out to her that she was doing a triathlon today.) Again we had the entire solarium to ourselves and the view was amazing. Mary said she felt like she was swimming in the alps. People look at us like we’re crazy when we say we’re not getting off the ship, but, I said to Mary, “Which would you rather do, this or mingle with the hordes at the t-shirt store?” After our swim and jacuzzi and shower and sauna, we headed for our free ice cream. But there were two women from the spa giving free shoulder massages in the hallway. I quickly abandoned my ice cream plan in favor of a “free” massage. The young woman, from Thailand, noted immediately that my right shoulder was tighter than my left, extolled the benefits of Thai massage, and then said that there was an in-port special on Thai massage that had ended at 1 pm, but if I booked right then she would extend the special price. I thought she gave a good massage, I thought maybe she could help my back (she could also potentially hurt my back, I realize) and she suggested that I come at 8:00 tomorrow evening, “before bed.” How could I say no? So that will use up $112 of our cruise credit + 18% gratuity, but I think it will be nice.

Mary thinks this is too long and is asking when I might be done so she can read it. You may also be asking when this will be done so you can go on with your life. Well I’m almost done. I thought, though, that you might be interested in how we have used our cruise credit so far: $126 for unlimited “high-speed” internet. This “high-speed” is new for Celebrity. They call it Xlerate and this cruise is the inaugural cruise for the new Xlerate internet. They advertise you can Skype and watch Netflix but it takes 5 minutes for Facebook to load. However, I have seen some people Skyping, so maybe the Netflixers and Skypers are hogging all the bandwidth. To continue my list: $6 for the 2 for 1 gelato, plus tip. $12 for chocolate covered strawberries and tip. $9.50 for a beer for Mary. $15.50 + tip for my fancy Molecular cocktail. $12 for a glass of wine for Mary at dinner last night. $7 for Mary’s capuccino after dinner last night. After my massage tomorrow we will have $82 left. Some of you, including my wife, may say this is the most boring paragraph ever. Others of you may enjoy lists and knowing how much things cost. I aim to please everyone. For now, I bid you all good night. In our next installment we’ll see how we fare tomorrow on our Sea Day, with all these Damn People all on the ship!

We are in Juneau now, and I am lying in bed in our cabin surfing the web and recovering from a serious case of the cranks while Lis is out being shown real Alaska sights by a real Alaska resident (our friend Jeannie). How did this come to pass, you ask? Did we have a fight?

No, I just forgot the main rule of survival on a big mass market sailing like this, which is DON’T GO WHERE ALL THE PEOPLE ARE GOING! Seriously – don’t do it. Otherwise, before you know it, your joyous attitude from the morning’s ice viewing will be totally gone; you will be hating everybody and refusing to leave the ship.

It started innocently enough, when we went to the buffet for breakfast. We were still in the ice flo area, but we’d been up since 5:30 and were starving. But the buffet area has good views and so was crammed with people – Lis and I got separated, she couldn’t find me or a place to sit, and wisely headed back to our cabin and the fantastic ice viewing from our balcony. I, on the other hand, kept wandering the crowded cafe area looking for her (mistake #1). Eventually, I gave up and went back to the cabin, too, and we had another fantastic hour or so of ice viewing. (Recommendation: if you lie on your side, the icebergs going by start seeming like fish or rocket ships.)

By about 10:10am the ice was mostly done, but I was feeling a bit peckish, plus I’d read about a $10 merch sale at 10:15am. I said “I’m going to go get a cookie and then go check out the stores.” (mistake #2) We weren’t in port yet, so everybody was still on the ship, and the ice viewing had just stopped, so EVERYBODY (EVERYBODY!!) was out and about. After a crowded elevator ride and congested walk back to the cafe, I went to the cookie area (yes, there’s a cookie area, next to the ice cream area – we spend a lot of time in these areas…) and discovered that the cookies weren’t out yet! (DANG!). Now, at this point, I should have gone straight back to the cabin and ordered some cookies via room service. But instead, I fought my way on and off elevators and walked to every food venue on the whole darn ship in search of a flipping cookie (mistakes #3, 4, 5, etc…) In the course of this quest I also discovered that the store area was a nightmare zoo, but luckily I saw this from above, so was able to avoid the crush and thus didn’t actually have to elbow my way through it. Note from Lis: What I wisely chose to do from 10:10 until noon was sleep. If I had been more awake when Mary announced she was going to a $10 sale I would have tried to stop such craziness on her part.

FINALLY I gave up and went back to the room, but by then the damage was done. I tried to relax until lunch, and thought I felt better, but when we went back up it was crowded again and I was just SO GRUMPY! Our plan for the afternoon, made several weeks ago, was to call our friend Jeannie, who would come get us and take us to do some sight seeing. But now I was all “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can bear to deal with the crowds getting on and off the ship.” Lis (and Jeannie, via text) were very gentle and understanding with me, and encouraged me to maybe just try it. I said OK, but if there’s a line I’m not going.

After lunch and a shower I felt better, and Lis and I headed out to meet Jeannie. There wasn’t a line, but it started raining just as we exited the ship. Oh, well – it wasn’t raining too hard. I was still OK. Then, as we were about to pass the last security guy, we saw him asking some returning people for their picture ID. We were both surprised to see this – that’s the whole point of the nightmare lines at embarkation, isn’t it? So you only have to show your cruise ID after that? We asked “Do we need picture ID to get back on the ship?” He said “You might.” I said “But I only have my cruise ID.” He said “That’s not a very good idea.”

I looked at Lis in dismay. She gave me a helpful, encouraging look and said “Just go get your ID – we’ll wait here for you.” I looked around – it was raining harder; one of our plans was to go for a walk. Final straw, placed – I simply couldn’t do it. I said “I’m just gonna go back in.” Lis, who looked disappointed, but who knows me, said OK.

On my way back in, after showing my cruise ID and then going through the security line (a tiny one – just one other guy), a young girl cruise employee offered me a cup of something from the tray of cups she was holding. I didn’t catch what she was offering, though, and asked her to repeat. She said “chicken soup?” I looked – it was a small paper cup half full of clear, warm chicken broth. How delightfully odd – and just what a grumpy old lady needed. I took my chicken soup and headed back to our room.

This morning we got up at 5:30 am to watch the icebergs float by as we traversed the Tracy Arm fjord. This is our second time in Tracy Arm, and we’ve loved it both times – it’s like a having a series of ice sculptures float by your window for 3 hours. The ship’s naturalist would come on the PA system at intervals to point things out. This was cool, but also irritating because 1) it was often hard to hear, 2) we could rarely see the things he pointed out (overheard later in the elevator: Man: did you see the bear? Woman: I guess so – it was just a black speck.), and 3) he tended to rhapsodize in bad poetry mode (at one point I was afraid my eyeballs might actually lodge in my skull). But still, it was mostly OK, and the scenery was gorgeous. Lots of waterfalls, too – you could actually hear them from the ship! I took about 18 million photos of ice, all very like the others, but a few turned out pretty well, and I present them here for your viewing pleasure 🙂

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One of the things I love about a cruise is developing little routines – little favorites from the buffet, special nooks and crannies where it’s fun to sit, tea time at 4pm, etc. This cruise, especially, since we’re not getting off in ports, feels a little like a crossing, which makes it even easier to develop routines because there are no pesky shore excursion or debarkation times to get in the way.

Here is one of the routines I have developed:

• Go to the Fromagerie in the buffet on deck 14 after dinner and get some long skinny crunchy breadsticks to take back to the room for a late night snack.
• Head back to the room, but spend a little time on the way checking out one of the public rooms, like the library or the art gallery.
• Trip over something.
• Either drop my breadsticks or land on them to break my fall.
• Leave breadstick pieces and crumbs all over.

Note from Lis: I can affirm that this is a true representation of Mary’s routine. The scene in the library last night was both alarming and hilarious. Once I had affirmed that she was uninjured, I could not stop laughing at the breadstick pieces strewn all over the place. Tonight I urged her to eat her breadstick before we got to the room as I fear for her safety. She followed my instructions, and did not trip, thus altering the routine, for the better.

Let me start by saying, lest my title offend anyone, that some of my favorite people are old people! But, the fact remains that Lis did some pretty effective thwarting of a couple senior citizens in the last 24 hours, once on purpose, once not so much.

First, the on purpose one (by the way, I’m certain to get some of these details wrong – let’s see if Lis can bear it and refrain from correcting me): After making our way through one of the many, many lines we faced yesterday, Lis said to me “Did you see that old man back there?” I said that I hadn’t, and she told me that she and said old man had been locked in some sort of butting-in-line battle – he had run to butt in line in front of her (and everyone behind them both) but she had managed to cut him off somehow and get ahead of him. “And the best part was that, once I was in front of him, I motioned a WHOLE BUNCH of people to go on ahead of us!” said my sweetie, smiling in delight at the memory of her sadistic generosity. “And then he got chosen for a full bag search.” More grinning.

Then, today, we were on the ship’s elevator, riding up from the 12th to the 15th deck. The elevator stopped at 14, and when the door opened a sweet older lady came forward and said “Going up?” I assumed that she was planning to get on and ride up to 15 with us and then go back down. In response, Lis exclaimed “It’s our floor!” and surged toward the door. The lady stepped back to let her pass (as one does when one is observing correct elevator behavior), and I said to Lis, “No, we’re going to 15.” Lis stopped in confusion and stood right at the doorway, blocking the woman from entering, and kept saying “What? What floor? What are we doing?” The lady stared in confusion (and not a little annoyance), Lis stayed rooted to her spot – and the door closed in the sweet lady’s face and off we went.

So I guess the moral of the story is that the transportation gods are fickle – sometimes you get appropriately punished for butting in line, and sometimes you get unfairly punished for trying to allow a crazy lady off an elevator.