At Sea - Sept 29, 2011: Sent Sept 30th due to internet connection

Our first formal night, the Captain’s Welcome Reception!

Now we know why the ship feels like we have a lot of space, for a capacity of 1380 guests we are sailing with only 789. As there is a full compliment of staff (693) we are almost at a 1:1 ratio of staff to guests. This means we have limited or no line ups and it will be much easier to get off and on the ship in ports and immigration in many of the countries will be also be much quicker. So for us this is good not so much for Holland America, the elimination of Japan seems to really of had an effect.

We are currently just off Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska with much calmer seas than the last few days but we are told that tonight it may become rough once again. This is the first time in all our cruising that they are canceling the after dinner show due to possible injury to the performers, so tonight they are offering a big screen movie in the main show lounge.

 Captain Fred Iversen giving his welcoming speech and introducing all the main senior staff members on board. We are very happy with this line up as many of the key people are the same as our last grand voyage.

 The restaurant last night was all dressed up with a load of international flags with the white table linens.

 Steak and lobster night, we both had the seafood cakes - delicious. 
 Jan had the lobster while I had the steak, fantastic... Oh and they asked Jan if she would like another lobster, she said yes sooo they brought out two more, one for me. Yes I spent more time in the gym today.

 Our first night of extra gifts, 2 travel journals and card holders for our room cards, also our nightly towel animal (an octopus if you can’t make it out in the picture).

Tip or comment of the day. It is a good idea to book your next possible cruise while on board for $100.00 each you can confirm a cabin on almost any cruise and you receive usually double the regular ship board credits. If you change your mind, no problem as you can transfer this credit to any other cruise within the next 4 years. 

Until next time ...

At Sea - Sept 27, 2011

Easing into sea life. Captain made a change and we cruised through the Inside Passage rather than making a direct crossing to Russia. Apparently the winds of the outside of Vancouver Island were extreme at 70 miles and hour so to give everyone a good nights rest he changed our plans to go to the inside. So we woke up to the very scenic cruising through the passage, beautiful.

At the time of writing this, we are experiencing rough seas as we come around the top of Vancouver Island which is very common at this time of year. Fine by me, it is all part of the experience. Everything is going just fine as we are settling in for the crossing of the Pacific.

No pictures on this post just a quick note. 

Tip or Comment of the day. It is always a good idea to weigh in when you get on board to determine a good starting point. The tip is that when you weigh in wear your street clothes and put all the extra things in your pockets, then when you weigh yourself the next time in your workout gear you are already ahead of the game, I have already lost 3 pounds this trip.

Until next time...

Seattle - Sept 25, 2011

And we begin...

Need to go Seattle, highly recommend the Quick Shuttle service, very professional courteous driver, looked a bit like Peter Griffin from the Family guy.

The Best Western pretty much beside the Space Needle as a good clean reliable hotel.

  No picture but our first dinner here was at Assaggio Ristorante at 2010 Fourth Street, mentioned because it was so good, homemade fresh pasta with a great selection of fresh fish entries ... in a word delicious.

Breakfast at a little hole in the wall named Cafe Bee, conveniently beside the Space Needle.

Top of the Space Needle 

 If you have been down here and have not checked out the EMP Museum well it is worth a visit. They have rotating features with a couple of staples, Jimi Hendricks and Nirvana are the staples while Avatar and Battle Star Galactica are the current rotation. All great but what’s really fun is on the third and fourth floors they have personal sound booths loading with different instruments, for 10 minutes at a time you can go in and go crazy on your choice of instrument. As you can see we banged on the drums... gives me a whole new appreciation as to what real musicians do with these things. Yes if you wanted to you could go on a stage and wail away and get the DVD burned. Great for wanna be artists. 

 The EMP also has a new center stage 33 by 60 foot high definition screen with full concert speakers, they rotate a series of artists as well as film shorts and the makings of. We viewed the Avatar one and now have a much better appreciation for the behind scenes making of this movie, James Cameron basically pretty much reinvented the way movies are shot with this technology.

 We then took the Monorail to the city center and made our way down to Pike’s Market, stopping at the Kells pub for lunch. Another great spot if you happen to be down here.

Not sure how much detail I will put into this as we go along but if I see something interesting I will comment about it. 

Tip or thought of the day - Always pack a second pair of shoes or go with well worn in ones. I brought with my carry on here a pair of new sandals, my heels are sore and it is raining today. All my other shoes are already on board, thought I was being smart by saving some space and weight with my carry on...

We board the ship today.