Today we will be cruising The Inside Passage as the Zaandam heads south towards Vancouver, and where we began our adventure a week ago. This was a day of final jobs such as jackpot bingo buying photos, lotto jackpot drawing, a jewelry auction, spa specials, and booking a future cruise or two while onboard. One job we had was filling out the Canadian declaration card for customs and immigrations ahead of everyone else, since we will be sailing onward. We were delivered a letter describing the procedure on Wednesday where we will be "in transit". But more about that later.
The dining room was not opened for the regular breakfast this morning, but they did service a Brunch at 10am to 12:30pm. We enjoy the breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill, so our time was 8am. Some of the guests arrived closer to 9am, mostly due to the fact the clocks had moved ahead one hour last night. Sleeping later took priority over the early meal for most. The service has been top-notch in this venue, so we do not plan on missing a day. Manager Arsa and his assistant, Zhandy have been very welcoming each and every day.
Captain Smit came on at noontime after the whistle blowing. He did hope that we would see some wildlife later in the afternoon as we sailed in this passage which gets narrow in parts. Specifically, there may be Pacific White-Sided dolphins, humpbacks, and orcas. And can you believe there are cougars in these wooded islands? Supposedly it is the largest concentration of cougars in all of North America. To see them would be a rare sight. The Captain said the bow would be opened as well. The weather was good with calm seas, overcast and foggy in parts, with little wind. The high temp of the day was 55 degrees F. He expected Vancouver to be much the same.
Coming back from breakfast, we had two keepsake ship tiles with a note from the Mariner Society rep, April. She followed up with a phone call to explain there would be no Mariner medals awarded this cruise. And if we understood her correctly, HAL has stopped doing the awards ceremonies on all of the Alaska cruises this year. She did comment that a limited reception would occur if someone was getting a silver medallion and higher. We intend to confirm this when we see her again just in case we misunderstood.
While one of us worked on reports, the other took a nice long walk on the promenade deck. We have been having some trouble with the bathroom exhaust fan in the ceiling. It does not work at all. So as a result, after taking a shower, everything is wet….the ceiling, mirror, all the shelf items as well as every surface. We did report this finally to our room attendants and they did report it to the maintenance department. A few fellows came to our room along with our deck head housekeeper. They took one long look and decided they needed parts they did not have at the moment.
During his walk, Bill ran into hotel manager Leonie, who apologized for the inconvenience. Shortly after he returned, we had another fresh bouquet of flowers delivered along with a tray of chocolates with a card from Leonie. How very sweet of her to do that. We think that missing part will be picked up in Vancouver.
Scenic cruising did begin around 3pm but was not as scenic as we had remembered last year. There was a misty fog and clouds over the hillsides, and we could not spot any wildlife. Definitely no cougars. Out on deck six forward, we did see some dolphins on the port side, but for a nano second. They dove deep and never re-surfaced. Truthfully, it was too chilly, so we went back to our veranda. More guests had discovered this smaller deck, and they literally blocked the way.
We had picked up a couple of Ketchikan magazines in town and used this time to go over all of the important info. One of us made a run to the Lido where a couple slices of pizza were plated up along with a custom-made ham and cheese sandwich to share. By 7pm, most of the fog had cleared up and we did have some better scenery. No wildlife except for three little sparrows that came on our veranda looking for crumbs. They were not afraid of us as they went from balcony to balcony before flying back to shore. Since we should be receiving more sparkling wine tomorrow, we decided to open a bottle we had chilling in the refrigerator.
The farewell dinner took place in the dining room. We ordered one tomato soup, a Caesar salad, and veggie spring rolls, but 2 each. One is never enough they are so good. Mains were a small serving of prime rib, and one plate of sweet and sour shrimp, also quite tasty. Once again, dessert was sliced watermelon.
The wait staff, cooks, and head waiters did the farewell parade, a short and sweet version of what they did in the past. It remains an HAL tradition that used to involve platters of Baked Alaska topped with sparklers. Those days are long gone for sure, and so are many of the folks like us that remember the "old days".
Tonight's show was another performance of magician Nick Paul, although it was written he has a new show. Guess we will never know. The shows are starting at 7:30 and 9pm, and are not convenient for us due to our dinner time. Once again, all of the nighttime venues were full of folks enjoying the last evening of the cruise. And probably on the top of their list is taking advantage of their Have-It-All packages. It ends tonight.
Bill & Mary Ann
