Cruises: May 2012

I had wanted to go on this cruise for two years, Darthaniel, Alecia and the girls had gone with us on a five day down the coast but I still wanted to do the seven day. Plus we had bad weather and missed one of the two ports on the five day. The seven day had two additional ports. So after begging and pleading with Deb for a couple of weeks, she finally relented and we were booked. We decided to go all out on this one and booked tours and rented cars so we would get the most enjoyment out of our trip.

We booked the airporter shuttle to get us to the ship. I had never ridden the shuttle but had sent other people on it. When Deb wanted to see her mother and had asked me to drive her down to the airport I had said, "Why don't you take the shuttle?”

She got this hurt look in her eyes and said, “I guess I could, if you don’t have time for me that is.”

Mollika was a little more blunt when, during one of her college breaks I suggested "Why don't you take the shuttle?”

“What, you don’t love me anymore.”

Bjorn was less hurt when I told him "We take the airporter these days."We meaning everyone else but me. He just gave me the ‘Boy are you getting lazy.’ Look.

You figure that it’s an almost two hour drive down and another two hour back. Traffic on the way then you have to pay for parking when you get there. It saves me a lot of time and frustration. Besides I can say hello or goodbye at the airporter shuttle station just as easily as at the airport.

But riding on the shuttle was comfortable and nice and I no longer felt guilty about sending everyone else on it.

When we arrived at the shuttle station, there was an older lady with two suitcases and a carry on sitting there. Her friend came in and started harassing her for all the luggage she had. Her friend had managed to get all of her stuff in a carry on. Then she started commenting on her hair. Apparently there had been a recent hair cut. “Well, hmm it’s is short.”

It was one of those friends that does nothing for your self esteem. Deb asked her where they were going. Come to find out that they were going on a month long cruise to Europe. I could not even get enough underwear in a carry on for a month long cruise. Then the friends husband came in, complemented the lady on her haircut and brought in two large suitcases. They were ‘his’, but the friend had a lot of her stuff in them.

We arrived at the airport and checked our luggage, managed to avoid what Deb calls the Porno scanners and just went through the regular metal detectors. We sat down at the gate and noticed that it was a door and did not have a ramp going to the plane. The plane was a small turbo prop instead of a jet. This made Deb a little nervous. When it was time to board we walked through the door, onto the tarmac and then climbed some stairs to the plane. It had two seats on either side, seemed ok to me. I liked the smaller inside.

I was hoping to get some sleep on the plane. This was dashed however by the kid behind me. He kept talking and talking. Finally he stopped and I snuggled down for a nice rest. Then out of nowhere came this 'thump, thump, thump' on the back of my seat. He was kicking the chair.

His mom would say, "Don't kick the seat now." in a nice pleasant voice that didn't even slow the kid down. He would pause every once in a while and let out a blood curdling scream then start back in. This would be followed again with his mother saying, "Don't kick the seat now." I was contemplating toddleraside, but there were too many witnesses.
We flew into Long Beach instead of LAX because it was the same price and because it would be close to the ship.
We landed and taxied up to, what looked like, a parking spot at a supermarket. Except there was no supermarket, or for that fact, a terminal building. there was a hand painted sign with an arrow that said 'Terminal' so we went that way. We walked along the edge of the tarmac for about five city blocks. Walked past some construction and arrive at some steps that had a guy with a uniform at the top. The door was open so we went in. It looked like a large high school portable with a scene of organized chaos. You had the regular airport announcements "Now boarding..." and all, with counters at each of the eight doors. All of which led out to the tarmac and not to a gate. Then you walk about half a city block and the baggage claim was there outside of a building next to the sidewalk. We grabbed our bags and went and flagged down a cab.

Los Angeles

We decided to go a few days early and stay on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Look around Long Beach the day we arrived and then the next day take a tour of Los Angeles. The third day we would eat breakfast and then take a taxi to the ship.
Mollika and Alecia were telling us that they would not stay there because the ship was haunted. But we were brave and did it anyway.

We arrived at the ship in the early afternoon. We were going to explore the ship, but we were hungry and since there was a free shuttle into town, we took it and found somewhere to eat. After dinner we walked around the city. Found a lot of picture taking opportunities.

Long Beach was a beautiful city. The main beach is five miles long. They have a aquarium and a lot of light houses. Nice parks and facilities. There are ship tours of the harbor that you can take, a schooner that you can ride on and a Ferry to Catalina Island.

There are artificial islands with palm trees and fake condo’s on them. They are used for the oil industry in and around that area.

It was interesting being on Long Beach. When I was a ten year old boy, we had visited Long Beach. I had stood there looking out at the Pacific Ocean, for the first time, and not seeing land on the other side of it. Growing up in New Mexico where water is scarce and you can always see to the other side of the lake. To not be able to do that was just an amazing thing. Now here I am forty some odd years later on the exact same beach with the exact same view. It brought back memories.

It was dusk when we got back to the ship, we did some exploring, but it was hard to get good pictures in the dark, so we decided to explore in the morning and went down to the room. We had an interesting room. It had a couch and a TV in the one section of the room, and a bathroom off to the side. Through a doorway was another section with a bed and a dresser. There was another TV in this part and another bathroom. The bathtub gave you a choice of hot saltwater, hot freshwater, cold saltwater and cold freshwater.

The decor is interesting and it is hard to tell what is the original 1936 design or the 1967 additions. The original Queen had no air conditioning, so that was added in 1967. The old original fans are still in the rooms but they do not operate. There are green marble counter tops and fine woodwork throughout the ship. That adds a lot of weight and is opposite of shipbuilding today, with the mindset being to save weight.

Our room had two portholes in each section, a total of four. We were on the water side so we could see the bay and the city on the other side. You could watch ships come and go.

Deb said it was like staying in a museum.

The bed was comfortable and we fell asleep soon. Unfortunately for me my graveyard shift schedule soon got the better of me and I was wide awake by two am. I do this a lot and usually spend my time exploring the ship. Now I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts but not wanting to prove myself wrong while walking through a dark hallway, all alone in the middle of the night, on a haunted ship. I thought better of it so I sat inside and watched TV. Besides, I rationalized, it was a hotel now, maybe they don’t want people walking the halls late at night.

Tour of Los Angeles

The next morning we got up and ate breakfast. We had purchased breakfast buffet tickets prior to the cruise. It was good and had lots of selection, but I would skip the sausage if I had to do it again. The sausage got Deb first. It was so bad that I thought we were going to have to miss the tour. When to tour bus arrived, she was still in the bathroom. The driver didn’t mind waiting a minute and we were soon on our way. I could see that Deb was suffering but couldn’t do anything for her. After an hour drive we arrived at the Los Angeles Coliseum. All Deb cared about at this point was looking for a bathroom, any bathroom. The area around the Coliseum was not a good part of town, but she didn’t care, so we stopped at the first fast food joint that we found.

We then drove to the Hollywood sign, or I should say, an area where you can see the Hollywood sign. It was the Griffith Observatory up in the hills above the city. We didn’t stay long as there was no place to pull into and the bus was double-parked. We ran took our pictures, went the bathroom and then we were off again.

Next stop was the Walk of Fame and the Chinese Theater. I often get confused about the two, but now I now, the theater has the cement impressions of the celebrities and the walk of fame has the stars with the celebrity names on them. In front of the theater was Spiderman, Darth Vader and a storm trouper, cat woman and a pirate. It also had a couple of guys with megaphones predicting the end of the world. It was because the Speticons were coming.

There are more than 2,400 stars on the walk of fame. It is a mile and a half long.
We drove past Rodeo Drive, but didn't stop. The driver said that we would thank him later. Then we went to Beverly Hills to look at the homes of the stars. What was interesting to me is that they were so close together. It looked like a regular neighborhood with extra large houses in it. I didn't take any pictures up there. Would not have remembered who's house was who's when I got the pictures back anyway.

We were driving back out when we passed a house with a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost coming out of the driveway. The man and the woman getting in it had period era clothes on. They made those cars between 1908 and 1926.

Lunch was at Mel’s Diner. A 50’s era diner that was famous for, well, I have no idea what it was famous for, it certainly wasn’t the chili. That was the worst chili I have ever paid for. The diner was build in Oct of 1959, so it was a 50’s diner for all of three months before the 50’s ended. Deb just had a milk shake as she wasn’t doing all that well still. All I can figure is that the driver gets a free lunch if he brings in a busload of hungry tourists. I was hoping to go to Pink’s myself.

The next stop was Venice Beach. The reason they go to Venice Beach is that Baywatch was filmed there. There were street performers on the road that runs parallel to the beach, but once you get past them it was a lot of sand and water. There are some life guard stations spaced every so often along the beach. It looked like the water may have been a little cold because no one was staying in it very long. The one guy from China who had taken several pictures of each star’s home in Beverly Hills was complaining that the water was dirty compared to Long Beach. I saw that the sand was being swirled around with each wave but it wasn’t dirt per say. We walked along the beach our allotted hour and then climbed back in the van for the drive back to the Queen Mary.

Now we had time to explore the ship / hotel. We took a lot of pictures as we walked around. Found the infirmary, now if I was a ghost I would live there. The hair on the back of my neck kinda stood up while Deb and I explored. That’s where they put all of the stow aways. They had a list of all the crewmen that died during her year of service. Several died in their sleep, some heart attacks and such. Three or so did not die well. They were crushed to death in the machinery or other violent means. Maybe that explains the death screams that two girls reported coming from the engine room.

After we got home I did some research on the Queen Mary. She is considered the most haunted place in the United States and one of the most haunted in the world, with 49 deaths over the years, on the ship and hundreds around the ship.

We took the free shuttle back into Long Beach, ate dinner and then went and visited the beach.
Got back and went to bed. I awoke in the middle of the night and noticed a glow on the upper middle part of the door that separated our cabin from the one next door. I got up to look and saw a peephole in the door. I don't know if it was the kind that was suppose to look into our room or for us to look into their room. I thought about taking a look but then realized that, with my luck, I would see a stark naked, 500 pound Bohemian great grandmother with a belly button ring and a skull and crossbones tattoo. I stuck a piece of paper in it instead.
I woke again when our room was suddenly lit up. The perfect shape of two portholes illuminated the far wall. Then one flashed off as the other flashed on, and it repeated several times. I got up and looked out the window. On the far side of the bay was a boat with its spotlights on. Someone was walking back and forth in front of the lights.
The next morning we ate breakfast at the Promenade Cafe again using the buffet tickets that I had purchased. Despite Deb being sick and even the driver of the tour bus complaining about the sausage on the ship, I ate it again. I should not have. It was my turn to be miserable. I took some of Deb's plug me up stuff, that she had purchased the day before, and was OK. I would do the buffet again, but would skip the sausage.
We asked the bell hop to call us a cab and I went up to check on something. When I got back there was a Towncar waiting for us. I think it cost a little more than a cab but we rode in style to the pier.
We had arrived before eleven and waited in line till they opened the doors. Got through security and check in and were told to wait again as they were not letting people on the ship just yet. Worked out well because we were some of the first people on the ship when they started boarding.

Boarding the Pearl

We decided to go to the main dinning room instead of the buffet for lunch. One of the stewards tried to talk us in to going to the buffet while we were standing outside the main dinning room. We just told him we wanted to eat where we were and he left us alone. It was not crowded at all, as I am sure the buffet was jamb packed.
The first thing one usually does, after lunch, on a cruise is go check out the ship. Since this was our fourth time on this ship, we saw no reason. We both commented that we kinda missed that aspect and that maybe we should try out other ships in the future. Even though there was no general announcement, at about two o'clock we went down to the cabin to see if it was ready and to drop off the bag. It was ready and even had our latitudes paperwork and our on board credit paperwork there. We had a $100.00 credit that we could not use for the daily service fee to use up before we left the ship. Since we are usually frugal with our on-board expenses this was actually going to be a challenge for us.
We done the mandatory lifeboat drill and gone up on deck for the sail away party when we heard "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, Summer Palace." I knew that Bravo repeated three times meant fire, but was unsure what Alpha meant. It was soon revealed when the ambulance pulled up and they took someone off the ship on a gurney. They had a short trip, didn't even make it out of port. The ship was delayed a few minutes, but then we were on our way down the channel.

While attending trivia and doing fairly well, we teamed up with a couple from Hilo Hawaii, Randy and Nancy. Dinner that night was fish and lobster medley for Deb and I had a nice roasted chicken. It was good. They had changed their menu’s and I had high hopes for the food during the week. Deb gave me her lobster, it was tough and overcooked. My chicken however was done perfectly. The show that night was a mixture of the different entertainment that we would see that week. There was the comedian, the Pearl production singers and dancer and there was a singing group that NCL had hired away from Los Vegas. They were called Oh What a Night. They did an amazing job.

A funny thing happened when Oh What a Night was getting interviewed by the Cruise Director. He asked where all they had performed and when they mentioned that they had been to Australia among other places, a guy in the third row yelled out, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” to which all four performers yelled back, “Oi, Oi, Oi!”

I leaned over to Deb and asked, “What the heck was that?”

She responded simply, “That’s just what they do.”

“But why?” I asked, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

I wondered how something like that would get started. Maybe two guys in a bar were talking and one of them says, “How about if I said Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! And you respond Oi, Oi, Oi!?”

If the other guy said, “Now why would I do that?” It would have ended the tradition right there and then. Maybe he had just had enough to drink to agree to it.

Or it was a secret password that they used at the entrance to their forts. Something every self respecting Australian would know. If someone came up and tried to get in the guard would say “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!”

If the response was, “What the heck are you going on about?” BLAM! The guard shoots him. Then you either have a dead enemy spy or a dead non-self respecting Australian not up on the latest traditions. Either way they didn’t get into the fort that night.

Alas, I digress.

After the show we headed down to the cabin.

First Sea day.

This time I was able to sleep in till four am. With no threat of ghosts I started my wandering aimlessly about the ship. Cross paths with another man who was doing the same thing. He was real surprised to see me as he thought he had the ship to himself. Breakfast wasn’t even out yet. I remember the time we went cruising with the Quinton’s. They eat like birds, small birds, so I would sneak up to have a nice hardy breakfast before anyone else got up, and then go back to the cabin. When everyone else was up I would go to breakfast again and eat the same amount as them. Since I had only Deb there this time, I didn’t have to do that.
I got back to the cabin around six. I thought that was a reasonable time to get up, after all, I had been up for two hours and we didn’t want to miss anything. Boy was I wrong. I was told in no uncertain terms that anyone disturbing her before seven forty five in the morning would be in grave danger of losing their head. So I walked back up to the buffet which was finally open and grabbed a small snack, while waiting for the clock to progress.
On my way up the elevator that morning I ran into a Butler with a tray full of breakfast food headed up to the Garden Villas. I commented, 'What, they can't get their own breakfast."
He politely said, "You know, they are on vacation and all."
I was on vacation too and nobody was bringing me breakfast, so I commented. "You need to those people, get up, get dressed and get yourselves down to the dinning room, just like everyone else on the ship manages to do."
He was laughing so hard I thought he was going to drop the tray. You know he was thinking it. He could never have said it, but he was thinking it.
After my Queen of the Seas roused herself out of bed at the allotted time, we went down to breakfast at the Summer Palace. It was good but takes longer than the buffet and seems to have the exact same food.
We then went to make our restaurant reservations for the week in an attempt to spend all of our on board credit.

The lady next to me says, “Hey Clark, where you guys thinking or eating?”

Deb whispers, “Who is she and how does she know your name?”

I have to mention that is was Nancy from Trivia. “Oh, she said.”

We reserved Moderno’s for Monday night and La Cucina for Tuesday. We then went about our day. We were late getting to the shuffleboard tournament because trivia went over. Even though we were ten minutes late, nobody else had showed up, so we started playing. While we played four grey whales came up and started swimming next to the ship. It was fun, take the turn, watch the whales, take you turn. The whales were about twenty feet off the boat, so close you could hear them breathing in and out. A heard a lady say they were pilot whales, but I l looked them up after we got home and they were definitely grey whales. The ship was going just a little faster than the whales and we started losing them in the distance. Then the bridge announced that there were whales off the starboard side and suddenly we had 500 bodies walking across our shuffleboard game. We gave up at that point. But I had won and for two days I was the reigning NCL Pearl shuffleboard champion.

The problem with this cruise was not not having nothing to be, but fitting in all the activities in you wanted to do. After the shuffleboard we had to hurry up and eat then run to our Cruise Critic meet and greet. There was a room full of people that you had never met but had communicated with over the internet. More than half of the senior staff was there also. Before things got started the Captain came through the doors and announced, "I'm giving all of you a bridge tour." and then he was gone. We had a good question and answer session with the rest of the staff and then a tell me about yourself session with each other after that.
As soon as that was over we had just enough time to grab a quick lunch then get to the latitudes party for returning NCL cruisers.
Dinner at Maderno’s that night was interesting. I think it’s design is all about overeating. It’s a Brazilian style steakhouse. They had a really nice salad bar and you could be fine just eating that, but then they bring you food on long skewers and you decided which ones you want and which you don’t. The only problem there is that if you have never been there before you don’t know what you like and what you don’t. So you end up trying everything, and by the time they get back with that thing you just loved, you are way too full to eat anymore. They had seven or eight different meats that came around on the skewers. It’s like having eight different main courses. I was done after about four, but kept eating because I had not tried the rest. I was in such pain at the end.

Deb did manage to find a piece of plastic in her soup and mentioned it to the waiter, when we went to leave he deducted her charge from the bill.

I say, “You don’t have to do that.” I was thinking of the on-board credit and now I have $20.00 more to spend.

He says, “It’s no problem.”

I go, “No, I really mean it, you don’t have to do that.” But they did it anyway. So we had to recalculate.
The show was "Oh What a Night." and it was amazing. It is a musical tribute the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The best singing that I have heard on a cruise to date. The theater was packed as a lot of the early show attendees, also took in the late show.

San Fransisco

The city by the bay.

The sun was barley peeking over the horizon when I got up. I had a special reason this time. We were sailing under the Golden Gate bridge. Even though I had done so twice last year, I kept thinking to myself that there is only a limited number of times in my life that I will be able to do this. Camera in hand I headed up to the top deck. My tired half was working on her beauty sleep. There were only a few people around and the bridge was a distance off, so I headed for the library to do a crossword. When I saw the bridge coming up I ran up to the top deck again. The first thing I noticed was that I should have brought a jacket as it was chilly. All the optimum spaces were taken except the one in the back corner, so I planted myself there. Other people came up after me but I was gracious enough to take turns with the pictures. I would get out of their way and then they would move so I could get my next shot.

About then things started to get crazy. One guy had a GPS and would update us when we would pass by a bay or lighthouse. People started grabbing small end tables they use for the drinks while sitting on a deckchair and standing on them. A couple of people started climbing up onto the radar masts. It was bodies everywhere when we went under the Golden Gate Bridge. Then as quickly as they had come, they all started disappearing. I decided to linger as I knew that we were going to park, right after we passed Alcatraz, at pier 27. To my surprise we passed pier 27 and kept going. I had checked the Port Authority schedule before the cruise and I knew we were suppose to dock there. Then we started getting closer and closer to the Bay Bridge and I was pretty sure we weren’t going to fit under that. All I could figure is that someone other than the crew had taken over the navigation of the ship and they were going to use it to take out the Bay Bridge and then run us aground somewhere. The only thing that I could do at that point was to film the whole thing and sell it to one of the networks afterward.

To my surprise and relief, except for the part of getting rich selling the video, we fit under the bridge and docked right afterwards at this big flat area that looked more like a parking lot than a dock. They had pitched a large tent to use as the terminal. I checked the schedule again after I got home and it still shows us docking at Pier 27.

The bad thing about docking there was that we were too far away to walk to the tour bus. Not that it was all that close at Pier 27, but it was a lot closer.

I awoke sleeping beauty and we went to breakfast. We then headed down to the parking lot / dock to see how we could salvage the day. Deb asked for direction. We couldn’t board the trolley there because it didn’t go where we wanted to get to, so all we had to do is walked to the Ferry Building and catch the F line from there. What we weren’t told was it was over a mile walk from there. Along the way we find the earths spaceport. A silver rocked was sitting there looking like it was ready to take off.

After our scenic walk, we got on the F line, which was packed because there were now three cruise ships, to ride into town. We got off around Fisherman’s Warf. It was too early to get on the bus and also too early to take the tour of the sourdough bread factory that Deb wanted to do, so we went over to the Maritime Museum to kill some time. They had added a new wing since the last time we were there and we weren’t done exploring when it was time for the tour so we vowed to come back.

The tour bus was an old English double decker with the roof chopped off. They warned us not to stand up on the top deck or the trees and the overhead electrical lines would get you. Our tour guide was a starving actor that did this while waiting for his big break.

One of our first stops was Union Square, in the middle of the square, eighty three feet up on a pedestal was a statue of a woman on the Dewey Monument. She was supposed to be an artist that was struggling and she would make ends meet by posing for other artists. When this statue was placed in Union Square everyone was interested in who she was and she became a local celebrity overnight. A lot of men wanted to date her, but she said she would rather date and older man than than someone young and immature. A sugar magnate started dating and they later married, that is where the term "Sugar Daddy" comes from.
The San Francisco City Hall was the also part of the tour, the U.S. Capital Building should be that fancy. It has solid gold trim on the dome of the building, left over from the gold rush days. There was a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on top set there by the city, to eat the pigeons that make a mess of the dome. Tony Bennet the singer of the song, "I left my heart in San Francisco." was allowed to paint a heart in union square. They even gave him some of the paint from the Golden Gate Bridge.

After our tour around the city we went back to the Maritime Museum. The new section told of all of the ships that had been left in the city. When the gold rush came, people would hire ships to get them to San Francisco. The life of a sailor was hard and the promise of gold was strong. When the ships would dock, all of the sailors would jump ship and go to the gold fields, leaving the ships without a crew. They would be abandoned. After the earthquake and fire and in 1906 they plowed a large section of a hill and filled in part of the bay.That is why they have a area of town named something hill that is flat and another area named south beach that is nowhere near the beach.They also covered up all of those abandoned ships. So any building built downtown has to have an archeologist on the scene.

Deb wanted to go on a cable car, so we got in line and paid our fair. The cable car is the only moving national monument. There is a guy on the front that grabs the cable and a car on the back that runs the brakes. The use wood brakes and you can smell it when they heat up. Off we went to I didn't know where. I asked a couple of guys if it went all the way to Union Square as we could pick up the tour bus at that point and they both assured me that it did. It didn't look like it did looking at the map though. I know understand where the inspiration for the roller coaster comes from. Up hill using the cable, down hills using the brake. The brakeman wasn't always Johnny of the Spot, either. We were going down some of those hills a little faster than I thought was healthy. In the end we made it to Union Square as promised and took the Hop on Hop off bus back to waters edge, there we got a taxi back to the ship.

We ate that night at La Cucina. I thought it was good food. I like Olive Garden better though. The show was Dr Scot Lewis, a hypnotist. It was the first time a saw a hypnotist at work. I Have to commend NCL for bringing non traditional entertainment venues on-board. The people looked some what shocked when the Dr woke them up on stage and didn't seem to know that they were playing air guitars and dancing like KISS and other awkward things. It was good for a laugh, but I felt sorry for them because the rest of the cruise, people would be asking them questions. We, of course all laughed at them.

Second Sea Day

I slept in till 8 am. Was mad at myself for wasting the day, but Deb was really happy with me. I guess I sometimes let the door slam during my middle of the night wanderings and it wakes her up. Life is a tradeoff. Did a buffet breakfast as it was fast and then started the day.
It was another one of those days that you did not quite have enough time to do all the things that were on the schedule. After morning trivia we rushed up to the shuffleboard tournament where I lost my title of NCL Pearl shuffleboard champion to my wife. We were the only two playing until we finished our game, then four other passengers arrived twenty minutes late and demanded to play. By this time we had already been awarded our prizes. Actually it was some signatures on a piece of paper that you can turn in at the end of the week for some cheap plastic things or T-shirts.
Again the whales were out. We could see them way off in the distance sticking their tails in the air and making big splashes. I have never seen or even heard of this behavior, but they seem to be enjoying it because they did it over and over again.
Next was a cooking demonstration. That was the only information we had about it. Deb was all excited about it. We get to the atrium to watch and it was mobbed. When they start making sushi, I decided to give up my spot by the railing to someone who might actually care. Deb stuck it out a little bit longer, but gave up too, as they didn't seem to be using the freshest ingredients and it was starting to stink up the whole area. We went and had an early lunch instead.
Today is also the day that we got the promised bridge tour. I thought it would be, "Look here is our really nice bridge but now you have to leave." type thing. But instead they took almost two hours to show us all of their really cool gadgets and answer all of our questions. The ships joystick, the thing that drives this 90,000 lb behemoth was the size of a toothpick with a little cork on it. They have the ability, when they can't drop anchor, to keep the ship in one exact spot using the computer. It compensates for the wind, the tide and the current.
Someone asked about sailing safe distances from the land, and the guy looked mildly offended, "We're not like those other guys."
It was interesting seeing the captains cabin and office and going behind a lot of closed doors that stated 'No Admittance!'

The next thing on the agenda was movie trivia. Our friends from Hawaii save us a spot, but it was to no avail. Mostly we sat there dumbfounded. Just not up on all the movies. We got a few but not a lot.
The show was by the Pearl production team. Someone said that they had just gotten on the ship at Miami before the start of the Panama Canal portion of the trip, and that they were getting better all the time.
Then we went up to see the 'Not so Newlywed Game.' I don't know why I go to these. Deb volunteered us on another ship to do this and I was mortified. I guess I go to see the other people squirm like I did. They handle it better than I did though.
When the asked the question of "Where is the strangest place that you made woopie?" The real newlyweds were there with her father and she's going "Plug yours ears Dad!"
The real surprise of the night was the man that had been married sixty years answered the same question by saying "Standing up in a canoe."
His wife looked real surprised and said, "He didn't do that with me!"
The other male contestants gave him a standing ovation.

Astoria Oregon

It was raining in Astoria and the wind was starting to kick up. Didn't let that stop us though, we have never been the kind to stay on the ship in port. After breakfast we walked out trying to find the Enterprise van that was going to take us to the office to pick up our car. Did you know they don't have an Enterprise sign on the Enterprise van. I went up and asked a guy in a van if he had seen the Enterprise van , thinking that it would have been well marked, and he said he had not. I started walking away when the guy in the van next to him, without any markings on it, came out and asked if we had said Enterprise. He then drove us to get the car. It was nice having a car since it was a time to get out of the rain while we traveled around. We drove out to Fort Stevens. They have a small, but very interesting visitors center there.We walked through it. They have a model of the guns that were used at the fort to protect the mouth of the Columbia. For a quarter you can make it raise up.

We then went out to see the very soggy fort. It had been attacked by a Japanese submarine during the war, but the sub only did minor damage. The commander of the fort refused to let his men fire back because it would give their position away and because they were out of range anyway. The guns, even though they were large caliber, could not be raised up high enough to hit the sub. It seemed a little short sided by the original builders to have guns that would not cover the whole mouth of the river.

We then went over to see the shipwreck. I have visited the shipwreck before. Another one of those times when I woke up too early and went exploring while Deb, and that time Mollika also, slept. When I visited it the tide was way out and I was able to get right up to it.This time the seas were angry and the tide was high so there was no getting any closer

I unlocked the car for Deb to get out of the rain and then went to the bathroom. They must have had a huge storm because the bathroom was up on a hill and it was surrounded by sand. They had a front loader digging out the sand and taking it back to the beach.
When I got out of the restroom, Deb was standing there dripping wet. Did you know that the fancy new cars lock themselves after a few seconds if you forget to. She was reaching for the handle and the lock went 'click'. You think she would have been really happy to see me instead of frustrated. I thought about asking "Didn't your mama teach you to get in out of the rain?" but it just wasn't a moment.
. Around the corner was an overlook to the Pacific side of the fort area, we went to that and the waves were crashing, we then went a few hundreds yards, over to the river side and it was fairly calm. It was a huge contrast.
Then then headed to town to the Maritime Museum. OK, I like ships, if a city has a Maritime Museum, I'm there. I do have to add that the one in Astoria is one of the better ones anywhere.
After the Museum, we went to lunch. Deb was craving clam chowder, so we are asking all the locals where the best clam chowder is. They recommended Jennifer's Kitchen. I think that was the name anyway. Good food, good prices, right on the main street in town, and it had a river view. Sounded ideal, and it was. I now had a happy smiling wife, even though she was still a little wet.

Dinner was in the main dinning room. I was a little disappointed that they were still serving Alaskan Meatloaf. I had had it on another cruise and it was the worst meal I have ever eaten at sea. I didn't have that but I did have the Eggplant Parmesan and it was nummy.
The show was Second City. I guess I have just seen that show one too many times. Half the skits were the same as the other ships I have been on and the other half were not funny. They sang some of the skits, something that I had not seen before. They were not bad singers, but you couldn't understand them.

Victoria

What a beautiful city.
I never get tired of visiting it. We had been there three times before.This time we decided to go to the Royal British Columbia Museum. It was amazing. It had the history from the earliest Indians, OK that's the American word, they call them First Nations, to the nearly the present day. They covered shipping, merchants, coal mining, fur traders and the like. It was very interesting. My only complaint is that you really can't see all of the museum without having to backtrack several times. Every thing has it's own display, but you might have to go through another display to get there and then backtrack to get back. I found it frustrating.
We have always gone past the Empress Hotel and the bus driver said that it was OK to go into it. So this time we did. It looked like a hotel inside. Maybe just a little bit fancier. I don't know what I was expecting.

We then headed over to Miniature World. It was in a building next to the Empress and it had what seems like hundreds of dioramas about history and castle and fairy tales, even the circus was covered. A definite yes for anyone going to Victoria.
Then we headed up the hill to the Maritime Museum. I never grow tired of that place. It also is supposedly haunted, but with only one ghost. After the Queen Mary, that seemed so insignificant.

We played trivia that night, it was hits of the 50s and 60s. Our regular partners were not there so we teamed up with two Brazilians, two Australians and us. Nobody was saying 'Oi, Oi, Oi' that night, because we lost badly. Just over fifty percent. We blamed the language and cultural problems for the bad showing. Or for that fact anything else we could come up with. I just am not that good at naming artists.

Nanaimo

What a friendly city.
We took our time getting off the ship this time. We were in a hurry in Victoria but found that all of the stores and museums and shops didn't even open until 10. So getting off and rushing into town at 9 did us no good.
They had a free tour bus around town to shuttle the cruise passengers to the businesses and tourist spots. The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) came out to take pictures with. The Mayor was there checking to make sure that the lines for the bus weren't too long. He didn't say that he was the Mayor, but he had the 'Look at me I'm the Mayor.' fancy gold chain around his neck. It's another thing that we don't do in the States.

In town we went to the Bastion. We had been there before but it had been updated, We skipped the museum this time as we had been there twice also. We watched them fire the canons at noon. For $40.00 Canadian, you can fire the guns. Someone had already reserved that honor this time though. We did think about it. We wandered around and found the old court building. It was neat looking, then we hiked down the sea walk and found a nice little park, a fishing pier and a place to watch the float planes take off and land.

When we got back to the ship, we had time to play the 'Indoor Bowl' as they call it. It was actually Bocci, An Italian lawn bowling game. You throw a white ball and the the teams take turns trying to get their black or red balls as close to it as possible and you score point depending on how close you get. They did women against the men. The women surged ahead 7 to nothing before then men were able to start scoring points. We were suppose to play to 21 until we started taking to long, then that was amended to 15 and then it was amended again to 13. It was tied 12 to 12. We had the closest ball with one more guy to play.
I said, "Drop the ball and we win the game." He looked hesitant, I said it again. "Drop the ball and we win the game." He didn't look like he was getting the concept, so I said it again, "Drop the ball and we win the game."
He didn't drop the ball, instead he threw it and it knocked our other ball out of play and the women won the game. What a dummy.
Or friends from Hawaii came down and were waiting for our game to get over because directly afterward was a golf putting tournament. We hadn't planned on doing this but we both thought, "Why not."
You had three chances to get the ball in the hole or you were disqualified. Randy missed, but his wife Nancy got one it and so did I. This guy named Norm came up and put three of three in. I thought, 'Well that was fun.' and was about ready to leave, when round two started. This time you had to shoot under a chair. Not even Norm was able to do this one.
The next round was rapid fire, you hit as many balls as you could for three minutes. When Nancy got up there Randy got on the ground as was setting up the balls for her so she could shoot fast. Everyone else started doing it the way also, and Deb helped me. I got two more in. Norm only got one but was still in the lead 4-3.
The last round was shoot five balls from ten feet further away. I was able to get two more in and Norm only got one so we tied. Nobody was more surprised than me, except for, maybe Norm.
The really funny thing is, I don't golf.
They had an awesome farewell show that featured Oh What a Night, the Comedian, the Pearl Production Staff and then all of the Officers, Cabin Stewards, Waiters and all the rest came on stage and thanked us for traveling NCL, then they shot Mylar streamers out from the balcony level. They managed to go everywhere. When we got back to the stateroom I went to empty my shirt pocket and found three of the streamers in there. Deb found some, well, I won't tell you where Deb found some, but there were four down there. They were also all over the ship before the end of the night. Poor guys that had to clean those up.

Vancouver

It's always sad when a cruise comes to an end, but such is always the case. We spent the night parked in the middle of the inside passage just outside of Vancouver, and we just sat there all night. The moon was full during the night and gorgeous. In the morning I got up again, way before the allotted hour and sat in the library. I had gotten videos of us going under the Bay Bride and the Golden Gate. I wanted to complete the collection and get one of us going under Lions Gate Bridge.

I did a crossword puzzle until I noticed that he ship was starting to move and then went up on deck. There were several people from Vancouver on deck waiting to get the first glimpse of home. They were concerned also because they knew it was high tide and wondered if the ship was going to fit. Not a problem.
We came in and docked at Canada Place.

We were in no hurry to get off the ship and had a nice and slow breakfast. Customs were their usual slow selves as is typical for Vancouver. When we got through the line we decided to take a cab instead of lugging our suitcases onto the sky train. Best $11.00 I ever spent. We checked our bags and then went back to the waterfront and took a water bus over to North Vancouver Lonsdale Quay. Looked around there for a while then headed over to Vancouver.

Vancouver had just had a marathon. Which was interesting because I have never in my life seen so many healthy looking people limping around town. The metals the people had didn't say Vancouver Marathon on them but Boston Marathon. I guess it was a qualifier for the Boston Marathon later on.
We ate lunch at fast food places in a food court and then made our way back to the train station for the ride home.