May 19, 2012

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for Travel

Cruise to Alaska–Day One (Day at Sea)

May 15, 2012 By 2 Comments
Cruise to Alaska Day at Sea 300x142 Cruise to Alaska Day One (Day at Sea)

Cruise to Alaska: Day at Sea

As I am writing this, I am sitting in the Writing Room of the Sapphire Princess cruise ship looking out at the Pacific Ocean through the window.  The day started out quite cloudy, but has now become sunny with the clouds just hovering on the periphery of the sky.

The cruise to Alaska was originally meant to help celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, however, due to health reasons, they were not able to come.  So that leaves me to find a new purpose for this unusual and unexpected vacation with my husband and two daughters, my brother, and my sister and her husband and two children, a girl and boy.

I also want to keep a record of this journey to tell my parents when we return, since they will have to live it vicariously through our memories, pictures, and tales.

Today is Monday, and we have an entire day at sea, as the ship travels from Seattle, Washington to our first stop in Ketchikan, Alaska.  We spent one day in Seattle as we flew in from Cleveland, Ohio on Saturday, and had about 24 hours to drink in some sights there.

I really enjoyed the brief time we had in Seattle.  I was born there, but do not remember it very well, as I left there at age 6 months, and have only been back once when I was twelve.  This time, as an adult, I could appreciate the clean and active downtown, the wonderful weather, and the amazing Pike Place Market, including the Pike Place Fish Market featured in the book Fish! which I read several years ago.  Very colorful, and entertaining, this city is one that I would like to spend some more time in on a future trip.

There is a peace inherent with the movement of the ship, and the waves emanating from the ship as it passes cleanly through the water.  The Sapphire Princess is immensely large, and has numerous decks, activities, restaurants, and clubs throughout the ship to entertain just about every kind of passenger.  There are four pools, and an awesome nightclub up on deck 18 that allows you the view of the entire ship from the aft (back) end.  However, today I want to just do nothing, something that I never do.  I am always working, trying to build my business, work out the financial details of running a retail gallery in trying economic times, and working to stay on schedule with our family schedule, which includes school, college, and work.

This is our last family trip before my older daughter goes to college for the first time, which will change the dynamic of our family unit, so it is a uniquely poignant time for us.  On top of that, my husband and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary during this week, and we have been through a lot in 20 years, but we can also see a future before us that will include some us time with grown children.  We have not taken a week off and actually gone on a trip away that did not include a family event since my older daughter, who is now 18, was 3, so you can imagine how much this week in time stands out for us.

Today we will use this time to just relax, cut off from the internet and cell phone service for one 24 hour period of our life, a rare occurrence these days, and just allow the movement of the ship, the sun, and the sea to seep under our skin, and just be.

Incoming search terms:

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , , , ,

World Cruise | Luxury Cruise Vacation

January 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

world cruise World Cruise | Luxury Cruise Vacation

Travel the World on a World Cruise

It was only recently that I learned about World Cruises. I own a small gallery in Cleveland, Ohio and had a new customer in my shop. I always try to get to know the customers and ended up in a conversation with this customer about a World Cruise that she and her husband had just come back from. They had been on their cruise for six months, and had visited the coastline cities and towns of the center of the globe. They had chosen this way of traveling because they could stay on the cruise ship if they wanted to just relax that day, and could tour the various locations if they were feeling more energetic.

We had a very interesting conversation about some of the locations she had seen along the African and Asian coastline. She had come in to talk to me about some beads that she had collected on her travels and if they could be made into a necklace or piece of jewelry.

I really enjoyed learning about her World Cruise. I had been on week long cruises before but didn’t know that cruises could last for more than a few weeks. The longest cruise that I was aware of was a 3 week cruise to Alaska.

Is a World Cruise for You?

Since World Cruises were a new concept for me, I started doing some research on exactly what kind of World Cruises were available.  And what I found out was truly enlightening.

The term World Cruise is really a misnomer, but what it really means is a cruise of a few weeks to several months, that is meant to travel a specific path.  Some of the cruises travel around a continent while others are more like the one my customer was on, traveling from coastline to coastline for several months.

I know that I do not have the time to travel on a World Cruise right now, but what a terrific way to spend my retirement.  Getting to travel the world and see places that I might never get to any other way, yet having a home base to come back to.  Truly a wonderful travel experience.

Choosing a World Cruise

If you do a search on the internet, you will find that there are several companies offering World Cruises.  Some of the companies have educational aspects while others are purely luxury travel.  When you are looking to choose a cruise for your own travel, there are several factors to keep in mind:

  • Where do you want to go?
  • How long do you want to be traveling?
  • What is your budget? (Most companies offer significant savings if you book a year to several months ahead)
  • Are you traveling with a partner? (Many world cruises have two for one pricing)
  • What facilities do you want to have onboard the cruise ship itself?
  • How many stops do you want to have?
  • What kind of climate do you prefer to travel in?

World Cruises Can Go Places That Normal Cruises Can’t

Because of the duration of most World Cruises, you as a traveler can experience travel locations that most people cannot.  Some of the exciting locations that World Cruises go to are South America, Antarctica, Africa, India and the Pacific Rim, as well as West Africa, the Mediterranean and the Holy Lands, the Canary Islands, Turkey, and Antarctica.

You have the time to really explore and interact with the cultures and peoples of the world, and spend time absorbing the history of each location.

Incoming search terms:

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , ,

Cruise to Alaska: Day Two (Ketchikan)

December 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
cruise to alaska ketchikan1 300x142 Cruise to Alaska: Day Two (Ketchikan)

Downtown Ketchikan

As I write this article, I am sitting on Deck 14 of the Sapphire Princess cruise ship after having spent most of the day in Ketchikan, Alaska.  This was our first stop in Alaska on this trip, and it was definitely a great place to start out with.  If you have been following my narrative of this trip to Alaska, you know that I am here with my extended family, and each of us spent our day differently here.

My husband, my younger daughter, and I woke up at about 8 am, and had breakfast on the ship.  Then the three of us disembarked, and walked into the downtown area of Ketchikan.  Call me uniformed, but until today, I did not realize that Ketchikan, and most of the areas that we are visiting on this cruise are islands.  The year round population of Ketchikan is between 11,000 to 13,000 people.  Ketchikan is the fourth largest city in Alaska.

The three of us walked off the cruise ship, and into the center of the small downtown area.  It took about 10 minutes to reach downtown which is primarily filled with shops for tourists, and restaurants.  There are also a few tourist shows including a Lumberjack show.  Many of the shops are fine jewelry shops, because Alaska is one of the best places in the United States to buy diamond jewelry and other gemstones.  However, we were not interested in that so we skipped most of those shops, and looked for galleries and native art shops.

We happened upon a small but very interesting shop called the Alaska Inner Passage Trading Company run by Raoul and Joanne Grospe.  We ended up spending about 30 minutes talking to them about their wares, and Ketchikan.  They are extremely friendly, and we learned quite a bit about the weather, and the various native stone carvings.  There were several very interesting carved stone pieces, including serpentine, Alaskan glacier jade, and Alaskan marble.  Although we wanted to buy a much larger piece, we ended up buying a small serpentine bear for $35.  There were lovely totem poles, hand carved wooden wall hangings, and many stone figures.  If you get a chance, you should definitely visit the Grospe’s shop.

There are many beautiful souvenirs that you can purchase in Ketchikan.  We saw some exquisite hand sewn quilts, original art, and of course, lots of fine jewelry.  If you are in the market for these things, Ketchikan is a good place to find them.  We also learned that you can send the items back to yourself using the United States Post Office flat rate boxes, because Alaska is in the U.S., it is considered domestic purchases, so you don’t have to worry about customs.

During the time that we were exploring the downtown, my older daughter was on a different excursion with my brother.  They went zip lining.  If you don’t know about zip lining, it is one of the hottest activities for travel vacations with a little zip (pun intended).  Essentially, you suspend yourself from a rope strung across two points, and ride a pulley from one point to another.  In addition to the zip line, the excursion included other similar activities, crossing a wood plank and rope bridge, and walking across a suspended log.

At the same time, my sister and her family took a ride on a crab boat, and watched them bring in Alaskan king crabs from the water.  They also saw a small octopus.  Afterwards, the four of them watched the lumberjack show in downtown Ketchikan.

The highlight of the day for me was standing at the bow of the Sapphire Princess when it took off from the dock from Ketchikan, and feeling the wind in my hair, watching the pontoon planes, and the sailboats and Coast Guard boats in the water as we pulled away.  The weather was gorgeous today, about 75 degrees, and the sun was shining the entire day.  We were plenty warm, walking around in short sleeves and jeans, and were actually warm.

I spent one hour this afternoon in Ketchikan in a small coffee shop/fishing charter office (who knew that combination existed?) called the Ketchikan Charter Boats, Inc. where I could use the internet for a relatively inexpensive fee, and got a very good mocha.  From the shop, I could watch the water, the people, and check in for messages.

Alaska trivia:  Alaska is 14 times the size of the state of Ohio.

Incoming search terms:

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,

Cruise to Alaska, Day Three (A.M.): Tracy Arm Fjord

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
cruise alaska tracy arm fjord 300x142 Cruise to Alaska, Day Three (A.M.): Tracy Arm Fjord

Tracy Arm Fjord, Alaska

This morning our cruise ship, the Sapphire Princess, arrived at Tracy Arm Fjord, a narrow waterway in the Alaskan Inner Passage and spent four hours cruising through to show us the frozen glaciers, and small bits of glacier ice that float in the water.

I am not going to bother to give you the geologist’s background on the Alaskan glaciers, their history, and projected future.  You can look all of that up yourselves in some of the fabulous books that I have listed at the end of this article.

Instead, I will tell you as best as I can what it felt like to be in the midst of such natural power and majesty.  With the rapid pace that most of the Unites States has developed, even in the last ten years, areas in my hometown that used to be woods, and clear land have become homes, shops, and roads.  There are very few untouched natural areas in the country, and most of those are areas that are protected by the local, state or federal government through the various park systems.

Alaska is the largest American state by far in land, and has the most land in its natural state of any of the 50 U.S. states.  Much of that is due to the icy climes in Alaska, and the fact that most people do not want to live in the inhospitable parts of the state.

However, that also means that there is a lot of untouched, natural areas that are simply pristine, and wildly natural.  The small glimpse of the hills, rivers, ice, and glaciers in the fjord drove home the sheer majesty of the Alaskan wilderness.

Even in an immense ship like the Sapphire Princess, the peaks that we cruised through in the Tracy Arms Fjord dwarfed the ship.  Many of the passengers woke early to go out on deck and watch as the ship slowly traversed the waters.  The temperature was quite cold, and we needed to wear winter gear to stay outside.  Just the day before, we had been walking around Ketchikan in 70 degree weather.

Some of my favorite views were the way the sides of the hills were cut, the vegetation on the rock, and the waterfalls coming down the sides of the hills.  The glaciers were actually blue, not white like the snow and ice we are used to in Ohio, and they were massive in size.

Incoming search terms:

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,