I intend to blog about our time in Edmonton (nearly six weeks), our road trip to Vancouver and back, and most especially our cruise to Alaska. However, having been absent from Lethbridge so long, I have had to throw myself back into my work and household responsibilities and suspect it is unlikely I will be able to blog the trip(s) in a timely fashion. (I couldn't blog as we went because I was busy living it, but also because we don't have Internet access where we were staying in Edmonton because our usual on-the-road option of using Telus dial-up service did not seem to be working – their Help Desk told us the recent switch to 10 digit local numbers had crashed the software, though that seems a bit hard to credit. Access during the Alaskan cruise was theoretically possible, but prohibitively expensive.)
Consequently, rather than have the trip entries sprawl across the next few months, I thought it best to back date them to August where they would all be in correct chronological placement, even through written after the fact. I recognize that this somewhat goes against blogging etiquette/tradition, but seems appropriate in this one instance. Therefore, this is just kind of a place holder to direct you to check out "August" from time to time, to see if there have been additional trip posts.
Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The Alaskan Cruise
We boarded the ship at Vancouver's Cruise Terminal, an attractive building and an efficient, polite operation. The longshoreman were exceptionally helpful and waved away tips -- just part of the job, sir! I was impressed.
Mary had booked us a great cabin, smack in the middle of the bow, directly under the observation deck and one deck above the bridge. We had,therefore, the same view as the Captain and the ship's webcam. Pretty cool!
Above: Looking down from the observation deck,
you can just see Mary and the girls out on our balcony.
Below: Mary and Kasia on our balcony, as seen from the dock
(you have to squint to see them, but they're there!)
We were talking the Norwegian Sun on this cruise, partly because of availability, pricing, and so on, but the NCL is often our first choice because of their excellent children's program. Unlike some lines that don't even have dedicated space for their kids club (they just use whatever conference space happens to be free that morning), the NCL have great kid spaces, and often really great supervisors.
A highlight for the kids each night is returning to the room to find the steward has left a towel animal. Here's the towel dog from our first night, leading the pack of my kids' stuffies.
Mary had booked us a great cabin, smack in the middle of the bow, directly under the observation deck and one deck above the bridge. We had,therefore, the same view as the Captain and the ship's webcam. Pretty cool!
Above: Looking down from the observation deck,
you can just see Mary and the girls out on our balcony.
Below: Mary and Kasia on our balcony, as seen from the dock
(you have to squint to see them, but they're there!)
We were talking the Norwegian Sun on this cruise, partly because of availability, pricing, and so on, but the NCL is often our first choice because of their excellent children's program. Unlike some lines that don't even have dedicated space for their kids club (they just use whatever conference space happens to be free that morning), the NCL have great kid spaces, and often really great supervisors.
A highlight for the kids each night is returning to the room to find the steward has left a towel animal. Here's the towel dog from our first night, leading the pack of my kids' stuffies.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Vancouver Aquarium
I took Kasia to the Vancouver Aquarium to see the new baby beluga whale. Well, actually I was hoping to show her the whole aquarium, as we had with Tigana at this age, but somebody must have prepped her that the big thing at the aquarium was the new baby whale, so that's what she wanted to see, and she dragged me through the other exhibits at breakneck speed to get to the baby beluga. We had to stand in line for about 25 minutes, which wasn't too bad from my point of view though pretty much at Kasia's limit. When we finally got in, we received an orientation that I found interesting, and at which Kasia put up her hand and asked "What's the baby's name?" (They hadn't named her yet.) The orientation warned us that the baby was spending a lot of her time in an adjacent pool because the mother and grandmother whales were trying to teach the baby that the neighbouring pool was safe, even though there was only one entrance. So we went through to the viewing room, and sure enough, the whales were barely visible swimming in and out of the neighbouring pool. But with 30 seconds on our turn to go, they finally swam directly in front of our window, and to my surprise, this was sufficient to satisfy Kasia. Who immediately bought mommy and baby beluga whale stuffies, which the aquarium staff had conveniently set up in a large display near the whale exhibit exit. Kasia then headed straight out the door -- apparently, having seen the whales, we were done!
I did manage to see and snap a couple of shots of a dolphin rehearsal on our way out.
And an okay picture of a jellyfish.
Vancouver
We spent a couple of days in Vancouver to visit family, and enjoy the sights. We drove out to Horseshoe Bay to pick up nephew from Ferry, and the kids found a whale in the playground/park next to the dock.
The whale spouts when you trigger a button.
And we spent a pleasant afternoon in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; I'm pleased with this photo of Lillies I took with my little digital camera:
Kasia putting one foot on the grass...next to the don't walk on the grass sign
And we spent some time in Steveston.
I bought some Chinese DVDs in Night Market, along with tons of food from various stalls. Entertaining way to spend an evening, but we left before the crowds got too scary.
The whale spouts when you trigger a button.
And we spent a pleasant afternoon in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; I'm pleased with this photo of Lillies I took with my little digital camera:
Kasia putting one foot on the grass...next to the don't walk on the grass sign
And we spent some time in Steveston.
I bought some Chinese DVDs in Night Market, along with tons of food from various stalls. Entertaining way to spend an evening, but we left before the crowds got too scary.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Hawaii Aftermath
The wind was over 100K Friday, the temperature cold enough to freeze even the hardiest Canadian, so the combination was not pleasant. Indeed, Kasia flatly refused to go out into the already dark afternoon following Ballet class, even though we had no alternative to walking across the windswept parking lot to the car if we were to get home. But in the end, cries of "I'm not going out there" could only be overcome by my physically picking her up and carrying her to the car. Which turned out to be damned difficult in the face of gusts up to 120K, which, with her added weight and a thick layer of ice on the ground, stopped me cold in my tracks. But we eventually made it across the cold dark vast expanse of the otherwise empty university parking lot (her ballet class is Friday afternoon, so all the university students and faculty were long gone) and I got her buckled into her car seat. As I started the freezing cold car and drove out of the lot, I once again heard a little voice from the back seat saying, "Dad, I want to go back to Hawaii!"
She's not the only one.
The weather in Lethbridge was, thankfully, relatively mild over Christmas, so our return from Hawaii was not as traumatic as it might have been...but I still found myself in a state of denial. For example, I continued wearing my aloha shirts until mid-January, when the weather turned too brutal to ignore. And I have been watching for academic positions available in Hawaii.
Mary and I have seriously discussed the possibilities of moving permanently to Hawaii, calculating how much of a pay cut we were prepared to accept to move there. It would mean giving up the house for an apartment-sized condo, but then, who stays indoors in Hawaii?
And I'm going round the house, figuring out what we would keep, and what wouldn't be worth the airfreight to move if we moved. Even now, as I stroll through Winners or other stores, before buying this or that unnecessary possession, I think, "would this be something we'd take with us to Hawaii," and if the answer is no, I find it easy to resist the impulse to buy. I'm even starting to buy paperbacks rather than hardcovers.
And there isn't a day that goes by without Tigana or Kasia asking why we don't go back -- in Kasia's case, why we can't go now. "Why do live somewhere where it isn't summer all the time?" is a very hard question to answer. Why do live here, other than inertia? (Well, that and the fact that we're not Americans.)
And Mary has caught the cruise bug pretty bad, already booking us on two new cruises.
We decided to do the Alaska cruise to see the glaciers this coming August because it's pretty obvious that if we wait a couple of more years until the kids are older, there won't be any glaciers left to see. Environment Canada noted that the impact of global warming on the North this summer was equal to what they had initially projected for the next thirty years. Another study reported on Quirks and Quarks mentioned that an island in the far north whose usual summer averages hovered around 5c above, this year hit over 20c above for over a week -- melting the permafrost down 1 and a half meters, rather than the usual 15 cms…Without the permafrost to stabilize the soil, any landform with the least slop allowed the ground to flow down into the central valley, blocking the river, and creating a new central lake. In one summer, the island completely reshaped itself and its local ecology. Knowing something about cliff effects, I reasoned that this process was only going to accelerate, and it was now or never for the full-impact Alaskan cruise.
Coincidently, Mary was teaching an extra grad course this term, earning the exact amount extra to cover the cost of the cruise. (She paid for the Hawaii cruise by writing a test bank for a new textbook in her field -- again the amounts matched almost exactly.) This helped to cut down on her guilt for booking two cruises within a year of each other; though I pointed out that when she moved to Lethbridge to marry me, I had promised her a holiday somewhere warm once a year to compensate, and she has never been able to collect on that promise until now, so is owed 9 more cruises just to catch up with the backlog.
So, poking around the cruise sites, she found a Disney cruise through the Caribbean next November that coincides with Mary's study leave and more importantly, Kasia's 5th birthday. (Tigana got Disneyland for her 5th, and so the Disney cruise for Kasia's only seems fair.) So now Mary is casting around for some project to pay for it…though I still argue it is not necessary, given that she went almost 10 years without a break.
So, Mary spends almost all her spare time these days on the Internet reading reviews and blogs and advice columns on the cruises we've signed up for. The level of detail you can obtain on-line is mind-boggling. For example, she found out the suite we had booked on the Disney cruise was right under the dance floor and the last few couples to take that suite found it noisy… so Mary was able to switch to a suite at the other end of the ship -- which the people who stayed in that cabin had said that they could hear the hum of the engines, but that it hadn't bothered them at all, and that they had noticed the motion of the sea much less. It is almost too much detail… in some cases, the reviews mention specific names of waiters or stewards, tell you what menu items to steer away from, and debate which deck chairs are the best.
But we do love cruises…We like that your hotel moves, so you don't have to change hotels to change locales, and we love the kids' club. Most hotels don't have built-in day care, and even when they do, it's well, not exactly Disneyland. In contrast, the reviews of the Disney Cruise often talk about how the kids' club is so good (staff of 60, dedicated facilities) that kids refuse to go back to be with their boring parents. After four years of never being able to leave Kasia alone with a sitter (because of her RAS), we could really use some time to ourselves. Good food, reading, maybe some writing, life is good on board! And Mary has planned so much princess stuff (including all of us getting dressed up in the appropriate Disney themes) that Kasia is going to have the best birthday ever.
And, we have more "Tigana learns about…" projects in mind for Alaska and Florida (see http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/tigana/potential.htm), so it all should be good. Except for the having to come back to Lethbridge part.
As I'm writing this, Environment Canada has issued a blizzard warning for Lethbridge, with high winds, blowing snow, and temperatures of 40 below (F and C are the same at 40 below). Looking out the window I have trouble seeing all the way across the street through the snow and deepening gloom, even though it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. It's not just my four year old who wants to go back to Hawaii, it's my aging inner child too.
She's not the only one.
The weather in Lethbridge was, thankfully, relatively mild over Christmas, so our return from Hawaii was not as traumatic as it might have been...but I still found myself in a state of denial. For example, I continued wearing my aloha shirts until mid-January, when the weather turned too brutal to ignore. And I have been watching for academic positions available in Hawaii.
Mary and I have seriously discussed the possibilities of moving permanently to Hawaii, calculating how much of a pay cut we were prepared to accept to move there. It would mean giving up the house for an apartment-sized condo, but then, who stays indoors in Hawaii?
And I'm going round the house, figuring out what we would keep, and what wouldn't be worth the airfreight to move if we moved. Even now, as I stroll through Winners or other stores, before buying this or that unnecessary possession, I think, "would this be something we'd take with us to Hawaii," and if the answer is no, I find it easy to resist the impulse to buy. I'm even starting to buy paperbacks rather than hardcovers.
And there isn't a day that goes by without Tigana or Kasia asking why we don't go back -- in Kasia's case, why we can't go now. "Why do live somewhere where it isn't summer all the time?" is a very hard question to answer. Why do live here, other than inertia? (Well, that and the fact that we're not Americans.)
And Mary has caught the cruise bug pretty bad, already booking us on two new cruises.
We decided to do the Alaska cruise to see the glaciers this coming August because it's pretty obvious that if we wait a couple of more years until the kids are older, there won't be any glaciers left to see. Environment Canada noted that the impact of global warming on the North this summer was equal to what they had initially projected for the next thirty years. Another study reported on Quirks and Quarks mentioned that an island in the far north whose usual summer averages hovered around 5c above, this year hit over 20c above for over a week -- melting the permafrost down 1 and a half meters, rather than the usual 15 cms…Without the permafrost to stabilize the soil, any landform with the least slop allowed the ground to flow down into the central valley, blocking the river, and creating a new central lake. In one summer, the island completely reshaped itself and its local ecology. Knowing something about cliff effects, I reasoned that this process was only going to accelerate, and it was now or never for the full-impact Alaskan cruise.
Coincidently, Mary was teaching an extra grad course this term, earning the exact amount extra to cover the cost of the cruise. (She paid for the Hawaii cruise by writing a test bank for a new textbook in her field -- again the amounts matched almost exactly.) This helped to cut down on her guilt for booking two cruises within a year of each other; though I pointed out that when she moved to Lethbridge to marry me, I had promised her a holiday somewhere warm once a year to compensate, and she has never been able to collect on that promise until now, so is owed 9 more cruises just to catch up with the backlog.
So, poking around the cruise sites, she found a Disney cruise through the Caribbean next November that coincides with Mary's study leave and more importantly, Kasia's 5th birthday. (Tigana got Disneyland for her 5th, and so the Disney cruise for Kasia's only seems fair.) So now Mary is casting around for some project to pay for it…though I still argue it is not necessary, given that she went almost 10 years without a break.
So, Mary spends almost all her spare time these days on the Internet reading reviews and blogs and advice columns on the cruises we've signed up for. The level of detail you can obtain on-line is mind-boggling. For example, she found out the suite we had booked on the Disney cruise was right under the dance floor and the last few couples to take that suite found it noisy… so Mary was able to switch to a suite at the other end of the ship -- which the people who stayed in that cabin had said that they could hear the hum of the engines, but that it hadn't bothered them at all, and that they had noticed the motion of the sea much less. It is almost too much detail… in some cases, the reviews mention specific names of waiters or stewards, tell you what menu items to steer away from, and debate which deck chairs are the best.
But we do love cruises…We like that your hotel moves, so you don't have to change hotels to change locales, and we love the kids' club. Most hotels don't have built-in day care, and even when they do, it's well, not exactly Disneyland. In contrast, the reviews of the Disney Cruise often talk about how the kids' club is so good (staff of 60, dedicated facilities) that kids refuse to go back to be with their boring parents. After four years of never being able to leave Kasia alone with a sitter (because of her RAS), we could really use some time to ourselves. Good food, reading, maybe some writing, life is good on board! And Mary has planned so much princess stuff (including all of us getting dressed up in the appropriate Disney themes) that Kasia is going to have the best birthday ever.
And, we have more "Tigana learns about…" projects in mind for Alaska and Florida (see http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/tigana/potential.htm), so it all should be good. Except for the having to come back to Lethbridge part.
As I'm writing this, Environment Canada has issued a blizzard warning for Lethbridge, with high winds, blowing snow, and temperatures of 40 below (F and C are the same at 40 below). Looking out the window I have trouble seeing all the way across the street through the snow and deepening gloom, even though it is only 3:30 in the afternoon. It's not just my four year old who wants to go back to Hawaii, it's my aging inner child too.
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