My epic Alaskan adventure
Alright, here it is: my super-long, overly detailed Alaskan cruise recap! Grab a coffee and feel free to take a smoke break at any point.
Alaskan cruise? you may be saying. Yeah, I went on a 7-day cruise, essentially for free. Ryan's parents took us, his brother and his girlfriend, and their grandpa, just for the hell of it. I don't know why I'm so lucky, but I love it!
Anyway, here we go...
Sunday
We all met up at Quinn (brother) and Liz's (brother's gf) new house in New West. They bought it for just under half a million dollars, and it's a piece of work. They'll be fixing that thing up for the rest of their lives, and I'm not even exaggerating. Ryan and I won't be getting a fixer-upper like that one, let me tell you!
We took two cabs down to the Ballantyne terminal in downtown Vancouver to board our ship (the Celebrity Mercury), and that's where I first became acquainted with "the life." :P Cruise ship workers took our luggage and later brought it to our staterooms for us. After a short trip through security and customs, we were having our pictures taken and being handed champagne as we walked onto the ship. The first thing we did was check out our rooms, which were small but quite nice. Our room attendant, Danny, was a sweetheart and not only learned our names, but even left band-aids with the nightly chocolates on our bed the night Ryan cut himself shaving and was bleeding everywhere. The staff really were awesome. I've never been called "Madame" so many times outside of the classroom!
Our room connected to Quinn and Liz's, which was very handy, especially since they were the ones with the 3.5 litres of rum and vodka we smuggled in, disguised as two boxes of wine! Haha, it was amazing... A coworker of Quinn's told him how to do it: you dump out the cheap, boxed wine, then refill the bag with a 40 of hard alcohol, reseal it using a hot knife, put the bag back into the box, and re-glue the box top. You're only allowed to bring two bottles of your own wine onto the ship, so this was our way of getting more bang for our buck. GENIUS! Liz was extremely disappointed that security didn't even look at the boxes, though. She was super proud of her work. :P
After checking out our rooms, we went upstairs to Ryan's parents' suite - theirs was a bit fancier, with a balcony. Since they were on the higher-class floor, we got to have even more champagne from the bottle awaiting their arrival. Good times! Soon the ship was ready to take off, so we went up to the deck to wave goodbye to Vancouver, and people waved back to us from the Lions Gate Bridge. It was a gorgeous evening and everyone was all festive and excited. Around 6:00 we had to go to the main restaurant for our dinner reservation. We sat at the same table every night and had the same two waiters, Emo (pronounced M-O, not eemo, haha) and Crissendo, who were AWESOME and we LOVED them. The food was also incredible - 4-course meals every night, all very fancy and amazingly delicious. The whole cruise was basically a 7-day binge, I'm not gonna lie. There wasn't an hour in the day when food wasn't available, and it was ALL delicious.
Oh God, I'm still on Sunday. Anyway, after dinner we wandered around exploring, then Quinn, Liz, Ryan and I retired to their room to drink vodka with our free juice. I was pretty tired from all the excitement and fell asleep after 1 drink. But there was much more fun to come!
Monday
We spent this whole day at sea. I was a good girl and tried to go to the gym, but it was very crowded, much like gyms in January after everyone's made their New Year's resolutions. :P We didn't do too much that day besides eat from the breakfast and lunch buffets (with any kind of food you can think of, really, and the most amaaaaazing desserts). We checked out the casino and played the penny slot machines, and Quinn and Liz played roulette. Then in the afternoon we went to Bingo, where both Ryan's mom AND Liz won!! They made about 300 bucks in total, it was amazing. We went back a couple times after that but didn't win again. Bingo was the first time we encountered what we half-affectionately and half-disgustedly called "Brooklyn." There was a fairly big group of people from New York with MAJOR accents - I'm talking TV stereotype-and-a-half accents - who made fools of themselves everywhere they went, and they were almost ALWAYS near us! One of the more idiotic ladies was really drunk and was harassing the poor Bingo caller and annoying everyone by being extremely loud and crass. Every time we'd see her or the other people from her group that week, we would all roll our eyes and groan. Funnily enough, I kind of miss them now, haha.
That was also the first of two formal nights, meaning we had to dress up really fancily for dinner. It was neat to see everyone on the ship all dolled up, as well as what some people's idea of "formal" is, haha. After dinner, we had professional pictures taken by the ship photographers and then went to one of the nightly shows - singers, dancers, and a few special performers later in the week like a magician, an acrobatic duo (think Cirque), and a vocal impressionist. That was another free champagne night for the Captain's toast (he came out and introduced himself and all the other important crew), and then more drinking in Quinn and Liz's room later on.
Tuesday
This was the morning I first felt seasick. I tried to go to the gym, but had to leave 30 minutes in because the ship was rocking so badly. It didn't help that the gym was at the front of the ship, where the rolling is especially bad! I felt sick a few more times after that, and was kind of annoyed with myself, but at least I never barfed! This was the day we docked in Sitka, a small but pretty place. Alaska is basically identical to coastal British Columbia, so it wasn't anything new or exciting for me, but I do love my BC so it was nice to feel at home. We explored the town a little bit, like the old Russian Orthodox church (Ignoramus Discovery #1: Alaska has a shit-ton of Russian history) and the endless tourist shops. By the way, every second store in Alaska (at least the parts that I saw) is a jewelry store. Seriously, they were pushing that stuff like MAD, and for good reason - it is CRAZY CHEAP up there. I didn't get anything, but the four of us (Quinn and Liz have been together a few months longer than Ryan and I) definitely looked at rings and I even tried a couple of things on. This is huge for us, since Ryan wouldn't even look with me before. He now knows what I like, though, so that's good. :)
ANYWAY. We had the first of our excursions in Sitka. (The excursions are optional for cruise-goers and cost quite a lot of extra money, so I was really lucky that Ryan's parents were sparing no expense!) The Sitka one was a sea otter and wildlife expedition, and I wasn't all that stoked for it since I grew up seeing eagles, bears, seals, and all that in Kitimat, but it turned out to be REALLY fun! We hopped on a boat where they fed us hot chocolate and delicious snacks like local chocolate and smoked salmon, and went looking for wildlife. We ended up being super-lucky and not only spotted tons of sea otters, including a raft of about 20 bachelors just chilling, but also a lot of seals, TONS of eagles, a puffin (!!), and a grizzly bear, which they said was very rare so the tour guides were all excited about it. The guides were funny and really knew their stuff, and it was just an awesome experience, aside from me feeling seasick again. :P
That night was more delicious dinner in the dining room with Emo and Cris, a magic show in the theatre (and more seasickness for me, whee!), more drinks with Quinn and Liz, and a really good sleep because of all the fresh air on the excursion!
Wednesday
This is when I gave up on the gym, haha. It was also the morning that I ate two giant meals within 4 hours, ugh. I couldn't help it, though! Ryan and I had just eaten breakfast an hour or two before, when we discovered there was a fancier buffet going on in the restaurant. I'm talking salmon eggs Benny, chocolate fountains, chocolate-covered cheesecake bites... oh God, so good. SO GOOD! We weren't going to eat anything, just look, but we both ended up with full plates, haha.
The ship stopped by the Hubbard Glacier that day, which is the only glacier in the world that's advancing instead of receding. We couldn't get very close because there were so many icebergs in the water, but it was still a pretty incredible sight! It was super cold that day, though. Oh, and Ignoramus Fact #2: the Pacific Time Zone is not, in fact, the "earliest" time zone as I previously thought. Alaska is an hour earlier! And Hawaii's even earlier (I think)! Learning this seriously blew my mind. This was also the night Quinn uttered the infamous line, which no one let me forget for the rest of the week: "Would you like to rephrase that so that it DOESN'T sound stupid?" after I said, "But Russia's in the future, right?" Because it kind of is! Come on!
I think this was another Bingo afternoon, and after the show that night (Broadway hits, which was excellent... the two lady singers in the ship's performance group were really amazing), we four kids and Ryan's parents went to a 50's/60's sock hop in one of the ship's bars. There was music trivia and dancing, and Ryan's dad fell off his chair, nearly killing us all with laughter... oh man, SUCH good times.
Thursday
Juneau day! We arrived in the morning and went straight to our excursion: whale-watching and the Mendenhall Glacier. Whale-watching was similar to our sea otter trip, but BETTER, because holy shit, whales!! We saw TONS of humpback whales, and lucked out yet again when we saw another rare behaviour that made the tour guides flip out - breaching! That's when the whales jump into the air! They usually only do it during mating season, which takes place down in Hawaii, but this was a mommy whale teaching her baby whale how to do it, and for exercise. It was SO COOL! She would jump super high and make a HUGE splash, and then the baby would try and not be able to get high at all. Then another baby was practicing a communication behaviour where he slaps the water and kinda spins around while he's slapping. It looked like he was waving at us! It was REALLY amazing. We also saw a sea lion sitting on a buoy, and a ton of seals wiggling on a beach. They look hilarious when they move. So entertaining.
Next, our very hilarious lady bus driver took us to the Mendenhall Glacier, a spectacular thing near a bunch of trails, including one with a river where we got to see sockeye spawning and a bear sleeping in a tree. It was weird to me that they encouraged people to walk on these trails where bears pretty much always are... in BC we kind of avoid having people and bears in the same space, do we not? But this was just like, "Walk at your own risk! Make sure you don't have any food!" And that was it. Very weird.
That afternoon we wandered the streets of Juneau and its infinite jewelry stores (this was where the trying on happened) and made a stop at the Red Dog Saloon, a famous bar with sawdust on the floor. It was a pretty cool place, with the pub visitors' names scrawled on every surface imaginable. Ryan actually found his old boss from Burnaby's business card on the ceiling above us - what a small world! Needless to say, we left our marks, too. :)
At dinner that night, Liz wasn't feeling well and didn't want to order anything for dessert, so when Emo came around to take her order, she said "Nothing for me." A few minutes later, he comes back with a covered plate and sets it in front of her, and she's like... wat. Then she lifts the cover, and on the plate he'd written, in swirly chocolate syrup, "NOTHING :)". OMG, it was the cutest thing ever. <3 Emo!
We were so wiped out from that day that we kids didn't even make it to the usual 9 o'clock show. I actually fell asleep at 8:30, haha. Oh, another cute thing - we had turndown service in our stateroom, which means that every night, while we were at dinner, Danny would come in to clean our room (for the second time that day; he also did it in the morning) and literally turn down the covers so that we just had to crawl into bed. He would also set out our pyjamas for us, and he always arranged mine with my tank top bunched in at the middle to make it look like I had a teeny-tiny waist. Cute!
Friday
The trip's almost over! :( (But the post's almost done! :D) On this day, we docked at our final Alaskan destination, Ketchikan, where it rains 300 days of the year. They joked that they don't measure their rain in inches, but in feet, and I believe it! It was a really cool-looking town though, with the houses all set in the side of the hill and lots of neat stores and things to look at. There were 4 of us cruise ships docked there that day, so you can imagine how touristy it is, though.
Our excursion for that day was the lumberjack show, where we saw 4 very manly men do all that cool lumberjack-y stuff like running on the logs in the water and whatnot. They had it set up so that it was 2 guys on an American team, and 2 guys on a Canadian team; and guess what? We so won. Woot! It was highly entertaining, with the guys cracking jokes and the two sides booing and cheering and heckling. After the show, we wandered around a bit more and bought presents for Jeff and Sara because the latter got us stuff when she went to Mexico (the former hasn't even said hello to us since we've been back, and has left his present on the counter as if he doesn't want it... ugh. WTF. I HATE YOU!).
This was the second formal night, so we got all fancy yet again and had yet more pictures taken. Dinner was REALLY exciting because they introduced all the waiters and kitchen staff, and then they did a Baked Alaska parade, where the waiters walked all around the restaurant with flaming ice cream cakes! SO COOL! We also went to the dancers' last show (dances from around the world), and after that, it was PARTY TIME! We finished off the rest of the vodka and rum, and then went up to the "young" nightclub and danced the night away! Brooklyn was there in full force, with Classy Brooklyn ending up dancing in her bra at one point and grinding on the pillar - not a pole, but a pillar. Oh lawd. We ended up staying until they kicked us (and Brooklyn) out, around 4:30, then the four of us went back to Quinn and Liz's and ordered room service. We ordered so much food that it took them two trips to bring it all, hahahaha. Oh God, good times! We didn't get to sleep until 5:30, so we were suitably haggard the next day!
Saturday
SADFACE! The last full day was spent at sea. We maxed out our liquor allowance at the duty-free store (a litre of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum - for TWELVE FREAKING DOLLARS! and other amazing deals) and checked out the many sales at the ship's shops, but didn't buy anything besides lots of booze. Our last dinner was really sad and quiet, but Ryan's parents gave Emo and Cris extra tips for being so awesome, and they shook our hands and said goodbye. It was nice!
We then hit up the last theatre show, where the special guests (magician, acrobats, blah blah) did mini-shows, and after that the four of us kids went to the casino. I wanted to try roulette because Liz and Quinn had made it look so easy, but I don't have the luck they do and lost Ryan's 20 bucks. :P Liz doubled her money though, and Quinn won some money in a poker tournament, so at least someone in our group did all right! Brooklyn was also at the roulette table, and it was actually kind of amazing to see them play. They were tossing down money like it was going out of style. Ryan said one of the older guys spent 500 bucks in the half hour we were at the table, but Old Brooklyn told me himself in line at customs the next day that he cleaned up later on - like 3000 bucks. o_O I also heard them talking about it earlier in the week and am pretty sure they said something about thousands... sweet Jesus!!!
Sunday
Wahhh, it's over! :( We went for one last breakfast at the Manhattan Restaurant (instead of the less classy buffet) and sat with an older couple from Mississippi (also very stereotypical, but in a nice way) and a couple from Calgary. We were already on our way off the boat at 8:15, and it was actually pretty easy because they took our big luggage for us the night before and all we had to carry was our carry-on or backpack. It didn't take too long to go through customs and get our bags, and we were back at Quinn and Liz's place by 9:15. Ryan and I were then off on our 8-hour drive back to PG, yech. :S To add insult to injury, I got CARSICK! WTF! I never get motion sickness! Luckily I had my Gravol with me, so I was knocked out from Chilliwack to 100 Mile House!
Now we're home and it's back to regular life. No more 4-course gourmet meals, no more dessert(s) with every meal, no more free-flowing booze, no more people making my bed for me and cleaning up my bathroom and turning down my bed... sigh.
It was one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life, and I can't believe how lucky I am to have experienced it! Alaska is beautiful, cruising is fun, people are awesome, and I freaking LOVE Ryan's family... and Ryan. :) It was nice to spend so much time with him. Sure, we got annoyed with each other now and then since we were barely ever apart, but overall, it was a wonderfully relaxing, fun time. I didn't even miss the internet, and normally I'm attached more than half the hours of the day! I didn't think about school at all and didn't stress about how much I have to do in the next two weeks... Being with Ryan's family was comfortable and good times. It was just so, so, so great.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff but this is insanely long and I applaud you if you made it all the way through. If you ever get the chance to go on a cruise, even to a cold, rainy place like Alaska, DO IT! And Celebrity was a really awesome cruise line - highly recommended. It was SO organized and entertaining, beautiful and clean, and just super well-run. A+++!
I'm tired, and I'm sure you are too. If you're Facebook friends with me, keep your eyes open for pictures sometime soon, but for now... sleeeeeeep. Goodnight!
Alaskan cruise? you may be saying. Yeah, I went on a 7-day cruise, essentially for free. Ryan's parents took us, his brother and his girlfriend, and their grandpa, just for the hell of it. I don't know why I'm so lucky, but I love it!
Anyway, here we go...
Sunday
We all met up at Quinn (brother) and Liz's (brother's gf) new house in New West. They bought it for just under half a million dollars, and it's a piece of work. They'll be fixing that thing up for the rest of their lives, and I'm not even exaggerating. Ryan and I won't be getting a fixer-upper like that one, let me tell you!
We took two cabs down to the Ballantyne terminal in downtown Vancouver to board our ship (the Celebrity Mercury), and that's where I first became acquainted with "the life." :P Cruise ship workers took our luggage and later brought it to our staterooms for us. After a short trip through security and customs, we were having our pictures taken and being handed champagne as we walked onto the ship. The first thing we did was check out our rooms, which were small but quite nice. Our room attendant, Danny, was a sweetheart and not only learned our names, but even left band-aids with the nightly chocolates on our bed the night Ryan cut himself shaving and was bleeding everywhere. The staff really were awesome. I've never been called "Madame" so many times outside of the classroom!
Our room connected to Quinn and Liz's, which was very handy, especially since they were the ones with the 3.5 litres of rum and vodka we smuggled in, disguised as two boxes of wine! Haha, it was amazing... A coworker of Quinn's told him how to do it: you dump out the cheap, boxed wine, then refill the bag with a 40 of hard alcohol, reseal it using a hot knife, put the bag back into the box, and re-glue the box top. You're only allowed to bring two bottles of your own wine onto the ship, so this was our way of getting more bang for our buck. GENIUS! Liz was extremely disappointed that security didn't even look at the boxes, though. She was super proud of her work. :P
After checking out our rooms, we went upstairs to Ryan's parents' suite - theirs was a bit fancier, with a balcony. Since they were on the higher-class floor, we got to have even more champagne from the bottle awaiting their arrival. Good times! Soon the ship was ready to take off, so we went up to the deck to wave goodbye to Vancouver, and people waved back to us from the Lions Gate Bridge. It was a gorgeous evening and everyone was all festive and excited. Around 6:00 we had to go to the main restaurant for our dinner reservation. We sat at the same table every night and had the same two waiters, Emo (pronounced M-O, not eemo, haha) and Crissendo, who were AWESOME and we LOVED them. The food was also incredible - 4-course meals every night, all very fancy and amazingly delicious. The whole cruise was basically a 7-day binge, I'm not gonna lie. There wasn't an hour in the day when food wasn't available, and it was ALL delicious.
Oh God, I'm still on Sunday. Anyway, after dinner we wandered around exploring, then Quinn, Liz, Ryan and I retired to their room to drink vodka with our free juice. I was pretty tired from all the excitement and fell asleep after 1 drink. But there was much more fun to come!
Monday
We spent this whole day at sea. I was a good girl and tried to go to the gym, but it was very crowded, much like gyms in January after everyone's made their New Year's resolutions. :P We didn't do too much that day besides eat from the breakfast and lunch buffets (with any kind of food you can think of, really, and the most amaaaaazing desserts). We checked out the casino and played the penny slot machines, and Quinn and Liz played roulette. Then in the afternoon we went to Bingo, where both Ryan's mom AND Liz won!! They made about 300 bucks in total, it was amazing. We went back a couple times after that but didn't win again. Bingo was the first time we encountered what we half-affectionately and half-disgustedly called "Brooklyn." There was a fairly big group of people from New York with MAJOR accents - I'm talking TV stereotype-and-a-half accents - who made fools of themselves everywhere they went, and they were almost ALWAYS near us! One of the more idiotic ladies was really drunk and was harassing the poor Bingo caller and annoying everyone by being extremely loud and crass. Every time we'd see her or the other people from her group that week, we would all roll our eyes and groan. Funnily enough, I kind of miss them now, haha.
That was also the first of two formal nights, meaning we had to dress up really fancily for dinner. It was neat to see everyone on the ship all dolled up, as well as what some people's idea of "formal" is, haha. After dinner, we had professional pictures taken by the ship photographers and then went to one of the nightly shows - singers, dancers, and a few special performers later in the week like a magician, an acrobatic duo (think Cirque), and a vocal impressionist. That was another free champagne night for the Captain's toast (he came out and introduced himself and all the other important crew), and then more drinking in Quinn and Liz's room later on.
Tuesday
This was the morning I first felt seasick. I tried to go to the gym, but had to leave 30 minutes in because the ship was rocking so badly. It didn't help that the gym was at the front of the ship, where the rolling is especially bad! I felt sick a few more times after that, and was kind of annoyed with myself, but at least I never barfed! This was the day we docked in Sitka, a small but pretty place. Alaska is basically identical to coastal British Columbia, so it wasn't anything new or exciting for me, but I do love my BC so it was nice to feel at home. We explored the town a little bit, like the old Russian Orthodox church (Ignoramus Discovery #1: Alaska has a shit-ton of Russian history) and the endless tourist shops. By the way, every second store in Alaska (at least the parts that I saw) is a jewelry store. Seriously, they were pushing that stuff like MAD, and for good reason - it is CRAZY CHEAP up there. I didn't get anything, but the four of us (Quinn and Liz have been together a few months longer than Ryan and I) definitely looked at rings and I even tried a couple of things on. This is huge for us, since Ryan wouldn't even look with me before. He now knows what I like, though, so that's good. :)
ANYWAY. We had the first of our excursions in Sitka. (The excursions are optional for cruise-goers and cost quite a lot of extra money, so I was really lucky that Ryan's parents were sparing no expense!) The Sitka one was a sea otter and wildlife expedition, and I wasn't all that stoked for it since I grew up seeing eagles, bears, seals, and all that in Kitimat, but it turned out to be REALLY fun! We hopped on a boat where they fed us hot chocolate and delicious snacks like local chocolate and smoked salmon, and went looking for wildlife. We ended up being super-lucky and not only spotted tons of sea otters, including a raft of about 20 bachelors just chilling, but also a lot of seals, TONS of eagles, a puffin (!!), and a grizzly bear, which they said was very rare so the tour guides were all excited about it. The guides were funny and really knew their stuff, and it was just an awesome experience, aside from me feeling seasick again. :P
That night was more delicious dinner in the dining room with Emo and Cris, a magic show in the theatre (and more seasickness for me, whee!), more drinks with Quinn and Liz, and a really good sleep because of all the fresh air on the excursion!
Wednesday
This is when I gave up on the gym, haha. It was also the morning that I ate two giant meals within 4 hours, ugh. I couldn't help it, though! Ryan and I had just eaten breakfast an hour or two before, when we discovered there was a fancier buffet going on in the restaurant. I'm talking salmon eggs Benny, chocolate fountains, chocolate-covered cheesecake bites... oh God, so good. SO GOOD! We weren't going to eat anything, just look, but we both ended up with full plates, haha.
The ship stopped by the Hubbard Glacier that day, which is the only glacier in the world that's advancing instead of receding. We couldn't get very close because there were so many icebergs in the water, but it was still a pretty incredible sight! It was super cold that day, though. Oh, and Ignoramus Fact #2: the Pacific Time Zone is not, in fact, the "earliest" time zone as I previously thought. Alaska is an hour earlier! And Hawaii's even earlier (I think)! Learning this seriously blew my mind. This was also the night Quinn uttered the infamous line, which no one let me forget for the rest of the week: "Would you like to rephrase that so that it DOESN'T sound stupid?" after I said, "But Russia's in the future, right?" Because it kind of is! Come on!
I think this was another Bingo afternoon, and after the show that night (Broadway hits, which was excellent... the two lady singers in the ship's performance group were really amazing), we four kids and Ryan's parents went to a 50's/60's sock hop in one of the ship's bars. There was music trivia and dancing, and Ryan's dad fell off his chair, nearly killing us all with laughter... oh man, SUCH good times.
Thursday
Juneau day! We arrived in the morning and went straight to our excursion: whale-watching and the Mendenhall Glacier. Whale-watching was similar to our sea otter trip, but BETTER, because holy shit, whales!! We saw TONS of humpback whales, and lucked out yet again when we saw another rare behaviour that made the tour guides flip out - breaching! That's when the whales jump into the air! They usually only do it during mating season, which takes place down in Hawaii, but this was a mommy whale teaching her baby whale how to do it, and for exercise. It was SO COOL! She would jump super high and make a HUGE splash, and then the baby would try and not be able to get high at all. Then another baby was practicing a communication behaviour where he slaps the water and kinda spins around while he's slapping. It looked like he was waving at us! It was REALLY amazing. We also saw a sea lion sitting on a buoy, and a ton of seals wiggling on a beach. They look hilarious when they move. So entertaining.
Next, our very hilarious lady bus driver took us to the Mendenhall Glacier, a spectacular thing near a bunch of trails, including one with a river where we got to see sockeye spawning and a bear sleeping in a tree. It was weird to me that they encouraged people to walk on these trails where bears pretty much always are... in BC we kind of avoid having people and bears in the same space, do we not? But this was just like, "Walk at your own risk! Make sure you don't have any food!" And that was it. Very weird.
That afternoon we wandered the streets of Juneau and its infinite jewelry stores (this was where the trying on happened) and made a stop at the Red Dog Saloon, a famous bar with sawdust on the floor. It was a pretty cool place, with the pub visitors' names scrawled on every surface imaginable. Ryan actually found his old boss from Burnaby's business card on the ceiling above us - what a small world! Needless to say, we left our marks, too. :)
At dinner that night, Liz wasn't feeling well and didn't want to order anything for dessert, so when Emo came around to take her order, she said "Nothing for me." A few minutes later, he comes back with a covered plate and sets it in front of her, and she's like... wat. Then she lifts the cover, and on the plate he'd written, in swirly chocolate syrup, "NOTHING :)". OMG, it was the cutest thing ever. <3 Emo!
We were so wiped out from that day that we kids didn't even make it to the usual 9 o'clock show. I actually fell asleep at 8:30, haha. Oh, another cute thing - we had turndown service in our stateroom, which means that every night, while we were at dinner, Danny would come in to clean our room (for the second time that day; he also did it in the morning) and literally turn down the covers so that we just had to crawl into bed. He would also set out our pyjamas for us, and he always arranged mine with my tank top bunched in at the middle to make it look like I had a teeny-tiny waist. Cute!
Friday
The trip's almost over! :( (But the post's almost done! :D) On this day, we docked at our final Alaskan destination, Ketchikan, where it rains 300 days of the year. They joked that they don't measure their rain in inches, but in feet, and I believe it! It was a really cool-looking town though, with the houses all set in the side of the hill and lots of neat stores and things to look at. There were 4 of us cruise ships docked there that day, so you can imagine how touristy it is, though.
Our excursion for that day was the lumberjack show, where we saw 4 very manly men do all that cool lumberjack-y stuff like running on the logs in the water and whatnot. They had it set up so that it was 2 guys on an American team, and 2 guys on a Canadian team; and guess what? We so won. Woot! It was highly entertaining, with the guys cracking jokes and the two sides booing and cheering and heckling. After the show, we wandered around a bit more and bought presents for Jeff and Sara because the latter got us stuff when she went to Mexico (the former hasn't even said hello to us since we've been back, and has left his present on the counter as if he doesn't want it... ugh. WTF. I HATE YOU!).
This was the second formal night, so we got all fancy yet again and had yet more pictures taken. Dinner was REALLY exciting because they introduced all the waiters and kitchen staff, and then they did a Baked Alaska parade, where the waiters walked all around the restaurant with flaming ice cream cakes! SO COOL! We also went to the dancers' last show (dances from around the world), and after that, it was PARTY TIME! We finished off the rest of the vodka and rum, and then went up to the "young" nightclub and danced the night away! Brooklyn was there in full force, with Classy Brooklyn ending up dancing in her bra at one point and grinding on the pillar - not a pole, but a pillar. Oh lawd. We ended up staying until they kicked us (and Brooklyn) out, around 4:30, then the four of us went back to Quinn and Liz's and ordered room service. We ordered so much food that it took them two trips to bring it all, hahahaha. Oh God, good times! We didn't get to sleep until 5:30, so we were suitably haggard the next day!
Saturday
SADFACE! The last full day was spent at sea. We maxed out our liquor allowance at the duty-free store (a litre of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum - for TWELVE FREAKING DOLLARS! and other amazing deals) and checked out the many sales at the ship's shops, but didn't buy anything besides lots of booze. Our last dinner was really sad and quiet, but Ryan's parents gave Emo and Cris extra tips for being so awesome, and they shook our hands and said goodbye. It was nice!
We then hit up the last theatre show, where the special guests (magician, acrobats, blah blah) did mini-shows, and after that the four of us kids went to the casino. I wanted to try roulette because Liz and Quinn had made it look so easy, but I don't have the luck they do and lost Ryan's 20 bucks. :P Liz doubled her money though, and Quinn won some money in a poker tournament, so at least someone in our group did all right! Brooklyn was also at the roulette table, and it was actually kind of amazing to see them play. They were tossing down money like it was going out of style. Ryan said one of the older guys spent 500 bucks in the half hour we were at the table, but Old Brooklyn told me himself in line at customs the next day that he cleaned up later on - like 3000 bucks. o_O I also heard them talking about it earlier in the week and am pretty sure they said something about thousands... sweet Jesus!!!
Sunday
Wahhh, it's over! :( We went for one last breakfast at the Manhattan Restaurant (instead of the less classy buffet) and sat with an older couple from Mississippi (also very stereotypical, but in a nice way) and a couple from Calgary. We were already on our way off the boat at 8:15, and it was actually pretty easy because they took our big luggage for us the night before and all we had to carry was our carry-on or backpack. It didn't take too long to go through customs and get our bags, and we were back at Quinn and Liz's place by 9:15. Ryan and I were then off on our 8-hour drive back to PG, yech. :S To add insult to injury, I got CARSICK! WTF! I never get motion sickness! Luckily I had my Gravol with me, so I was knocked out from Chilliwack to 100 Mile House!
Now we're home and it's back to regular life. No more 4-course gourmet meals, no more dessert(s) with every meal, no more free-flowing booze, no more people making my bed for me and cleaning up my bathroom and turning down my bed... sigh.
It was one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life, and I can't believe how lucky I am to have experienced it! Alaska is beautiful, cruising is fun, people are awesome, and I freaking LOVE Ryan's family... and Ryan. :) It was nice to spend so much time with him. Sure, we got annoyed with each other now and then since we were barely ever apart, but overall, it was a wonderfully relaxing, fun time. I didn't even miss the internet, and normally I'm attached more than half the hours of the day! I didn't think about school at all and didn't stress about how much I have to do in the next two weeks... Being with Ryan's family was comfortable and good times. It was just so, so, so great.
I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff but this is insanely long and I applaud you if you made it all the way through. If you ever get the chance to go on a cruise, even to a cold, rainy place like Alaska, DO IT! And Celebrity was a really awesome cruise line - highly recommended. It was SO organized and entertaining, beautiful and clean, and just super well-run. A+++!
I'm tired, and I'm sure you are too. If you're Facebook friends with me, keep your eyes open for pictures sometime soon, but for now... sleeeeeeep. Goodnight!