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Before breakfast, we woke up to the sound of the ship’s hull breaking ice plaques in the water. The captain warned us that we were sailing next to Hubbard Glacier, so we got dressed in a hurry and ran to the observation deck (level 12). The glaciers were spectacular. Amazing. Breathtaking. And any other similar adjectives you can think of.
Their intense blue is due to the way they are formed: layers upon layers of heavy snow compresses the bottom, squeezing any tiny bubble of air out, until only pure ice crystals remain, glacier crystals, which are intense and beautiful blue.
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As if we had not experienced enough adventure and beauty, Sitka was awaiting us with even more. Early in the morning, after an in-room breakfast, we boarded the St. Michael catamaran to go on a wild life quest between the narrow island passages and open bays of the Sitka Sound, with the dormant volcano Mount Edgecumbe providing an unsurpassable background to one of the world`s most beautiful coastal environments.
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Caviar on warm blinis and Montaudon champagne for breakfast, while docking in Skagway. That is the right way to start an amazing day. As soon as we finished our breakfast, we disembarked right in front of the “graffiti” that cruise lines have been painting on the mountain (with their logos, captain and vessel names) since 1928, and went to the heliport to board a Eurocopter that took us, through narrow canyons and spectacular valleys, flying over very high peaks and several glaciers, to the dog camp on the Denver Glacier.
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June 15 we woke up in Juneau, Alaska’s capital (the largest and best known city is Anchorage, but Juneau is the official capital).
After breakfast, we attended a very rare screening of a 7 minute animation film called “Destino”, a little known collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney started in 1949, but unfinished until 2007 when Roy Disney decided to hire a team of French animators to complete it.
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We woke up in Ketchikan, Alaska’s fourth largest city with 14,000 inhabitants, which almost gets doubled by today’s visitors (via 4 cruise ships): 10,000 cruisers.
As is the case in many communities around Alaska, things are spread out between many little islands. So, for example, Ketchikan has an airport in which a 747 can land… but the luggage has to be picked up in another island, accessible by ferry, because the “airport island” is too little to have both the landing strip and the luggage collection area.
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We decided to sleep in to recuperate from a very active week, so we ordered the breakfast in the room. While not a friend of in-room service, everything (muesli, wheat meal, blueberry pancakes, cheese omelette, smoked salmon bagel, fresh pineapple) was perfect. The restaurant schedules are very “American”, with breakfast served until 10:00am, lunch until 1:30pm, and dinner only until 9:30pm!
We spent the whole day at sea, cruising North through the Inside Passage.
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Wednesday, June 12, woken up by a false fire alarm, we had breakfast in the room, worked on our laptops until check out time, and had the hotel car (a BMW series 7) take us to the Vancouver Cruise Terminal. After a quick US immigration check, we boarded the luxury Regent Cruises’ “Seven Seas Navigator”.
Champagne glass upon reception, and a very nice crew welcomed us to our comfortable room.
