Road to Seward
May 23rd 2003
Off to Seward, Boarding the Ship


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Angie got up early to go back to the Jade shop. She just could not resist ;-) There were some additional pieces she decided to buy. She went back with Judith while I spent the morning finishing up the packing. After I was done packing, I went downstairs to have breakfast. Steve had a good talk with the waiter Brandon. He is the waiter that served us when Angie had her sandwich snafu. We chatted about what he does in Alaska and stuff in general.

Steve went back to the room, and noticed that when he left for breakfast that a lot of people had their luggage outside the room. When he got to the room the luggage was still in the room and Angie had just got back from shopping. I called the front desk and got the correct information about the luggage. They sent someone around to pick up the stragglers. I was impressed the hotel did not make excuses, and solved the problem right away. Again, this is much better than anyone from Holland America so far.

We went downstairs to wait for the shuttle. Steve talked with the hotel manager. She explained that they were having several problem with the Holland America rep. We chatted with at least a dozen people and they all had problems with Rosemary. Each conversation pretty much ended with, we are going to write a letter to Holland America.

The bus arrived and we headed down the Seward highway to Seward. We actually watched them put our luggage on our bus. We wanted to make sure it had been picked up and delivered.

We arrived at the ship after a about a two hour drive down the Seward highway. We arrived at the docks and boarded pretty quickly. The only delay was the security X-ray machine. But that went smoothly, except for some employees that needed to get back on the ship, and they wanted them to wait in line. It appears that they were a little disorganized.

We boarded after our picture was taken, and went to our room. We dropped off our carry on. After we dropped off our carry on we headed to a lunch. Lunch was buffet style. We finished and went back to our room. Our luggage had arrived, hurray! we met our cabin steward, Mohammed.

We got situated, unpacked and read the onboard newsletter with the schedule of events. We booked our shore excusions for Sitka and Juneau. More about that later. It was nice to unpack for the rest of the trip and not need to worry about packing for the next leg of our trip.

When we were done unpacking we headed to dinner. The food was good and the service was very attentive. We ordered a bottle of wine, that they allowed us to re-cork and take to our cabin. That was nice, plus they would have kept it for us if we wanted to. We think the latter idea would have been better as we did not drink much of the remainder.

After dinner we attended the welcome show. It introduced the senior staff and they put on a mini-musical production. After the show we bought our pictures that were taken when we came aboard. We then headed to the crows nest for a drink. Steve was not feeling well. We think the ship was rocking a bit much. What a view we had from the crows nest. The shoreline was magnificent. The waiter made us a mini origami shirt. It was very cute.

The weather started getting rough and Steve started to get a sinus cold. It came on very quickly. The sea was also a little wavy, so he was not feeling too hot. Angie was feeling daring and tried a new drink. Now she is hooked on grasshoppers. Guess what we will have to purchase when we get home!

After drinks we headed back to cabin. They provided a newsletter for each day of the cruise. You can read them online, but note they are large image files.