tandb's latest Traveleor blog entries

Last Blog of the Season

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:59:35

Everywhere we went on our trip we were told it was the last ... of the season. Last cruise, Last tour, Last excursion etc etc etc, it became a running joke with our group. So now that we've gotten back home we've decided to give you our Last Blog of the Season, as a fitting finish to the wonderful time we had on our Alaskan Honeymoon.

Our Bests and Worsts

Best Meal - Looking at overall meal enjoyment including company our best meal would have to be our last meal in Fairbanks with Ken and Sue. Even though it cost us an arm and 2 legs, it was great fun and fab food.

Best Excursion - Helicopter flight over Glaciers in Juneau.

Best Scenery - Glacier Bay - the whole bay was awesome with the glaciers everywhere you looked, and so totally quiet you never once thought you were on a ship holding 4000 people.

Best Little Town - Skagway

Best Big Town - Vancouver

Best Flight - From London to Vancouver - eating ice cream while flying over Greenland and seeing all the icebergs.

Worst Flight - All the rest!

Most Amusing Characters We Met - We didn't meet them but we had nick names for them for sure! Turkey - nutcase old Japanese/American lady who had ants in her pants everytime we saw her. Never sat still. Brandin gave her the nickname because of her hair (who knows!). She had wiry thin hair, that was sprayed every day to within an inch of its life and put into an up pointy style like a conehead. We even got photos showing the light coming through the up do. Say no more. The other couple we named were the Late Comers. You count on it, every time our coach was leaving from any stop, they were always the last to get on the coach. We were always waiting for them!!

Best Ship Moment - sitting in the hot tub in the freezing cold air outside while it was raining, watching the glaciers and snow-capped mountains go past and feeling totally warm and cosy in the water.

Best Land Moment - We have to say that any time spent with Ken and Sue on land were our best moments. They are such a great couple, and we had loads of hysterics, laughs and good times.

Best Experience Overall - The ENTIRE holiday!! Look out Princess - all your cruises have our names on them!!!

We learnt so much while we were in Alaska so we're going to share some of those facts with you. If you've read all our blogs you may have seen some of them, but read them all anyway cos they're all very interesting.

Alaska possesses an area of 586 000 square miles.

Alaska is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined.

Alaska is the northern-most state (extending past the Arctic Circle), the western-most state (continuing west beyond the Hawaiian Islands), and eastern-most state because the Aleutian Islands that form part of Alaska stretch westward beyond the 180th meridian, placing Alaska in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Alaska is made up of many eco-systems including desert sand dunes, rain forests and dry tundra regions.

Alaska has:-
19 mountains reaching over 14 000 feet

3 000 rivers

1 800 islands

3 000 000 lakes

nearly 100 000 glaciers which cover 29 000 square miles

15 National Parks, Preserves and Monuments, plus 117 State Parks

322 million acres of public lands.

Alaska is bordered by 2 oceans (Pacific and Arctic) and 3 seas (Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort) that provide a total of 47 300 miles of shoreline, exceeding the total shoreline for the rest of the States.

Alaska was originally owned by Russia, but was bought by the USA in 1867 for $7.2million, which works out to about 2 cents an acre.

Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959 (exactly 42 years to the day before we got engaged...quite fitting!)

There is no highway that extends across the state from east to west.

Cities such as Barrow (the northern-most city in the USA), Kodiak in the south-western islands, and Sitka, Ketchikan and Juneua (the capital) can only be reached by air or sea.

There is only one road from north to south. This road was built in 1974 to support the construction of the Alaska Pipeline from Valdez (South) to Prudhoe Bay (North).

The Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered in 1968 and was estimated to contain approx. 12 billion barrels of oil.

The Alaska Pipeline was built in 1977 and moves oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez (an ice-free port) 800 miles south.

The pipeline has a capacity to move 2 million barrels of oil a day.

Alaska is also abundant in coal - it has 2.5 times more coal than the rest of the US combined.

Learnt something new?? We definitely did.

Finally, thanks to everyone for following our activities and enjoying our experiences with us. Your messages were thoroughly enjoyed so far from home. See you next time!

London

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 09:37:21

We know we haven't updated in a while, but being in the UK is slightly different to being on holiday. Running around and seeing all our friends is lots of fun but not very newsy. We've had a great time catching up with everyone and have managed to stay on our cruise diet and eat until we're popping.

We're on our way to the airport shortly, but just wanted to say that we've got loads of stuff to still put up on the site, so as soon as we get home tomorrow we'll update it all, and then you can see all our pics, and one last special blog.

Adios Amigos x

Vancouver / London

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:19:18

After breakfast we hopped back onto the bus for another train ride, and did the little tour around town again. Nice and relaxing just listening to the commentary and watching the sights go by.

Unfortunately the movie set wasn't happening, looked like it would pick up later, but while on the bus, the driver commented about the traffic getting really bad in Vancouver about the time we wanted to leave for the airport. So we hotfooted it back to the hotel, packed all our clothes - again (getting tired of this!!) and caught a cab to the airport... only R204 for 25mins. Did a self service check in so had our boarding passes printed automatically, then went to a desk to get our luggage tags printed, and then went straight to put our luggage on a conveyor belt - no weighing whatsoever! All the stress of packing those cases so economically for NOTHING.

Just before we boarded an elderly gentleman sitting across from us started feeling faint, and eventually they called a medic to come take a look. At this point we started boarding, only to find that the plane would be delayed cos this old man was not joining the flight, and his luggage was being taken off.

Then, a lady got up to walk down the aisle and fainted - out stone cold right next to me. Luckily the lady sitting opposite is a nurse from SA, so she sorted this lady out, who had to lie in the aisle for about an hour and have oxygen given to her. Apparently she'd taken some medication for a back spasm, and she has low blood pressure, so the muscle relaxant combined with the altitude was not a great mix for her.

The flight wasn't great but I think it was more to do with the time difference than anything else. We arrived in London at 11:25am but our bodies still thought it was 3am. It will take some time to adjust but it doesn't feel half as bad as getting on the ship.

We got picked up by Donna who is looking lovely with her long hair and got taken to our Hotel at 6 Hazel Way, hosts - Jules and David. Lovely weather here, about 20C so t-shirts have had to be washed as they all just about got used up in Vancouver.

Have spent a lovely afternoon catching up on all the news and reminiscing about our holiday - and planning our next ones too. Dinner will be early tonight - curry! Love to all from the UK. Finally, only one stage left to go with the suitcases!

Vancouver

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 22:19:50

What a wonderful day. The weather has been perfect with not a cloud in the sky. We started the day with a ride on a hop on hop off bus, and stopped at Granville Island. This is a man made peninsula and is very arts and crafty. They have a market 10 times better than Borough market. Fresh veggies and fruit to die for, and so many stalls selling so many different types of food, from pies and pasta to salads, to bagels and pretzels, to curry and mexican food, pancakes, desserts, fish... you name it! We wondered around for a couple of hours, bought a nice 'Native' indian print of a Salmon, and then sat outside on the dock eating our lunch.

Caught the bus again and travelled halfway around downtown Vancouver till we got to Robson street which is the main shopping street here. We bought some accessories for the ipod and then took a walk down to Canada Place which is the pier where we embarked our ship. Today there were 4 ships waiting to leave, and just as we got there, one of them tooted and left - a Princess one - so we stood and watched it leave, remembering all our special moments of our cruise.

From there we caught the bus again and travelled the whole route around downtown Vancouver - back to Stanley Park where we got to see a ship going under the Lions Gate Bridge (the one thats in the pics of our ship). Once our bus stopped at its last stop - about an hour and a half later, we were in an area called Gastown which was the first part of downtown Vancouver. We had dinner at a lovely restaurant called the Old Spaghetti Factory - right up my street. Every main meal includes a starter of soup or salad, plus garlic sourdough loaf, plus pudding or tea and coffee. All for the price of an average starter in the US. We've found prices here a lot more reasonable... but that could just be due to using the wrong exchange rate. We're happy with that for now though! What are the rates at the moment anyway???

Tomorrow morning before we leave for London we'll probably go back on the bus as our ticket is for today and tomorrow. The bus driver comments on all the sights and buildings as you pass, which makes it rather interesting. There is also a movie being filmed here, and apparently Pierce Brosnan, Charlize Theron, Renee Zellwegger, Halle Berry and Ben Affleck are here, so we are going to take a walk and see if we can spot anyone we recognise.

We have loved being here. The weather is good, apparently their winters are mild too - more rain and snow in New York than here. Lots of things to see and do, and it just has a nice relaxed vibe. We'll definitely be making our way back here in the future, and go on a tour of the Rocky's which our friends Ken and Sue did and said it was out of this world.

Catch ya later x

Fairbanks / Anchorage / Seattle / Vancouver

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 21:55:09

Exhausted (and smelly) is not the word! Left Fairbanks on Friday at 11am after being stung for $25 for an overweight suitcase - mine... The scales weren't working properly and we later found out that Brandin's was nearly as heavy as mine, so we were lucky.

Got to Anchorage and most counters were closed, but we'd managed to check in on line with Continental Airlines, so we had our boarding passes already. We left our luggage in storage for the day and caught a bus to a big shopping centre in Anchorage. Seemed like it was in the red-neck neck of the woods... Everyone had big earrings, big hair, funny clothes, stupid hats, and pregnant!

We walked and walked and walked and walked around to waste time, then watched a funny movie at the cinema for the same price that we could have watched 10 movies at Ster Kinekor! After wasting more time, we went into an electronics store, and we are now the proud owners of an ipod. Had a program for the bus times, but it was an old one, so as we were walking towards the bus it pulled out and off it went into the distance.... We had to wait another hour for the next bus, so went into a book store and had a Starbucks to pass even more time.

Got back to the airport at about 10, checked in, wanted to sting us for 3 x $25 overweight suitcases, so sat on the floor and repacked every case, so our tiny little case was BULGING but we managed to get all the suitcases under 50 pounds each (with our hand luggage just slightly heavier than it was before this escapade). Decided to go and chat to Alaska Airlines person about checking in so early in Seattle (5am) and she gave us huge tips to save our time when we got to the airport and also put a note on our booking so we didn't get charged any overweight baggage again.

Flight to Seattle was good, as far as we know, cos we both were asleep before the plane took off, and woke up just as we were coming in to land - the flight was just under 3 hours. Grabbed our luggage, ran to the desk, checked in for Vancouver, and had to go through long security queues. Its still quite hectic, and they always pull me aside to check my handluggage cos they think they can see a little bottle. We think it must be Brandin's asthma pump.

Our plane was a little 20-seater twin turbo prop, and the flight to Vancouver was 45mins. Arrived at 8:35am (nearly 24 hours after leaving Fairbanks!!) Now if you remember the last time customs in Vancouver was absolutely ridiculous. This time we arrived, and we were the only plane.... The plane wasn't even full. We walked straight to the front of the queue and were through customs in about a minute. Picked up our luggage and off to the transport bus to find our hotel.

Hotel isn't as grand as last one, but we knew so cos of the price. Weren't too worried as long as it was decent, which it is, and seems to be in a nice part of town, where there are lots of little restaurants and it is close to a very big park along the harbour, called Stanley Park.

First matter of attention: SLEEP. Checked in, got to our room, showered and slept for 2 hours. Woke up feeling like a human again... and not smelly anymore either!

Went for a walk to Stanley Park, visited the Vancouver aquarium, and then wondered around the park, seeing a totem pole display, and generally just relaxing in the lovely sunshine. Beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, beautiful city. We have bought a hop on hop off bus ticket for tomorrow to see the city so we're going downtown to Chinatown and some other places.

Now its off to find some dinner. Have bought some dessert for later, and will probably lie in bed and watch a movie and have an early night. Bye for now.