Thursday, May 23, 2019. Skagway, Alaska

Thursday, May 23, 2019. Skagway

 We awoke as the ship’s thrusters began causing the bow to vibrate while backing into it’s berth on the Railroad Dock.  There are now 3 cruise ship docks in Skagway.  There is a spur of the White Pass Scenic Railway that goes right to the Railroad Dock.  We could see the Disney Magic tied up at one of the other piers, and the Holland America Westerdam on the third dock.  

We had a quick breakfast in the Buffet before disembarking and boarding the train for our 3 hour scenic railroad ride.  The White Pass railroad has a few itineraries.  The one we selected goes from Skagway to the summit and then turns around and heads back to Skagway.  It does cross the Canadian border, taking us about 3 miles beyond the border, but there is no train station there as the train simply takes a loop branch that feeds it right back.  Since we couldn’t actually get off the train we didn’t require our Passports.  There were some other passengers who did end up spending some time in US Customs and Immigration because they had taken itineraries that took them to the end of the line, which is in Fraser BC.  They had brought birth certificates, which did allow them to return to the US, but didn’t have passports.  We ended up playing Trivia with this couple later in the day.  

The train did have a car that was equipped with a wheel chair lift. There were about a half dozen passengers that were in wheelchairs and scooters including Betty in that car.  We transferred Betty into a bench seat by the window for better viewing during the trip.  The scenery was quite spectacular, looking like the Canadian Rockies when you drive through Kamloops, only even bigger and with lots more snow at the tops of the mountains.  We spotted several small Sasquatch planted along the route including one holding a stick of dynamite at the entrance to one of the railroad tunnels. Janet spotted a gorilla in a tree and there was also a rattle snake perched on a rocky outcropping- fake of course, but a source of humor and amusement.  The Sasquatches, true to their nature, were very hard to capture on film.  Nobody was successful in getting their picture.  

The trip was pleasant and easy.  Today was really the first day we encountered rain in Alaska.  For the most part, it was a light drizzle, but it was nice that we were inside the train for the rainy part of our cruise experience.  When the train returned to Skagway, we disembarked downtown to walk through the shops and historic sites, before walking back to the ship, which was just a 15 minute walk from downtown.  The only thing really strange was when we went to retrieve Betty’s wheel chair to put her back in it, someone had poured a bottle of water onto her wheelchair seat, soaking the pad that was on it.  There was a mentally disabled passenger who was sitting right next to where we had parked her wheel chair, who seemed amused when we discovered that the seat was soaking wet.  We removed the pad and fortunately, the seat under the pad was dry.  Back on the ship afterwards, we used a hairdryer to dry out the pad cover so that Betty could use it again.  

Ben and Janet did an afternoon trivia, tying for first place with one other team, but this time losing on the tie breaker, which was How many official languages does Spain have.  Well according to Wikipedia, Spain has one official language- Spanish aka Catstilian.  But if you look up “Languages of Spain”, there are four other “Co-official” languages, so you I could say they have 5 official and co-official languages.  They did ask what animal is most closely related to humans based on DNA.  From our Viking Cuba cruise, we learned from the lecturer on board that the Bonobo is most closely related to humans, although most people wouldn’t be able to tell a Bonobo from a Chimpanzee.  They both are over 99% matches to human DNA. But we went with the safer answer of Chimpanzee because the Bonobo DNA was only sequenced in 2003, and these trivia answers are usually drawn from old data.  And that did turn out to be correct.  We did get tripped up on what the smallest country in Continental Asia was.  We the answer was Singapore.  We’ll certainly get that answer correct after our Rome to Singapore cruise this winter.

Everyone needed a nap after returning from Skagway, and had a hard time waking up for afternoon activities and dinner.  We did end up meeting up in the dining room for our 5pm seating, but several were a little late because it took a while to get back started up from their naps.  

We attended the early showing of “Born to Dance”, the first Princess Theatre production show for this cruise.  The cast was excellent, although one of the male dancers looked a little on the heavy side.  But that didn’t stop him from leaping directly into a splits on the stage.  Lots of Russian talent amongst the dancers.  The vocalists were also quite good.  Janet and I have seen this show many times on various ships with various casts, and this cast did a good job.  

We then headed to the Vista Lounge for an encore performance of the Magician couple.  They did several mentalist type tricks, and while none of the other magic was anything we hadn’t seen before, the humorous interplay between the husband wife team did make the show unique.  We couldn’t help but compare this couple to Remington Steele, because the wife is clearly the lead magician and showman, with her husband filling in a secondary role.  

We finished up the night with Franklin’s Karaoke.  This time, there were many more entries, including an 8 year old cutie singing a song from Frozen, and a couple of duets, including Franklin singing a song from Grease with a blond gal he apparently met just today at lunch, who was one of the last girls to get up to sing on the first night of Karaoke.  

Our clocks go back an hour tonight.  Good thing we don’t have any early excursions tomorrow, being our second day at sea.  Ben is hoping his suit and slacks return from the cleaners in time for tomorrow’s second formal night.  He had turned them in for pressing after the first formal night.