Onboard ship – Haines, Alaska port of call

Before I talk about Haines, a few words about our stateroom: Wow! And wow…and it’s really, really cool!

Seriously, though. In size it isn’t much different from a regular Holiday Inn hotel room. A narrow corridor gets you into the room; his and hers closets are on the one side of the corridor and the “head” is on the other. There’s a step up to the bathroom and all the doors are much more solid with firm seals you don’t see in hotels, though.

Our bedroom comes next with a king-size bed that is always impeccably made up by Novi and Arif with a fancy cover that goes over only the bottom third of the bed. No full comforter, but then again, one isn’t needed. I don’t care if this is Alaska, the rooms tend to be warm.

After that comes our “living room” which is the other half of the stateroom. A large couch is along one wall and opens into a queen-size bed in case I get mad at Steven. Means sitting on it is a bit stiff, but who’s complaining? Not me! Opposite the couch is a built-in desk with drawers for clothes, a HUGE mirror and a flat screen TV on the bedroom side. There’s a table in the middle which is bolted to the floor but can be raised or lowered to make a coffee table or a dinner table. We have one chair that doubles as a dining room chair or extra living room chair.

From there you get to the wall of window and the door to the veranda. The deck above us has verandas the width of two of what we have, but I’m not complaining here, either. Everyone below us has only windows. The travel agent made sure she booked us on the good side to see the glaciers and boy, did we see glaciers yesterday! Today I can look out over the city of Haines.

Haines is a port town like most along the Inside Passage. What’s cool about this one is that it hasn’t really been changed much by tourism. The big Holland America boats only stop once a week and provide tours to Skagway. All the other big boats go right past Haines and go up the channel to the tourist trap that’s Skagway. I’m glad we stopped here.

Population wise, it isn’t very big…about 1200 people. That’s smaller than Bishop Kearney was when I was there. I can’t remember how big the geographic borders are of the town, but she did say if you were to take the island of Manhattan and take off all but 14 people, that’s the same ratio of land to people that there is in the borough of Haines.

She? Who is she? That would be Diane, our tour guide on the historical tour Steven and I took this morning. Took about two hours and we went through Ft. Seward (once the first government military presence in Alaska, now a privately owned set of buildings that are being used for a variety of purposes. One is a bed and breakfast, another two have been joined together to make a hotel and restaurant, others are private homes or art studios. But there’s an attempt by all to keep the outside appearances intact. Very cool walk and great tour guide.

We decided to go local for lunch, even though lunch on the ship is free. We found a place up on a back street and boy, was it expensive for a diner! Haines is the “retirement community” of Alaska because it’s one of the most temperate areas, but it also is remote. That means everything needs to be brought in by barge. And that means higher prices. Still, the halibut fish and chips was wonderful and I could really, really get used to eating this fish.

The restaurant was a local hotspot and for $2.95 I could get Internet for an hour; for $6.95 I could get the whole day. Compare that with the ship rates of $25.00 for a half hour! Uploaded the blog posts and checked emails and spent time with the locals. Had fun!

Back in the room now, finishing Inkheart. Have ordered from Room service and should have fruit, cookies and cheese and crackers here soon. Ahh…this is the life!

Later
Ate at the Rotterdam again last night; Steven had some fun with the poor busboy. He kept “helping” him until the kid was laughing so hard he got the waiters laughing too.

We saw the second of the Statendam Singer and Dancers’ shows. The first one was better. The song choices for this one didn’t hang together as well and the dances weren’t as well executed (or choreographed). Enjoyed it, but not as much. Afterward we passed the “deck sale” – can’t have a sidewalk sale on a ship that doesn’t have sidewalks – and Steven found a nice pair of leather driving gloves and I picked up a scarf that matches my teal skirt (that I ended up not bringing on the trip).

Back in the room we watched a little of Mamma Mia! on TV, but the clouds had finally cleared and you could see the stars for the first time since coming to Alaska. We’re getting more hours of real dark here (approximately 5 of them a night) and we could see the Milky Way and Cassiopeia. Wished I had my star chart with me to identify more.

Just before we turned out the lights I looked outside one more time and saw not one ship passing us in the night, but three! Hard to tell what direction each was moving as everyone was moving very slowly through the channel. But definitely a bottleneck of cruiseships!