By my very toes

To be truthful, there were only two mad hotels on our trip. Most of them – barring the one in Whistler which was kind of old, and the one in Kamloops which was just basic because Kamloops doesn’t have anything better – were pretty nice, and all other than the one in Kamloops were five star because we booked a premium tour (and paid through the nose for it.) A few of them were in the Fairmont Hotel chain, which caters for the high end customers. So it was a peek at a lifestyle we’re not familiar with, while not particularly wanting to living like that all the time (I mean, turn down service? Chocolates on the pillow every night? Does any of that really matter?) Continue reading “Mad Hotels”

The flight to San Francisco was via Virgin ‘first class’ – which is to say, what other people call premium economy. Grimy white leather seats and cheap fizz do not make a flight ‘first class’. Nor was I impressed by the pole dance style safety briefing a very pretty and talented female flight attendant had to make for our section. People made such a fuss over this fun and funny Air New Zealand video which I saw several times on planes, but no one complains about this sexist shit Branson puts his staff through? Really? Continue reading “California”

Strictly, this belongs in the Canada post but oh well. Before we caught the train south, we had most of the day in Vancouver, so Doug went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge (which I did so not want to go to), while I went to the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens to meet a delightful and very clever twitter friend from Vancouver. The gardens are lovely, though I was too tired from an early start and bad sleep to really enjoy it. Lots of gracious planting and sculptures: Continue reading “Seattle”

The worst thing about the USA apart from its politics, is the way it treats people entering the country as tourists. It’s not actually necessary to regard us all as criminals, you know. But yet it forces people to wait for hours to be photographed, fingerprinted and interrogated, all so we can go and spend good money in the place.

We literally waited three hours to clear immigration at Vancouver’s cruise terminal to get onto the boat (considered American territory and we were eventually going to go to Alaska). That was after a very early start and long ferry ride. We didn’t get onto the cruise boat until after three pm, and had gobble some lunch before an obligatory lifeboat drill at four pm. To say I was pissed off and knackered after all this is an understatement. Grrrr.

However. Once we ate some more and had showers and calmed down, we suddenly realised that (a) the stateroom was bigger than some of the hotel rooms we’d stayed in and (b) we didn’t need to pack or meet a deadline again for a whole week. Yippee! And we could stay in our room for the entire trip if we wanted because room service was free. (We didn’t, but we could. We had some breakfasts in the room though.) Our verandah gave us a perfect view of the scenery and we could have as much or as little to do with other people as we wanted. Bliss 😉

The first day was at sea, letting us explore the ship, food options and entertainment possibilities. Also, relax after the hectic day before. It was ‘formal dress’ night so we blinged up and went to the main ‘posh’ dining room – where we were jammed in like sardines. Oh well. Food was okay, but not worth the hassle (the food in the ‘casual’ parts was just as good without all the nonsense) but we saw orcas outside the window 🙂 Oh and humpbacks from our verandah while eating breakfast the next morning! Continue reading “Alaska”