The Ship is in the midst of a 12 day Alaskan cruise out of
San Francisco. Alaska is beautiful, but honestly this itinerary has been the
most boring out of any I’ve been on. Too many days at sea, weird arrival and
departure times and a lack of amenities ashore makes life a bit more difficult
for crew members, but if you’re into hiking and wildlife and you’re looking for
summer vacation ideas, I could see the appeal of this particular set of ports.
The home port being San Francisco, I was able to enjoy a few
favorite spots while the ship disembarked old passengers and brought aboard the
new. Well, after a trip to the worst Guitar Center in existence that is.
Seriously, I’m no fan of GC’s in general but the store in downtown San
Francisco has got to be the biggest shithole I’ve ever stepped into. Apparently this place was in the midst of
completely renovating the entire store, but decided to stay open and not cover
up any of the equipment. Everything was covered in dust and half the ceiling
was torn open. If you’re a horn player
like me, GC’s are generally pretty useless, so if you’re in San Fran and need
some supplies head over to Union Music off of Market St.
The first two days of this cruise are at sea. Entertainers
tend to loath sea days simply because they are boring. Most of our work happens
at night, so the days are mostly spent in our rooms. In warmer climates we
might enjoy a few hours of sunbathing or a dip in the pool up on the forward
crew deck, but this being Alaska you can rule that out straight away. Mostly we
practice, write music or watch movies. Exchanging shows and movies with friends
helps, but by the third or fourth week you’ve watched everything, so it’s
pretty important to have something constructive to do.
Our first port was Ketchikan. Any port that cruise ships
dock in are tourist traps, and Ketchikan is no exception. Let me describe the
layout of any port you’ll visit: one main street right off the gangway, usually
called Bay or Wharf St; tour companies with white vans and taxi drivers
soliciting the best whale watching or zip lining or beach resort in town; a
small, annoyingly quaint shore side village filled with nothing but
restaurants, jewelry stores and souvenir shops. There are very few exceptions
to this formula. Here’s the real trick to having a good time in port: Get away
from the fucking ship. Because everything is set up so close to the docks, any
pub or café or shop is going to be filled to the brim with cruise ship
passengers. If you go just another few blocks down the road or few hundred
yards down the beach, you tend to receive a bit better service and the
environment tends to be a little less crazy.
Today we are in Icy Straight Point. This port is a tendering
port, meaning the ship anchors offshore and everybody takes the little
lifeboats into the docks. There isn’t much of a town ashore, but they do serve
fresh crab legs ($20 a pound for guests!) and feature a huge zip line and some
hiking trails. Hopefully tendering won’t take too long and we’ll get some good
shore time before we have to head back aboard for our evening stage show.
Tomorrow we stop in Juneau, one of the better ports on this itinerary. Juneau
as a lot to offer as far as food and activities go, from sea plane tours to a
great hike up a pretty big mountain. It’s also one of the prettier stops we
visit. Unfortunately we’ll only be in port for a short while, which is super
disappointing.
The best part of this trip comes at the end of it, so I’ll
do my best to have the next post ready by then.
-SlideFunk
Posts
