Cruising

Oh lawd. How far have I come from my gritty travel roots? Gentrification is a pernicious process, and here we are preparing to embark on our third cruise. Funnily enough I was canning my Booking.com history and came across a stop on my 2018 trip to Sri Lanka, a night at the La Safari Inn in Tissrahama prior to a safari. Not necessarily luxurious but a pretty decent night. Seven English pounds.

The trip on Celebrity Edge from Seattle to Vancouver via Alaska was a darn sight more than this, although given the somewhat eyewatering cost of literally all of our boarding and lodging over the past week it became more and more like the value option.

After dropping the hire car off, I met up with an old friend from the Investigations world. Really nice to catch up over a coffee once I had got over the mild coronary caused by his unexpected message- He is our answer to Ted from Line of Duty so my natural assumption whenever anyone talks to me about anything is that I’ve probably screwed up!

Embarkation from Seattle’s Pier 91 was, as predicted, a bit of a zoo. Whether a surprise to Celebrity or not, this morning was their annual Customs inspection which pushed all the boarding back a bit. A crowd, then a line to show your boarding card and passport, then a line to get on the escalator then a line to…show your boarding pass and passport, you get it. But we were on!

Edge is one of the newest of Celebrity’s fleet, with capacity for around 3,000 guests and a crew of 1300. So, good ratios right, this should make for excellent service?

Unfortunately not. The ship is beautiful but, even with our pretty pragmatic expectations, the service was exceptionally patchy, at times glacially slow and on occasions quite impolite. I don’t know if this is a Celebrity-wide thing or just this ship, or maybe even this crew? It just didn’t feel like our previous P+O or even Royal Caribbean trips.

Some notable examples- Whilst dining at one of the main restaurants a woman on the table next to us had the bottom of her water glass fall out- clearly a defect of some kind with clear safety implications. Her table was covered in icy water. Waiting staff did… nothing. A genuinely bizarre sight to see with plenty of vacant tables nearby. Eventually a supervisor wandered over and immediately gave a “WTF!” Look to the waiters before resolving it immediately.

A pretty common scenario was simply to be ignored in the cafe, on one occasion I finally managed to get the attention of a waiter who took my order and then just…disappeared. Thankfully in almost all of these scenarios the poor service is “caught” by other great staff members, but on this occasion, whilst returning to my seat after having walked the length of the cafe to reorder my vanishing coffee another member of staff approached a narrow bit with a tray and I graciously stepped aside…nothing. Completely blanked. That’s poor.

I will refrain from being too much of a princess about this but there is a basic level of service expected when you spend a not-inconsiderable sum of money with supposedly one of the more upscale cruise lines.

Anyhoo, bang on time we steamed out of Seattle’s enormous port and life at sea began. An afternoon and a sea day to start off proceedings.

We headed straight to the buffet, everyone loves a free lunch right? Unfortunately it seemed that everyone on the boat also wanted to love a free lunch, not for the first time on the voyage it was completely packed.

I immediately decided to test the legs of our “classic” drinks package with a couple of glasses of wine. This immediately demonstrated that the Classic package is pointless since the drink limit was $12 and all but about 2 wines were $19. Thankfully, in the manner of the best shady salesman a Filipino bartender called Mark sidled up to us as we left with an upgrade offer. Premium drinks- Another $126 each.

Of course, this was worth it. He drinks a whisky drink, he drinks a lager drink etc…By the end of the night I was fairly confident we had exceeded the price of all our drinks packages on deck, in the sun, in the Martini bar. Game over was when the silent disco kicked in…organised fun? Nah.

The next day was spent at sea. I do love a good sea day, it feels like there’s no pressure to go anywhere or do anything so it was largely spent mooching round the ship. Breakfast was in the main dining room, nice conversation with our random table of six but glacially slow service, like 45 minutes for anything to appear so we didn’t go back.

One of the most notable features of Celebrity Edge is the “Magic Carpet”which protrudes from an upper deck. It can also be used in tendering as a dock. The logical side of me really didn’t like this- Hanging a huge thing off one side of the ship. The chances of all of the welds and rails failing and sending it into the briny would be extremely low, but not zero. It was however a great spot for an afternoon cocktail, with notably better service than many parts of the ship. Windy but at least you know you’re at sea and not in some big hotel.

Edge really is a lovely ship, and much of the day was spent in the beautiful rooftop garden area. Lunch was in one of the speciality restaurants that you pay a supplement for, in this case $50 a head. This was the one meal that was really worth it, a beautiful steak dinner in Fine Cut. Absolutely superb, and service to match.

Evening was spent partly in Eden, one of my favourite areas on the stern of the ship, with a fantastic rainforest design and great cocktails- at least some of them under the $19 “limit”. I had then scanned the listings and promised Mark a comedian in the theatre. Suitably prepared we took our seats- not at the front- and a giant theatrical production started. Not our thing at all but actually very impressive,and all of Edge’s performances were a bitesize 45 minutes in duration anyway. No loss…we actually went to the comedian the next night and he was as funny as Ebola.

Next day was a port day… Ketchikan, Alaska. We really were having exceptional luck with the weather, September is very much the shoulder season and can be hit and miss. After a buffet breakfast on the rear deck we set out to explore the surrounds. Alaska can be a bit of a cruise ship procession and there were several in port so it took a good stomp to escape the throng. After a functional visit to the supermarket ($10 Lynx deodorant? Alaska prices are insane) we headed into town and looked up the totem museum as well as the park.

Better was to come however. Ketchikan is salmon town, and home to some of the hatcheries in the area where they return to spawn, unerringly navigating away to open sea and then back to this exact point. Perfect natural navigation. You don’t notice it until you see it. A river alive with salmon, utterly staggering. One of the best natural phenomena I’ve ever seen.

We enjoyed a walk through the historic boardwalk but took a miss of the lumberjack show, the town was far, far too peopley by now, so back to the boat to enjoy the evening sun and a scenic sail away on deck.

Dinner was at “Raw on Five”, another of the speciality restaurants. We had really high hopes after a similar restaurant on Royal Caribbean provided an innovative feast, but this was somewhat underwhelming, with reasonable but not memorable sushi, a lobster roll served with crisps and, whilst slightly redeemed by an amazing matcha dessert. We were wrongly charged nearly $100 for our wine, which was later refunded after a visit to guest relations (They obviously had to check first that we were telling the truth!), but no apology.

What the cruise lacked in consistent service, however, it made up for in spades with scenery. Day four marked a sunrise wake-up for the glide up the Endicott Arm towards the Dawes Glacier and spectacular, misty vistas as we pushed though the ice floes. Our captain was braver than some of the other lines, pushing right up to the glacier. A beautiful and memorable morning.

After a bit of restorative lounging on deck we pulled into our afternoon stop of Juneau. A mild bit of Googling identified that the key highlight here was the Mendenhall glacier, reachable either through an expensive shore excursion or…just grab a taxi from downtown. Not gambling men, we took the middle ground of a shuttle from town at about 60 bucks each. Our shuttle was driven and presided over by a former State Trooper with some fascinating insights….whilst there are big roads around town and America’s smallest Costco, apparently, these are roads to nowhere since you can only reach here by air or sea. A pleasant walk up to the glacier and nearby falls, a few selfies with the duck and our three hours were up.

There’s not much to recommend in Juneau itself, apart from some impressively dive-y dive bars. As with all of our stops, there were plenty of very strongly priced shore tours available, in this case various combinations of seaplanes, salmon and the least convincingly, bar crawls where presumably a local wino would show you the dive bar ropes. Why you couldn’t just walk off the damn boat and do it yourself I am unsure.

Back then, to the boat for another evening of bad choices. We were trying Normandie, the French themed restaurant on the boat and actually a distinct improvement in service, apart from the odd glitch like having to ask four times for a glass of port. First world problems ‘n’all. Great food though. We were seated alongside two brilliant ladies from Washington DC keen to emphasise their disdain for the current regime. Albertine in particular, a retired Xerox executive, was extravagantly pissed and outrageous, which I value in a dinner guest.

The evening continued in the Martini bar in the central atrium, a good spot with some wicked cocktails and a lively but unusually efficient Filipino bar crew, leaving shortly before the Beatles tribute act came on. Ugh. Much like not liking football, I know I am an outlier with my utter disdain for the Fabulous Four.

Back then to Eden bar to round off the evening with a young English vocalist who was genuinely excellent, however it quickly became apparent that he was being drowned out by a couple of loud guys at the bar. To the extent that people were starting to heckle. Somehow I decided that it fell to me to sort this issue out and have a chat. This went unexpectedly badly since the loud man’s friend was less than happy with any form of advice in life, but they left shortly afterwards to a round of applause, so all was well. We decided not to push our luck further and turned in for the night after this. Ship hero status achieved, no injuries.

The next morning we awoke in Skagway, and set off on a 3 hour trip on the White Pass scenic railway, genuinely a boon when introduced during the gold rush saving a week long rugged trek to reach the port. Skagway, again, turned out to be a bit of a cruise trap so after a brief wander in town we returned shipwards.

The ‘bad choices’ theme for the evening was gambling. Mark loves a flutter, and on our last RC cruise we were actually up on the fruities, this time not so much, $40 gone in the blink of an eye. Some great food and entertainment tonight, nothing we’d usually do at home but a lot of pizazz.

Time then, for another glorious day at sea in the sunshine. Brekkie in the cabin was nothing to write home about, and necessitated no less than 3 phone calls to us despite booking the night before. Onwards to cafe, great lunch and absolutely an early start on the sauce. You’re nothing in life if you can’t enjoy a morning pint in your socks on deck. Like Wetherspoons but fewer pensioners. Marginally. Naturally this ended in the Martini Bar, but early bed tonight after they all whipped out flashing batons and started waving them round in some ghastly American organised fun thing.

Our final port call was an evening in Victoria, British Columbia. I guess the clue’s in the title but from the moment of stepping ashore this seemed oddly familiar but all very civilised. Much to Mark’s chagrin, I made a beeline for the little hire golf cart in the street outside which looked very fun but I worked out was about £50 for 2hrs so we canned that idea and strolled into town along the front, taking in a cool floating food market and the stunning colonial architecture.

Much as I was determined not to spend money off the boat, the prospect of a proper pint in a proper pub could not be turned down, so we stepped into The Bard and Banker for a cooling libation, already noting that it was nearly half the US price. This boded well. Onwards to Vancouver BC…