Irv’s Journal

No big detailed post.  Just wanted to say Alaska was AMAZING!  Highlights:

• Aleutian Ballad (Deadliest Catch) Crab Boat tour.  WOW I would say if you had to choose one excursion to do, this would be it.  From showing us their fishing techniques, to telling fishing stories, I don’t think I had any dull moments on this tour.  Plus you get to meet people you’ve seen on TV, and they’re really nice guys.  The topper on this trip was when they took us to a native American reservation, where they were actually allowed to feed and bait the eagles!  I swear there must have been 30-40 eagles  swooping around right next to the ship!
• Eagle Preserve raft tour.  Being an “Eagle Preserve” I would have thought we would see some eagles!  Unfortunately I guess the majority of the eagles were off flying somewhere because the weather was so nice.  During the 1.5 raft ride I would say we saw about two or three eagles total.  However the river raft tour was nice, and we got to see some great views.
• Food on the ship was excellent.  Luckily dessert wasn’t always a great hit.  I managed to not gain any weight on the trip! Woohoo!
• The ship is REALLY smooth while in the protected waters.  It rocked slightly on the last day or two when we got out to open sea.

Highly recommended trip, especially if you get a good deal!  I would probably wait and do one of the later ones, even though we were really lucky and had sun every day.

I must say that this trip was much better than I had even expected.

Esther and I packed late into the night on Friday.  We then had to get up extra early to get to Steven and Jennifer’s wedding on Saturday morning.  This really led to a really frazzled exit from the house.  The wedding was at a golf course in La Habra, it was a very nice and scenic setting, and seemed to go off without any major issues.

Of course, thanks to Virgin America for changing our flight time to almost two hours earlier than scheduled, without any notification!  We didn’t find out about this small issue until we were about to check-in for our flight.  This meant we had to skip out on the wedding early and rush over to the airport, so we ended up missing out on the cake cutting and other activities after lunch.

Luckily, our flight to Seattle was on-time and pretty smooth.  Amy and Sean picked us all up and took us to an interesting Korean restaurant for dinner.  The rest of our Saturday was pretty much spent settling into our rooms (and doing a bit of extra laundry on my part) and relaxing.

Sunday started off at a cafe for brunch.  The food at this place was definitely hearty – I don’t think anyone finished their food!  After brunch, the whole family decided we needed to get out, so we took Kayla for a nice walk to the park.  The shocker of all was that Seattle was nice and sunny, so a couple of us got a bit slightly sunburned.  We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Lakers game, then most of us napped and got ready for Esther’s birthday dinner at Ginza.  This place is a cozy little Japanese restaurant with really fresh fish.  Pretty much every time we’re in Seattle we end up at this place, and as usual, we weren’t disappointed.

We were all rather full and tired, so after finishing off the evening with a little birthday ice cream cake, we all pretty much called it an early evening, since on Monday morning, the cruise awaited!