Day 332/365 - I Cover the Waterfront

Caught the 9:30 train up to New York today, checked into my hotel, swung by TKTS to get a discount seat for "The 39 Steps," and then headed over to the South Street Seaport to tour some old ships, check out the Seaport Museum, and wander along the riverbank for a while.

Then it was back to the hotel to change and off to dinner at Wolfgang's Steakhouse. I hadn't been out for steak in a while so I figured I'd go get a good one while I was in New York and I did. I ordered the filet mignon and it was several inches thick and as soft as butter. Damn, it was good. After dinner, it was time for the show. "The 39 Steps" is a comic adaptation of the old Hitchcock movie about spies and murder. The cast of four plays dozens of parts in a hammy, over-the-top style and there are lots of quick costume changes. It's even got shadow puppets. It's a funny, imaginative play.

When the play ended, I stopped by the Junior's in Time Square for my post-theatre cheesecake and coffee and then headed back to my hotel to listen to an episode of the old Damon Runyon Theater radio program on my iPod before falling into bed.

Thus went the first day of my weekend getaway.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 241/365 - In Victoria, British Columbia

Our weather good fortune finally broke. Today it was cloudy and foggy and cool all day. Still, given that we had six days of unbelievably perfect weather I can't really complain. We made our last port visit today, to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. I went on an Orca watching boat tour. It involved lots of wind, cold, and watching, but no orcas. We did see two harbor porpoises off in the distance and got a quick glimpse of the back and dorsal fin of a minke whale, but other than that all we saw was water, kelp, logs, and other whale watching boats. It's sounding like I should've gone for the tour of the city gardens instead. Everyone that came back from that tour was raving about how gorgeous they were. Oh well, three out of four ain't bad.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 240/365 - In Ketchikan, Alaska

Today we had the next-to-last port visit on our Alaskan cruise -- Ketchikan, Alaska. I went on a crab and beer feast/mountaintop flightseeing excurstion. The crab and beer feast part sounded much better until you realized it was at 7:15 in the morning. Still, it was pretty damn tasty. If you're drinking beer for breakfast then you're either on vacation or an alcoholic. Or both. After stuffing ourselves with dungeness crab, Alaska Amber ale, and blueberry cheesecake, we boarded a DeHavilland Beaver floatplane for our sightseeing flight over the mountains and waterways of Ketchikan. It was awesome. The views were excellent and the flight was a lot smoother than I expected, although landing on water is a bit bumpier than on land.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 239/365 - Cruising Glacier Bay

This was our second day at sea, and what a day at sea it was. We visited Glacier Bay and the scenery was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The mountains and the water and the clear blue sky were phenomenal, and then there were the glaciers. We stopped by three of them -- Reid, Margerie, and another one whose name I can't remember. Sheesh, not only am I bad with people's names, I'm also bad with glacier's names. The glaciers are miles-long, hundreds of feet thick tongues of blue ice that run from the end of narrow inlets up to the mountains. The ones we saw are called calving glaciers because chunks keep falling off of them into the sea, kinda like cows giving birth to calves.

Margerie was the best of the glaciers we saw. I saw a couple little landslide type calving incidents with it and then got to see one good-sized chunk splinter off and topple into the water with a boom. Glacier Bay is a U.S. National Park and we had a group of National Park Service rangers board our ship and narrate our tour of the park over the ship's public address system. It was like watching an Imax movie, but in person. The weather is still picture perfect. The ship's crew and everyone we talk to in the ports tells us that it normally isn't nearly this nice. Most of the time up here it's cloudy and cool and rainy, but it's been sunny and in the low 80s/high 70s for our whole cruise. And not only has it not rained, we haven't even seen hardly any clouds. So far we've hit the weather lottery. Here's hoping it holds for the rest of the cruise.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 237/365 - Moonrise over Alaska

We hit the first port on our Alaskan cruise today, the capital city of Juneau. I went for a six mile hike on a mountain alongside the Mendenhall glacier. The trail started out pretty easy and then got really steep. The views were great though and it was nice to be out in the woods. The weather was amazing. It's beginning to look like I packed the wrong sorts of clothes. I packed longsleeved shirts and turtleneck sweaters and jeans and I might have been better off packing shorts and t-shirts. It was sunny and in the 80s. Not what I expected from Alaska. I'm not complaining though. It was much better than hiking in the rain and the clear skies make for much better photos. This shot was of the moon rising over the mountains ringing the Inside Passage after we left Juneau to head further north to Skagway. The sun didn't set until 10 p.m. tonight. Now that is what I expected from Alaska.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 232/365 - Ready to Ship Out

Saturday morning I'm catching a flight to Seattle so that the next day I can board the Norwegian Pearl and get underway on a 7-day Alaskan cruise. I am 'redtago" (ready to go). Well, mentally ready to go anyhow. Still haven't started packing yet. I think I've picked out the shore excursions I want to do, though. In Juneau there's the Mendenhall Glacier hike, in Skagway there's the vintage railway scenic tour/Sawtooth Mountain rainforest hike combo, in Ketchikan I'm leaning toward the floatplane mountaintop sightseeing and crab feast outing, and in Victoria it will be the killer whale watching boat trip.

The excursions sound cool, but I'm still not sure how much I'm going to like this cruise. I've been on two Caribbean cruises before (not counting the half-dozen times I deployed there in the Navy on various ops) and my favorite part of those cruises were the days at sea where I could just lay in the sun on the Lido deck and read and listen to my iPod. Don't think there will be much working on my tan on this cruise given that the temperature is supposed to be in the mid-50s. Guess I can just sit by a window and read and listen to old radio programs, though. I've got one mystery series I recently loaded onto my iPod called "Passage of the Tangmar" about a group of heirs onboard a ship steaming from Australia to Jamaica to inherit a millionaire's estate and who are slowly getting bumped off one by one before they can reach their destination. It should be cool to listen to on my cruise. Plus I have a few books set on ships or at sea that should make for good reading.

This cruise was my brother's idea. I sent my parents on an Alaskan one last year and they raved about it, so my brother decided he wanted to go on one as well and he invited me to come along. This wasn't my first choice of vacations, but he and I usually have a lot of fun when we take trips together so I figured 'what the heck.' If nothing else, it's a week away from work and an excuse to take lots of photos. As if I really needed an excuse for that.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Twice on Sunday Bonus Photo - Venetian Gondolas

For this week's bonus photo, we have a shot of a pair of gondolas in a canal taken on my recent trip to Venice. Ahhh, Venice...

(Taken with my Nikon D80)

Day 142/365 - Across the Venetian Lagoon

Today was the fifth day of my trip to Venice, and the longest day of sightseeing thus far. I left the hotel at 7:45 in the morning and didn't get back until 7:20 at night. Despite all that (and the fact that I walked 5.5 miles, about a mile more than I've been averaging per day) however, it was a very relaxing day.

The day's journey began in the Castello district. I started off at the Naval History Museum -- five floors of boats, ship models, and military and civilian seafaring artifacts which I had entirely to myself. From there I walked down to the public gardens at the southern tip of the city and sat in the sun and read for a while. Then I moved on to wander around the streets of Castello and I still had some time to kill before my afternoon tour of the lagoon islands, so I decided to have a nice lunch.

Lunch has been something I've either skipped or settled for grabbing a sandwich on the run. Today was the first day I had time to enjoy a good lunch. I picked the restaurant of the Hotel Monaco and I sat on their terrace bordering the Grand Canal while having a salad, baked monkfish with potatoes and asparagus, zabaglione, and two glasses of Proseco. It was tremendous.

Then it was time to join my tour. First stop was Murano, the island of the glass-makers. The glass blowing demonstration was pretty short and not much different than other glass blowng I've seen. This was probably my least favorite of the three island stops we made. Next was Torcello, with its two very old churches. The paintings inside the main church were very Eastern Orthodox in style, which makes sense given that when the church was built this area was still under the sway of Constantinople. Finally, we stopped at Burano -- island of fishermen and lace makers.

After the unremarkable glass blowing demonstration, I skipped the lace making show and just wandered around taking pictures. The houses on Burano are all painted in spectacular colors. They look like a row of gumdrops lining the canal. This was my favorite stop on the tour. On the way back to Venice from Burano we lucked into the beginnings of a rather spectacular sunset, as you can see above.

The last stop of the day for me was Harry's Bar in San Marco, favored haunt of Ernest Hemingway and countless others and birthplace of the Bellini cocktail. I had two of them and they were both great. The bar itself was smaller than I expected, but very cozy.

Tomorrow, it's my birthday. I plan to start out the day in the last neighborhood I have yet to explore, Cannaregio, and then go to see the opera "Romeo and Juliette" at Teatro La Fenice. After that, it's either a Vivaldi concert with musicians in 18th century costumes or a trip to the casino. Or perhaps both. It will be my birthday after all and I certainly believe in spoiling myself rotten.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Twice on Sunday Bonus Photo - The Sea Inside

This week's bonus photo from my archives is a shot I took at the aquarium in Chicago when I went there to see the Nats play the Cubs in May 2006 (they lost, go figure). Chicago is a terrific city and a place I wouldn't mind living (although, granted, I've never been there during wintertime).

In this shot, I liked the way the aquarium pool verged on Lake Michigan with (seemingly) only the glass wall to separate them.

(Taken with my old Canon SuperShot 400)

Twice on Sunday Bonus Photo - Atlantic Sunrise

This week's bonus photo from my archives is a shot I took of the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean from the beach in Hollywood, Florida. I was down there for the wedding of my friends Chris and Desiree. It had been a while since I'd seen sunrise over the ocean, so I got up crazy early one morning and went down and sat on the beach while I listened to Bebel Gilberto's 'Tanto Tempo' cd on my iPod (it's the perfect soundtrack for sunrise on the beach, btw) and waited for the sun to come up.

It was gorgeous and well worth waking up early to see.

(Taken with my old Canon Powershot S400)