The majestic, snow covered ranges of Alaska, as seen from the ship
The return leg of any trip lacks the sparkle and excitement of the outbound portion, but today I find myself back at home and honestly somewhat glad to be back on good old terra firma. The Alaskan cruise I've been on with a small group of folks was certainly eventful, and I'll probably do several posts about the good and less-than-good portions of it for those of you who've missed the experience of being aboard a cruise ship so far.
One member of our party had a heart attack along the way, but thankfully while we were in port. They were taken ashore, hospitalized briefly in a small town hospital and then flown by private Lear jet back to a better equipped facility where they were stabilized and will more than likely be flown home today under medical supervision.
That bump in the trip aside, it was an incredible whirlwind of sights, adventures and superb dining that I'll share with you... after I deal with this mountain of laundry and mail that accumulated over the past couple of weeks.
Internet connectivity was expensive (between 40 and 75 cents per minute, depending on the amount of time you purchased - and data moved only slightly faster than the glaciers outside our window - but I'm back, and we'll get back on track here by Monday. Thanks for sticking with me.
An Alaskan glacier reaches the edge of a cliff, where it calves and falls to the rocks below - taken from a helicopter
4 comments:
Welcome back from your adventure. I hope your Lear-jetting companion is well on the road to recovery.
I went on my first cruise last Autumn and was horrified at the price of internet connection (and at the speed which I'm sure they slow down even further to use up your minutes even faster LOL).
Then I found out that my Amazon Kindle's VERY basic web browser worked on board AND was free of charge so I could check webmail and look up other image-light pages. Sure it was just as slow as the other internet access but for free it was fine and could be used pretty much everywhere on board.
This was on a Celebrity ship - I don't know if it works with other cruise lines. And it's probably not worth buying a Kindle just for this (it needs to be the more expensive 3G and WiFi version not just the WiFi) but if you like ebooks anyway it's a very nice addition.
That's an interesting tip about the Kindle reader, thank you. I greatly prefer holding the actual book in my hands, but perhaps that's just me being an old fuddy-duddy. :-)
The one who fell ill on the trip will not recover, sad to say, but thank you for the good wishes.
Bao-Bao,
Sorry to read here that your friend will not be making a recovery as was hoped.
Sounds as if the your next few blogs will be a particularly good read. Can't wait but take your time ... don't worry about me. LOL.
Cheers
Keith
Thanks, Keith. I probably won't post much more about that, but the prognosis is grave and will involve a shorter timeline than any of us had hoped.
Post a Comment