Island to Alaska with Pictures

[stephv710]

I'm starting to feel like a crack addict....keep running to the computer for my "fix". This is the greatest thread! Thanks for keeping us entertained...I love this story!

[Perley1]

I feel the same way - I'm checking out here all day to see what updates are available! It used to be all about the Alaska posts, now it's all about "Will they get their luggage?!" "What will they buy with the credit?" "Will we ever get to Day 2?" :)

[cworld]

Let’s see, where was I? I remember now, we were about to pick up our forks and sample that heaping plate full of food. Where to start? Enee-meanee-miney-moe (or however you spell it). Let’s start with the omelet.

I had and omelet for breakfast every morning. Why? Was it because they were, “to die for”, knock your socks off, absolutely not to be missed, good? Nah, nope, that’s not it. Was it because I was omelet deprived as a child? Could be. Is it because it was the only thing you could see that was freshly prepared, guaranteed to be hot when it hit the plate, and you could control what ingredients went in to the preparation somewhat? ***DING, DING DING*** !!!!WE HAVE A WINNER!!!! Call me a skeptic, call me weird, call me Howard Hughes like, (we saw the Aviator later in the day, but that’s another story altogether, and one I’ll probably tell in nauseating detail) but, I like my food fairly freshly prepared. (Who knows what the do to food when your not watching? There are disgruntled workers out there. I never know who is upset with me. Did I bump into someone in the hall and not say "I'm sorry"? Did someone get up on the wrong side of the bed? What revenge will they enact on some unsuspecting passenger... Doesn't everyone worry about these things? Is it just me? AM I PARANOID???)

Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything bad about the Horizon Court’s food. I don’t remember any time at breakfast anything being stale, dried out, or otherwise inedible (except for the stuff I don’t eat anyway). When you go to a buffet there’s always that possibility. And to be perfectly honest, (you’re not perfect at anything, and the honest thing…) if you eat downstairs, they do the much same thing, they prepare the food and put it under warming lights until it’s served. So what’s the difference? Probably the only difference is who is putting the stuff on the plate (me). Oh, and how much that person puts on the plate (piles).

 

Back to the omelet, the omelets I had during the week were always good, never outstanding, but never awful. I like big fluffy omelets. My favorite omelets are the ones they serve at Waffle House, or IHOP, big, thick, lots of ingredients, and lots of egg. If that is what you are expecting, you’re going to be disappointed.

 

The omelets were thin, but usually had lots of ingredients. The problem was the preparation was inconsistent. The first day the cooks were starting the omelets in the little specialized omelet pans then throwing them on the grill to finish them. This made the best omelets. The one I had from the first day was good. After that, though, all of the omelets I saw made were cooked on the grill. The cook would pour some egglike substance on the grill, take his spatula and spread it out, let it cook for a couple of seconds, then add the ingredients. This made for very thin, kinda small omelets.

 

Some days the cooks would warm the ingredients in the specialized omelet pans then put them in the omelets, and some days they didn’t. This leads me to my only real complaint about the omelets, one morning, the cook was warming the ingredients in the specialized pans prior to putting them in the omelet. He would pour a gallon or so of oil in the pan, well maybe it was only a couple of tablespoons, then throw in the ham, etc. The problem is that he used way too much oil. When I looked at my omelet on the plate, it oozed cheese, it looked pretty good, it had lots of ham, but, there was also a ring of oil around it. Every bite I took tasted of cooking oil.

 

 

Note to omelet cook in the Horizon Court that uses too much oil – If you see oil dripping out of your beautiful omelets, you are using too much oil. Oil is not an ingredient, at least when it comes to omelets, it’s a lubricating agent for the pan. We would appreciate it if you just use enough oil to lubricate the pan, not so much that it slops out with the ingredients. If it’s not absorbed into the ingredients, it’s too much. Hint: if you get too much oil add some mushrooms, they suck up oil, if the passenger complains about the mushrooms, you can just look at them and act like you don’t understand what they are saying. You guys already have that look down pretty well.

 

 

(By the way, can someone please translate the above note into Ukrainian, or Bulgarian, or whatever is the native language of those guys that cook the omelets. C3PO are you out there anywhere?)

 

 

Rating for the omelet from the Horizon Court – B C B C B D B-

 

I felt bad about not getting anything out last night, so I plunked this out on my lunch hour, hope it helps. Hopefully, more this evening.

[AmyinGA]

More this evening....pleeeeeeaaase. My DH now understands that I may run upstairs 3 or 4 times a day to see if there is a new post. I will try to control myself but this is too good to let one post slip by and not read it right away. It would be like skipping a souffle one night in the dining room. That's just something that can't happen.

[cworld]

How about a another quicky. Hey, STOP, get your filthy minds out of the gutter. I’m not that kind a guy But, for the right price, I might be willing to learn.

 

I was just driving down the road and heard a commercial that gave me a great idea. The commercial was for a Mystery Shopper. “Shop for a living” “Check out parking lots, store cleanliness, employees attitudes, and while you shop.” REALLY LOUD BELLS GOING OFF IN MY HEAD RIGHT NOW.

 

Here is a letter I’m composing to the head guy at Carnival Cruise Lines.

 

 

To: Micky Arinson, CEO Carnival Corporation

 

From: Your future employee of the decade.

 

 

Dear Mr. and/or Mrs. Arinson

 

Sir and/or Madame, I have just completed a wonderful vacation on your beautiful cruise ship, the Island Princess. I am writing you today to offer my services as a “Mystery Cruiser”. This is a position that, I believe would greatly benefit your company. As a "Mystery Cruiser", I would anonymously check out your cruise ships and report anonymously back to you. I am willing to sacrifice up to 75 days a year to provide you this service. All I would ask in return is first class transportation to the cruise, free passage in a stateroom commensurate with my station in life, complimentary shore excursions and maybe $200,000.00 US per year.

Let me spell out to you why I would be the ideal candidate. I am supremely articulate. I have my own digital camera and camcorder and know how to use them. I am well versed in computer usage, both IBM compatible and Macintosh. I have a great eye for detail. I see things that other people miss. I am fluent in one language, but for a fee would be willing to learn others. I am your everyday Joe that blends in well with the masses.

What I would provide you. An semi-unbiased written report that details everything that happens on your ships. Pictures both your operations, and pictures that I would allow you to use for promotional purposes. I would pledge to spend at least 1 hour per day describing my adventures on the Internet chat board of your choice. If I am selected I pledge that my reporting on the Internet will be about 90% positive, if I’m always positive it will raise suspicions. I will describe your ships in glowing terms that will make passengers flock to your doorstep.

If you would like to check out my work you can look at my writings at

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=180353

 

I am cworld. You can also view my photos that are described in the text of the first post. I need to point out that I deliberately reduce the quality of the photos on the Internet for copyright purposes.

 

Thank you for your time and attention,

 

 

 

Carl

 

PS. My resume is attached. Disregard the part about the Sing, Sing, time. That has been expunged from my record.

[cworld]

And by the way, any of you who would like to join me in applying for this position, please send me your resume's and I gladly foward them to Carnival Corp. for you.

[cworld]

Good evening and welcome back to another exciting episode of “The meals that never end.” I know, I know, it’s time to finish with breakfast and get on to the more mundane part of our day.

 

Let’s see, we’ve done the bacon and the omelet. What does that leave? All the rest of the stuff kinda runs together, both figuratively and literally. A couple of things did catch my eye. Every day there was an interesting assortment of cheeses available. My wife thoroughly enjoyed them, and since she’s a cheese lover, she would probably know. Me I barely tolerate cheese. I certainly won’t eat it if it's by itself. Then there was the scrambled egg dishes. They provided a little food (pun intended) for thought.

Each day there was a pan that had plain scrambled eggs, and one that contained more exotic scrambled eggs. For example the more exotic pan one day had scrambled eggs with shrimp, and one day scrambled eggs with spinach. The problem wasn’t the exotic ingredients (what do you mean the problem wasn’t the exotic ingredients? Who ever heard of shrimp in scrambled eggs?), it was that the eggs tasted like powdered eggs. My wife and I both tried the scrambled eggs, me the plain, her the more exotic, and we both came away feeling that the eggs were powdered.

 

That brings us to French Toast… Mmmm, let’s take a minute before we open the sealed envelope. Good industrialized French Toast is hard to come by. For French Toast to be good, the bread must be absolutely fresh, the egg mixture must be mixed and seasoned correctly, the oil/spray/butter that coats the cooking surface must be carefully selected, and then there’s the powdered sugar question. Do you or don’t you? Well do you? Answer me. OOPs.

(Slicing open the envelope that has been hermetically sealed, and kept at Funk and Wagnalls…) The French Toast in the Horizon Court, on the Island Princess, was IMHO (I’ve got to break in here. How many of you are confused by the use of these Internet short cuts? IMHO, what does that mean anyway? Yea, Yea, I know it stands for In My Humble Opinion, but what are we so lazy these days that we can’t type complete words. It gets so confusing, I mean, CB or CP which is the Coral and which is the Caribbean. Yea it makes sense when you look at both, but sometimes there’s confusion. When people type in IP are the talking about an internet address, or are they talking about a beautiful boat? I know some boards even have there own list of shortcuts. Over on the Disney Boards it can get really confusing because some shortcuts can have 2 or more different meanings. Whew. As you can probably tell, I tend to use lots of words. No Carl we haven’t noticed. Yep, it’s true, and I think using shortcuts cheapens the written word. Did Shakespeare ever use any abbreviation? I don' think so. Break over.) (No it’s not, second break, this IMHO thing, In My HUMBLE Opinion, HUMBLE, bunk. Anytime I see IMHO, I know that some blowhard is about to bore me with his 2 cents. THERE IS NOTHING HUMBLE ABOUT IT. Most humble people, like me, keep there mouths shut, Humble people don’t go around telling people what the think about inane objects. Humble people don’t use words that normal people don’t use in daily conversation. Humble people don’t tell everybody how great their children are. Humble people don’t post 200 or so pictures nobody wants to see on the Internet. Humble people don’t go around publicizing the fact that they just took a very expensive trip on a cruise ship. Humble people, STOP IT CARL!!!! What would you know about Humble people? Hey, I lived in Kingwood TX, right next door to Humble TX for 7 years. I knew lots of Humble people, there were the Barkers, the Konz’, the McCrary’s… Very long sigh.) OUTSTANDING. Just the right balance of spices, just a hint of cinnamon, just a very small splash of powdered sugar, and the bread… Right this down sports fans at 10:23pm CDT on June 2, 2005, THE BREAD WAS TO DIE FOR. Every piece of French Toast I ate, and I did eat it every day, was just right. I never had a bad piece. It was wonderful.

 

The other thing that really jumped out at me was the fresh pineapple. It also was absolutely perfect. I ate at least 1 hunk every day. Only one time did I get a hunk that was not perfectly ripened. I miss the pineapple. I’ll have that taste in my mind for years.

 

Overall rating for the breakfast in the Horizon court – B+

 

OK, that’s one meal out of the way for the whole week, making progress.

[Hate 2 W8t]

Thanks, Carl! I was about to sign off and thought I would check just one last time...yes...yes...yes!!! A new post! Woo-hoo! Honestly, though, and I don't mean to put a lot of pressure on you or anything, but really, I am sure you don't mind ;) ...it's been a tough week both personally and professionally. Your posts help lighten my load and keep my mind focused on the prize...ALASKA!

 

TYTYTYTYTYTYTYTY!!!!!!!!

[spingal]

And by the way, any of you who would like to join me in applying for this position, please send me your resume's and I gladly foward them to Carnival Corp. for you.

Carl,

 

You described my "perfect job"! COUNT ME IN! :D

Jamie

[HMcruiser]

Anytime I see IMHO, I know that some blowhard is about to bore me with his 2 cents. THERE IS NOTHING HUMBLE ABOUT IT.

Ha!! I agree with you there. I always substitute Honest for the H, because these days most people are certainly not being Humble with their opinions. :D

 

Can't wait to try the French Toast!!! I love it when it's done well and that is VERY hard to find in a cafeteria type setting!

[margord]

Carl,

 

Keep them coming. We are enjoying these post tremdously. We just booked Alaska for 2006 and I am sure I will still be reading your posts as we board the ship--smile.

[cruisebie]

Thanks, Carl! I read the omelet post yesterday and didn't have time to check back last night. What a nice Friday afternoon treat to find your newest installment! :) I'll be on the IP (note the abbreviation-and by the way-why is abbreviation such a long word? Seems like it should be much shorter.) Anyway, I'll be on the IP in one short week! Your posts are just adding to my daily anticipation amplification! I can't wait!

[debinnh]

Carl:

 

I love a good Freedom toast too (haha, had to throw that in). Glad to hear they know how to make them on the Island P. Less than a month before I sail (I love the way that sounds!) Hope you are through a few more days before we leave.

 

Love you review and your photos! I have been practicing with my Nikon and look forward to taking a few of my own.

[cworld]

Sorry, still working on tonights post, it will probably be tomorrows post at the rate I'm going. I did however finish the pictures. There at:

 

http://community.webshots.com/user/cktrent

 

Have a nice evening.

Carl

[crusdiva]

Sorry, still working on tonights post, it will probably be tomorrows post at the rate I'm going. I did however finish the pictures. There at: http://community.webshots.com/user/cktrent

Have a nice evening.

Carl

 

Thanks for sharing your memories and pictures Carl, I enjoyed them very much...the photos and your reports are wonderful.

[prophotogirl]

WOW! Those photos are wonderful!

[wtevrfltsurbt]

I am enjoying your review, although I always come away with a strange need for psycotropic drugs:eek: , please continue!:D

[Sandi in Seattle]

Hi Carl,

 

I, too, thoroughly enjoyed your photos and anxiously await your next chapter describing your trip!

 

I'm doing a back-to-back cruise on the Island Princess July 16-July 30 and haven't been on a Princess ship for 12 years. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

Keep those review stories coming!

 

Sandi

[ricktalcott]

Carl -

 

Love your pix. What kind of camera did you use?

If you ever decide to make the "Round the Horn" cruise, don't go for the glaciers. That is a great cruise, but the glaciers aren't a big part of it.

 

Rick Talcott

[cworld]

So we sauntered back to the cabin after our leisurely breakfast. Since it was Sunday, we stopped for a few minutes to thank God for blessing us. Then on with the day. The plan for the morning was to grab the cameras and explore the ship.

 

OK, grab the cameras…

 

(NOTE – The next few paragraphs are going to go into nauseating detail about cameras, if you don’t have any interest in photography, you’ll probably just want to come back later.)

 

Honey, did you leave the video camera on last night. No, Carl, you used it last, not me. Yea, that’s right I did. I wonder why the battery is dead. (It’s probably because you left the camera on when you stuck it back in the bag last night. But don’t admit that out loud, quick come up with some excuse.) I’ll stick the other battery in, it’s probably just some problem with this battery holding a charge. It’s OK. We’ve got that other battery, and the charger will probably catch up with us tomorrow (both cameras charger cords were in the bag that is still in netherland).

About the cameras. About 2 weeks before our trip, we started getting things together, things like camera batteries, film, DV cartridges, checking clothes, etc. Mrs. cworld went to the store and bought film, batteries, and DV film cartridges, and the cameras were set all ready to go. I got the camera bag out to give the cameras a once over. First the Canon AE-1 Program that I bought about 20 years ago. What a great camera. A true, make an amateur look like a professional, camera. In it’s day this was the camera for the masses. I loved this camera, but increasingly, I have used it less and less. The AE-1 Program came with a fixed focus lens (one that doesn’t zoom), I had bought a 70-200 zoom lens

The problem with the AE-1 is the film. I hate dealing with film. It’s a pain. Film is not very forgiving. I don’t know how many irreplaceable pictures I’ve ruined because I’ve opened the back of the camera before I rewound the film. How sensitive does film have to be? I mean just because I expose the film to a little light for just an instant, it shouldn’t be a killer. Right. A couple of times in the middle of the roll I’ve stripped out the film threads and lost a roll of film because the film won’t advance or rewind. Film is just a pain. But, we were all ready to take it with us. We had 6 (lets see, that’s 6 times 24, four carry the two, 144. One hundred and forty-four pictures we could take with our beautiful Canon AE1-Program. 6 rolls at $2.00 a roll is what $12.00 for film. Then processing 6 rolls costs at least $10.00 per roll that’s $600.00 (aren’t I good at math?). That’s $700-800 for 144 pictures. Or something like that…

And then there’s the processing time. I don’t know about you, but we are not always the most efficient at getting film processed. If you don’t shoot a whole roll, you end up with pictures of Christmas 2 years ago on the same roll with Graduation. And if you want to see them quicker, you pay twice as much. I’m an instant gratification type person. I want to see what the pictures I took look like. Sometimes I need to take another picture, because either some walked in front of me, or I stuck my finger in front of the lens, or I forgot to take off the lens cap, or… The things that really sticks in my craw about film processing is I still have to pay full price when I take bad pictures. So on to digital…

I also have an old (in Digital Camera terms) Kodak DC3400 digital camera. This was a OK camera in it’s day, but it’s not like a real SLR camera. It’s a zoomable digital camera that takes decent pictures. It has a memory card that holds about 40 pictures. I had just looked at buying an additional memory card that would hold about 100 pictures. I figured, I could take my laptop and download the pictures every night, so I could take about 140 or so pictures on the digital camera each day. The only bad thing about the digital is that it is a battery drainer. It uses 4 AA batteries, which tend to last about 2 days. That meant that we would need to take at least 8 AA batteries with us. The DC3400 also doesn’t take real good pictures at night or a long way away. I’ve never really liked this camera.

So about 2 weeks before our trip, I get this wild hare to check in to the latest in digital cameras. I start looking on the internet and I sneak in a trip to the real camera store here in OKC. On the internet I was looking at the Nikon D50 or the Canon Digital Rebel, only at the time I didn’t notice that the Nikon D50 wasn’t going to be available until sometime in June, sorry we leave on May 7, June is too late. When I went to the camera store they put a Nikon D70 in my hands. They showed me some of the features, including the continuous shutter (the camera will take 3 pictures a second for as long as you hold the button down). I thought this would probably be the camera for me, but since I hadn’t discussed it with Mrs. cworld, and since I never buy anything over $100.00 on the first stop. I walked out of the store empty handed.

I spent the next two weeks wishing I would have bought the camera. I whined, and moaned about the cameras and about how out of date they were. Finally packing day is here. We leave tomorrow and what have I forgotten? I’ve taken the day off just so I can go get those things that I've forgotten, and to jockey the boy around. About noon, I go to the camera store. I look one last time, but can’t pull the trigger. (Shopping wimp) I go home and whine and moan some more. I pack the batteries in the camera case, and huff about how much stuff I’m having to pack in to support the cameras. Finally Mrs. cworld breaks down. "Why didn’t you just go ahead and get it?" YES, YES, YES, I love this woman. My plot has worked, I have her blessing. If the camera doesn’t work out, it’s all her fault. I then go on for the next hour to justify buying it by talking about how I can use it to take pictures at baseball games, and maybe sell them to the parents. Great back to the camera store to buy my new camera.

By the time all of this transpires it’s 5:15, the camera store closes at 6:00. RUN, RUN, RUN. The camera store it about 10 miles away in Oklahoma City. How fast can I drive to get there. 100, 105, 110. Not really. I had no problems getting to the store and getting everything I needed. What I got was:

 

A Nikon D70. It came with an 18-70 Zoom lens.

A 70-300 Zoom lens

2 - 1GB memory cards (fast transfer) (each card holds 571 images)

 

All of this cost around a billion bucks, but it was money well spent. I sped home and started pouring through the manuals. First I've got to try out the camera just to see if it really works. 2 pics of the dog, look at them in the viewfinder. Looks OK. Plug the battery into the wall for a charge so we’ll be ready to go in the morning. Now let’s unpack the AE1 and the old digital. Repack the bag with the new stuff. Pack up everything else and off we go.

 

I spent most of the flight from Houston to Vancouver reading the manuals and looking at the new camera’s features. I started taking pictures in the Houston Airport, just to try it out. All in all I took over 2,000 pictures. A pretty good tryout, if I do say so myself. I did download the memory cards to the laptop a couple of time each while we were on the cruise. I’m still going through the pictures to see how things worked. I’ve run a few through Photoshop (which I am also learning again) to size and spruce them up. If you’ve looked through my pictures you can see I’ve posted almost 200 of them. I did take a lot of pictures of mountains. But I love that stuff.

One of these days, I hope to put all of this together on a web page with pictures worked in. That is if I ever quit writing.

About the video camera, with the new still camera, the video camera didn’t get as much attention as it normally would have. (It even accused me one night of abandoning it for a newer model.) We did have battery problems with it. Both batteries wouldn’t hold a charge for more than 24 hours. So we didn’t get as much video as I would have liked. We only had an hour and a half (but the dogsled video is to die for). I planned for at least 6 hours of video, but I didn’t expect to take so many stills (pictures, not the other kind).

We do have photos that will remind us of our days on the IP for as long as we can remember we were on the Island Princess. (At the rate my memory is deteriorating, that could be a matter of weeks.)

 

Rating for Nikon D70 camera – A

Rating for being able to take 2000 pictures – A+

Rating for the video camera batteries - D- at least they worked for a while

 

More tomorrow.

[ricktalcott]

...Rating for being able to take 2000 pictures – A+

QUOTE]

 

I totally agree with you on this. When we were crusing through the Straights of Magellan and the Chilean Fjords,

(pictures at: http://ricktalcott.smugmug.com/gallery/241469 )

I could just take one after the other with no worries about running out of film (or paying to develope them all either). That made such a difference.

 

Rick

[CSloan]

When we were crusing through the Straights of Magellan and the Chilean Fjords,

(pictures at: http://ricktalcott.smugmug.com/gallery/241469 )

 

Rick

 

Rick,

Not to get off topic, but when did you go to the Chilean Fjords? Did you post a review?

[Mrs. cworld]

Dear readers,

My DH, cworld, is ill today. Hopefully, he will feel well enough on Monday to crawl to his computer and continue his "novel" on our trip last month. He really enjoys hearing from each of you.

[wtevrfltsurbt]

Oh no!:( So sorry to hear your DH is ill, I will keep good thoughts for him!

Dear readers,

My DH, cworld, is ill today. Hopefully, he will feel well enough on Monday to crawl to his computer and continue his "novel" on our trip last month. He really enjoys hearing from each of you.

[Sandi in Seattle]

Thank you for keeping us informed and I hope Carl feels better real soon.