Sunday in Victoria. Victoria Day Weekend. Victoria Day is a national holiday. Although Victoria Day isn’t until tomorrow. Still with me?

P&O dumped us at Ogden Point, a container port, surprise surprise, outside of town. Only 15 minutes from town, this time, though, so that was nice.

We went into town and had a quick look around before trying to catch the Butchart Gardens Shuttle Bus. I got on and asked if someone on the front seat would mind moving back a row, so that mum could have a seat with more legroom. One man willingly made to stand up but the driver told him to sit down and said mum would have to sit further back. I got off and went back to the ticket booth and made a formal complaint. Particularly, bearing in mind that the front seats of all buses in Canada say “Reserved for limited mobility only” on them. It all might have been less confrontational, if we hadn’t already been standing for half an hour – fifteen minutes waiting for the bus and fifteen minutes waiting to board, while they dealt with existing passengers who had boarded without paying. What a farce. Mind you, the ticket agent thanked me for complaining. She said the driver was new and had been rude to her too! In the end, we got on the next bus and the entire queue was appalled by what had happened, so they were all happy for mum to board first and take the front seat.

When we got to Butchart Gardens, we borrowed a wheelchair and headed off into the park. We had a light snack lunch and then dad and I took it in turns to push mum around the Sunken Garden. A fellow passenger warned us to avoid the Japanese garden, as it was very steep and the rose garden isn’t in bloom yet, but what we saw was beautiful. I’ll have some aches and pains tomorrow though! We browsed the shop and then caught the shuttle back to town.

We had time for a brief wander and some shopping before heading to the Fairmont Empress Hotel for afternoon tea. Delicious. Absolutely lovely, although, oddly there was a hint of mustard in the cucumber sandwiches! I had Empress Earl Grey, Dad had Empress Blend and Mum had a decaffeinated green tea, the name of which escapes me, I’m afraid, which she seemed to like.

We then browsed some more shops in town, including several purchases in a shopping mall called The Bay. We even found an Aerosoles store for Mum. You should have seen her move! We went into a shoe store and asked if they had any shoes by Aerosoles. The assistant showed us what she had and then said “You could try their store downstairs”. You should have seen mum go! She left me and dad in her dust as she hurtled towards the lift! She bought a pair of shoes and so did I, just to keep her company, you understand…

We couldn’t find a restaurant for dinner, so we grabbed a cab to Fisherman’s Wharf, which we were under the impression had eateries. Turns out to be a houseboat village with a couple of cafes and some visiting seals, one of whom came to say hello to us. So I took lots of pictures of the seal.

We had a look around, admired the pirate ship moored there and contemplated a property purchase (420,000 CAD or about £280,000), and then caught the Harbour Ferry back into town. The Harbour Ferries are the most adorable and manoeuvrable boats we’d ever seen and we all fell in love with them. Our pilot, Mike, recommended the Flying Otter for dinner, so he dropped us there. We had a quite a wait for a waterside table, but we weren’t hungry after our huge tea so it didn’t matter!

NB. The food is very good but the refills are 50 cents each, not free! And do NOT buy a t-shirt. They cost more than dinner for three! (although not as much as a t-shirt from the Empress Hotel with real Swarovski crystals making up its logo…)

After dinner, it was simply a short but steep stroll back up to ground level from water level and we found ourselves just feet from the shuttle back to the ship. Easy peasy. What a lovely day.

Depressed. Really depressed. They’ve cancelled my Wind Turbine excursion. Not enough people. Not enough people? Surely there’s a MAXIMUM number of people who fit inside a wind turbine, not a minimum! No, the truth is, there are simply not enough people to make it PROFITABLE for P&O. To hell with the happiness of the passenger. Again.

This is the second excursion to be cancelled in two days – well, I think there are others, but two of MINE have been cancelled. Yesterday, we were informed that NASA has changed the scheduling of Astronaut Training and we can’t do that anymore. I checked the website and that actually appears to be true. The tour website now only lists Saturdays. So I suppose I’ll just have to accept that one being removed out from under me.

The trouble is that the loss of each of these feels quite substantially devastating. I’ve been looking forward to Astronaut Training for MONTHS before we sailed, and I’m not the only one. David is beside himself as well. He’s positively bereft. Now to lose the turbine trip as well? It’s just too unkind. Particularly, when, in this instance, there is no valid reason, other than the fact that P&O apparently aren’t making enough money.

I hate this captain. Every word out of his mouth is a lie. We didn’t arrive at 6.30, we arrived at 5. We didn’t leave at 12.30, we left at 10am and I barely saw the glacier, because I wasn’t up in time, BECAUSE HE LIED. If he had said, we will leave at 10, I would probably have got up a bit earlier. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. What would it cost him to just once in his pitiful little life tell the passengers THE TRUTH. Or, and here’s an idea, DO WHAT HE SAYS. If he says we will leave at noon, we should stay until noon, we should not be departing at 10 anything. If confronted, he’d probably say that it takes time to travel back down the fjord and we will actually geographically leave the entrance to the arm at 12, but if he says that, he KNOWS he has misled us, so even the excuse is damning. What a hateful, hateful, hateful man.

And before you say I’m over-reacting, Dad has just met someone in the lift who missed the glacier completely because they thought we weren’t leaving til 12. In fact, the people at the next table are saying similar even while I’m writing this. I was surprised when I went out on deck how few people were out there at the glacier. Now we know why. They all trusted the Captain to tell the truth and keep to the timings he gave us. And he lied. So they all missed it completely. The time is now 11.22am and the glacier is long gone from view.

For what it’s worth, the Dawes Glacier is a big, blue one at the end of the fjord. It is quite dramatic. It doesn’t have much of an ice field, so you can get quite close, but it does have some rather large bergies, the kind that, if 9/10ths are hidden under the water, are probably proper icebergs. The rest of the fjord is conifer forest on snow-capped mountains. I hesitate to say ‘more of the same’, because that sounds a bit blasé and a bit bored, but to be honest, right now, I’m typing this, Dad is doing Sudoku and mum has her head on her arms on the table and is trying to have a nap. It’s that much the same. It’s all beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the same beautiful as before. It was breathtaking and awe-inspiring and photo-taking about a week ago, and we go past this stuff REALLY slowly. Now, it’s just some more mountains and a bit more of the Tongass National Forest. Sorry.

Another early start. Oh goody. But at least this time it’s all in a good cause. We are going otter watching and if we don’t see any, we have a money back guarantee. So this should be good.

As Sitka is a tender port, the otter boat came straight to us and we boarded directly from the ship’s pontoon, which was a nice touch. It was a large, airy boat with lots of windows and a young man whose main job seemed to be to clean said windows (Arcadia, are you listening?)(spray when bumpy is a hazard of the job, it seems). It had nice loos, free tea, coffee and hot chocolate, both down in the cabin and up on the observation deck, and a little shop which sold everything you could ever need, from smoked salmon, kelp marmalade, postcards, magnets, cuddly toys, t-shirts and sweets. An astonishing array in such a small space! Every seat had a free map and a set of binoculars for passengers to use, which was another nice touch.

The guide had an excellent speaking voice and the PA system was clear and crackle-free. The boat was designed and built by the tour company and has jet engines, rather than propellers, so that it is not possible to injure, trap or damage any wildlife. It makes it very manoeuvrable although not as quiet as might be ideal.

We went out of the bay into Sitka Sound. We saw bald eagles first (two) then American sea otters (women and babies), grey whales, humpback whales and more otters (‘The Boys’ Club’)(boy and girl otters only hang out when procreating – the women then kick them out and bring up the kids together).

I finally sussed the continuous button on my camera. Some people have a sport button – David’s takes 47 pictures without stopping if you let it. Mine is continuous and, as far as I can tell, is genuinely continuous for as long as you hold the button down. I took over a 1000 photos today. It may take me quite some time to weed through these… it took nearly 18 minutes to download them from the camera onto the computer, for starters!

When we got back to shore, we walked into town and queued at the only restaurant, which was Mexican/American. When finally seated the food was lovely and the portions were huge, although the waitress, however friendly and cheery, suffered from More Haste Less Speed syndrome. Either that or she simply didn’t understand what the words “No Ice” meant. Despite repeating it several times, she not only brought us glasses brimful of ice, but she also got the order wrong – so we ended up with an extra (free) diet coke and a plate full of ice. Now, there’s not listening properly and not listening properly, but to get “two lemonades, no ice, and a diet coke, please” wrong surely takes some effort. She really wasn’t paying attention! Luckily, there was a second, less frazzled waitress, who took our food order, so that went without a hitch.

The restaurant was inside a little shopping mall of about six shops and the restrooms were in the basement. They were the least pleasant restrooms we have experienced on this cruise. I won’t go into details, but they really need a plumber.

Then we pootled our way down the one shopping street, purchasing the occasional souvenir. I went up a side road looking for something called the Tlingit village but it was quite a steep hill and I never found it. I may have given up too early, but I couldn’t afford to walk forever. That’s the trouble with tender ports, you have to allow so long for getting back that you have to ration your time ashore quite carefully.

Sitka used to be owned by Russia – it was sold to America after the Gold Rush petered out- the ‘cathedral’ is Russian Orthodox, and there are Russian reminders everywhere. The family Baranof must have had quite an influence because virtually everything is named after them. Real Estate vendors, gift shops, pharmacies, all sorts. I even found a statue, but it only said who donated it and when, not who it was or why! Turns out he was apparently the first governor of Russian America. Whatever that covers.

It took half an hour from joining the queue for the tender to get back to the ship and back to my cabin. I then spent the rest of the night (apart from dinner) downloading photos and editing. So far, I’ve got it down from 1066 to 319. I’ll have another go sometime, but right now, if I see another slightly out of focus otter, I’ll have to punch someone.

Captain’s Announcement at 16:45 today. We’re not going to Tracy Arm tomorrow, but Endicott Arm instead, same scenery but Dawes Glacier instead. This is because there will be no other cruise ships there, instead of the three other ships in Tracy Arm, and there’s also a lot of ice there, apparently, so you can’t get close to the glacier. We will enter at 6.30am tomorrow morning, leaving at midday. At 2.30pm we will lose the pilots and then head south towards Victoria, Canada.

Skagway is a very beautiful pioneer town, and looks as all as the Wild West should look. All brightly painted wooden buildings with boardwalks for pavements. It even has a brothel that still has girls in dodgy outfits to smile at you. It’s called the Red Onion Saloon. The ship moored near town and the weather was cloudy but dry. However, I will not be reviewing the shops or the restaurants or the town. I was too busy. I took TWO tours today.

First thing in the morning I boarded a 25-seater minibus covered with pawprints.

This took us, via a brief drive through town, out of Skagway and up the mountain, only half of which journey was on tarmaced road. The rest of the road was rather as though it was in the process of being resurfaced – you know when they take the top layer off? It wasn’t, it’s always like that. It wasn’t the worst ride I’ve ever experienced, but it was less than comfy.

We drove around the sides of several gorges and some indescribably beautiful scenery. I took photos, but it is so very frustratingly impossible to do it justice. I have tried, but it doesn’t really communicate the savage beauty of Alaska very well. There is no lense big enough, for a start.

When we arrived at the Mushers CampTM, there was a short walk across boggy ground, but they had thoughtfully nailed some planks in place so that we could cross quite easily. We then went up the mountain in the second mode of transport of the day. A Mercedes Ubimog, I think it was called. A very odd name for quite an odd vehicle. Sort of like a Jeep on steroids.

I must confess that, once we started the rather vertiginous inclines we confronted, I rather wished it had caterpillars instead of wheels, but, despite the cacophonous din of its straining engines, it made it up every one without incident. Having only a lap seat belt for comfort, having faith in the driver helped, particularly when some of the paths were accompanied at the sides by near vertical drops. In the end, I just stopped looking down. It seemed wisest.

We went up to several thousand feet – enough to make my ears pop and for a noticeable drop in temperature, but not quite to the top of the treeline, although we could see it above us. When we arrived at the track, which was basically a mud circle about a third of a mile long through the spruces, the dogs were already on their lines, attached to the sleds in teams of 16 and waiting, not very patiently, for us. They wanted to run and they told us in no uncertain terms to hurry up and strap in so that they could get going. All forty of them barking at once was rather loud!

The third vehicle of the day resembled a six-seater golf buggy, although with dogs instead of any engine, obviously, and we each had a separate seat with a seat belt – a very reassuring touch.

The mushers stood on the back behind us and yelled to the lead dog occasionally. They didn’t yell very loudly, mind you, because once they started to run, there was no barking and there was no other source of sound whatsoever around us, so sometimes it seemed as though they were simply talking to the lead dog (Dozer, a girl), despite the fact that she was several metres ahead of us. One of our mushers was a Reddington –grandson of the man who started the Iditarod. Sledding royalty, basically.

These dogs have been bred to run and they love it. During the Iditarod, they run 100 miles a day and eat 18,000 calories each (about 80 Big Macs a day). They food is fed to them hot, to keep them warm, although they were panting quite considerably today, because it was too hot (about 10 degrees centigrade). They prefer MINUS ten, bless them. My toes got so numb, I lost all feeling in them for about an hour. That’s plenty cold enough for me, thanks very much. The Iditarod course goes below minus sixty, which doesn’t certainly appeal to me. With the races run during the height of the winter (the Iditarod is in February), during the summer months, the dogs have to train, and so someone’s bright idea to drag tourists around in circles is brilliant. It allows them to run and train and earn money at the same time.

After the run, we were introduced to each of our dogs. I don’t think I can remember all of their names, and how the mushers remember all 300 at the site, I have no idea, although they obviously each know their own dogs well. There were Dozer and Merv at the front, Felix, Stovepipe, Bacon, Eggs, who are brother and sister (Waffles was in another team), Bert and Ernie. Dozer found my gloves very tasty (must remember to send them to the laundry!).

Then, sadly and, somewhat nerve-wrackingly (you think those inclines looked steep going UP?!), it was time to go back down the mountain to the camp, where we bought stuff in the shop, listened to some woman going on rather boringly about the practicalities of the Iditarod and had the chance to meet some pups, born only a week ago, whose eyes aren’t even open yet.

Dog sledding is a very serious business in Alaska – it’s the state sport – and there are sprint races as well as endurance runs. The puppy in my pictures is a sprinter breed, not an endurance one. Huskies are endurance, whereas sprinters are cross-bred with a more Pointer look about them.

The sledders come to Skagway every summer to swell the number of people in the town considerably. All the summer staff, who work as guides, waiters and so on, live in RVs and tents for six months. Our bus driver works in Aspen during the winter and Skagway in the summer. The actual permanent community is minute.

Said guide, Garrett, drove us back to town just in time for me to catch my afternoon tour. The train was parked right next to the ship, which made life simple! We took the White Pass Scenic Railway Yukon Route, which took us up the mountains and into Canada and back again, along the railway built for the gold rush stampeders, as they are known. It is renowned as one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. I’ll try and do it justice with pictures, because words are useless. Mind you, I wouldn’t have liked to have done it by any other method of transport, such as horse or mule. This is some of the most unforgiving territory on Earth. The gold rush stampeders were clinically insane.

Today we are halfway. Scary.

Unbelievable. There is no “tour” t-shirt. Having waited what feels like an interminable time (five weeks?) for them to start selling the Alaska memorabilia (they refused to sell it to people who weren’t doing the Alaska sector, fair enough, but instead of selling after San Francisco, they waited til today to put them on sale), and having had to force them to bring the anoraks out early so that we could wear them IN Alaska instead of AFTER, today I find out that there is no “tour” t-shirt. You know, the one with all the ports listed on the back. They simply haven’t bothered to print one. This is the first long voyage I have ever been on where there is no t-shirt with the ports on. Granted, there are often mistakes in the lists of ports – we miss one out or the printers miss one out (and one time the two coincided) or add a few (viz Aurora last year), but the tour t-shirt is an integral part of the memories of the holiday. Yet again, I find myself with nothing to say but Shame on you, P&O. Shame on you.

What is the matter with P&O? It’s almost as if they are trying to actively repel their customers. When Carnival bought P&O, there was speculation that they intended to run the name into the ground and move the customers to their other lines. For a while we thought we were mistaken, but I am gradually coming back round to this line of thinking.

Everyone I speak to is annoyed with them. Have a random example. To get from the t-shirt sale with no t-shirts to lunch requires a trip in a lift – decks 3 to 9 (I don’t care how fit you think I should be keeping, I’m not doing six flights of stairs for anyone). In the lift are a couple I’ve never met before who are still angry about Seattle. They went on a tour and were put on a bus. Then they were put on a different bus. They changed buses four times before leaving the terminal and, if you recall we were already three hours behind by that point. Their tour ran out of time and was curtailed because they had spent so much time mucking about with coach passenger numbers – they eventually merged the contents of two buses or something. But the tour driver couldn’t complete their tour because he had to get back to pick up another tour at 6pm. So they lost even more time than we did and you remember how annoyed we were!

If I’d paid for a tour I hadn’t received in full, I’d be asking for at least part of my money back. Whether these people will, I have no idea, but I have to confess, I doubt it. There are so many people in the world, particularly in Britain, for some reason, who would rather have something to whine about than actually get a problem fixed. That’s partly why I veered towards consumer protection – most of the time the consumer needs protecting from themselves and their own apathy. If you’re unhappy, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Bitching to other passengers is less than futile. Even if one of them puts it in a blog on the internet.

I may be ranting a bit now. I’ll stop for a while and resuming watching for dolphins. Dad said at lunch that he doesn’t see what the fuss is about – you can see a dolphin in an aquarium at home any day of the week. Silly Daddy.

A quick P.S. Can someone please give Nicholas Witchell some kind of medal for his piece on the Queen’s visit to Ireland. In case you didn’t see it, it started like this. “It’s only an hour’s flying time from London to Dublin, but this was a flight that has taken literally decades to get here”. Oh bravo, Nicholas, bravo. You must have been planning that line for MONTHS! 😀

Well, guess what? Turns out that it’s not what you ask, it’s WHO you ask. This morning, Dad found the Port Manager, who told him that there would be no buses, no hire cars and no transportation of any kind to get to Anchorage, because P&O had told them NOT TO COME. They CANCELLED everything. Buses, taxis, hire cars, the works. The fact that the train is not running because it’s too early in the season for the track to be passable is just the final icing on the cake. Once again, P&O have screwed us and this time, they have done a brilliant job. If you don’t pay them SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS to take their shuttle bus, you’re not leaving town. Simple as that.

So we didn’t. We didn’t go to Anchorage and we didn’t go to the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Centre, which is only about five or six miles out of town. There was simply no way whatsoever to get there.

There is a bus company that advertises on the local map, called The Magic Bus Company. When we rang them, they said they had been told not to come by P&O and that, anyway, they only run their “daily transportation service all yr round” on days when there are, and I quote “a lot of people”. Now, bearing in mind that quite a lot of crew have been allowed off today, we’re talking somewhere in the region of 2,500 people. That’s not enough?!

Princess Cruises come here regularly and they have shuttles and tours organised and all sorts of stuff arranged, including discounts for their passengers. But P&O can’t or won’t use the same services as their SISTER company – remember, both Princess and P&O are owned by Carnival and your loyalty points are transferable between the two.

So, we couldn’t leave, even if we wanted to, so we didn’t.

Luckily, Whittier is a lovely little town. Insanely friendly (to the point of offering lifts in cars to strange British people). Prices aren’t cheap (four quid for a share size bag of Walkers/Lays crisps), but it is SO cut off, you can’t blame them! This used to be an Army town and, prior to 2000, the only way in or out was air or sea. In 2000, they cut a tunnel for the train to go to Anchorage and four years later, Princess Cruises starting stopping here. The tunnel now takes cars and trains (it is the longest combination tunnel in America – 2.5 miles), the Army has gone, and the place is definitely going to attract much more attention in the coming years. They already have pre-printed postcards and t-shirts, which puts them ahead of some other places we have been.

Dad thinks the whole place must be heavily subsidised, because they don’t seem to DO much, and yet there is serious money swilling around. In fact, the only thing of any size in the whole place is the marina, which is absolutely jam-packed with boats. I reckon every resident must have their own, including the children, and we’re not talking tiddlers, they’re BIG. There are a few under 40 feet, but not many. But there is nothing else to spend it on, I suppose. There is one bar/pub/diner/disco/nightclub (the Anchor as aforementioned) and one hotel with a bar and a restaurant (which opened today for the summer season). That’s it. There is one supermarket, a museum and the building they all live in. Other than the little seafood cafes and gift shops by the water and two restaurants (the Chinese and the posh one in the hotel), that’s IT. No cinema, no theatre, no art galleries, no amusement arcade, no parks – in fact, virtually no grass at all – nothing, absolutely nothing to alleviate the dullness of what it must be like to live here, particularly in the winter.

There is major construction under way. They have already built a special concrete pier for the cruise ships, and now there is a new slipway under construction to get boats into the water more easily. There must be a building involved as well, because there are some monumental girders lined up on the quayside. What I really need is to come back again in a year or so and see what they’ve built!

One nice touch I noticed is that the Disabled logo is embossed on the number plate of the car, so it can’t be stolen or misappropriated like blue badges can.

Anyway, so we pootled along the waterfront, going into each and every shop, because every single one had gifts and souvenirs available, be it a chandlery, a shop selling fishing rods and bait, or a cafe, before taking the underpass under the railway lines (no movement there, obviously) and going to the Anchor Inn for lunch. The diner is on the first floor, so mum only had to climb about five stairs. The food was superb although the service was a little vague in places and the portions were, as you might expect, vast.

We sat with Nancy, the friend of Merle’s that was conned out of sharing her cabin. Merle had returned to the ship early because she was too angry to enjoy herself. The ship has apparently stopped changing her Australian dollars into American dollars. They’ve done so for the past five months that she has been on board, but now they won’t any more. Apparently because this is not a world cruise. Although if you click on ‘world cruises’ on the P&O website, this cruise does come up, we tried it. She was, understandably, apoplectic with rage.

Everyone has their last straw, and today mum and dad may have had theirs, with the excursions business, and Merle had hers with the refusal to change her money. P&O just have no respect for their customers, whatsoever. It’s astonishing that they even still exist, if this is the way they treat probably their best customer. Merle is has been on Arcadia since January (that’s five months) and is going to join Adonia at the end of this cruise for the next four months. If this is how they treat HER, imagine how little they care about the rest of us!

After lunch, we crossed the eight railway lines – one line and seven for shunting – and made sure we had visited every shop on the waterfront, including the one selling kosher hotdogs.

We then wended our way back towards the ship, and stopped at The Inn at Whittier (the hotel next to the ship) for tea. Their wifi wasn’t free, but five dollars an hour is still cheaper than the twelve pounds an hour it costs on the ship. I filed a few emails in folders, but then I got talking to Nancy and it all went a bit by the wayside after that. I returned to the ship around six, while Nancy went off in search of more purchases.

What I didn’t realise until I came to leave was how cold the bar was and how stiff my muscles were and how chilled I had become. The floor was stone, which doesn’t seem wise in Alaska, and by the time I got back to the ship, I was chilled to the bone. I had to put my fleece on, despite not feeling the need for it all day, and keep it on throughout dinner. I felt quite ill and shivered repeatedly. I am now back in my cabin, with the air con turned to hot, which I’ve never had to do before in my life. Time for an early night with an obliging duvet, methinks.

So there you have it. P&O have screwed us over for possibly the last time and Whittier is lovely. Book a hire car before you go there if you want to see Anchorage. Or go on a Princess cruise instead, where you will probably be treated as if you matter.

You recall my saying we were too early? Too early for bears? Too early for salmon? Well, it seems we were too early for humans, too. Whittier seems to have had virtually no inkling we were coming! We are, altogether now… too early. We are the first ship of the year to come here and they are not ready. The new hotel, restaurant and bar apparently doesn’t open for another week, so there is still only one pub in town, oddly at the top of several flights of stairs. No idea why. The drinks aren’t cheap, but they are quite strong, so a little goes quite a long way. Monica and I set out for said Only Bar In Town: the Anchor Inn. It’s only half a mile or so, but we thumbed a lift from a passing stranger called Ron, who happily dropped us so close to the door, he nearly hit it. There are two, maybe four, roads in Whittier, so it wasn’t a long drive.

After duly schlepping up THREE flights of stairs, we found a small, empty bar, with three pool tables, a dart board with one dart, a small dance floor and sound system and those annoying lasers that look like a cloud of mosquitoes have landed on you, shiny dark green vinyl diner banquettes that were surprisingly comfortable and the World’s Loudest Jukebox, although, thankfully, someone made them turn it down from 11. Signing the walls is obviously an Alaska thing, because they’ve done it here too, although when I asked, the barmaid said her boss had called a halt to it. Lack of room, probably.

There were only half a dozen locals and half a dozen of us, but over the next hour and a half, a steady stream arrived from the ship, including a lot of crew, so that, by the time we called it quits at 23:30 and started the walk back, the place was heaving. Our plan had been to try the other bar, in the hotel near the ship, but on finding out this wasn’t open, we just called it a night.

I needn’t have taken a coat. It stayed tied firmly around my waist. It’s not cold and there was absolutely no wind whatsoever. It was a lovely stroll back, dusk was setting in and by the time we got halfway back (as close as you can get and get the whole ship in shot)(in fact, it’s easier to get the whole of Whittier in one shot than it is to get the whole ship!), it was definitely twilight. I took some very pretty photos of the ship.

It was dark at about half midnight, but the Anchor Inn stays open as long as there are people, so that one barmaid has a hell of a night ahead of her!

There was a solitary police truck rolling back and forth between the ship and the pub, offering people lifts, so that the policeman didn’t have to worry about bear attacks. There have been black bears in town during the day this week, and he was apparently quite worried. I may see one yet.

Whittier is an odd little town. It has less than 300 residents and they all live in one block of flats. I kid you not. Apparently, it makes for only one path to clear when the snow comes. All 300 inches a year of it. The post office, police, fire and ambulance are all in the same building. This is it.

Excitingly, they have no sales tax and, according to the map, precisely four shops to spend in. I only hope the coach companies hear we’ve arrived, and turn up in the morning, otherwise there is no way we’re going to Anchorage tomorrow. It’s an hour and a half each way as it is.

The water doesn’t LOOK like it’ll kill you, although Dad is quite sure the water on the port side looks colder than that here on the starboard side. I might venture to suggest this signifies a somewhat overactive imagination, because I’m pretty sure it’ll all kill you in a matter of minutes, whichever bit you fall into.

Glaciers to the right of us, glaciers to the left of us, it’s all getting a bit Charge of the Light Brigade, frankly. No matter which way you look, there are glaciers. Big ones, small ones, five in one photo. All named after American colleges, men’s colleges on one side, women’s colleges on the other. Hence College Fjord.

All filling the water with bergies for the otters to swim round. Yes, we have spotted otters, probably American sea otters, which, for the record, are MUCH larger than British otters. Around three times the size. Think medium sized dog, rather than cat sized, as British ones are. If you’re are VERY lucky, you can spot the occasional little head popping out of the water and charging along for a few yards before diving back under. The only way to glimpse them is to look for their wake and then follow it forwards to its point. Most of the time, when you get there, it’ll have already gone back under and all you’re left with is a photo of the wake. Like this.

Luckily the water is so still, it should be fairly easy to spot their wakes. The only complication is that the vibration of the ship, slow as we are now going, causes the bergies to bounce in the water, so that each creates a circular set of ripples of its own.

This, if you’ll pardon the expression, muddies the waters ever so slightly, as most of the ripples are bergies, not otters. Oh well, no one said it would be easy. In addition to which, the bergies here are very dirty indeed, many are completely black, which suggests to me that they are quite fresh and have only recently fallen into the frigid turquoise, and the bouncing up and down actually washes them as we pass.

Once again, we find ourselves at a dead end and after circling for four hours, we have no alternative but to go back out the way we came in.

It is a little sad how quickly you can become used to such beauty. Only hours after arriving, I find myself impatient to go somewhere else, look at something else, be somewhere different, and I consider myself quite a still, contemplative person. I can’t imagine how bored the faster movers and people so impatient to get a dessert they’ll shove you aside in the blink of an eye must be. Yes, it’s beautiful, yes, it’s awe-inspiring, but, you know what? It doesn’t change while you watch it. These things move inches a YEAR and we are here for four hours. We’re not going to see anything change or move. It’s all just as lovely when you leave as when you arrived. I can’t help but feel that most of the growlers that drop bergies into the water are not witnessed by any creature, human or not. There’s simply no one and nothing here. It is all so similar to yesterday. All that is different is the sheer number of glaciers. There’s no wildlife, of course, because we are even further north now and hibernation isn’t over for at least a month. There aren’t even any birds.

At 5.30, I called it quits. I made it as far as the lift lobby before someone told me that someone claimed to have seen a bear. I’m not sure I believe this any more. It seems so unlikely that a bear would be awake this early and there is nothing to eat – no grass, nothing – here, so unless it finds fish that we didn’t, it won’t last long. On the contrary, I have heard people, in their cups, claim to have started false alarms, just to make people run, just to see the reaction. They think it’s funny. I find it hard to find such deliberate cruelty amusing. People are desperate to see the wildlife, this may be the only chance they have in their entire lives to see a whale or a bear in the wild, and I’m quite sure that some of them find the idea of having just missed something very distressing. Whilst the average age on here is significantly lower than on most other long cruises I’ve been on, as I’ve already mentioned, there are still people here for whom such distress could be rather dangerous. I just think it’s unkind. Unnecessarily unkind. There are enough genuine disappointments in life, both big and small, without some idiot with a warped sense of humour inventing new ones for you to add to your collection. I won’t believe there was a bear here today until I see dated photographic proof.

Wow. What a meal we are making of mooring up. Welcome to Whittier. We’re due in at 10pm and we’ve either got a beginner doing the parking or someone is stalling for time, because we have been alongside but several feet out for nearly fifteen minutes now. Arriving the night before anywhere is exciting, because it gives a rare chance to experience the nightlife of a place. We normally arrive in the morning and leave at dusk, on the evening tide, so this is a rare treat. Now all we have to do is wait for them to let us off. How exciting!

You don’t think on a cruise ship. No one does. Well, I hope someone on the Bridge does, but no one else does. What is there to think about?

You plan one day ahead, max.: What We Are Going To Do Tomorrow. That’s it. We rarely write anything down until we part and need to swap email addresses. I don’t write this blog for you. I write it to remind myself how to type, corral words, string a sentence together, plan a paragraph. Planning 24 hours ahead is not thinking. It’s all written down – in the daily newspapery thingy that lists what’s on where and at what time, in the version of the Daily Mail that gives us the news in print around 24 to 36 hours after we’ve seen it on the tv; there are port guides and guide books and excursion books that we read before we left and wrote notes in. There is no need to think. In fact, my family are probably some of the most forward-thinking people on board. We get the menu a day early, so that we can pre-order in case we need something different. The menu is pre-printed as well. But other than that, all thought is still.

The other day I tried to email a friend back in the UK to wish him a happy birthday. But we are eight hours adrift of the UK. Not so complicated, you might think. But I started the email and then my brain froze, like Roadrunner boi-oi-oinging to a standstill, the vibration of intended movement rattling up from his stopped feet t o his still moving head. My mind felt like the seventh dwarf still hi-hoing into the back of the other six who have long since stopped in their tracks. I could almost see the pause symbol flashing before my eyes. Was I eight hours ahead or eight hours behind? If it’s today here, is it today there or tomorrow or yesterday? Surely someone as smart as me should be able to work this out? But try as I might, my brain could not, would not sort it out for me. I even dug out a pen and paper but was dissatisfied and uncertain with the result I got. So I deleted the email, unsent. I sent it today. It will arrive somewhere in the region of two to three days late – I have no idea – but it is definitely late, so it says happy belated birthday. That much I am sure of.

This is how little we think. We lose the ability through lack of use. It’s not as stultifying as trying to communicate with a small child all the time (no offence, parents of small sproglets, but you DO know what I mean) – we have adult conversations about weather and the cost of trips and the best places to see, go, eat, whether the film at the cinema was any good, being blown out of bed in the Blitz and found asleep on the floor, and how much we like Two and a Half Men and wish Charlie would get his act together before Ashton Kutcher makes a right hash of it (we only watch it for the kid’s one liners, anyway, let’s face it) and aren’t P&O AWFULLY badly organised, but there is no actual THOUGHT involved.

When I mentioned at dinner that I am reading Jonathan Franzen’s essay on the future of the American social novel, all I got were blank stares, even from the Americans at the table. No one even pretended to be up to responding. But I purchased this book in San Francisco precisely BECAUSE I could feel my brain atrophying through lack of use, withering away into a soggy, spongy mess of recent pop culture references (someone stopped at my table at dinner to ask me who won American Idol) and 24 hour news (Sky AND BBC, remember), so liquid that it might dribble out of my ears at any moment like a sort of cream of mushroom soup. I don’t even watch American Idol.

Am I a snob? Am I some sort of over-intellectualising freak, who pushes myself to understand on too deep a level and leaves others treading water out of reach? Is thought really so alien a concept when on holiday? At all, for that matter? For what it’s worth, by the way, How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen is not a challenging read. It’s a selection of short essays on different topics, from his father’s Alzheimer’s to the disintegration of the Chicago Postal Service. I don’t need to reach for a dictionary, which has been known when reading Will Self, for example. That’s not to say I don‘t enjoy Will Self, I do – in fact I rather enjoying learning new words from him! But today I felt like a weirdo. Because I was trying to think during a cruise. Silly me.

This is, in fact, bothering me so much that I got out of bed to write this. (I think it’s about eleven o’clock. I went to bed at nine and read til ten.) Where is the line between thinking and over-thinking? Is there one? Is it fixed or mutable? Is it different for cruises than it is for real life? Can you ever over-think? You can clearly under-think (look at the world around you!), so it stands to reason you should be able to over-think, doesn’t it? Granted, every message I saw on Facebook today was about Eurovision, rather than the incident in Tenerife or the implications of the UK spending money we clearly don’t have to bail out Greece, whose currency we do not share, and whose economy is actually growing faster than ours, but Eurovision is about post-modern irony and not getting nul points, so that’s fine. But you’ve got to think sometimes, haven’t you? Haven’t you? Is it possible to go through life without thinking at all?

Of course, while I’m sitting here, I will moisturise my face. Anyone who has ever flown long haul knows what air con does to your skin and mine hasn’t experienced fresh air for 36 hours straight now. I didn’t go outside today. Are you nuts, it was FREEZING?! So the skin on my face, living in an inside cabin (those with balconies can have fresh air all night as long as their bedsocks are up to the job), is so dry you could write on it in pencil right now.

But while I moisturise, I muse. Is thinking a more unusual occupation that I have thus far taken for granted? Is the community on the ship a microcosm of the real world? Is the real world also full of people who simply don’t think about stuff? Ever?*

I find the idea of going through life without thinking a very odd one, but then you read about people who are clearly just wandering through their existence in a state of almost permanent bewilderment, like sheep, so that almost everything that happens is a surprise. It’s not hard to understand where the phrase ‘sheeple’ came from, and even if you’ve never heard it before, you know instantly what it means and who it describes. But are they people that can’t think or won’t think? Is there a difference between Can’t Think and Won’t Think and which is the better state, if any? Can you deliberately choose to not think about things or is it something you are taught or brought up with? What is the appeal in not thinking? Is there an upside? Is ignorance really bliss? Are there really people in the world for whom the warning on the side of Black and Decker drill boxes sold in the USA that reads “Not for oral use” is genuinely useful advice? I define myself via my ability to absorb, re-use and, most importantly, analyse information from the world around me and it frightens me to think that others don’t. Not as much as the concept of losing that ability, myself, but almost.

I don’t have answers to these questions. If I did, they wouldn’t be keeping me awake at night. QED! I am open to suggestions. If you can/want to/are capable of thinking about it, let me know what you… think.

* Sorry, that paragraph sounds a bit Candace Bushnell/Carrie Bradshaw, doesn’t it?! It wasn’t intentional, but after I wrote it, I could hear her!