Seattle was a place I’d always wanted to go to. One of the most beautiful places on Earth. The Land of the Midnight Sun.
This is an account of three Alaskan Virgins, Max, Ash and I, who headed West to lose our Virginity.
We took the short 20 minute journey from the airport to our hotel for the night, the Westin Seattle, in a taxi which offered great views of both the city & the harbour. It was late by the time we’d checked in & freshened up & we were all a little groggy from the flight but we still took off in search of somewhere to eat & a nightcap in good spirits.
Downtown Seattle is pretty compact but it seemed to take a while before I spotted some bright lights of what must have been the local restaurant or bar area. 5 minutes later we were hurriedly walking away red-faced after realising that my good spot had actually been the most brightly-lit suitcase shop we’d ever seen!!
We did eventually find a cosy looking place where we had something to eat & ended up watching the local Major League Baseball (MLB) team, the Seattle Mariners on TV with some locals. Their stadium was no more than 3 miles from where we were situated in downtown & had we had more time, would have been a great experience for any sports fan.
We were up early the next day as we hopped into a cab outside our hotel for the short trip back to Seattle Tacoma Airport for our flight to Juneau, Alaska. After a short hop on Alaska Airlines we were soon amongst the wilderness & Max was snapping away at anything that moved in the hope that we’d catch a grizzly bear on film! (FYI – Both Ash & myself agree that Max could carve out quite a lucrative career as a paparazzi )
We did see a couple of bald eagles on our trip between the airport & the embarkation point for our cruise on the Sapphire Princess which we boarded smoothly once we’d convinced security we weren’t crew! After getting to our cabins & dropping our bags, we decided to take a look at the excursions available to us the next day in Ketchikan over a spot of lunch.
The choice of tours on offer was great & covered all age groups on board; from relaxed tours of Ketchikan Old Town, to a rainforest zip line challenge. There was a good selection of tours centered around the wildlife in the area of which we went for the one offering the best chance of seeing both humpback whales & orca’s (remember Free Willy?). In fact they were so confident you would see a whale that a $100 per person refund was on offer if you were unsuccessful which hadn’t been paid out in over 10 years!
As most of the other guests had been on board since Whittier 4 days earlier, unsurprisingly our choice had already sold out. As with most cruise lines, Princess offer a pre-booking section on their website for extras such as excursion so it’s well worth doing your research before you travel to secure your place early. In the end we went for a tour run by some local Alaskan folks who knew the area really well & turned out to be very entertaining as well as educational on their “Lighthouse, Totems & Eagles” tour which was a 3 hour boat trip of the area.
Our final day on board was spent at sea where we got to try out all the facilities the Sapphire Princess had to offer. An invite from the captain onto the bridge started the day & we spent a good half an hour there listening to one of the cadets talk us through all the ship’s features. We then had a few minutes to ask any questions & take some photo’s – Max was beginning to turn into a modern day David Bailey as his camera seemed to be for ever attached to his hand!
After a brief trip to the gym & pool area, we entered a slots competition in the Casino in which I beat Max by a mile & putting me in 2nd place for the final later that day (more luck than judgement I’ll admit!). I came back a while later to take my place in the final, which was made up of the top 8 scores, to find that my 4200 points was nowhere near the best scores (8th place had at least double my score), so we headed off to have a go on the Princess Links golf course on the sports deck. It was while walking back from here to our cabins we saw a commotion & went over to find a whale swimming alongside the ship for at least 5 minutes before disappearing off into the ocean. Enough time for Max to take at least 50 photos!
Nathan
Part 2 of Nathan, Max and Ashley’s Alaskan adventure will continue on Thursday the 27th of August.
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