BACK FROM HOLIDAYS

Hi All

We had a fabulous holiday so I decided to record it for anyone interested.

Not a good start as we were on the plane about to take off when they discovered a hole in the fuselage so we all de-planed and finally went home (to our daughter and son-in-law's) for the night.
Back early again the next morning and we finally took off at 1pm.

So we arrived late in LA and missed our connecting flights, not fun !!
Left it to our daughter who bullied the staff of Qantas until they found us 4 seats on Alaska Air.
Don't know what we would have done without her.

We missed a day and a half in Seattle but enjoyed exploring it whilst we were there, a very pretty city.
Arriving at last at the ship was a great experience. We were on the Regatta an Oceania Line ship.
Wonderful ship with only 604 passengers and 500 staff so we were really spoilt.

The meals were fabulous and apart from the main dining room there were 2 speciality dining rooms and a great buffet.
Happy hour got a beating every night with Sue (my daughter) and myself enjoying our couple of drinks and listening to the music.

We were on out way to Alaska, so we called in a lot of small ports all up the coast with different outings arranged for each one.
We saw our first icebergs, starting small and gaining in size as we sailed further north.
We also saw the large glaciers a fascinating sight.
The weather was not cold just brisk and sunny, we only had one day of rain the whole time we were away.

One of the best things we did was to take a small float plane over the glaciers, landing at a cabin at the edge of a lake where we had a great meal of salmon plus numerous other local dishes.
We saw a brown bear in the tree close by and after the salmon was cooked and we were out of the way he climbed down and licked the grill !!

Will leave that for now and give you episode 2 in my next blog, hopefully not a long time off.
Eileen