Dinner at the Empress Hotel

The other day when our ship was in Victoria for the night I got to go to the Empress Hotel for dinner and drinks... For free.

The Hotel was treating a group of Shore Excursions staff, from the 2 ships that were in port for the night.

I was able to go with them because my friend is the shorex manager and he invited me along. Also the ITV system sells tours as well, so in a way I am part of shorex team.

We met Rob, who was a manager of the restaurant operations for the Empress, and he took us to a table on the veranda of the hotel, which overlooked the harbour.


They started by serving us champagne from Kelowna, and a selection of appetizers from the menu, which included dungeness crab, mussels, and various meet and cheeses all from Vancouver Island.



Then we ordered dinner from the main dining menu.
I had the Ahi Tuna, which was excellent, nicely seared not overdone as is often the case on the ship.




After dinner we passed through the Tea Room, (which is what all the ship guests book tours to the Empress for) and went to the Bengal Lounge, which is decorated in a English India style.


In the Lounge we had dessert and martini's.

I had the Bengal Indulgence, which you can see at the bottom of the above picture.

Pictured above is the Empress 1908, which uses vodka infused with the Empress signature tea, and comes with a mini crumpet that gets served with afternoon tea.

We had the best table, next to the fireplace, and tiger skin rug.

Vancouver Fireworks

The Celebration of Light, fireworks competition in Vancouver, is one of my favorite events of the summer.

It is held from the last week of July and the first of August.

For the last year and this one I have missed it as I have been away.
Tonight I watched them, in the best way that I could.

Via a Webcam.

Not even close to the same, but it let me feel like I was home for a short while.

Hopefully next year I will be home for summer.

Golf Alaska

On my birthday last week I went on a tour in Haines, Alaska.

The tour was to a 9 hole golf course that was opened a few years back, in Haines, which is a 45 min ferry ride from Skagway which is where our ship docked.

The golf course was built on land that only a few decades back was under water. Because the whole area used to be under a glacier, the whole region is slowly coming upwards around 1 inch a year.

But still the golf course can still be put under water during very high tides.

The views around the course were very spectacular, and reminded me of golf courses like Big Sky and Nicolas North in B.C.

The course is called Valley of the Eagles, and we did see a few eagles flying around that day.

And we were told that they often get grizzly bears on the course, which happened the night before we were there. But we didn't see any that day.

Golfing in Seattle

I have had my golf clubs on the ship for a few weeks, but this day was the first I was able to use them.


I went golfing with a friend in Seattle, at what turned out to be a very nice public course in West Seattle, that overlooked downtown.

The weather was very warm, and the best we have had any of the times we have been in Seattle this cruise.



I was playing very well, driving the ball awesome, if my putting was better I would have scored very well, but still I was happy with the day.

Canada Day Parties

Here are some pictures from Canada Day, both on the ship and in Victoria.

3rd Hike Upper Dewey Lake

The Upper Dewey Lake was the longest of the hikes we went on of the 3.

It starts at the base of the town of Skagway, and follows the trail to the Lower Dewey Lake first then continues further upwards to the top of the mountain.

The hike was definitely the hardest of the 3.
It was the highest and longest of the hikes.

The elevation gain was a 3,100 feet to the end of the trail. That is almost a mile longer then the Grouse Grind in Vancouver

We got to the top in about 2.5 hours, taking in the breaks we took, it was about 2 hours of continuous uphill climbing.

Once we made it to the top we ate our well deserved lunch on a picnic table overlooking the lake and mountains.


The views at the top were amazing and well worth the hike. At the top we were basically at the tree line, as just a little way up the trees stopped appearing completely.

There are two cabins at the top of the trail, one is free to use first to get there gets to use it, and another that can be rented. These are a good idea as there area many areas around the lake to explore but after getting up there a rest sounds better then another long hike.

After our lunch and a short time looking around we packed up and headed back down the mountain.

The hike back down was a much quicker 1.5 hours.

After which we treated ourselves to a well earned beer at the Skagway Brewing co.

2nd Hike, Juneau Glacier

The Mendenhall Glacier is just a 12 miles outside of the city of Juneau.
We took a taxi to the entrance of the west glacier trail.



The start of the trail was next to the inlet that the glacier feeds into. There were many large icebergs floating around the area.

We were told that the hike had around 2000 feet of elevation, so when early in the hike we came upon a split in the trail, one that went up and one that led down.
So we figured that up was the way to go.

After around 30 minutes, we came upon another hiking group going the other way. I asked them how much further it was to the glacier, and we were told we were on the wrong trail.

Apparently we were on a very long trail that led to the top of a mountain. So we had to backtrack, back to the first split in the trail.

This one led at first down to the water level again, and then back up. And then we came across a small hill we had to go over.


Which turned out to require some rock climbing skills to get over.

Once we did we got a great view of the glacier.

Another short bit of hiking and we were at the base of the ice.

There are ice caves where you can go under the glacier, but you will get dripped on a lot.

Also you can go in between the ice.

After hanging around the glacier for a while, we had to head back to meet our taxi that was going to pick us up at 7pm.

We make it back after a very tiring but awesome 4.5 hours of hard hiking.