All At Sea Part II

Edging our way through the ice to the Hubbard Glacier was due to be one of the highlight’s of our trip but personally I was more interested in spotting the local Alaskan wildlife.

On our first morning dolphins had been jumping the waves beneath our cabin - but dolphins are now old hat.  What I'd really come for was the whales and the bears, and at our first port of call we signed up for a bear hunt.  A 10 mile drive in a rickety Alaskan school bus took us to a wildlife lookout where we were told by our bear guide that four grizzlies had just been spotted in the distance.  Good job we'd brought binoculars because sure enough, there were the bears meandering through a field a mile or so away.

After the bears we headed back to the ship and set off through some rather rocky seas towards the Hubbard Glacier.  The Hubbard is the largest coastal glacier in North America and at the point where it reaches the sea, 76 miles from its source, it’s an amazing six miles wide. "It's great that you're here on a grey wet day", the on-board naturalist informed us over the loudspeaker, "it's only on days like this you can appreciate all the magnificent colours in the ice". Well it does take a lot to impress me but yes, despite the pouring rain, I was enthralled, especially as great big chunks of blue ice crashed into the sea before our very eyes. 

Our next stop was Juneau - Alaska's capital city and my idea of hell on earth.  It’s totally unreachable from anywhere else in the world by road and is only accessible by air or sea.  There was a distinct aura of gloom in Juneau. We were on the second to last cruise of the season – in two week’s time half the shops would close  and the townsfolk would batten down the hatches for the winter. Swathed in low grey cloud, the prominence of the soup kitchen and welfare centre in the main high street spoke volumes.

After Juneau we were in luck and the sun came out as we headed for our next port of call - Ketchikan.  This is a town that normally gets 13" of rain in September - by the 9th of the month they'd already had 12.  Feeling pretty privileged to have seen the place in the dry we headed off on a speed boat excursion to try and spot some more of those bears, and we were in luck again.  After an hour or so hugging the coast we spotted a black bear fishing in a salmon stream, on the way we’d passed several seals, and on the way back a whale the size of a bus performed one of those impressive tail swishing things just yards from our tiny boat.

We’d had a good day.  Not only had we seen Ketchikan in the sun, we’d spotted all the wildlife we had hoped for, including an abundance of bald eagles which  had actually impressed me the most.  These birds were absolutely amazing with their graceful seven foot wingspans and humongous claws.  I couldn’t resist capturing one to bring home.  Having been warned by seasoned cruisers to avoid the multitude of jewelry shops that littered every port we’d so far steered clear of any gift shopping at all, but I finally succumbed to the $5 cuddly soft toy eagle in a dockside warehouse specializing in Alaskan tat. A lasting momento of fantastic trip.

Our final day at sea and the sun shone again.  We cruised back towards Vancouver and decided to take a turn in the jacuzzi, where to my husband’s delight he discovered our young female fellow hot tubber was a Canadian oil refinery processing engineer.  They happily exchanged pipeline small talk for an hour or so amongst the bubbles whilst I was just relieved we'd met her on the last day of our cruise and not the first.

All At Sea Part I

As soon as the idea of taking a cruise had been suggested I’d headed straight to the travel agent.  You need a Celebrity cruise, the 30 year old travel agent insisted, they cater for the younger generation of cruisers like us! Well flattery gets you everywhere because I booked on the spot.

Slightly worried that an American cruise ship might well be full of Americans, it was a pleasant surprise to discover once we had settled on board that most of our fellow passengers were either Canadian, British or Australian.

I knew there were Americans on the ship though – I’ve lived amongst them long enough now to be able to sniff them out.  I knew that the gentleman listening to the presentation on "How To Take Better Photographs of the Hubbard Glacier", on a cruise entitled "Cruise To the Hubbard Glacier", who actually put his hand up and asked “Are we going to see a glacier on this cruise?” was American.  As was the woman who whilst being transferred ashore by lifeboat tender at our first port of call asked the officer on board “do the crew have lifeboat training too?”

The Americans were also rather conspicuous in their absence every evening in the formal dining room, which knowing how fond they are of their food did rather puzzle me until I realised the self-service restuarant upstairs offered an alternative all you could eat buffet.  The portions in the main dining room were definitely nouveau cuisine.

However, this gave us ample opportunity to mix and mingle with the other colonials on board and catch up with a welcome bit of news from back home.  We’d chosen the casual dining option in the main restaurant so that we could eat at a different time and table each day. It was a bit like speed dating – you sat with a different couple each night, exchanged life stories and moved on.  The service was a bit like speed dining too – the minute we sat down the menu was presented, less than a second later the waiter was back to take the order, and before we’d even opened up the wine list the starter was there.

No matter how much they dress a cruise up, you're still basically trapped in an upmarket holiday camp and no matter how much money you've already spent, every effort will be made to elicit more.  Would we like to spend $200 for a week's pass to the spa? Did we wish to purchase an all you can drink beverage package? Tempting, but no!   Sea days definitely take a bit of getting used to - I regularly do very little all day but even I was chomping at the bit; sailing up the icy waters off the Alaskan coast it’s hardly the weather to be sat up on deck with a good book or lazing around the pool.

The “Celebrity Life” daily bulletin listed all manner of exciting activities intended to keep us occupied.  We enjoyed a tour of the ship's galley, attended a couple of lectures on the local wildlife and tried our hand one or two trivia quizzes, but even I draw the line at  napkin folding and bath towel origami (although our room steward obviously did not!)

It was definitely a touch of romantic self indulgence to sit and watch the sunset over the sea, sipping a glass of 'Celebrity Vintage"  champagne.  It was only when the Captain started to mention the icebergs that I started to feel slightly nervous, and then the band started to play......

Oh Canada

It's not often that my husband makes a spontaneous romantic gesture so when he asked if I fancied a week on an Alaskan cruise - just the two of us - I jumped at the chance! Apparently his work colleagues had assured him this was the one trip in the US we shouldn't miss, so we kissed the kids goodbye and set off for Vancouver in Canada where we were due to join our cruise ship for the week.

I'd been to Vancouver before way back in the early 1980's but I could remember very little about my visit to the city, apart from knowing that I'd liked it.  Well it wasn't surprising to discover that nothing seemed familiar because Vancouver has been transformed twice since then - first in the late 80's for the World Expo, and again in 2010 for the winter Olympics.

Vancouver is a modern, high tech attractive city with a fantastic, walkable, waterfront.  Whilst it may well be full of high rise apartment blocks and glass fronted offices, new buildings are erected around spacious plaza's, complete with carefully designed courtyards full of plants and water features.  The city has retained its open spaces; its clean, the air is fresh, and there is a youthful vibrancy about the place.

Vancouver has the third largest China Town in North America, but a lot of the Chinese immigrants have been there since the Gold Rush in the late 1800's.  Gas Town - the original downtown - has been recently re-vamped; there are cobbled streets, boutiques and smart restaurants.

We took a Sunday morning stroll around Stanley Park - the jewel in Vancouver's crown, 1000 acres of inner city park space, surrounded by water with a cycle path and sea wall full of dog walkers and early morning joggers.

We've already made some Canadian friends back in LA so we knew what to expect from the locals -  folks north of the border certainly seem a lot more genuine and down to earth than their American cousins.  Those joggers in Stanley Park were there because they wanted to be healthy, not because they wanted to be in the movies or look like Ken and Barbie. 

Our bus driver on the city tour talked about his home city with love and pride, he went out of his way to throw in an extra couple of stops and even apologised for the fact that we might see a "few street people" wandering around.  Two years of living in LA and not one local has ever apologised to me for the amount of street people camping out in town - we all just walk on by pretending we can't see.  LA drives me nuts but here in Vancouver I thought yes, I could live here and retain my sanity.

The cruise terminal was a mere five minute walk from our hotel; again modern and purpose built.  Floatplanes landed and took off across the water; snow capped mountains framed the view in the distance and as we sailed out of the harbour I knew my parting thought about Vancouver would again be that I liked it. Canada was definitely my kind of place.  Good, said my husband, because the Canadian economy is currently booming and it's all down the black stuff that puts the food on our table.  Oil exploration companies can’t recruit people quickly enough.

They always say be careful what you wish for.  Unfortunately the oil isn't in Vancouver, it's trapped under a layer of ice several hundred miles further north. Maybe I'm quite not quite ready to give up the comforts of my LA Bubble for Life in the Freezer just yet.

Back To School

The time has come and the teenager has bravely returned to school, which means of course I have become school run mom again.

It's the usual bun fight every morning  to see who can drop their kid off closest to the school gate.  Heaven forbid some kid might have to walk 25 yards more than another.  The teenager's school is on a main road - there's a three lane highway outside the school and every morning at least two of these lanes are blocked - the inside with parked cars belonging to students - the second with parents dropping off.  The school does have a drive-in drop-off zone but most parents seem to feel this is beneath them and prefer to throw their kids out on the highway instead.

Picking up at the end of the day is even worse - being British and knowing what my teenager has legs for, I go and wait a couple of hundred yards away from school in  a nearby supermarket car park so that the teenager can dawdle across the road to meet me.  A significant number of parents just block the highway and double park whilst they wait the 10-15 minutes or so for their kids to emerge.  Why the Pasadena police haven't cottoned onto this blatant disregard for the law I have no idea considering all the other minor misdemeanors they are so keen to write a ticket for.   They'd make enough money in one afternoon's worth of traffic fines to fund their entire Christmas Ball.

Apart from anything else of course this hardly teaches learner drivers good habits and most of these high school kids will already have passed, or will be about to take their driving tests. As it seems to be the done thing here to buy your kid a brand new SUV for their 16th birthday, it would certainly be a good idea for parents to set an example of how to drive it - or not to drive it as the case may be.

Either way the new school year means another attempt at integrating myself into the school community with parent association meetings, cookie bakes and voluntary service hours.  Last year I just managed to scrape enough “hours” together with a final donation of a couple of bottles of wine for some after school event to avoid being "fined" for lack of commitment. 

I have to say I find the whole parental involvement thing in American schools slightly weird.  I'm just not the super-school-mom I ought to be.  There's definitely no sweet sixteen SUV on the horizon in this family, nor was I impressed by the start of term school photograph order form – did I wish my teenager to be digitally enhanced to “eliminate any spots and blemishes”?  Well I love my teenager warts and all (not that she has any warts I hasten to add) but of course she was very keen to be airbrushed.  My argument that it was a school photo not a glamour shoot sadly fell on deaf ears. What kind of LA mom  am I?

Is there something so very wrong these days with being seen as who you really are? Or has the humble school photo  become another misrepresentation of perfection in a society that has an awful lot spots and blemishes of its own it would like to hide?

A Good Evening

Since arriving in California  two  years ago we have been living a comparatively quiet life.  Not that we were out partying every weekend when we lived in the UK but with family and friends close by, our social life could well be described as "active" - ie at least we had one.  Most weekends we would be out and about somewhere, if not I was happy to invent an excuse and entertain at home.

Here it has been decidedly different.  Despite Americans having this reputation for being highly sociable, and yes I do only have to hand over my driving licence for ID and I’m on first name terms with the sales assistant, this is not the start of a beautiful friendship.

My husband has tried to arrange entertaining team building events with his multi-cultural work colleagues, but by the time he has taken into account the religious restrictions, those who wont eat carbs after six and those who need to be in bed before nine, he’s left with very few willing bodies.

The mainstay of our social life here revolves around a small group of fellow ex-pat Brits – not because we are xenophobic, but quite simply because these are the only people who have ever shown a genuine interest in meeting up or going out.

Building new friendships take time, but when you do meet people in the same ex-pat situation you tend to bond very quickly, especially with no other commitments or distractions.

Leasehold apartment living is not particularly conducive to entertaining at home - stand four people on my balcony and it's decidedly crowded, plus I've neither the crockery, cooking utensils or desire to cater for anything other than a plateful of nibbles.
 

When we want to meet up we tend to go out - but the trouble with dining out over here is that the majority of the waiting staff seem to be on some sort of speed-serving competition.  Trying to make a meal last more than hour is extremely difficult - a recent night out with a couple of girlfriends involved planning a meal at a restaurant at least a twenty minute walk away so that we'd be out of the house long enough for the kids to watch a complete DVD in our absence.  As it was the main course was delivered whilst we were still tucking into our bruschetta and the bottle of rose we'd ordered to last the entire meal was  poured into three large glasses and the empty bottle and ice bucket whisked away before we even had a chance to say please could we have another!

Americans might like to be in and out of a restaurant in record time but us Europeans we do like to linger.  Despite assurances of "in your own time" or "whenever you're ready" as soon as that bill is presented I feel the staff are willing us to go - often without  the option of dessert or coffee even being offered.

Where's the rush? Do they think we have somewhere better to go? Obviously yes because when you leave any American restaurant the staff will always wish you to  "have a good evening" as you head out  the door.  Back home a meal in a restaurant would have been the entire evening's entertainment and we’d have been wished a “good night” as we left.  Here I always end up thinking That was my evening and its only 8 o’clock…….