Review - a month in Alaska with a B2B on Celebrity Millennium

[BrusselsGirl07]

The most amazing thing we saw was a Sea Otter eating a huge red Octopus! He had managed to catch himself an eight legged lunch and was merrily chomping away. When we first saw the Octopus it was clearly alive and squirming, but the Sea Otter killed it pretty quickly. The Sea Otter was floating on his back with the Octopus on his tummy and was a very happy critter!

 

 

 

 

This is a Tufted Puffin 'Bill Stacking', where the parents are collecting food to take back to the young. They can stack a lot of little fish in their beak thanks to some clever design features!

[BrusselsGirl07]

We stopped to watch and listen to Holgate Glacier and saw a huge calving! While we were watching, you could see the gap in the ice getting bigger and bigger, and suddenly a huge chunk fell off followed by lots of other pieces of ice.

 

 

 

 

 

ICE FALLING!!

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

On the way back into Seward we came across a single Sea Otter sleeping. We circled back expecting him to dive, but when he woke up, while he seemed very surprised to see us, he was very happy to stay and very photogenic. We got some great photos as he groomed himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for all of the Sea Otter photos - this one was so adorable and seemed to wave goodbye when we left!!!

Edited September 9, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[BrusselsGirl07]

On the way back to Seward, the views were beautiful. We came upon some more whales to end the day on a wonderful note. It had been a really great day out on the water.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[BrusselsGirl07]

Lunch on board that day had been a simple lunchbox, so when we got back to port, we went straight to have dinner at Ray’s Waterfront Restaurant on the advice of our Captain. http://rayswaterfrontak.com/Home.aspx. It was very good, and again Bill found some new beers to try.

 

After leaving the restaurant we saw some fisherman lining up with all of their fish and having their photos taken. On the walk back to our B&B, I noticed that at the port there are metal sculptures on top of the lamp posts such as Puffins, Eagles and Salmon.

 

It had been a great day, but we were all tired and went to bed early ready for our next day of adventures in Seward!

 

 

Ray's Waterfront Restaurant

 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[tee_harbor]

Thank you for your wonderful review. Even though I live in Alaska, I enjoy a good review because it's a chance for me to see my home through new eyes. And I see places I need to travel to myself!

[BrusselsGirl07]

Friday 25 July - It was a sad day as it was our last day with our friends Rod and Nancy. We live so far apart that we only see each other every few years, but we have so much fun with them. We had such a wonderful time sharing our Alaskan experience with our two wonderful friends.

 

For breakfast this morning, Marsha had made fresh sweet muffins, and packed the leftovers for Rod and Nancy to take on the train later that night. She also had all the ingredients lined up to make skillet scramble. Marsha had a small cast iron pan for each of us, and after we picked out the ingredients we wanted, she scrambled two eggs and poured them over the top and let it bake in the oven for 10 minutes. They were really yummy!

 

We finished up our packing, and took our bags downstairs, and then left for the Alaska Sealife Centre http://www.alaskasealife.org. The B&B was just a few minutes walk from the main street, and a few minutes more to the Sealife Centre, so very convenient. It was a 25 to 30 minute walk down to the port area of town which also had shops and restaurants.

 

We had booked the 11am Puffin encounter and the 1pm Octopus encounter, so were really looking forward to those.

 

The Sealife Centre was already really busy at 10am. We looked around at all of the exhibits. They had a Steller Sea Lion swimming in his tank and Sea Otters playing and swimming in an outdoor tank that you could see through a window. The Puffin enclosure had huge glass sides and the water was 25 feet deep. The puffins were diving down and ‘flying’ around in the water feeding. That was really fascinating to watch. I learnt that plankton is not an actual animal but any living creature that so small it can’t move under its own propulsion and is swept along by the current. They had some under a microscope which was then shown on a TV screen. They had touch tanks filled with starfish and other creatures.

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

Before we knew it, it was 11am and time for our Puffin encounter! We were met at reception by a guide, and taken behind the scenes to learn about Puffins. We saw a Puffin skeleton, an egg and also a beak sheath that grows during breeding season and then falls off. We saw the backs of the Puffin breeding boxes. Then it was time to go and feed the puffins!

 

We were given buckets with little fish, chopped up octopus and other tasty treats, and went into the Puffin enclosure. They gave us a cushion to sit on, and we had to sit down and wait for the Puffins to come across. They came over right away, and we had some very adorable little Puffins to feed.

 

Some were just eating the food right away, but there was one mother with a chick, so she was ‘bill stacking’. Puffins have the ability to gather lots of fish in rows in their beak. She ended up with so many that she started dropping them out, but I guess she did not want to leave while the food was out.

 

A very cute hand raised rhinoceros auklet came and sat next to me. He was not interested in food, but just wanted to be close to humans. At the end of the feeding time, we threw the remaining fish into the water, so the people watching the tank would have had a great display of Puffins diving and other birds feeding as well. When we left the enclosure, the little rhinoceros auklet followed us out, to go and see his favourite person in the world, he ran right over to her, it was so sweet!

 

This was such a fun thing to do. The Puffins are so cute and full of personality, and we had a wonderful time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

After we left the Puffins, we looked around the centre, and the shops for an hour before our Octopus encounter started at 1pm. I did buy a beautiful pair of earrings with Mammoth Ivory and Alaskan Jade beads.

 

The Octopus encounter was very interesting. Our guide said that they had already fed the Octopus the day before on another encounter, so our Octopus was not as interested in food. But I had no idea they were so fascinating! We were taken out the back to the staff area and learnt about the Octopus. It takes 5 to 7 years for them to reach sexual maturity and they mate only once. After the male fertilises the females eggs, he dies very quickly afterwards. The female lays thousands of eggs in a den and weaves them all together in a very intricate rope. She then spends the next 7 or more months tending the eggs until they hatch. She does not leave the den and does not eat during this time, and dies soon after the eggs hatch.

 

The baby octopus float to the surface of the water and live as plankton for up to 3 months, but as soon as they reach about 5 grams they fall to the bottom of the ocean and try to survive. We saw some baby octopus in tanks and they were very cute. The Centre is still learning how to breed Octopus in captivity, it is not easy.

 

Our Octopus was in a big tank and was quite big! She kept on changing colour from bright red to almost a pale pinky white colour. Octopus can taste through their suckers, so when she was sucking on to us, she could also taste us! Her suckers felt really bizarre, as if your skin was being pulled off! I got a little scared as I was feeding her a crab, and I though my hand was going to be pulled off! They are amazingly strong. Bill really enjoyed feeding her the crab. She then decided she did not want the crab and did not want to interact with us anymore, so that was that. We went and looked at the baby octopus and some other little creatures in tanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[BrusselsGirl07]

We left the Sealife Centre around 2.30pm. Opposite the Sealife Centre was a beautiful mural of whales on the wall of a building.

 

We headed back to the B&B to collect our bags. Marsha told us about the free shuttle to the cruise ship and train station that comes along every half hour. We just started walking down the road with our bags and after 5 minutes, the shuttle came along. We had our first view of the cruise ship which was exciting!

 

Rod and Nancy were taking the 6pm train back to Anchorage, so the shuttle dropped them at the train station and then dropped Bill and I at the cruise ship. We dropped our bags off, and then walked 10 minutes back to the train station where Rod and Nancy where waiting for us.

 

We had lunch at The Smoke Shack, an old railway car turned into a restaurant. It had yummy food and good service. I had my first pulled pork sandwich and it was delicious! http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g60873-d729532-Reviews-Smoke_Shack-Seward_Alaska.html

 

After lunch we went back to Ray's Waterfront Restaurant for a final drink with our friends. I had a spiked hot chocolate which had a toasted marshmallow on top! It was delicious, I think it was called a S'more maybe? I liked the chalkboard illustrations on the walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

Then sadly it was time to say goodbye. We all walked to the cruise terminal and said our farewells. I have never started a cruise so sad before, it really put a dampener on the usual excitement of getting on board. I am sure the check-in people wondered why I was so teary!

 

The line of people checking in was surprisingly very long at this late hour. We skipped the very long line, as this was our first cruise as ‘elite’ members of the Celebrity Captain’s Club. We were checked in quickly and on board within 15 minutes. It was almost 5pm, so our bags were already there. We were on level 11 in room 1129. It was a normal inside room, and had everything we needed.

 

As I said before, this cruise was all about Alaska and seeing the scenery and wildlife, so we hardly took any photos on the ship. We did not go to any of the speciality restaurants and missed a few nights in the main dining room. But we did like the Millennium. Our focus was not on the ship as much as usual, but we did not have any complaints about food, staff or how the ship looked.

 

We were supposed to sail on her in 2007. Bill and I were posted to Brussels in Europe for 3 years, and I loved living there and did not want to leave. To soften the blow of packing up our lives, we had booked a two week Mediterranean cruise. We had packed up our house and sent the shipping container back to Australia, and just had a bag each with our clothes for the cruise. When the cruise ended, we would be flying back to Australia. Three days before the cruise, we were notified that the it had been cancelled as the ship had damaged its propellor on rocks! I was so devastated, it was too late to book another cruise in our time window, so we spent two weeks on a Greek island, which was lovely, but not the same as a cruise.

 

As we had such a late lunch, we did not have dinner the first night. We showered and changed, and then went to a sail away party in the Penthouse Suite. A couple who had been on the roll call had invited a group of us to come and enjoy sail away in their suite. We met the people who had been chatting on the roll call, and enjoyed the hospitality of our new friends. It is a shame that on a short, port intensive cruise, there is not enough time to really socialise and get to know people.

 

We went to the first night’s show which was a taster of all the shows we would be seeing during the cruise. We decided we really wanted to see the juggler, as even in the short show he gave he was hilarious!

 

 

Celebrity Millennium

 

 

 

Typical inside room

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Seward!!

[BrusselsGirl07]

Saturday 26 July - today was a sea day and also included a visit to Hubbard Glacier. We had breakfast in the buffet, and then relaxed and read. We went to the naturalist’s (Dirk Younkerman) talk on ‘Alaska the Great Land’.

 

There was a wine tasting for elite & select Captain’s Club members in the Olympic restaurant, so we went along to that. We sat next to a lovely couple on the second of their B2B cruises and chatted with them. While we were there we noticed Orca breaching outside the windows! They were in the distance, but it was lovely to see them leaping right out of the water! I took a video on my iPhone and you can hear everyone exclaiming and being very excited!

 

We went to the buffet for lunch, but took one look at the mass of people and headed down to Bistro on 5. It was calm and peaceful and there was only one other couple there. The other couple was from our roll call, so it was nice to spend time talking with them.

 

At about 1.15pm the ship entered Yakutat Bay and at 2.45pm we were the closest the ship is allowed to get to Hubbard Glacier - 1/2 a mile away. Apparently this was the first time the ship had been that close to the glacier this season.

 

We had put on all of our warm clothes and we needed them, it was really cold! We had gloves and hats and our warmest clothes on and were still cold! As we sailed closer to the glacier, we saw all kinds of ice in the water from huge icebergs to small floating pieces of ice. There were seals sitting on the larger ice chunks but they slipped into the water as we approached. Some of the ice was really blue, and some had pieces of rock embedded in them from when the glacier scraped down the valley and crushed and pushed the rock along. The ones with the most rock were very black and dirty looking!

 

The glacier was very beautiful, and the ship slowly circled so that everyone could see from all sides. The by now familiar noises of the glacier - thunder claps, rifle cracks, and groans - could be clearly heard and there were a few calvings while we watched. Dirk the naturalist had been narrating the whole time we sailed toward the glacier, but he let us just listen to the glacier ‘talk’ while we where in front of it. At about 4.30pm, we turned and left the glacier.

 

That night was a formal night. We received 3 drink vouchers each in lieau of the elite Captain’s Club Cocktail Hour. They said it was because there were so many elite members on board, but there could not have been more than 20 judging from the amount of people we saw at subsequent cocktail hours. We had select dining, and ate in the main dining room.

 

The Captain’s Gala Toast was held before the show, ‘Boogie Wonderland’. We had arrived at about 8.20pm to the theatre and it was hard to find 2 seats! We went all the way down the front and sat in the second row on the side. At the time we did not realise that we were seated near to a deaf couple and they had two sign language translators on board with them. The translators stood in front of the stage and in front of the deaf couple. I watched the translator more than the show! She signed the entire show, the speaking and the singing, and danced and shimmied her way through the show. It was quite a workout for her, and she was soaked in sweat at the end of it! It was really interesting to watch. Lots of people came up and commented on what a great job she did afterwards.

 

When we got back to our room, we found a rose and a stem of flowers in a vase, and two chocolate covered mint cookies. We had noticed there were no chocolates on the pillows each evening anymore (like on previous cruises), but the rose and the chocolate cookie was nice! We also had an elephant towel animal.

 

wine tasting

 

 

A glass sculpture on the ship

 

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

 

 

A carving made from glacier ice

 

[karensc]

Yvette, thank you so much for doing all of this. We were supposed to be on the Millenium last September when they had the engine problems and ended up cancelling (I believe it was) 3 cruises, ours among them, so now we are getting a second chance to plan our Alaska trip. Planning about a week on our own before boarding Southbound in Seward. Your report is incredibly helpful!

Karen

[tlcoke]

Thanks for sharing about your trip Yvette. Sorry, we never got to meet up on the ship. I hope to get time to write my trip report soon of my 20 day trip.

[BrusselsGirl07]

Yvette, thank you so much for doing all of this. We were supposed to be on the Millenium last September when they had the engine problems and ended up cancelling (I believe it was) 3 cruises, ours among them, so now we are getting a second chance to plan our Alaska trip. Planning about a week on our own before boarding Southbound in Seward. Your report is incredibly helpful!

Karen

 

Karen, I read about the cancelled cruises, and felt bad for those people who had to cancel all of their plans. I know I put so much time and effort into preplanning, that it would have been such a let down to be told the cruise was cancelled.

 

I hope that you have a wonderful trip the second time around!

Edited September 11, 2014 by BrusselsGirl07

[BrusselsGirl07]

Thanks for sharing about your trip Yvette. Sorry, we never got to meet up on the ship. I hope to get time to write my trip report soon of my 20 day trip.

 

Hi Tracey, with no meet and mingle it was hard to catch up with people from the roll call! It was also such a busy cruise. I hope you had a wonderful time!

[BrusselsGirl07]

Sunday 27 July - today we were docked in Juneau. The day was cool and overcast. We got off the ship at 9am and had to be back on board by 8.45pm. I had booked a morning whale watch with Harv & Marv http://www.harvandmarvs.com and we went outside to find their representative. She was easy to find and was holding a big sign, so once everyone was together off we went in a bus to another harbour.

 

We had 5 people on our boat - Bill and I, the naturalist off one of the other cruise ships in port, and a professional photographer and his partner. Our captain was Jayleen, she was really nice and very enthusiastic. Half an hour into our adventure, we struck it lucky and came up on a very large group of Orca including a baby. They were in no rush to be anywhere and just swam along calmly with the occasional spy hop and tail flick. Jayleen was really excited to see this big group and said it was the best viewing she had seen in a while. We stayed with the group for half an hour and then went to see if we could find some whales.

 

 

View of the cable car from the ship

 

 

A view of Juneau

 

 

 

Scenery from the H&M boat

 

 

 

Orca!

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

 

[BrusselsGirl07]

After leaving the Orca, we quickly found some whales who did a few tail slaps, but when they dove we moved on. We motored past a buoy covered in seals, and then not long after came across a very large pod of whales bubble net feeding! I had hoped to see this while in Alaska, and we were given a fantastic display. From 12.40 to around 1.25pm we watched the whales dive and surface with their mouths wide open again and again. Finally it was time to leave and we headed back into port.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BrusselsGirl07]