Nobody Went Overboard

Josie's class trip this year was an Alaskan cruise. Yes indeed, this was an ambitious, extravagant adventure for 7th and 8th graders at a cash-strapped public school... but between the educator discount and tons of fundraising, we managed to get fifty kids and almost as many adults on board Holland America's Oosterdam last Sunday. Perhaps even more remarkably, we sailed back into port seven days later without anyone having gone overboard (except possibly figuratively). I've got a bunch of stories from the trip, but I think they'll make a little more sense if I start by giving you the basic itinerary and logistics. So here goes:

Josie and I boarded the ship at noon on Sunday (Andrew and Simon had their own Adventures at home, about which more later), spent Sunday night and all of Monday at sea, and woke up Tuesday morning in Glacier Bay.

From there we made our way down the Inside Passage, stopping in Juneau on Wednesday, Sitka on Thursday, Ketchikan on Friday, and Victoria on Saturday night, before arriving back in Seattle early Sunday morning.

On board we slept in cramped, windowless cabins with an adult and 3-4 kids in each one. When we first saw our stateroom we thought there must have been a mistake -- only two beds for four people? But every night the stewards came through and pulled a narrow mattress out of the couch and lowered a bunk out of the ceiling. (While they were at it, they folded our towels into frogs, seals, hippos, and my favorite, the elephant. We expressed enough enthusiasm about the towel animals that we were presented with a book that shows you how to do them, so give us a call if you're in need of a little terry-origami to brighten up your bathing experience.) I was surprised at how easy it was to sleep on the ship -- something about the pitch dark and the gentle rolling, maybe.

During the day the kids had schoolwork: lectures to go to, papers to write, journaling, silent reading, etc. When they weren't doing that they were mostly eating, swimming in the pool, or playing ping-pong. Chaperons spent a lot of time poolside watching kids swim, walking around and around the Promenade Deck (three circuits was a mile -- I could never do more than that in one go without feeling like I was on a giant teak-planked hamster wheel), and talking to each other -- which was nice.

On days in port, there were educational field trips for the kids; chaperons could attend or not, depending on their level of teen-fatigue.  These ranged from a visit to a raptor rehabilitation center, where a handler walked into the room with a 30 lb bald eagle named Sitka on her arm, and none of us breathed until she carried her out again:

to the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, where four hunky loggers bounded into the arena and we all cheered and jeered and howled and chanted until the final log-rolling splash.

In the evening we ate dinner either by the pool or in the fancy restaurant -- the latter option was definitely a major educational experience for most of the kids. (Thank God for Molly's pre-cruise etiquette class!) Meals were all included in the cost of the cruise, so the kids could go ahead and order spiced apple vichyssoise (for instance) just to see what the heck it was, without worrying about the financial ramifications. Two nights were officially Formal Dinners, where everyone got All. Dolled. Up.

 

And took pictures of each other.

 

 Post-dinner the entertainment options included cabaret shows, karaoke, jazz combos, and several pretty good movies. (The casino was off-limits, thank goodness.) There was a teen lair full of board games and cubic furniture, which our kids managed to get themselves thrown out of on the very first night (determined parents talked them back in by the end of the week, by promising to plant a phalanx of stern-faced chaperons in the hall outside).

As the evening wore on, it was not unusual to find a group of parents in the Crow's Nest, sipping martinis and enjoying the endless sunset, while at a nearby table a group of kids played chess or half-heartedly did their homework. At moments like that I occasionally thought, I could get used to this.

At other moments -- like when the TV turned itself on at 5:30 am for the third day in a row, filling our pitch-black, gently rocking stateroom with blaring Smurf cartoons like some crazed time-warp alarm clock, and I had to get up and stuff my bed back into the couch so I could get to my clothes so I could make my bedraggled way upstairs to grab a cup of washy coffee to stave off the caffeine headache long enough for me to get my three girls through their hair care routines and upstairs for breakfast before the morning meeting -- those moments I never did get used to.

Stay tuned for more details on our Alaskan adventure!

Thanks to Zeke Brucker for the Glacier Bay and Sitka the Eagle pictures.