Vancouver + A Rocky Start to Alaska
To celebrate David’s 74th (heavenly) birthday (June 13, 2024), I’ve written a two-for-one travelogue about our trip to Vancouver and a slight hiccup at the beginning of the last big adventure we took together. More to come about Alaska. Thank you all for reading, sharing, and all the love you continue to give our family. — Allie
Alaska was a place David always wanted to visit. Me? Not so much. I don’t really know why. Everyone I knew who’d been there loved it. It is many things, they said: Unique. Majestic. Cool. So when we started looking for an impromptu trip somewhere in the world for a few weeks in May 2023, I totally surprised David by suggesting Alaska — in fact, a cruise that would take us along the Inner Passage. He was always so generous with accommodating my travel whims; I wanted to let him check one off his Bucket List. I’m so glad I did.
We got to have this last big travel adventure together, and it was incredible—so much more than he and I were expecting. But after returning home and before he could put his fingertips to the keyboard and start writing his impressions, David passed away—suddenly and unexpectedly on July 29, 2023, only a little more than two months after the trip. He didn’t suffer or linger. He passed away from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, which has only about a 1-2% survival rate, I was told. But not before he was able to tell me he loved me and to continue on and be happy without him. He sensed he would not make it through the surgery, and he didn’t.
So here I sit nervously at his desk, trying to continue the writing he loved so much, describing the marvelous places we visited together and, hopefully, starting to write about the places I will be exploring without him. I’m beginning with the last big trip we took together: Alaska.
We started in Vancouver, British Columbia, a place we’d visited a few times together years ago and had loved. We arrived on a Wednesday evening, had dinner at the chic award-winning Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar, and had only the next day to reacquaint ourselves with the city. Because we knew we’d be aboard a ship for eight days, we decided to get a little exercise by bicycling, concentrating on one area of the city: Stanley Park. Stanley Park is huge: a thousand acres abutting Vancouver’s vibrant downtown. We started from our hotel and cycled easily through the streets to Coal Harbour, which was British Columbia’s last successful whaling station and closed in 1967. But the main focus of our morning bike ride before we had to make our way to our ship was to ride the perimeter of Stanley Park, along the Seawall Trail, a fifteen-mile mostly paved road that hugs Vancouver’s waterfront.
The ride was pretty, flat, and easy. By Googling it, I learned that the greenway is “the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path.” The nice feature of this path is that the bikers and inline skaters have their own clearly defined lane, and the walkers and joggers have theirs. And never (well, seldom) the twain shall meet. On the ride we saw ten beaches, many gardens and green spaces, incredible views of the Vancouver Harbour (where you can watch seaplanes land and take off), and (my favorite) the Brockton Point Totem Poles. The latter deserves at least a 30-minute stop to view the colorful, ornate designs and read about their histories.
Some of the landmarks and sights along the route are definitely worth describing. The Siwash Rock, said to be 32 million years old, is absolutely worth a photo stop. A Squamish legend has it that a father was turned into this giant outcropping to honor his generosity and selflessness. I was so enthralled with viewing the rock and the seabirds encircling it that I almost had a collision with a group of cyclists coming from the other direction. The Siwash Rock is near Third Beach, one of the prettiest ones. It is surrounded by trees and may be the quietest of the ten beaches. Of all the monuments along the route, I think my favorite was “Girl in a Wetsuit” by sculptor Elek Imredy. She’s sitting on a large rock wearing a wetsuit, a mask pulled up above her eyes, and flippers. It immediately made us think of Copenhagen’s “The Little Mermaid.” At the east end of Stanley Park is the red and white Brockton Point Lighthouse. The light was first built at location in 1890, and a small, squat structure was constructed over it in 1914. It hasn’t been used since 2008 and is only decorative now, but still a nice little lighthouse to view, especially juxtaposed against the skyscraper landscape of Vancouver.
The bike ride was definitely one we would recommend to anyone. Our hotel offered complimentary bikes to guests, but there are many cycle stations in the city that offer bikes for rent by the hour. We had time for a quick lunch before heading back to the hotel to pack and leave for the embarkation of our ship, so we found a little pizza place and had a great meal. We were a little sad we didn’t have more time to explore other parts of Vancouver that we’d missed before—it’s a vibrant city that deserves several days of exploration.
ON OUR WAY TO ALASKA DAY 1:
A ROCKY EMBARKATION FROM VANCOUVER
David and I have had very little bad luck in our many, many years of travels – OK, a few missed connections, some important flights canceled, an iPad left at TSA but retrieved successfully, a hat left under the seat and lost forever, a pair of prescription glasses left in a cab in Lima and never found, a trip to the ER in Edinburgh which triggered a missed flight. So I guess we were due for some. I’m going to try to tell this story succinctly so I can get on with the excitement of our Alaskan trip. At first, I was going to omit this story, but I think it’s important to know that sh*t happens. And a trip that should start out fun and happy with a glass of champagne can start out anxious and nervous with a huge knot in the stomach.
Here’s what happened: My phone dropped out of my pocket in the 15-minute Uber ride from our hotel to the cruise ship terminal at Canada Place, and I didn’t realize it till we had navigated the sinuous lanes for the various departing ships and been dropped off in the deep bowels of the gigantic terminal at our gate: the Seabourn Odyssey. Standing in line to check in at 2 pm for our 5 pm departure, I reached into my coat pocket and discovered my phone was missing. Of course, I searched the twenty zippered pockets of my two bags fifteen times, knowing full well I had not put it there. Then panic set in. But David, always quick-thinking and so smart, pressed the Find Friends button on his phone and saw it driving away with our Uber driver north of Vancouver.
Whew! No need to panic. All we had to do was contact Uber, ask them to call our driver and beg him to return the phone to us at Canada Place. Not so fast. We had the driver’s name on the digital receipt in David’s phone, but Uber Command Post informed us that he had signed off for the day and was heading elsewhere: home? his child’s soccer match? an out-of-town trip? They didn’t know, but they left a message and said they’d let us know when he contacted them. Did I mention that the driver, probably from Eastern Europe by the sound of his name, spoke very little English?
By this time, we’d also let the entire Seabourn service team know of our predicament, and they were sympathetic yet encouraging:
“Oh, you're not the first to have this happen.”
“These things happen all the time.”
“We’ll be right there when he returns the phone, and we’ll bring it straight to you.”
“And if we sail before he gets here, we’ll have the phone transported to you at our next stop.”
So we waited. In our beautiful stateroom, where a chilled bottle of champagne and assorted delicious-looking canapés awaited us. But my stomach was in knots, thinking about the fate of my lost phone, with thousands (yes, thousands!) of precious photos stored on it; my whole life –restaurants, flights, birthdays, movies, trips, doctors’ appointments, teaching schedules– typed into my calendars going back years; hundreds of articles yet to be read and recipes yet to be made; dozens of lists of favorite restaurants in favorite cities, hundreds–maybe thousands–of books I’d read. You get the picture.
I was feeling nauseous. By this time, we were doing other things: calling my phone (which, of course, was on silent but at least on vibrate), calling Uber again for updates (which proved worthless), tracking my phone (which was going farther and farther away from Vancouver and into the hinterlands of Canada), and watching the time (which was getting closer and closer to the departure time of 5 p.m.).
But finally, a miracle occurred. David’s phone rang, and a sweet, heavily accented female voice said tentatively, “Hello?” when he answered it. It was the Uber driver’s young daughter who had heard the phone buzzing and found it on the floor in the back seat when her dad had returned home from his shift. She explained that her father did not speak much English but understood the direness of the situation–that we were sailing in less than two hours–and assured me that she and her dad would drive back to Vancouver and return the phone.
And so we held our breaths and watched Find My Friends as my phone slowly crept up the back roads of the outskirts of Vancouver and made its way to us. At the same time, we also gathered a nice sum of cash, sealed it into an envelope with a profusely thankful note, and handed it to the Seabourn employee who promised he'd be waiting for the driver. An hour later, I had my phone, and I cried, which is often my go-to emotion when expressing relief and joy. It also felt appropriate to have a glass of champagne and toast the beginning of our trip, while silently praying that it would all be wonderful from here on out.
**********
Amid the flourish of cheerful music and blasting airhorns, passed trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres, and excited cries from the passengers, we left the docks of Canada Place and slowly made our way toward Alaska.