I don’t know whether we arrived a day early or left a day late but on the day we turned up we were docked in the commercial dock area of the city – at Kwai Chung Container Terminal III by my reckoning of landmarks – which meant our first view of Hong Kong was somewhat industrial. Cranes and containers surrounded us and only the more distant sights were of the skyscrapers we’d been expecting to see. Still, the weather was gorgeous and there’s a type of beauty even in these commercial ports, especially when you’re on the other side of the world and experiencing them for the first time. I suspect that’s a minority view but it suits my contrarian nature.

The video below was shot from the top deck of Diamond Princess looking first eastwards then crossing over and looking westwards to show the views from this part of Hong Kong. What’s of slight interest (very slight; like so slight you might not even spot there’s any interest at all; we’re talking a sliver of slightness that practically disappears if you look at it edge on) is that you’ll be able to see that the Stonecutters Bridge wasn’t quite complete when we visited; there’s a gap in the centre of the award-winning bridge’s span over the Rambler Channel.

We’d booked a Hong Kong Island highlights excursion for our day in the city so it was just a case of waiting until we were due to head off – that usual gathering in the theatre with your tickets and assigned tour group number while watching people try to sit at the ends of the rows, causing chaos, or leaving before their row is due, out of some utter desperation to get on the bus first and mark them out to their fellow passengers as selfish tits – then trundling off the ship and to our designated means of transportation.

Victoria Peak

Our bus took us from the Hong Kong mainland onto the island and dropped us off at the station ready for a funicular train ride to the viewing platforms on Victoria Peak. It was incredibly crowded and quite chaotic waiting to board and I’m not convinced that everyone in our tour group managed to get onto the same train going up, but I’m sure we all made it eventually because there was no panicked stare in the ship’s representative’s eyes when taking head-counts during the remainder of the excursion’s activities.

A sculpture of local legend Jackie Chan caught our eye and it wouldn’t be the only time he would appear in some form on our two days in Hong Kong, with our tour guide pointing out his house as we drove past it later in the day, and with us seeing his star on the walk of fame the day after.

 The view from Victoria Peak was the classic one that everyone knows from looking for pictures of Hong Kong online, even if the haze from heat or pollution made the skyline photography a lot less than ideal. Some skyscraper landmarks we had pointed out to us included the Bank of China Tower (designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei) and Central Plaza, but you can also see in the photos and video from Victoria Peak below that there was a building under construction across the water, on the mainland, and that was the International Commerce Centre, the tallest building in Hong Kong.

Stanley Market

The next stop on our Hong Kong excursion was to the southern side of the island and a shopping trip at Stanley Market. We were assured that this was a great place to get good quality, cheap souvenirs and clothing, and that actually turned out to be true. We’re not shoppers when we travel but we did have some local currency on us – we like to spend when we’re ashore, helping the local economy in some small way, and we’ll judge you if you don’t do the same – so ducked into a side alley and were encouraged into a shop selling silk shirts by the owner there. He looked me up and down then reached back into a pile of shirts and pulled out a short-sleeved, dark blue, silk number, threw it into a bag, and asked for a very reasonable sum of money. We took a chance on not being handed something polyester, nine sizes too small, and I’m glad we did. It fit me like a glove, it felt divine, and I still have it now, even if it’s a little snugger around the waist these days.

Aberdeen

Our penultimate stop on this guided tour was Aberdeen, named for the 4th Earl of Aberdeen and former mid-nineteenth century Prime Minister, George Hamilton-Gordon. The original name of Aberdeen was actually Hong Kong but foreigners mistook it for the whole island and by the time this was realised the misunderstanding had stuck. The locals now call Aberdeen Hong Kong Tsai which can be translated as Son of Hong Kong.

Aberdeen is famous for its floating village and restaurants and it was to a famous one of the latter that we had a quick bite for lunch. The floating village houses many boats and is home to the Tanka people, historically associated with fishing in Hong Kong harbour and with prostitution, though that is partly ethnic stereotyping of people seen as low caste across much of Asia.

Once our short stop for food was complete we then boarded boats for a ride around the Aberdeen waterfront.

The final stop was to see some artistic workmanship in a jeweller’s workshop. As always with these kinds of stops on these cruise ship-organised excursions there’s a push to buy merchandise too, and while we didn’t there were some in our tour group who did, which was good to see. It always helps when you’ve got plenty of wealthy Americans in your group.

Even though Diamond Princess would be in Hong Kong for another day, everyone had to be back on board by early evening as the cruise ship needed to move to an anchoring spot in Junk Bay. The timing of the ship’s repositioning to its new location in Hong Kong Harbour would mean we’d get to watch the famous Hong Kong Harbour Light Show from the water.

We happened upon some train tracks running along one side of La Boca that I assumed were disused on account of their general condition. We discovered soon afterwards that this wasn’t the case as a train came slowly rolling through the district.

We’d been advised to stay very much in the colourful, tourist part of La Boca and not to wander away as it could be dangerous – there was a police car parked up as an additional protection for tour groups – and we duly did that. There was plenty to catch my eye and my camera’s sensor in our restricted zone as my wife and I meandered up and down La Boca’s pedestrianised areas admiring the buildings and the impressive amounts of street art everywhere. At one point a tango dancer approached me and asked if I wanted to take her picture; fearing an appeal following that for money I didn’t have on me (it was impossible to pick up Argentinian money before our cruise) I declined.

The trip we’d arranged during our day in Montevideo was to a vineyard for a wine tasting. That vineyard was 35 kilometres from the Uruguayan capital, in Juanico, and to travel there we boarded a steam train that had been restored to working use by a local group of amateur rail enthusiasts.

Our steam train set off with plenty of whistles to announce its departure from Montevideo and then began its fairly leisurely trek northwards out of the city and through the Uruguayan countryside. Despite my general aversion to taking photos through windows on account of their general dirtiness and reflections galore I did take some video and a number of pictures of the various villages, houses, and people of Uruguay that we passed on the way.

We noticed many dogs running alongside the train. In fact, we noticed many dogs throughout our tour around South America; very much a land of dogs. The local Uruguayan people all came out to stand and stare as our steam train rolled past them too which led us to suspect the train did not run that often. Obviously, we did the very touristy thing of waving to everyone we passed. Not everyone waved back but there were some smiles.

There was a big, obvious wealth disparity as soon as you ventured very far from the centre of Montevideo. When you’re used to travelling throughout the UK and much of Europe with generally pretty even levels of income in whichever country you’re in it can come as a bit of a culture shock to move so quickly between fairly well-off (European-comparable) levels to what looks like close to abject poverty in very short order. I know that there are some people who think that tourism is bad but it can open up your eyes from the outside looking in and there’s no denying that it does bring some money to poorer areas even if the dispersal and use of that money isn’t always obvious or well-managed.

Once we arrived at Juanico train station we had a bit of time to see the steam train in all its glory (as it had been difficult to do so from the platform in the capital city) because there was a bit of filming taking place by one of the Princess Cruises ship videographers, Leandro, for the various promotional pieces and souvenir DVDs they produce on these trips.

The area of Juanico itself was devoid of much of interest but our next stop wasn’t too far away. We waited patiently for our coach to arrive and carry us onto the vineyard and I entertained myself with a few, final photos of the local landscape.

The rain has stopped! The rain has finally stopped! And the weather forecast says it’ll stay dry this weekend. We have got to get out of the house and go somewhere.

And that’s the thrilling flashback covering the backstory behind a quick scroll around and zoom in on a map to find a place we’d never visited – in fact, a place we’d never heard of before – less than an hour away from our home: Amberley Museum. Open air? Fresh air will do us good! Industrial heritage? We like a bit of that! Vintage electronics? You can’t beat a bit of retro equipment perusing! Used as a filming location for a James Bond movie? Well, if we weren’t sold before then we are now! On a cold but clear Saturday we headed off.

Amberley Museum is north of Arundel, somewhere we’ve visited numerous times (Arundel has a lovely castle and very attractive gardens), so getting to Amberley was very simple. We’d checked the map before and it wasn’t immediately obvious where parking was located for the museum but as you approach the destination it’s all quite clear; parking is within the grounds of the nearby Amberley railway station. The free parking section reserved for museum visitors is locked up outside museum hours.

We had a pleasant chat with a very friendly member of staff at the ticket office for the museum who handed us a map and explained the best way to wander around the site’s acres of land, told us about the free bus and train rides running throughout the day, let us know that craftspeople and volunteers varied like the weather but you could count on at least three buildings where locals would be able to demonstrate old skills or answer questions, and then pointed out that all the communications were down and taking card payments electronically would involve some old-school shenanigannery. While that felt almost perfectly in tune with the heritage feel of the museum anyway we actually had enough cash on us to forego this necessity, helped by the January discount that the museum runs if you know the password. You’ll have to look online for that if you’re planning to visit in the off-season months.

Through the ticket office and gift shop then turning left presented us with some attractive brick buildings. In addition to public toilets at this spot there was also a brewery display, ironmonger’s shop, machine shop, print shop, and a shed housing some road steam and stationary steam engines. The print shop was the largest of the buildings and was a working one so if you want a custom print of some description to take away as a souvenir then this is the place to visit.

The building housing the TV and radio exhibition was next around Amberley in a roughly clockwise direction. This was jam-packed with everything from the early days of broadcasting entertainment and information over the air with displays dedicated to microphones and wartime communications to shelves of radio units in wooden or plastic casings and increasingly decorative styling to television sets and video recorders from the earliest days upwards. We liked the 1927 Royal Doulton loudspeaker in the form of a parrot “to make the technology more acceptable to the lady of the house” mostly for what that said about social attitudes of the time.

Art deco designs on the vintage radio sets were particularly beautiful but some of the early television sets with their tiny, curved screens were the standout pieces for me with their anachronistic futuristic appeals from the distant past.

About halfway through the TV and radio exhibition building there was a reproduction of an amateur radio room. We got talking to the volunteer nearby for several minutes and in the conversation we learned that the reproduction was effectively a mishmash of three genuine setups. I loved the very obviously amateur feel of this – the exposed wires, the spare equipment – but also the very real sense that someone had lived and loved this life – the mounted ashtrays, the kettle with its terrifyingly dangerous-looking wiring – and that feeling of dedication was almost tangible.

At the ticket office we’d been told that there might be a Tesla Coil demonstration in the Electricity Hall at the far end of the museum grounds at half past the hour and that excited us. We looked at the map and looked at the bus stop near where we’d exited the TV and radio exhibition and figured we’d take the bus as it was due to leave and we didn’t think we’d be able to walk to the hall in time. As already mentioned, there is a bus that runs around the site and there is also a narrow gauge railway running a train too so if you have mobility issues then these can alleviate some of your walking difficulties. Transportation is free and regular so you’re also able to ride both forms of transport as much as you like. We were the only people on the bus and about sixty seconds after setting off it had reached its destination as we hadn’t really grasped the map’s scale so we probably could have walked after all. But who doesn’t like a bus ride?

The first thing we did inside the Electricity Hall was head to the Tesla Coil to see if there would be problems viewing it or filming it. Viewing it, no. Filming it, yes, on account of the sign indicating that there would be no demonstrations on the day of our visit. That’s just the risk you take and we wouldn’t let it spoil our visit because we hadn’t even known it would be here before arriving. We shall have to return to Amberley Museum at some point and see if we can get lucky.

There are two sections to the Electricity Hall. The first section we entered contained a wide range of more industrial uses of electricity; engines, displays, power indicators, plus vehicles including electric bikes, Sinclair C5s, and a ridiculously cute Enfield 8000 Electric Car.

The second section of the hall was more interesting to us and if you’ve got children or have the mind of a child then it’s far more entertaining – and educational – too. This was dedicated to consumer uses of electricity so there were displays of fridges, freezers, vacuum cleaners, heated baths, cookers, washers, dryers, and personal electrical equipment for home use. Moreover, there were lots of interactive elements here, lots of buttons to push, levers to pull, handles to turn, and switches to throw, and it would be accurate to say that not a single one of those buttons, levers, handles, or switches got away without being used by either me or my wife. Lots and lots of fun.

Ah, the classic Polar Cub Electric Vibrator. For the lady of the house to use on her

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throat. Her throat.

A very short distance from the Electrity Hall was the BT Connected Earth building. As you’ve probably guessed, this was a part of the museum focussed on telephone communication and, like the building we’d just come from, this also featured a lot of things to play with for children aged 0-99: morse code, telegraph messaging, dialing and watching the electronic relays moving to connect calls, using rotary phones and calling other phones elsewhere in the building, that sort of thing. Noisy as well as entertaining and educational again – I even learnt some things and I’m a regular Mr Know-It-All usually – and it was great to see and be reminded of the explosion of new phone designs that came out from the 1960s onwards.

The grounds of Amberley Museum are surrounded on three sides by the chalk hills of the South Downs and we had a few moments to enjoy some of the attractive scenery on the crisp day of our visit as we crossed the railway tracks to the thing we next wanted to take a look at.

That thing we wanted to take a look at was one of the filming locations used in the James Bond film A View To A Kill. If you’ve seen the movie then you’ll know that the evil plot involved explosives in a mine at one point and the mine entrance in question for Operation Main Strike was here at Amberley. Having rewatched the scene where Grace Jones emerges with the explosives to the annoyance of Christopher Walken recently it’s amazing to see how incredibly recognisable the area still is so many years after the movie. Some information about the film along with a prop from it – a skip in which Roger Moore and Tanya Roberts rode (after it was apparantly smoothed down to make sure neither star caught their skin or clothing on its interior) – was in the nearby railway exhibit building.

Following a small diversion to watch the wheelwright keeping some children occupied with trying to fix spokes into the wooden hub of a wheel outside his shop we made our way down to the De Witt Kilns not through any strong love of the art of pottery but because the building itself looked fantastic. Set lower than the surrounding paths around the museum, waterlogged ground and train track running alongside, a couple of arguably eerie sculptures of kiln-workers in the vicinity because of the chill in the air and silence all around, the massive brick building with its arched kilns was the single most impressive structure on the museum’s site.

We were making our way back towards the museum entrance/exit at this point and the next set of buildings we came across were those of the garage and cycle shop and the Southdown bus garage. A family friend and my wife’s father both used to drive buses (and knew each other through that job years before my wife and I ever met) so we’re never disappointed to have a nose around the vintage transportation when we see it. The bus garage contained some nice examples of old vehicles but I especially liked the booking office next to it offering exciting bus trips such as a drive to North Wales or even a Mystery Tour!

The final things we saw during this visit to Amberley Museum were the Fire Station with a few examples of fire-fighting vehicles inside before slightly doubling back on ourselves to wander through Greenwood Village, a far more rural setting for woodcraft people to demonstrate stick making and wood turning. This was a pleasant area and probably a lot more enjoyable in the warmer months with more people around.

On the way to the exit we passed a shop and a café, the former not being open but likely to be so later in the year, while the latter appeared to be serving the small number of other visitors to the site.

We exited through the gift shop, naturally, and we bought things, naturally, because that’s what we do when we visit places we like.

We liked Amberley Museum a lot. For a spur-of-the-moment decision it turned out to be a great one with loads to see not just on this visit but with plenty to come back and see more of plus lots we didn’t get around to. There are nature trails which we’d like to walk once there has been a more sustained period of dry weather and there were lots of buildings that weren’t open because the volunteers or craftspeople hadn’t turned up on the day of our visit. You can get a rough idea who will be available on the museum’s website but nothing is guaranteed. And we’d love to see that Tesla Coil in action.

Amberley had a good mix of activities, education, and nostalgia suitable for a huge range of age; kids will love the train and bus and playing around with the phones and electrical elements; adults will love some of the vintage TV and radio equipment and they’ll also love the train and bus and playing around with the phones and electrical elements. An easy-to-find place in the country, lots to see and do, and some great-sounding events planned throughout the upcoming year that almost guarantees we’ll be back at least once in 2020. Why, yes, I am talking about the ale festival.

I’ve mentioned before that we like spotting other cruise ships from the cruise ships we travel on so it was nice to spot Viking Venus visiting Oslo on this day too.

Before we’d visited Oslo for the first time we’d had two cruises booked that would be visiting Norway’s capital city, both with the same cruise line, so we checked out the excursions that Princess Cruises offered and identified two that interested us, both full day options. With us having a little more time in port for the second of the visits – this visit on Island Princess – we’d booked an Oslo highlights tour for the first cruise, but for this one we’d be travelling about forty kilometres north of the city so the extra time would allow for a bit of travelling to and from the destination.

That cruise excursion destination was Jevnaker, a municipality, itself part of the greater, traditional Hadeland region. The name Hadeland derives from the old Norse for “the land of the warriors” but we wouldn’t be engaging in any activities that related to war on this day’s tour. We’d instead be discovering that Hadeland could more accurately be described as the land of the artists.

The first element of this cruise tour was a visit to Hadeland Glassverk. This had been described as a glass blowing demonstration in the excursion blurb and it’s a subject that appeals to my wife who’s got a fascination for glassware (as our many filled shelves will attest to), and was the entire reason for booking this trip.

But let’s get this bit out of the way ahead of time: in this respect, this part of the tour was a massive disappointment. Now, that’s no reflection on what we were about to see in Hadeland, which was absolutely fine, very impressive even, but what we’d anticipated and what we actually saw were two very different things.

Anyway, we arrived at Hadeland Glassverk under glorious blue skies and nice, warm conditions, and the first stop was a wander to get a coffee and cake, included as part of the tour. We wouldn’t normally bother with this sort of thing, especially not so soon after breakfast, but when you’re touring with lots of older Americans it’s something they seem to love, and it gave them all a chance to use the toilets nice and early into this day’s activities.

It didn’t take long to get the snack and drink down us and gather outside with our guide.

Hadeland Glassverk is a collection of buildings working with glass, selling them in outlet stores, and showcasing them for sales. Production of items such as jars and bottles for chemists and medical purposes as well as household items began in 1765, but in the middle of the nineteenth century the focus was changed for more decorative pieces, initially copying popular European designs before finding its own forms to sell. With production continuing to this day, this allows Hadeland Glassverk to claim to be the oldest industrial business in Norway in continuous operation.

We were given a short amount of time to wander around the buildings in the fresh Norwegian air and we had a lovely day to enjoy the old buildings of red brick and white boards against the blue sky. All the colours of Norway’s flag.

What we’d actually come to see, however, was the glass blowing demonstration, and here’s where the tour deviated sharply from what we’d been expecting.

We were led into the main factory space where glass blowing was taking place and we were led to rows of raised seating looking across to different workspace areas where glass blowers were blowing and shaping glass. It was interesting to see the process but that’s all that occurred. There was no demonstration of the art; there was no explanation of how colours were added or anything to explain the different methods of producing glassware; no mention of how glass blowing had changed over the centuries. We were tolerated viewers in a factory, and that’s it.

It was as if we’d booked an excursion promising a look at how roads are built, then given some fold out seats next to roadworks beside a motorway and told “Enjoy, and when you’re bored feel free to wander off on your own.”

Okay, we weren’t bored, as such; the glass blowing, even as industrial and uninformative as it was, was still interesting enough to look at for a while. Eventually, though, we did get up and have a nose about. There were examples of Hadeland Glassverk glassware throughout the rest of the warehouse space and we initially had a thought that if we found something small, artistic, unique, and not stupidly expensive then we’d pick up a souvenir. That wasn’t the case, though. Everything was produced to set designs, larger than we liked, and with that size came a price tag we weren’t prepared to spend. There was no doubt, though, that there were some very nice pieces of work here and it was lovely to see them in household display settings.

We used what remained of our time at Hadeland Glassverk with a little more of a stroll outside, taking advantage of the great weather. Hadeland is located at the southern tip of Randsfjorden, Norway’s fourth largest lake, which meant that even though we were inland on this excursion we still got to see water, and water is what makes us happiest.

We liked this visit to Hadeland once you factor out the expectation versus reality aspect of it. A fault that can be shared between Princess Cruises and ourselves in equal measures for not explaining more accurately and not researching fully respectively. In our defence, we hadn’t known the name of the location we were visiting which did make research more troublesome. In that respect, I hope that this explanation about what to expect on a glass blowing tour when visiting Oslo on a cruise ship helps someone out in the future.

In the second part of this cruise excursion we’ll have a completely different experience when a “public modern art sculpture park” visit turns out to be vastly more impressive than we’d expected and an absolute gem of a place in Norway.

After our usual breakfast we met up with our friends Paul and Carole to head ashore for the tour because they’d booked the same trip as us on this day.

Our excursion in Skagway was to start with the White Pass Scenic Railway trip.

The narrow-gauge railway running from Skagway, Alaska in America to Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada unsurprisingly owes its existence to the gold rush of the very late nineteenth century. Prior to its construction the only way from the port locations for easy shipping to and from the gold fields in Canada was on foot or by pack animal over the border at White Pass but the Canadian authorities insisted on so much winter gear for prospectors (for obvious don’t-die-in-a-snowdrift reasons) that many weren’t permitted to legally pass. The train would make transporting people and goods faster and safer.

Gold prospecting and mining gave way to mining for other minerals but by the 1930s and the Great Depression the train service was barely in use any more. Despite a surge in operation thanks to fears over Japanese attacks during World War II, and more ore-carrying requirements post-war, by 1982 the train route could not operate at anything other than a loss and closed down. Fortunately, the 1980s started to see an increase in Alaskan tourism thanks to the growth of cruise ship travel so by 1988 a pure tourist service had restarted on the White Pass line.

Now, if you book a tour to travel on the White Pass Scenic Railway route while visiting Skagway on a cruise ship then you’ll have a few options for how to do it:

• travel up and down the line and over the USA-Canada border on the train,
• helicopter to the moving train and descend to its roof by rope,
• travel up and over the border by bus, travel back down to Skagway on the train,
• travel up and over the border by train, travel back down to Skagway on the bus.

The benefit of picking one of the latter two options is that the road and the track, while running roughly parallel to each other for the most part do deviate either side of valleys frequently, so if you want to see the largest number of scenic views on your trip then those make more sense. We chose to drive up by bus then come back by train. It seemed the best choice before we went, and having done it we still think it was the best choice to make. The train in both directions might be ideal for those worried about the bus not making it to the station in time. The helicopter option is just to see whether any web scraper ever offers it as a serious suggestion.

We stopped a couple of times on the drive to the border, over the other side of which we’d join the train. You can see the sort of landscape in this part of Alaska in the photos below. The odd waterfall would cascade down rock faces, and you can get a sense of the scale of the Alaskan mountain ranges in the picture that shows our bus where it had stopped to give us all a few minutes to walk around a bend further along the road to take some shots.

Crossing the border into Canada proved to be problematic. A queue of traffic had built up ahead of us. At the border the guards were checking passports of everyone travelling. There were some buses ahead of us but mostly cars, and the time that we were supposed to be boarding the train had come and gone. Our guide assured us, though, that the train knew about the delay and would wait for us. I’m pleased to report that it did, and we were the last to arrive, with the train setting off very soon after we’d all grabbed seats.

I’d told everyone in our group we needed to be sat on the right side of the carriage as it faced forward because that would have the best views heading in this direction towards Skagway. The opposite would apply if we’d taken the train up, of course. However, the reality is that while you can’t move from carriage to carriage – they’re assigned to specific tour groups – you can get out of the front and rear of each carriage onto a small, open-sided section giving you views either way.

I ended up spending almost the entire time outside. I found that it was fairly crowded at the start because the excitement of getting out appealed to everyone, naturally, but that most people decided they’d rather sit inside soon enough and headed in. Only a few of us stood outside most of the time – it wasn’t particularly cold and the train moved at a smooth and sedate pace – and I tried to make way for anyone who’d pop out for a photo or video or two when they did so. Unlike some other passengers. Ah, selfishness, my old travelling companion, I’ve missed you.

Crossing back over the USA-Canada border by train didn’t involve a border guard stopping us there and then but we would have our passports checked again before being allowed off the train at the end of the ride.

It was fascinating and only a little disconcerting to see the partially collapsed remains of one of the original wooden trestle bridges used on the White Pass rail route. These bridges were phased out of use and replacement routes opened as the train engines got larger and heavier to move ore during the twentieth century.

As you can see, at times the train would pass very close to the rocky face of mountains.

At one point we stopped on a spur line to allow a train on the way in the other direction to pass by. We passed slowly enough and close enough that I high-fived a guy passing by on the other train. Should you do this to people in other trains as you pass? You know the answer to that. Of course you should. It’s fun to touch people at speed.

A lot of people who’d cruised to Alaska before had recommended taking the White Pass Scenic Railway trip while in Skagway and we were very happy we followed that advice. And, as I’ve mentioned already, I think heading up by bus then back down by train gives you the best experience. The landscapes along the rail route were tremendous, but then they all are in this part of the world.

In the next post in this series we jump back on our bus and pay a visit to Liarsville to try gold panning and have some lunch.

We had quite a bit of free time after our excursion in which to look around Skagway for ourselves. Our friends Paul and Carole had been on the same trip as us and were after some hardware for their vlogging equipment so we started off with a walk around to find a store that would sort them out while we all admired just how pretty the historical district area of Skagway was. There was something of a western movie film set feel to the city but, generally, the buildings genuinely are from the gold rush era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We all liked the raised wooden pavements (sidewalks if you want to be American about it) and the colours and varying-but-similar styles of the buildings.

You can see from the photo below just how close the cruise ships dock to Skagway. It’s a very easy city to walk into from the port.

After we’d located a store towards the far end of the main part of the city and Carole had bought what she needed for her camera we started back now in search of something for us. That something was beer, which won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows us, and though we’d been entertained in the Red Onion Saloon on the brothel tour we were after something a bit more authentic.

We ended up visiting two breweries in Skagway. The first of those was Skagway Brewing and the second was Klondike Brewing. Both had very different styles of drinks available and we enjoyed both locations very much. I don’t think Paul and Carole were quite so impressed; Paul’s a lager or cider drinker, and Carole likes a Sauvignon Blanc or Bloody Mary so craft ales simply aren’t their thing. They were, however, gracious in accompanying us and polite when describing their experiences.

We started to make our way back to the cruise ship now but there were still some interesting sights to see on the short walk. A number of historic train carriages used on the White Pass train route were visible and there were a few sculptures and monuments dotted around. Most poignant was one dedicated to the SS Princess Sophia which lost all hands (364 crew and passengers) in 1918. That is a link well worth reading, particularly for the letter written by someone who feared the worst during the grounding, and whose fears were well-founded.

To finish, some views of the two ships to the right of the city as we walked away from it to the port; there were berths for more ships to the left side too. Crown Princess was the second cruise ship we ever cruised on.

Our home for this week in Alaska, however, was Holland America Line Koningsdam.

In the next post in this series we’ll have a day of scenic cruising, and it’s very scenic indeed as we make our way through Glacier Bay. It’s a bay, it’s got lots of glaciers, and we even see one calve while we’re there.