The guide is a young-ish bearded guy. He gets us all set up with lifejackets for the catamaran. We walk down to the waterfront, passing by red huckleberries which he lets us eat! I've eaten purple huckleberries all my life, but the red ones are cool! They taste fresh and fruity with a huckleberry tartness that's almost clear tasting.
We pile into the catamaran and although I'm first in, Robert and I choose the back. Our guide does like 195 miles an hour, splashing and jumping over the ocean waves, and I am so bloody happy to be on the water that I don't even care if I bump out the back of the boat! We see bald eagles in the trees above the water and seals in the water at the waterline.
The trees are thick but what really stands out is the rock. Ok, it stands out to me. The trees look like they're coming right out of the bedrock. There's no soil visible. It's just shist and trees. That's it. Crazy.
We pull up at a beach in the Tatoosh Islands and disembark. There are three guys on the wide beach with a dozen double kayaks. Sea kayaks, they tell us. These have tiny metal rudders on the back. Turns out, kayaking on the ocean is a LOT different than individual kayaking on lakes and waterways. The guides offer us spray skirts to cover our legs but nobody takes one. They change out our catamaran life jackets for smaller, more compact ones and give us paddles. One quick primer on sea kayaking and off we go.
At first, nobody can get their rudders down. Then once we get our rudders down by using the rope pulleys, we realize the person in back has to use foot pedals *while paddling* to steer the kayak. Everyone runs around in circles on the water for the first 20 minutes. The guides are slower than molasses in January, and once we all get the hang of the steering, we end up having to hang back to keep pace with them. It's odd at first, but once we chill out we all realize it's nice to kayak slowly and sort of meander.
Lots of bald eagles show themselves, fishing and building nests. The salmon are actually jumping out of the water, which the guides explain as spawning behavior. There's a nest in a tree on an island we pass. The nest is big enough to fit all nine of us (minus the guides) into that one nest. It is huge. We end up kayaking for hours. The best part is when a huge bald eagle flies about 25 feet in front of us, carrying sticks for their nest.
The worst part is when we turn around to go back and have to cross the break line in the ocean. It nearly tossed us in the drink, half a dozen times. It was amazing! The ocean waves look really tiny from a ship. They look REALLY BIG from a sea kayak.
We get back to the beach where the extra kayaks are still sitting, but the tide is coming in so the beach is almost gone. When we get our kayak beached by the nose, one of the guides helps me out. Unfortunately, the tide is moving in at a full 3 feet per hour. This causes Robert to get absolutely soaked from the hips down when a wave rushes in. He's such a good sport, he just laughs it off.
The guides offer us homemade chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa. The Alaskan air is so cold, the treats hit the spot. Our catamaran returns and we all pile in and head back to the lodge. The sky is mostly blue but it's starting to look like storm clouds are rolling in. It seems like a good time to be done. We head back to the ship. The line to get back on is a little long but it moves quickly. We get scanned and have our things scanned and Robert's steel toed boots set off the metal detectors. Still. We're back on the ship in 20 minutes.
We go to our room, change, and head upstairs to deck 14 to the Hot Glass Class. There's a woman finishing her tumbler, but as soon as the instructor is done, they set Robert up to do his flower for his parents. Robert wants some nice neutral colors on the flower so it will work with his parents' decor. He asks for clear and black, but the glass blowers tell him that might not show up well, as the black will permeate the whole piece and it could just look dark. So Robert and I confer and he settles on black, grey, and white.
The male instructor helps Robert start the item, by starting with a long metal rod and reaching into the 2500 degree furnace to gather a glob of molten glass on the end of the rod. Then he starts rolling the glob in colors of glass chips, with the white being first. Then he flattens the end of the glob and adds the grey on the flat, round end. He then smushes the end some more and adds the black around the edges of the flat grey end.
The instructor then sits Robert down and has him take a set of shorter metal tweezers and pull the molten glass on the black edge, about every inch. The end starts to flute a bit, as Robert keeps nipping at the edge and turning the rod. You can see it's starting to look like a trumpet flower. Next, they let the flower droop on the rod, and then turn the flower on the rod so it droops the other way. It's elongating the tube on the flower, where the grey leads to the white. Robert is literally holding the black trumpet end with iron tweezers while the instructor pulls on the rod and starts twirling the bright white end. The instructor takes the rod from Robert and puts the flower in the Glory Hole to reheat it, then he sets the flower down on a work table. He says this makes sure it sits well when its done.
Suddenly the instructor clips the end off the flower and uses a blowtorch to refine the clipped end. He tells me, when I ask, that the end is solid not hollow. They put the flower in the annealer and tell us we can pick it up Wednesday after Skagway.
I'm next, so the female instructor verifies I want to make a pumpkin and asks what colors. I choose basic orange and a nice bright green for the stem. She has me watch her get the initial glob of glass on the metal stick, and I see the molten lake of glass in the furnace. She tells us the rod only gets hot about halfway up, and turns cold at that point. I wonder how many burn scars they have.
She rolls my blob in the orange glass color chips a while, then adds more molten glass to the lump. I assume this will give a glass outer layer with the color layer underneath. Next, she has me help shape the ball with a wooden spoon tool. The spoon sits in water and it's actually the water and steam that shape the glass. We do that twice, and then she stands on a stool and lowers the ball into a metal mold shaped like a cone with a star type pattern inside. This creates the pumpkin ridges.
Next, she has me use these long iron tweezers to press a divot into the ball to segregate the junk end from my pumpkin. She turns the rod while I squeeze with the tweezers. It takes a good amount of force, and I see fiery sparks between the glass and the iron tweezers from the heat of the glass. She has me blow air into the metal rod that has the pumpkin at the end, and she explains how the air heats up and expands, so if you hold the tube closed, it makes the pumpkin expand.
So then we go back to the tweezers at the top, and we flatten the bottom using a flat wooden paddle. Then she takes it over to the work bench table and has me tap the metal pole while she cuts the top off. It snaps cleanly but leaves a little hard glass debris, which she brushes away. I'm shocked it's that hardened but also shocked the darn thing snapped off because it looked too thick to snap.
She asks the male instructor, Joe, to get a small ball of glass on another rod and roll it in the green color chips. She lowers that into a tiny star mold to give the stem a ridged appearance, then brings that over to my pumpkin. She sets the star on the pumpkin and starts twirling it, to create the curly stem piece. She cuts it, blowtorches the end, and takes it to the annealer. I can't wait to hold these pieces in our hands!
We go back to our cabin, shower and change into fine clothing and head downstairs to Murano for dinner. At first, we're seated by the wrong waiter but after we explain that we'd like to have Oleg, they relocate us to another table and Oleg comes to greet us. We decide to opt for the 6 course meal and Robert takes everything on the left side of the menu and I order everything on the right side.
The sommelier immediately appears at our table and starts us off with the wines for the first course. We get a perfectly paired wine for every course. I get an Oregon white wine for my starter and Robert gets a California white wine. I'll post a picture of the menu when I get decent cell service, but suffice it to say the food was an otherworldly experience.
We have a single heated shrimp in a glass dish that looks like an oil lamp. We have a crab cake with dill on a crunchy base that has a flavor so clean yet so complex, I can't describe it, along with smoked copper river sockeye salmon that is more sushi than smoked. We have lobster bisque that tastes like a fine, light italian pasta sauce. We have a palate cleanser of green apple sorbet with a big blueberry on it, in one of those glass oil lamp wells. We just keep eating, and the wine flows with every course. We finish with a Grand Marinier souffle that must have given an angel its wings somewhere.
Robert says, "Do you think we're foodies?"
Har dee har.
Oleg talks about his wife, when we ask. He says she is on the cruise with him, working. We don't ask where. He talks about how he makes good food for her, but how he's found he's now the cook at home. He says he didn't expect that to be the case, but it is. He also talks about what he has done and has not done, on the cruises as well as travel in general. He really is sweet and it's nice that he's willing to share his personal details somewhat.
By the end of the meal, I am quite tipsy and so is Robert. Oleg mentions gently that our reservation was for tomorrow night and we realize we got it mixed up with tonight. But he says it turned out ok because the restaurant wasn't booked full tonight. We leave a tip on top of the automatic 18% and call it a night.
Tomorrow, we get to go whale watching!
1 comment:
I have never been in a sea kayak on the ocean. Mo and I once did a sit on top on the ocean in Mexico and the waves were scary but that was way different. Wow what a meal! Too funny about the reservation mixup
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