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Alaska – Part 1

Posted on 28 September, 2019 by pierreo

For a long time, I have wanted to go to Alaska and it seemed to me that a cruise would give me a good chance to see some of it. However, the idea of sharing cramped quarters with 1000-4000 other guests did not thrill me nor Bee. When we moved back to Houston, an Alaskan Cruise was one of our priorities which became even higher when it became clear that my Dad was interested in coming to visit us and would be interested in a cruise too.

We found the PERFECT way to do this! On 31 August, we left Houston for Seattle and later Juneau where we arrived in mid-afternoon (there is a three hour time change).

We would board our boat on 1 September around noon and therefore we had a full evening to enjoy and then a morning to ‘kill’. We had a very nice dinner at a Fish&Chip shop right on the old harbor (In the old Warf right across from the sea plane docks – Alaskan Fish and Chip Co – it was quite good).

In the morning, we went to visit a salmon hatchery which was pointed out to us by the taxi driver who took us from the airport to our hotel.

There are salmon stairs to allow the adult salmons to climb back into the tanks were they will lay or fertilize the eggs. Unfortunately, we were there at low tide and therefore the salmons could not reach the first step. We saw a few salmons swimming around looking for the entrance though. It is amazing that even in this very artificial situation the instincts of the salmon pushed them back to where they were born.

Inside the hatchery there were four tanks which were filled (we were told) with 190,000 young salmons. You can see a few swimming around where the lights from the windows shine but do not reflect. The photo below shows two of the four tanks. The young salmons spend 1-2 years at the hatchery before they are released back into the wild. After 5-6 years, 1-5 % will return to create the next generation; the rest were food for men and animals throughout the region.

From the hatchery, we had a good look at the Gastineau Inlet, the narrow sea arm in front of Juneau where harbor seals were hunting the salmon waiting to get up the stairs. Juneau is actually at the end of the inlet which creates a dead-end at low tide due to shallows – one can almost walk across it at very low tides.

A view of Juneau – these are not the boat we took! The one on the left is one of the Mega-Cruise sips that just pulled into Juneau around 11:30 AM. It has over 5000 passengers! The one on the right is a lot more modest – it si a National Geographic ship that was also loading as we went by. Probably holds 200 passengers and that was still a lot more than our boat.

This is not the boat we took either. It is a private yacht that left just as we were boarding ours. For a moment, I thought it might be nice to take that one – the I discovered all the great features of the boat we would spend the next 7 days on and did not regret anything anymore.

This is “The Catalyst” – our home for 7 days. The boat was christened in 1932 (there was only one passenger on board older than the boat) as a research vessel for the University of Washington. She was a patrol boat in the Aleutian Islands during WWII and changed hands several more times after that. She is now owned by a couple who take very good care of her and she makes regular voyages between Juneau and Petersburg from May to September. We are actually making her last trip of the 2019 season.

Catalyst only has 6 cabins, 4 below the main deck, one at the back of the dining area and one (the one where Bee and I stayed) located on the top deck right behind the pilot house. She has sea kayaks for 14 people, a fast tender and 4 wonderful crew members. Since there were only 6 gusts on this particular cruise, we quickly became one happy family.

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Travel

Napoli and Amalfi – Part 1

Posted on 15 September, 201413 February, 2015 by pierreo

If it is not obvious already from the amount of time that I spend there, I love Italy. I have been there many times and every time I do, I come back more enchanted and convinced that I should come again.

In all my previous trips, I had spent a grand total of 3 or 4 days in the area around Naples, and all of that when I was 11 and 13 years old. I had memories of Paestum, Monte Cassino, Heculaneum and Castel del’Ovo. But these were very vague, and I was not sure what was what any more.

Bee and I decided to spend the time between Easter and May Day in and around Naples so that we could take advantage of two holidays. We arrived in Naples on 19 April, rented a car and drove to our hotel right in the center of the city. The hotel was situated on a pedestrian street and so had left good instructions of where to park. We found the parking and walked to the Hotel Il Convento. We had booked a room with balcony, at the very top of the hotel and it was very nice.

We went for a walk in order to discover the neighborhood. On Piazza Plebiscito (Suffrage Square), we saw this sight of a cruise ship leaving harbor. Naples and, as we will see later, Sorrento are major stops on the cruising Italy scene.

There was not much going on in the low town around the square, so we decided to go up with one of the old cable cars (Funicolare Centrale) up to the Vomero Hill. The car runs underground all the way up to the top of the hill.

We first went to visit the Castel Sant’Elmo, located right at the top of the hill and built by the Spanish in 1538, with spectacular views of the city and Mount Vesuvius just behind it. At first, I was not sure that it was Mount Vesuvius, as I did not remember the second “hump” on the side of the mountain, and all the photos and paintings of the volcano showed it more with the typical conical shape. However, comparing with the location of Vesuvius on the map, and when we went there, I can confirm that the big mountain just outside the city is indeed Mount Vesuvius.

Here is a wider panorama of the Bay of Naples. Vesuvius is on the left and then you can see the low hills of the Amalfi Peninsula. The last two dark spots on the right of the photo are the two hills of Capri – we had excellent visibility that day as the sun started to come down.

After the castle, we went to the Certosa di San Martino, located only 100 m from the castle. It used to be a Monastery, build in the 14th century and rebuilt in the 17th. A constructed view (180 degrees) of the cloisters inside the monastery – this is Chiostro Grande.

There are ancient carriages used by the former occupants of the Certosa – I guess the chief abbot was used to travel in style!

Continue reading “Napoli and Amalfi – Part 1” →

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Culture, Travel

Garmisch and Munich

Posted on 16 December, 201316 December, 2013 by pierreo

It has been a tradition for the last three years that Bee and I celebrate her birthday somewhere other than Brussels! This time, I did not tell her where, just that there was the castle of a princess, the nest of an eagle, a place where there is lots of beer and a place that should never be forgotten.

We flew to Munich and immediately drove south with the intention to visit Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, two castles who belonged to Ludwig II (the mad) of Bavaria. Hohenschwangau is not very famous and therefore not familiar to people. However, that is where the visit starts and I had nothing to do while waiting in a long line of cars – so I took a picture of the castle behind the trees.

We were only 300-400 m away from the parking lot, but the road was completely blocked and we moved a few meters every several minutes. Bee went ahead to see what was going on; when she came back 15 minutes later, I had moved two car lengths and she explained that the parking lot being full, one car could get in every time another one got out! She also mentioned that the line to buy tickets has several 100 people in it.

So we decided that visiting Neuschwanstein was not that important. We stopped and took a few pictures, because that one is recognised all over the world!

It was the inspiration for Disney’s original Castle at Disney World and was the Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the movie. It was also featured in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, another Disney movie, but not animated this time.

The castle was actually never finished and Ludwig II never lived there. Only 1 or 2 rooms were decorated, including one with a fake grotto as an homage to Richard Wagner, who was a close friend (very close friend?) of Ludwig.

The location for the castle is great – At the edge of the mountains and on the side of a large plain.

So, we decided to move on ahead and go to Garmisch Partenkirche, where we would be spending the first night. This is one of the first winter resorts in Germany and it hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1936, the same year the summer games were in Berlin. In summer, like right now when we were there, it is a sleepy little town, with typical Bavarian architecture such as this Bier Garten with very nice frescoes.

The local church has the onion dome that is also typical of this region.

We were early for dinner so we kept walking around town and heard music in the distance. We were intrigued and saw that there was a trio of young musicians setting up. Two violins and a clarinet. They were very good and played classical music adapted for their instruments. The movie below is taken with my still camera and reduced so that it can fit into my blog, but the music quality is not bad. Continue reading “Garmisch and Munich” →

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Culture

Ardennes, then and now

Posted on 20 January, 2013 by pierreo

During a recent trip to Arimont, Bee and I decided to stop at a recent addition to the local scene.

We discovered the Baugnez 44 Historical Center. Here is the link: http://www.baugnez44.be/

It is a very well put together story of World War II with an emphasis on what happened in the area during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

The museum itself is situated only 100 m away from the American Memorial in Baugnez, on the road between Malmedy and Waimes.

I did not have a camera, and the weather was not great, so I have had to borrow other people’s photos, for once…

Photo borrowed from Wikipedia

This is the site where 80 American Prisoners of War were massacred by their German captors during the earlier phases of the campaign. This event was recreated in the movie “Battle of the Bulge” from 1965. This was not the only such war crime perpetrated by the German troops, but it caused the largest loss of American POWs lives in one incident.

Several soldiers survived the massacre by “Playing Dead” and their interviews can be heard in the museum. The memorial itself is, as always, sober and peaceful.

Following the massacre, there was a trial in Dachau in 1946. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on the subject:

In what came to be called the “Malmedy massacre trial“, which concerned all of the war crimes attributed to Kampfgruppe Peiper for the battle of the Bulge, the highest-ranking defendant was General Sepp Dietrich, commander of the 6th SS Panzer Army, to which Peiper’s unit belonged. Joachim Peiper and his principal subordinates were defendants. The Tribunal tried more than 70 persons and pronounced 43 death sentences (none of which were carried out) and 22 life sentences. Eight other men were sentenced to shorter prison sentences.

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