We got up late, especially because we returned to Pacific Time during the night, so clocks went an hour ahead. We had a nice breakfast upstairs, then went to a “Breaking the Ice Ceiling” presentation about three women working in male-dominated fields in Alaska.
We went to another America’s Test Kitchen presentation of “Southern Snacks” - fried pickles and drop biscuits with pimento cheese. During the presentation, my wife ducked out to see if my sister-in-law could join us. She did not, but my wife grabbed me because a huge pod of dolphins were paralleling the ship. We watched from a window in the hallway for several minutes as the dolphins repeatedly jumped out of the water. We had lunch, then returned for another Test Kitchen presentation: Dinner Classics for Two. This was the same Chicken Marsala, Rice Pilaf, and Chocolate Fudge Cake recipes we’d seen on the Volendam, but my sister-in-law had missed that, and it was interesting to see the different aspects that received focus with the different presenters.
Video clips from earlier parts of the trip, plus the dolphins:
I watched a towel folding demonstration showing how to make an elephant, a bird, and a dog from towels, then we went to a presentation by the illusionist, James Cielen who did the main show the night before last. This was cool, but it was kind of a sales pitch, and my wife bought a magic kit with a bunch of props that she thought might be useful for catching the attention of small children.
I walked around the third level deck three times, which is supposed to be a mile. There was nice scenery because we were in the Inside Passage, and I saw four orcas pass the other way in the very smooth water.
We joined my sister-in-law and the boys for dinner in the dining room, walked around deck three again for a last look at the scenery, then went to the final main stage event: Illusionist James Cielen doing card tricks for half the show, then comedian Ken Boyd for the rest. Then it was time to pack our bags so they could be sorted and stowed for transfer off the ship tomorrow.
The next day we docked at the Canada Place cruise terminal, “closing the loop” of our journey. We don’t understand how it was paid for, but we got a nice bus ride to the airport. Our flight was delayed a couple hours due to a lack of control tower staff. This gave us a good chance to hear how many other people in the airport also seemed to have the same cough that I’d caught. Finally we picked up our Daisy dog and returned home with lots of memories and some vague plans to return to various areas we found especially interesting on a long camping trip.