Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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I Must Go Down to the Sea Again
I'VE NEVER WANTED TO
take a cruise. I've stayed in enough hotels that I have no ambition
to stay on one that floats, too, and I lived on a fish tender for five years off and on when I
was a kid, so the romance of the sea is lost on me. I also don't have enough formal wear to
see me through two weeks' worth of fancy dress dinners, and I refuse to get into pantyhose
more than once a year anyway.
So when Bonnie Berg Maclaird of World Explorer Cruises had the brilliant idea of hav-
ing a mystery writers' cruise with me, John Straley, Sue Henry and Father Brad Reynolds,
my first reaction was not only no, but hell no.
However, this cruise would go up Alaska's Inside Passage. I'd never been up the Inside
Passage. The closest I'd come to it was my junior year at the University of Alaska Fairb-
anks when the Journalism 301 professor conceived the idea of the class going to Juneau to
report on the Legislature. We drove to Haines squished into in his car and took deck pas-
sage on the ferry to Juneau. As I recall, this was in February or March of the spring
semester. Most of the journey took place in the dark, so I didn't see a lot.
"Do I have to dress up?" I asked Bonnie.
"No," she said.
"OK," I said, "I'm in."
Day 1: May 14
th
, Vancouver, British Columbia
The first afternoon is spent finding the ship, and then finding the lounge and the theater,
the two dining rooms (one buffet, one sit-down) and the library. Eventually and inevitably,
we end up on stools at the Harbor Bar on the aft deck.
