2022-05-19: Hubbard Glacier

It was an early morning today. It was a sea day today but the ship was doing a sail by of the Hubbard Glacier. The Hubbard Glacier is the largest tide water Glacier in the world. It begins on Mount Logan in Canada and runs for miles and miles to Disenchantment Bay in Alaska. The face of the glacier where it meets the water is over 6 miles wide and over 1000 feet tall. Most of that height is under water though. The hotel director informed us yesterday that we would be approaching the Hubbard Glacier at 6:00am this morning. So, Darrell got up at 6:00am to see what we could see. It was a sunny morning but chilly. He went on the veranda and could see Disenchantment Bay in the distance. He hesitantly woke Amanda up as she had a rough night with some tummy issues.

We watched the ship approach from our veranda for a while with a short break to grab some warm beverages from the Oceanview Cafe. As we got closer to the glacier, we started to move around the ship to see if there were any better viewing positions. We went out on deck on deck 4 for a while. We heard they may open up the helipad on the front of the ship as well so went on a search for that. They had indeed opened up the helipad, but it took us a bit to figure out how to access it. The access was through the 2nd floor of the theatre. The helipad had quite a few people as expected so it wasn’t the best place to get pictures of the glacier. We went up to the Sky Lounge on deck 11 and had a decent view from there, but it’s inside so not great for taking pictures through glass. We returned to our veranda as we had a decent view from there.

There were chunks of ice in the water in front of the glacier that had fallen off or “calved” from the glacier. The term “calving” comes from cows giving birth to calves. The glacier is giving birth to these ice chunks in the water. The ship had to navigate through this ice to get to the glacier so had to keep it’s distance from the glacier for safety reasons. We didn’t see any calving while at the glacier unfortunately, but it was sunny and clear and the views were incredible. Once the ship was as close as it could get to the glacier, the captain rotated the ship back and forth for a good half hour or so, so everyone could get a decent view of the glacier regardless of which side of the ship you were on. Once the glacier was out of view from our veranda, we went searching for another vantage point again. We grabbed some more hot beverages from the Oceanview Cafe and headed to the Sunset Bar patio behind the Oceanview Cafe on the back of the ship. We found a staircase we hadn’t noticed before that led to a rooftop patio above the Oceanview Cafe. How did we not notice this before?? It appears that most people weren’t aware of it since we were about the only passengers up there. There were more crew members than passengers. We had a great view of the glacier from there and remained there until the ship had to leave the bay.

We returned to our room and had a short nap before heading to theatre for a presentation by our Cruise Director. He gave a presentation on his personal experience working on a cruise ship when the COVID pandemic hit. His story of getting passengers off the ship when all the countries were shutting down the ports and then getting home himself was amazing. He was the last Cruise Director to leave the ship when they shut everything down, and he was the first one to start working again when cruising started back up. He was supposed to leave the Celebrity Eclipse on March 15th when the ship pulled into Valparaiso, Chile as that was the end of the current cruise and his current tour of duty was over. He got a call from the Captain at 2:00am that morning informing him that Chile had shut down it’s borders so no one could get off the ship in Chile as planned. They started to look for alternate ports in different countries where they could get the passengers off. Peru, Columbia, Panama, Mexico had all shut down their borders. They ended up having to sail to San Diego to offload the passengers a full two weeks later except for 120 passengers from Argentina where the cruise started. They didn’t require passports to get off the ship in Chile, but they did to get off in San Diego. Of course, they hadn’t packed any passports or didn’t have one since they weren’t required originally. It took a while to make the proper arrangements to get the Argentinian passengers back home. The crew also wasn’t allowed to leave the ship in San Diego. It took another two months before they could get the crew off the ship. He didn’t get home until the first week of June. By that time, the ship had relocated to Barbados. St. Maarten and Barbados allowed the cruise ships to dock on their islands long-term. He said Celebrity was amazing through the whole adventure though. They made sure the crew was taken care of. They made sure every crew member had transportation from the ship to the front doors of their houses. They chartered planes to get the crew to their home countries, hired busses or taxis or whatever other transportation was required to get them from the airports to their homes since not everyone lives close to the airports. They paid bonuses to every crew member due to the pandemic, even if you chose not to return to work. If you did return to work, you received a bigger bonus. It was a very interesting presentation.

After the presentation we walked around for a bit before heading for lunch. Fog had rolled in so there wasn’t much of a view outside the ship. We had made reservations at the Sushi restaurant on board. We had some rolls, ramen, edamame, and gyoza. We had a matcha version of tiramisu for dessert. The food was all good, but he dessert was AMAZING.

After lunch we attended a matinee performance in the theatre. The singer from the night before, Travis Cloer, and The Company Men performed. We missed the show last night because of the Chef’s Table dinner so it was nice to catch Travis’ performance. It was an enjoyable show.

Amanda wasn’t feeling great so she headed back to the room for a nap. Along the way, she found a rubber ducky in the stairwell with a note on it. The note said “Oh what luck! You’ve found a cruising duck! Keep or hide, you decide! But only hide me in public places!” It was cute but she elected to leave it where it was. Darrell stayed in the theatre for another presentation by the Cruise Director. He talked about his history with the company and how he became a cruise director and about his home country of Argentina. It was another interesting presentation.

Darrell returned to the room after the presentation and we started to pack up the room. Our luggage has to be out of the room by 10:00pm so we won’t have much time after dinner and the evening show to get the bags out the door. We packed what we could and relaxed in the room for a bit before heading for our last dinner in the Metropolitan Dining Room. Amanda still wasn’t feeling great so she just had the roasted chicken breast and a passionfruit custard for dinner. Darrell had french onion soup, pork cutlet, and creme brulee. It was delicious as usual.

We grabbed our photos from the photo gallery after dinner and returned to the room to finish packing. We got put our bags in the hall outside our room to be picked up and Amanda headed to bed. Darrell went to the theatre to watch the evening show. Tonight’s show was called iBroadway by the ship’s singers and dancers. If you hadn’t guessed, it was a performance of several Broadway songs. Darrell enjoyed the performance. After the show, he returned to the room and called it a night. Tomorrow will be another early morning. We have to be ready to leave the ship by 8:30am.