Vancouver again

As ever, when on holiday, the first part seems to stretch out and I'm able to enjoy long weeks, while the second part, still thoroughly enjoyable, simply whizzes by.  

I have a postscript to the comment I made a few days ago about the Glums, adjacent to us for our evening meal.  They are actually the "Not-So-Glums". We now believe them to be parents with two sons.  Having engaged the mother in conversation a few nights ago, we were shown their video of some bears and they have been greeting us cheerfully as long-lost friends ever since!

We're back in Vancouver and docked just before 07:00 this morning.  

Our flight doesn't leave 18:30 so we took the opportunity to meet Sadie (one of Dave's colleagues at the Olympic badminton last year) and family before setting out for the airport.  Sadie gave birth to a little girl just over a week ago, so it was very bold of her.  

Stuffed again!

The subject title refers to a comment made by Kim in the Grand Restaurant earlier.  This is where we have our evening meals, served by a superb set of waiters, assistant waiters and sommeliers.  Today, being our last full day on board ship, we were also invited to a special brunch there.  I've commented on the food previously, but this was an ultra wonderful spread with tons of food laid out in a central area, some pre-prepared, but also with many chefs preparing food on the spot: stir fry from scratch, with a variety of meats or fish, different kinds of eggs, pancakes, in addition to a fruit expert cutting melons etc freshly.  

He (and others) had already produced some sculptured fruit and there were plenty of large ice sculptures on view.   

It wasn't easy to choose what to eat, but the desserts proved particularly difficult - star from my point of view was probably the chocolate fountains with plenty of fruit chunks and marshmallows for dipping.

The morning began with a swim.  Having broken my goggles a few days ago and suffered stinging eyes from the salty pool, I sought out goggles in Juneau, but only managed to find children's sizes.  Fortunately I was able to expand the strap and took advantage of the pool yesterday and today.  The pools are well populated in the afternoons with plenty of young people but but it's only apparently the brave or foolish that frequent them before breakfast.  That suits me!  It was raining yesterday, but the sun shone this morning.  On both occasions the water itself was fine but the wind made itself known on completion of the swim.

Talking of weather, I can't believe we've been so lucky.  We've had a couple of brief periods of fog, and there was some rain yesterday but it cleared up for our nature trip in Ketchikan.  Otherwise, the majority of the time has been sunny with warm temperatures.  The sea has been correspondingly calm and we've hardly felt the motion of the ship.

Dave and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable hour in the theatre this afternoon at a jazz concert, while this evening we supped aperitifs in a lounge with wonderful forward views before descending to the restaurant and another super meal along with farewells to the waiting staff.