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Saloon, we were beginning to wish we had left our rain gear on board. The irony of the ragtime pianist hammering out a honky-tonk rendition of ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ wasn’t lost on us. A friend had recommended Tracy’s King Crab Shack for lunch and the delicious crab bisque didn’t disappoint. That afternoon, we headed to the Wings


Airways office to see if they had any last-minute seats on their Glacier Flightseeing Adventure by floatplane. Luck was on our side and, in no time at all, we were strapping ourselves into a 10-seater De Havilland Otter for a 40-minute flight over a 75-mile circuit of the 1,500 square miles of the Juneau Icefield that straddles the boundary between Alaska and Canada.


ice-faces, deep crevasses and azure-blue meltwater pools of the Norris and Taku Glaciers. Of the 36 named glaciers in the Icefield, the five-mile wide Taku is one of only two glaciers actually advancing. Our return was via the Mendenhall Glacier, stretching for a mile and a half across the head of the Mendenhall Valley. Rarely has a flight been so full of serendipity. Skagway seems scarcely to have


W


changed in the century since it was the hub of the great Klondike gold rush. Lying at the head of a fjord known as the Lynn Canal, this settlement is not so much faked as well edited, costumed and choreographed to exude the aura of a frontier town. In August 1896, three men (and one


woman, sometimes forgotten) found gold near the Klondike River. They staked their claims then walked into a bar and told the world. Everyone rushed for the door. First out was the bartender, who made $4.5million. Between 1897 and 1898 stampeders


arrived en masse and, to enable prospectors to get to the Canadian Yukon, a railway was built. Today, the White Pass & Yukon Railroad’s narrow-gauge train is one of Alaska’s top tourist attractions. We climbed on board the period carriages conveniently drawn up alongside


SEA PRINCESS FACTFILE


ITINERARIES: Princess Cruises will operate no fewer than 122 sailings aboard seven ships in Alaska from May-September 2012. In addition to 10-day sailings on Sea Princess from San Francisco, Golden and Star Princess will undertake 7-day round-trip departures from Seattle, while Coral, Diamond, Island and Sapphire Princess will undertake 7-day voyages between Vancouver and Whittier and vice-versa.


MORE INFO: in the UK, call 0845 075 0031; in the US, call 1800 774 6237; or visit www.princess.com.


carved chasms. At the head of the fjord, we nudged icebergs calved from the South Sawyer Glacier. Below, hair seals hauled themselves up onto larger ice floes. Setting a southerly course into the Chatham Strait and the North Pacific Ocean, a day of whale-watching beckoned. Just before lunch, the first flukes were sighted as a trio of 30-ton humpbacks breached like trout leaping out of the water for a fly.


I could see their distinctive sickle- shaped fins as they curved in a graceful


site abandoned by her husband’s cement- making operation, Jennie Butchart created an exquisite Sunken Garden. This was to be the first of several spectacular gardens created within the 55 acres of floral finery. We strolled meandering paths that link the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden before enjoying lunch overlooking the Italian Garden. It was the perfect culmination to a 3,170 nautical mile cruise suffused with true natural splendour. 


Built: 1998, refurbished 2003 and 2009 Tonnage: 77,690 Length: 856ft Beam: 106ft Draft: 26ft Speed: 20 knots Passengers: 2,016 Crew: 830


Passenger decks: 7 Registry: Bermuda


e flew along fjords etched with jagged cliffs and pointed mountains to the imposing


Sea Princess and, for the next four hours, weaved our way to the 2,865ft summit at White Pass, crossing impossibly high trestle bridges, clinging to cliffhanging cuts, all the time taking in dizzying views of misty waterfalls and glimpsing brown bear foraging and bald eagles on the wing. By six o’clock the next morning we


were navigating the 25-mile-long Tracy Arm Fjord, passing spectacular waterfalls that cascaded from towering, glacially-


arch before crashing back into the icy-blue water with an almighty splash. We bundled up and tucked into cheeseburgers at the Riviera Grill, all the time keeping an eye out for more telltale signs of whale huffing spray into the air. At our final port of Victoria, capital of British Columbia – perched on the southern tip of Vancouver Island – we headed to Butchart Gardens. In 1904, in an effort to beautify a worked-out quarry


Winter 2011-12 I WORLD OF CRUISING


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