Alaska - day 1

We flew in to Anchorage and settled into our hotel, Millenium Alaskan hotel on the shores of Lake Spenard near the airport. Quaint! A multitude of animal heads and complete bodies scattered throughout the hotel including bears, moose etc. It was weird to take a walk along the lakeside at around 10.30pm after dinner in complete daylight. Peter was quite taken with all the float planes parked around the lake (the highest incidence of float planes in North America apparently) and the continual takeoffs and landings.The first flight out in the morning took off at 4am!
We slept well, reorganised the suitcases so we had mostly winter gear available in one and set off next morning for the city of Anchorage.
We had the morning to explore before we assembled in the lobby of the Sheraton with other passengers and were picked up by Cruise West coaches for the journey to Whittier and the Spirit of Columbia.
Majestic Alaskan scenery along the way, a two mile tunnel into Whittier and we arrived into the strangest little town. Overcast and raining, apparently usual weather there, we had a brief coach ride with the local head teacher of the school as our guide. Whittier was once a military base chosen during WW2 because of it's isolation (via the one way tunnel) and continual overcast weather making it difficult for the enemy (Japan) to find the fuel stores etc. The miltary side of things are now abandoned leaving some unsightly ruins and a not very attractive town.
In the meantime, our cases were spirited into our cabins by the multi tasking crew.
We boarded around 5pm and were led to our cabins to briefly unpack into the tiny space and then assembled in the dining room for the mandatory safety talk.
Dinner was most interesting! The dining room was a little small for the 75 passengers and a bit noisy but we got used to that soon enough.
Peter was surprised by the crew bringing out a birthday cake at dessert time and the whole assembly sang him Happy Birthday.
After dinner we had the opportunity to venture out on deck....suitably attired to view the passing scenery. Magnificent!
We hit the sack around midnight....still daylight.
I'll close Day 1 here and post photos separately as I keep stuffing up the positioning of them!