On Wednesday we arrived in Skagway. Skagway had it's heyday for just 2 years: 1897-1898 during the Yukon Gold Rush. Many hundreds of thousands of people came through Skagway on their way to striking it rich. Only several hundred people actually did make it rich from the gold (including a Trump, a Nordstrom, a Pantages, and others). But Skagway, at least for two years, had a large number of people who made their fortunes "mining the miners," selling everything from apple pies to a night of pleasure, as well as a variety of con artists.
The day we were in Skagway, the town was once again bustling with four cruise ships in port and about 10,000 tourists. After our regular breakfast and a session posting on the blog (we were able to access the 3G from our stateroom), we walked down the long pier towards the town. Along the cliff by the pier, ships have painted the rocks with their logos and captain names. We saw some as old as 1928 (see photo). The earliest cruise ship into Skagway was 1920.
There's about a 1/4 mile walk into town. The main tourist part of town is about two blocks of the street we walked in on and about five blocks of the first cross street, Broadway. (The whole town is 5 X 23 blocks.) So as you'd expect, the streets in town were really crowded. It was hard even to walk down the sidewalks (all wooden). We saw the first Starbucks we've seen on the trip and the usual jewelry stores, souvenir shops, and tee shirt stores. Many of the buildings are restored from the original buildings built around the time of the gold rush.
We stopped first at a small museum that was run by the National Park Dept. The museum had a lot of interesting information on the gold rush. We learned that Canada required anyone coming into the Yukon to have sufficient supplies to last a year. The amount of supplies they required would have weighed a few tons. So the gold rushers would have had to find a way to lug all this gear up through the mountain passes. Some gave up and sold everything on the way back down.
There were also some interesting stories about people who were part of the rush. One woman from Ohio was going to go with her husband, but he backed out at the last minute. So she divorced him and left him with their two small children and went on her own! Once in Alaska, she found out she was pregnant. But she stayed in Alaska and raised the child and did well. She was elected to parliament late in her life.
We decided we needed to get lunch because we had to meet our afternoon tour at 12:15. We went to the Red Onion Saloon. It was originally a bar and bordello (upstairs). That's part of the tour we're doing this afternoon. But it's also very convenient to get to in the middle of town. They were pretty crowded, but we found a table. The servers were dressed in bawdy period costume in skirts and corsets with twenties tucked into their bosoms. Sandra ordered a Trollop sandwich and I got Naughty Nellie Nachos. The food took a while to come, so we had plenty of time to look at the saloon and read the informative newsletter about the place (see photo).
By the time the food came and we ate, it was time to go back to the pier to meet our tour "Ghosts and Goodtime Girls Walking Tour." Our tour guide was Madame Ophelia. She was also dressed in period costume, a little less bawdy, with a proper dress and hat with veil, but also low cut with twenties in her bodice (and also a cell phone tucked behind the twenties). She was very sweet and a little bit naughty, especially with the guys. She gave us each a red garter to put on our arm and took us on a bus back to town for the walk. (See Goodtime Girls and Ghosts post.)
After the walking tour, we were ready to go back to the ship. With all the standing, my feet really hurt. When we got back, we rested a bit in our room and then went for our thelassotherapy. The pool was really crowded, so it wasn't as nice as on other days, but still good. After soaking, we changed for dinner and then sat in the Rendezvous Lounge and played pinochle on our iPads while we sipped a vodka with olives and listened to a band playing.
At 6, we had reservations for the fancy restaurant The Olympic (see photo). This is a specialty restaurant, so you have to pay to eat there. We had a coupon with our tour package for dinner for two there. The restaurant is very elegant with real silverware and fancy china. Sandra had lobster bisque and diver scallop Wellington for appetizers. The latter was a scallop baked in a puff pastry with spinach fondue and a truffle emulsion. It was very tasty! I had smoked salmon and peekytoe crab parfait. It was a layered thing with avocados and caviar on top. It was also very tasty. For entrees, Sandra had Loup de Mer (grilled sea bass with red peppers and eggplant) and I had Olympic Lobster, which they cook and flambéd at your table. We both enjoyed our entrees very much. For dessert we enjoyed a selection of tastes of six different desserts. They were all very good.
As soon as dinner was over, we went to the theater for the show they called iBroadway. It was selections from Broadway shows with singing and dancing. It was fun and entertaining.
After that we were completely worn out and went to bed.
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