What a relaxing week! I love cruising! We eat, sleep, eat, watch live entertainment, eat. Every once in a while we get off the ship and walk around a nice town. They make my bed everytime I leave the room. And I come home to chocolate on my pillow before bed. Love it!
Sailing from Seattle
So sad to leave 85 degrees when the forecast for Alaska was gloomy and 55 degrees. What are we thinking? I stayed on the deck as long as I could to soak up the last sunrays we would see for the week.
Cruising at Sea
The water was a bit rough and I was feeling a little queasy. Nothing Dramamine couldn't solve. Others on the boat didn't bring anything with them and were making messes in the hallway. One lady almost lost it at the breakfast table. We requested to sit by ourselves for the rest of the trip! Running on a treadmill while the boat is rocking is also challenging so I stuck to an eliptical machine and held on for dear life. We hit the gym 6 of the 7 days which I feel pretty good about. Gotta counter all that eating somehow. Grey skies and rains came. Most memorable was when we were sitting out on the deck in the hot tub and it just started to pour. We waited out the rain before getting out!
Juneau
Glad to be in port after 2 days at sea. We had planned to go on a tram, but that was totally socked in from the fog so we found a city bus that took us to Mendahall Glacier. We had to walk the last two miles. My hands were frozen when we got there. The glacier was pretty cool though. On the way home we thought we would save some time by catching a taxi. Someone else wanted to share which seemed like a good idea at the time. We ended up paying for more than half even though we were dropped off at the Rainforest Gardens. One of those times when it was just better to eat the bill than to throw a fit. We're on vacation! The Gardens were pretty. My mom would have loved it! It was a full day...Hindsight one of the best we had as far as touring goes!
Hubbard Glacier
Still grey and foggy and now windy. Unfortunately the captain wasn't able to get near the glacier as the wind would have pushed us right into it. So we spent the afternoon in the cafe and found one of Nathaniel's toy motorcycles in Ken's coat pocket. Nate is going to be sooo happy!
Sitka
We didn't really have anything planned for this city. We had to tender (take the lifeboats) in from the ship since the dock was not big enough for the ship. We took a nice nature walk through the Totem Pole forest and had the most amazing time watching salmon jump out of the river. Every 10 seconds! It was amazing. I even got a picture of one parallel to the water (see below). We arrived back at the tender station to get back on the cruise ship and were convinced to take a shore excursion on a small wildlife adventure. Just 6 people on the boat (one actually knew someone from my college, small world!). We sped up and down the coast looking for whales, bears, sea otters, salmon, eagles, anything we could find. We were lucky enough to see a momma bear and her two cubs. Very cool! Unfortunately, we hadn't really planned on doing anything in Sitka so I left my zoom lens on the ship. Uggh!
Ketchikan
Probably my least favorite place. We didn't sign up for a airplane tour or fly fishing excursion so there wasn't much to do. We wandered around the town, but eventually just got back on the ship.
Sailing
I did get to see a couple of whales... at least their spouts and their backs, sometimes a bit of a tail. Pretty cool.
Victoria, B.C.
The Buchart Gardens were stunning! Unfortunately we didn't get there till 8pm and the sun went down before we could experience all the gardens in the daylight. They do have evening lighting which was pretty but not the same. Our taxi didn't come pick us up till 10pm so we just waited our time out in the parking lot bus terminal. Wish we had more time.
