Day 14 - Tue - 09/29/26 - Juneau

 It started out as a wet and cloudy day in Juneau, Alaska. We've been here many times, and I also grew up here in my early years. We decided that we would do a little bit of shopping and then catch the local bus out to the world's smallest Costco.  The plan was to meet up with my cousin who moved here after we left, but she's lived here for 30+ years. The number four bus whisked us out to the nearest stop to the Costco, where we departed the bus and walked about 15 minutes to the Costco store, which is at the end of the road near a Home Depot. We arrived before noon, but noted that there was no inside seating to have a Costco dog. We did do extensive sampling and walk. The aisles from my cousin showed up and she had the same observation as we had that would be tough to have conversation here so she drove us out to our Bay where she knew of a nice Thai restaurant where we enjoyed a very pleasant time together, catching up on family values and talking about cruising.

When it was time to leave, she drove us to A place where she volunteers to preserve Beaver habitat near the Mendenhall glacier. We enjoy a very pleasant stroll in the forest with the changing of the colors and scenic view of the little lakes and ponds and Greeks, and even a peekaboo Yuzu of the glacier. Afterwards, she dropped us off at the local Fred Meyer. I was able to purchase some Neo flavoring for all water on board ship. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the ship's water, but I like to have a little flavoring. She then dropped us off downtown and we shopped our way back to the ship. Downtown was much more crowded now because the Norwegian Encore ship had arrived while we were out having lunch.  

Back on board, we ate a very late dinner as we were still full from our Thai food lunch. The evening entertainment was Hyperion Knight who is a classical pianist who now plays extensively on the cruise ship circuit. We've seen him several times before and he's very good. As an aside, he's also a person you definitely want on your trivia team. We concluded our evening watching the Dam band and their singer in the Ocean Bar. They are very good and it was easy to sit there and listen to them. Afterwards we went to the Mix where Marcel & Shelly were singing duets.  They are also quite good both solo and together.

Overnight we'll sail to Wrangell, Alaska, which is a port that I have visited by airplane, but never by cruise ship. It's not far away and so once again we'll not have to have much speed to get there.





My Seattle sticker left in 2025


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 03 - 09/18/26 - Scenic Cruising - Day 2

Image
 What a contrast this second day of cruising has been. While we set our alarms for 715. I was awake at 6 AM and Angela had turned on the stateroom television to the bow channel and the light from that kept me awake. So I rolled out of bed roughly at 7:45 or so and prepared for my day we ate our customary breakfast in the Lido. Just north of Ketchikan we spotted the southbound Nieuw Amsterdam headed for there and I photographed it. Last year we were on that ship doing that same route southbound to Vancouver. We then attended Theresa's coffee chat with the executive chef. He's from India and is a vegetarian. Following this, we watched his cooking demonstration of preparing salmon meatballs in the Wajang theater. Again it was very interesting and we enjoy watching these cooking demonstrations. Unfortunately, there's no sampling of the food that's prepared there. For us, there was a gap in the programming so we went up to the Crows Nest and watched the scenery go by. It is ...
Read more

Day 01 - 09/16/26 - Embarkation Day

Image
 The embarkation for this cruise was one of the most different that we have ever done. We woke up at 5 AM in Burien at our home and prepared for our journey north. We left the house around 6 AM headed for Surrey, British Columbia where we are leaving our car with cruise friends. The drive up was pleasant and not many holdups. There were a couple sections which had pretty intense fog, but we made it through those safely. The border crossing into Canada on the truck route was uneventful and very smooth. There was one car ahead of us and they cleared just as we reached the stop sign. The Canadian border guard was efficient and asked the typical questions and we were soon through the border. We drove about 20 minutes further north and found our friends townhouse. The total trip was about 2 1/2 hours. We had not seen them in about 3 years since we sailed with them on the grand South America cruise. We've certainly kept up via Facebook. We had a chance to briefly chat and enjoy some tea ...
Read more

Day 02 - 09/17/26 - Scenic Cruising - Day 1

Image
  Little did we know that today was going to be a whale of a day. We woke up via an alarm at 7:15 AM as the first event was to start at 9 AM. We enjoyed our first breakfast in the Lido and I especially appreciated the fresh cooked eggs and the accompanying sausage and bacon and salmon. We then hustled down to the World Stage where Theresa our cruise Director did a brief interview of three of her staff, Holly (Travel Guide), Jaclyn (Wildlife expert), and Ben (Shore Excursions Manager).  Then at 9:15 Jacqueline gave a talk on when and where is my wildlife that was pretty interesting. She was followed by Ben who gave a first presentation on shore excursions.   I then led a Cruise Critic meet and greet in the Wang Theatre. There were about 50 people in attendance. I was a little apprehensive about the venue because the seating is fixed theater style and not in tables, but it really worked out to be very profitable to have the people seated that way, I gave a short introductio...
Read more