Alaska – May 2009 – Norwegian Star - Part 2

Monday

It’s 4:30 and there seems to be more light screaming in our window than there was yesterday morning…please turn out the lights!  Ok, we might as well get up and going.  Today we are in Ketchikan (or for some stupid reason we like to be silly and refer to it as Ketchup Land – LOL!)  Since we are tight on money, we did not sign up for any excursions today.  We head off the ship to venture around town.  The main port area is similar to that of any cruise port area with the usual Diamonds International, Del Sol, etc. type shops.  The town is quite small and you definitely should see the area around Creek Street.  We ate lunch at Steamers where the Santa’s were apparently eating lunch.  (There was a Santa convention on our cruise.)  All in all it was a good day, even though it steadily rained on us all day.  We went to the other main dining room, “Aqua”, for dinner.  The food was edible.

Tuesday

Ok, I’m not sure I can continue with this bright light screaming in our window at 4AM.  Today we are in Juneau.  We have an excursion planned so we grab a quick bite at the so-so buffet and head off the ship.  Our excursion is a PhotoTour.  There are only 7 of us on this excursion which makes for a very nice day.  We are driven over to Treadwell Mine Historic Trail where our guide helps us with our cameras and gives us instruction on how to take that interesting shot or how to make the picture tell a story.  Not sure I succeeded at that, but we got some great pictures.  Treadwell Mine was the largest mine of its time, employing some 2000 people.  The mines were actually dug to depths of 500 feet below sea level.  One tragic day leaks were noticed in the mine, hours later the mine collapsed.  As the leaks were noticed early enough, evacuations took place and incredibly no one was killed.

Ok, enough about the mines.  We get back on our bus and are driven to Mendenhall Glacier.  What a gorgeous sight!  However, since this is a photo tour, we wind up hiking some trails and don’t get a chance to get in close to the glacier – but we were close enough that above the roar of the waterfall, I could still hear the cracking of the glacier when it’s calving.  Pictures from this tour as well as from our entire Alaska trip can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/CruisersParadise.

After returning from the excursion, our driver let us off in the middle of downtown so that we could spend some time exploring Juneau.  We proceed to walk around and took some pictures with a variety of stuffed and/or wooden bears.  Sadly, this might be the only time we see any wildlife.

Do not make the same mistake we did.  We mistakenly thought that our ship was ‘just on the other side’ of the Diamond Princess, which it was, but in order to get to it we had to walk about a mile!  We should have taken the shuttle from town.  Oops.

The ship leaves Juneau around 1pm and spends the day cruising the inside passage.  We spent some time in Spinnaker Lounge which is the only real nightclub type area.  It is located at the front of the ship and has windows all the way around with plenty of seating.  We copped a squat in a nice location and relaxed for a while.  We are headed to the glacier, so we go out on deck and brave the cold to get some great pictures.  (IS THAT A BEAR ON SHORE?? – WHERE?  OH, THAT TINY SPECK OVER THERE!)  After a while, the Captain tells us that he cannot take us through Tracy Arm Fjord due to all the icebergs in that passage.  Instead, we venture into Endicott Arm Fjord and spend some time viewing Dawes Glacier.  What a beautiful sight.  We can’t believe how BLUE that ice is!

Chilled to the bone, we decided to go to the spa for some warm, soothing bubbles, so we headed off to the spa’s thermal suite for some relaxation/napping.  WAS THAT A WHALE I JUST SAW IN THE DISTANCE???  Again, sadly, this was the only time we might have seen a whale, and all we saw was some spray coming out of the water.

For dinner we decide to spend a little cash and go for the Tex-Mex.  It was $10pp but tonight it’s BOGO with a free Margarita included!  I was not impressed.  I’ve had better Tex-Mex at Chili’s.  And the margarita…it was only a sample – 2 sips worth.