Time in port: 3pm - 11pm
We woke up pretty early again but I did sleep like 14 hours. I must have needed it. Shortly after we got up we heard a chopper land on the ship. Some sort of medical emergency. We hadn’t even made it to our first port yet. I hope it wasn’t a serious issue (could have been a broken leg versus trauma). We saw beautiful snow-capped mountains. Exactly what Alaska looks like, in my mind.
We dined in the fancy dining room. I’m going to be soooo spoiled. We weren’t getting to Juneau until 3pm so we needed to burn some time. We played…and promptly lost at trivia. 4 points out of 20 possible. What I’d the other name of a Boeing 747? A “jumbo jet” was the formal answer. Ed’s answer, which was ALSO correct, “Queen of the skies”. Man, he’s still lit up that we got it wrong. Dude, the prize was a keychain and it only would have put us at 5/20 so…
We napped because we weren’t really feeling the activities offered right before lunch and headed to the buffet for lunch before our time in port. We saw a beautiful waterfall coming down the mountain. The mountain was peppered with happy little trees. Absolutely gorgeous. Fishies we’re dancing in and out of the water as sea birds were gliding by.
We were let off the boat a half hour early so we had extra time for shopping. First lesson learned: don’t hit the first souvenir shop you see. While it had EVERYTHING and then some the prices at this chain store were costly…as I compared at the next shop a few doors down. Oh well.
We headed back early from shopping so we could drop the stuff off in the room and not lug it with us. Plus, bags weren’t allowed on our excursion.
Now let me just tell you a little about this excursion we had booked. We were taking a helicopter ride around the glacier, stopping ON the glacier, taking a boat up NEXT to the glacier, and drinking from it. This was our second helicopter tour we booked for this trip. The first tour was to be in Skagway. It was a helicopter tour over more glaciers and dog sledding. I’m not talking playing with the dogs. I’m talking the ultimate Alaskan adventure where you mush the dogs and glide over the snow on a Devil’s dogsled of death. (Ok I might have made that part up, but a pack of hell hounds with me with the reigns, or are they leashes?) Well I guess I’m never going to know as NCL canceled our tour.
Meanwhile we had booked another helicopter tour in Juneau, which we are at now. We had shopped a ton and came back to drop stuff off in our room (no bags allowed). We go to check on our tour…aaaaannnnndddd canceled due to weather/fog. We were so upset but didn’t feel like wanting to die either. Sooo, I do believe God and the Universe or whatever you believe in but I 100% think we were being protected.
We went back into town so we could quite literally impale our hands and gorge on crab legs. Yes. Impale our hands as well had no tools except a plastic fork. Didn’t matter. We devoured 3 pounds of crab legs. 2 pounds or Norton Sound crab and 1 pound of Red king Crab at Tracy’s Crab Shack. It was about a 20 minute line, then another 20 minutes to get the food. It’s grab a seat wherever you can. You give them your name and location. They call out your name and location, you raise your hand, and they bring it over to you. Oh man that was so freaking good. So worth it.
After dinner, we cleaned up our wounded, sticky hands and headed for more shopping and to walk off our full bellies. It was misting heavier now and definitely chillier. We stopped for coffee, Ed found “room” for a strawberries and cream crepe, and we made the trek back. Our bus driver looked a lot like Zach Galifinakis (or however you spell it) and as the weather picked up (cold and raining). That man drove so fast! We were standing on the bus so we could hurry up and get back. We called it an early night. Tomorrow we head to Skagway and it’s a full day with 2 excursions.
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