Honeymoon - Day 3

We ate breakfast at the buffet again this morning. Seems to be the same choices each day. We spent some time out on the deck by the swimming pool. In coats, under blankets, and cuddled together of course. It’s a chilly one! We spent some time on the other side of the boat as well and ordered margaritas at 11:30am. They came in plastic souvenir cups. We had a light lunch of mostly bread to make sure we weren’t tipsy for our first shore excursion. Today was our first time off the ship since boarding in Seattle. Juneau was our first port of call. We arrived around 1 but had to wait for another NCL boat to leave the dock before we could actually get on dry land. It was a little congested getting off the boat but once through the crowd of people who didn’t know what they were doing it was ok. We got on the bus for our Mendenhall Glacier tour. Cruises and these tours are not made for tall/wide people. The bus is a normal Greyhound/Coach kind of bus and when Adam and I sat in a seat together we were totally squished. Of course they book these tours to the max so we couldn’t have individual seats. We solved this problem by getting back to the bus after the glacier really early so we could claim the back seat (technically 3 seats so it made for more room and knee room for Adam.) Anyway, after a mini town tour from Lowell, our bus guide, we stopped at Mendenhall Glacier. Took lots of pictures, visited the museum and visitor’s center, and watched some salmon spawning. It was a little rainy and mighty cold. But not unbearable. Speaking of bears, some people saw some over by the creek the salmon were in but we didn’t have the pleasure while we were there. After getting back on the bus we drove to the docks and got on a catamaran boat to go whale and wildlife watching. The boat was much more roomy and comfortable. We got out into the open water and managed to hit the wildlife watching jackpot. We saw a pod of orcas, at least 8 humpback whales, and a group of harbor seals sunning themselves on a buoy. I got videos and pictures of them all. It was a good time. The naturalist aboard was very interesting and deseminated all kinds of good information. We arrived back to the pier a little early and to kill time before the buses returned we watched the Alaska ferry dock in front of us. Back on the bus we rode to the center of town, did some power shopping (well, not really shopping… we had raffle entries to drop off and free stuff to redeem) we walked back to the ship. Unfortunately the ship was much further away than we thought and it began to rain again but we eventually got back and got dried off. We didn’t have to walk the jogging track tonight, that’s for sure. We ate dinner at the buffet since I had a craving for mashed potatoes. We discovered that the buffet doesn’t have mashed potatoes… grrrr. We called it a night soon after we ate.