2022-05-18: Skagway, Alaska

The ship arrived in Skagway at about 7:00am this morning. We were not in a hurry this morning but were both awake by 7:30am for some reason. We looked outside and saw three other ships docked around us; Nieuw Amsterdam, Royal Princess, and Norwegian Encore. The Princess and Norwegian ships were also in Juneau with us yesterday. We got ourselves cleaned up and dressed and headed to the Oceanview Cafe for some breakfast as usual. After breakfast, we grabbed our gear and headed ashore.

Skagway is a very pretty area surrounded by mountains. It is known for the White Pass Railroad which was built during the gold rush and connects Skagway with Whitehorse. It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the lot teens. We appeared to be docked at the furthest dock from town so it took a few minutes to walk to town. We waked down Skagway’s main street and perused the shops. There are some nice local art stores where we admired the local native designs.

We came across a shop selling “doughboys”. It looked an smelled good so we had to try one. It’s similar to a Beaver Tail but larger. It is a piece of fried dough close to the size of a small pizza covered in cinnamon sugar. It was very tasty. There were a bunch of crows hanging around the stop hoping for scraps. We came across the Skagway Museum down one of the side streets but it doesn’t open until Noon. It was only about 11:00am at this point so we carried on.

We stopped in at the White Pass and Yukon Route station just as the trains were swapping out passengers. We saw three trains around the station at the time. We did the train tour to the US/Canada border last time we were in Skagway. It is a lot of fun. The train line is a narrow-gauge railroad so the tracks are closer together than traditional tracks. It’s a very scenic ride through the mountains.

We finished walking through town and made our way back to the ship around 1:00pm. We headed to the Pool Grille for lunch today as we were both craving burgers. We headed to the Sunset Bar on the back of the ship to eat and enjoy the nice weather on the outdoor patio.

Amanda had some school work to do so we retired to the room for a while. The category of our room (Concierge Class) comes with a few perks such as a free bottle do champagne at some point during the cruise and daily canapes. We had asked our room steward to bring the champagne with the canapes today. At 3:00pm he arrived with the champagne and canapes. We enjoyed the treats while we watched the scenery go by.

At 6:00pm we started getting ready for dinner. We had booked a Chef’s Table experience for this cruise and tonight was the night. We headed to Cellar Masters to meet with our fellow dinner mates. There were seven of us in total. After a few hors d’oeuvres and more champagne, we were escorted to a table at the Tuscan Grill. We were treated to a seven course dinner over the course of two and a half hours. The head chef on the ship presented each course to us.

• Hors d’ouevres
• Watermelon palate cleanser
• Curried Cauliflower Soup
• Mushroom Risotto Persillade
• Seabass with Za’atar
• Duo of Beef Filet and Short Rib
• Java cake

The meal was amazing. There was so much food. We had lovely conversation with our fellow dinner mates as well. One couple owned a chiropractic clinic in Oklahoma. There was also a physical therapist and her Mom from Texas and Ohio respectively. The final member of our group was a lady from Washington who was travelling with some friends while her husband had to stay home and work. She grew up in Hawaii. We were given a group photo and cook book from Daniel Boulud. who is a world class chef who helped design the Chef’s Table event. It was an amazing experience.

After dinner we walked around the ship a bit and got a few pictures taken since it was the second and final “evening chic” night of the cruise. We stopped at Guest Relations to get Amanda a new Seapass card since she somehow lost it after we got back on the ship this afternoon. There was a silent disco being run in the foyer of the ship so we did a bit of people watching there for a few minutes. We headed up on deck to take in the beautiful scenery we were sailing by and then returned to our room and called it a night. We will be at the Hubbard Glacier bright and early tomorrow morning.