2024-08-17: Glaciers and Relaxation

It was a relaxed morning. Everyone was able to sleep in today. Patrick slept through breakfast, but the rest of us had some breakfast in the Windjammer restaurant which is the buffet restaurant on board.

After breakfast, Darrell took Michael down to Guest Services. We had pre-purchased some arcade credits for Michael before we boarded, but the arcade games were charging our account instead of using the credit. They were able to get it sorted for us pretty quickly. We then went next door to the Shore Excursions desk to clarify our tours in Juneau the next day. Darrell and Michael had tickets for one tour while Amanda and Patrick had tickets for a different one. However, the names didn’t match the tours each person wanted to do. Darrell and Patrick will be touring together while Amanda and Michael will do the other tour. They told us as long as there is an adult and youth on each tour, they don’t care who actually goes. We figured that would be the case, but wanted to confirm.

Everyone went their separate ways for a couple of hours. At 2:00pm, our ship started it’s approach to the Hubbard Glacier. The weather was beautiful! We found a spot up on deck to watch the ship pull into Disenchantment Bay. Hubbard Glacier is North America’s largest tidewater glacier. While we were waiting, Michael found a cruise duck that someone had left on deck. Once the ship made it’s way to the glacier, the captain started to rotate the ship. There were so many people on the upper decks so we made our way back to our cabin. With the ship doing a couple of circles, we had a better view of the glacier from our cabin. We admired the glacier while the ship turned. We saw the glacier calve a couple of times. Once the ship completed a couple of rotations we had to leave the bay. Overall, we were at the glacier for about an hour and a half.

Once we left the glacier, we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Amanda went to the spa and got herself a pedicure which she really enjoyed. She decided not to purchase the $500 worth of product they tried to sell her at the end. The sales push at the end of the spa services is the one complaint we have with the spa.

It was formal night (or dress to impress as they call it now) tonight. We started to get prepared around 5:30pm and headed to the main dining room around 6:30pm. We stopped and got a few pictures taken on our way to the dining room. There was a huge line to get into the dining room. We thought we’d be waiting awhile, but it was only about 5 or 10 minutes before we were seated at a table. We were seated with 3 other couples from the US. We enjoyed our dinner and the conversation.

After dinner we returned to our cabin briefly. Darrell and Amanda wanted to see the production show in the theatre this evening but the kids weren’t interested. They went off on their own when we headed to the theatre. The show was called City of Dreams. It was an odd one. The singing and dancing were good, but there was no real theme to the show. It was just a bunch of different sets and songs mashed together with nothing connecting each scene. We were disappointed in the show.

After the show we returned to our cabin and got ready for bed. We have tours booked in Juneau for tomorrow morning.