21 Sept
This morning our alarm went off at 0630, we got ready and headed to breakfast where we both had omelettes and muffins.
We had arrived in Ketchikan to much better weather than we had expected and whilst we took our coats with us for our tour we decided we didn’t need our wet weather gear.
We were due to be collected at 0815 so we headed off of the ship, we found the meeting place and were advised that we had 20 mins until the bus would arrive.
We decided to pop to the Effy store to collect our free jewellery, this had the advantage of limiting our time in the store as we had an excuse to leave!
We collected our free whale pendants and then walked back to the meeting point for the start of our tour.
We got on the bus and were driven around 20 minutes away to the boat, the driver told us about the highlights of Ketchikan along the way.
Our tour was titled: Lighthouse, Totems and Eagles so no prizes for guessing what we anticipated seeing.
We headed out on the water and the first eagle was spotted very early and we then saw several in quick succession.
Next up were the totem poles which were apparently designed to be approached from the water.
Not long after this we had a surprise appearance from a whale which was brilliant, my photos aren’t very good but I did manage to get a short video of it.
While we were on our trip we were offered coffee, hot chocolate and some Alaskan snacks. The salmon was surprisingly good (I'm not a big fan) as was the chocolate.
Finally, we reached the lighthouse and apparently if we had wanted we could get a stamp on the boat to do with USA lighthouses - there is some kind of book?
We headed back towards the dock, this was a little faster as we didn’t stop to look at as many eagles.
The tour was actually better than I expected (although I’m not sure what I expected), the crew were friendly and informative as was the Captain of the boat.
We were taken back to town on a school bus, these are always fun for us for the novelty factor of the yellow bus.
We then went on a little walk town, visiting all the key areas such as Creek Street (otherwise known as the former “Red Light District”) and making sure to purchase our essential magnet as we did so. There were many shops selling magnets and other souvenirs but we only bought the magnet.
We also bought Rob some bamboo clothes (T-shirt and underwear) while looking for somewhere to get food. We failed miserably to find somewhere (everywhere had really long queues) so headed back onto the ship.
We had pizza and hotdogs before watching the sail away from a combination of our balcony and the Solarium.
We met our neighbour in the cabin next door who has been on 100 cruises! He gave us a bottle of champagne (Rob tried to tell him we don’t drink but he wouldn’t take no for an answer) as apparently, he kept getting given freebies!
Somewhere along the way I got some ice cream and we watched some tv and the scenery as we sailed towards Icy Strait Point before dinner.
I am not sure I mentioned previously but we had been due to visit Skagway as our second port but we had an email while we were sat in the lounge in Heathrow saying that our tour had been cancelled – and we later realised that it was because they had changed the itinerary again.
We discovered that the change had been made because a rockfall in Skagway meant our ship would have to tender and the forecast was bad. I must admit I was disappointed as we had both been looking forward to riding the railroad in Skagway.
We were back at Coastal Kitchen for dinner (having managed to get a booking made for every night of our cruise), we both had the New York Strip followed by the Neapolitan.
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