Day 3 on the Alaskan Cruise was our first stop. After a day of being at sea and exploring the boat thoroughly, this first stop was a welcome time. We had an early wake-up time to meet up for the bus to go to where our tour start. Right off the boat, it was full of the city and by the shore was tons of souvenir shopping.
Good morning, Ketchikan! 🙂
Rainforest Canoe Trail
Let me just start by saying that my mom and her friends did not know what they were getting themselves into, so they didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I did. If you’ve followed here for a while, you know that I LOVE water. I mean, like cruise feels great but I used to do dragonboat so canoeing felt great. They thought someone would paddle the canoe but nope, it was all about us doing the work to get there. There wasn’t a lot of people doing the tour on top of that so it was kind of funny how it was the guide, one of the cruise employees and me doing most of the paddling. Still, it was fun. Plus, the view was beautiful!
We did a tour of the lake and then made our first around the river bend where there was a chef lady who had prepared some clam chowder, smoked salmon, coffee, etc for our snacks.
Smoked Salmon
Chef and Clam Chowder
The view of the lake from where we parked the canoe
Then, we got to do a tour of the rainforest on that island to learn a bit of the vegetation. The guide was young and energetic and he seemed genuinely in love with nature making him rather enthusiastic so it was even more engaging to listen to. 🙂
A Berry plant..I think its salmonberry
Fallen logs that nuture the growth of other plants
Skunk Cabbage
Can’t remember the name but these things grow in 90% non-polluted air, making Alaska one of the most non-polluted places
Dinner at Tsar’s Palace
We got back to the boat for the sailing away at 3pm or something after doing some souvenir shopping and hopping back on the boat for lunch. I did go on the deck and take a nice picture of the Ketchikan harbor/city from there.
Ketchikan
I can’t remember the schedule exactly. Its somewhere in my stack of papers. From my notes, we did sit in the sun a little. There was the Sail Away Party in the lounge where I did go for a little while. I think we just sat and walked around until dinner time. I might have gone to workout (since I did that everyday).
The details aren’t so important since this is freestyling cruising. Seeing that’s Norwegian Cruise Line’s tagline, it works out, right? 😉 Tsar’s Palace is the other main dining palace. A part of the menu is the same as Azura but there is some dishes that vary on a daily basis. It is a bigger restaurant and has a more grand decor.
Here’s what we had. I’m sorry that I can’t remember any of the dishes specifically anymore. I should’ve taken a picture of the menu but apparently I didn’t…so there’s no going back from that.
Evening: Shows, Games and Country Hoe-Down
I don’t have a whole lot of pictures from evenings but that evening, we went to the show at the Stardust Theatre. I walked around (resulting in the shot above of the sunset) and caught the Guess The Tune game, which was pretty fun. That night it was called the Country Hoe-Down. I had a ton of fun learning how to line dance. I think I still remember some moves. It was super fun because this old couple was owning the dance floor, aside from the staff of course. They were right there next to me and when I got tired, I remembered that I couldn’t get owned by some elderly folks so I tried to learn it even better. It was really fun. That’s all I’m saying 🙂
Events like this and I started making acquaintances, not bad, right? Only took 3 days 😉
That’s it for Day 3! The beautiful Ketchikan graced us with no rain until we were sailing away. It was really some nice awesome weather we had the whole way, you’ll see… That canoe trail though, man, I have to find some of those here and sign up for one of those. You want to feel like being one with nature? That was totally how I felt about it.
Tranquil Dreams 