Juneau Alaska Blog
Today we are in the capital city of Juneau, Alaska. The ship is in port for a good portion of the day, and we don’t have an actual excursion planned. This could make or break the day but we’ll take it as it comes. We seem to be following a pattern this week of getting up later and later. We were up and heading to the buffet by 6:30 this morning. We didn’t make the early tender call this morning like we did yesterday. The difference for today is that we will need to tender into port, instead of getting off on the dock. The process for tendering included waiting in line at the casino to get a tender time slot and ticket. We were still among the first groups to tender into port from the Norwegian Sun. The rest of the ships were already letting guests off, and the town was already bustling.
In my research and planning phase of this trip I had read about the “blue bus” and all of the different ways you can get to Mendenhall Glacier. The excursion stall for the blue bus was super easy to find and we bought two tickets thinking it wouldn’t take long to get going. We were directed around the corner (from the excursion stalls) to the parking lot…where the line was wrapped around other bus lines. We were on the fourth bus out to Mendenhall, and about a twenty minute ride later we were there. The crowds here were monumental. It was only 8:30 AM but everyone here seems to be an early bird. We walked the trail down to Nugget Falls, and right up to the beach for a front row view of the glacier.
We shuttled back into Downtown Juneau around 10:30 AM, much earlier than I thought we would be. We were split between trying to book another excursion or just exploring on foot. The self guided tour won the race and we took off for Devil’s Club Brewing. We had a before-lunch beer, and planned out our walking tour. It shocked me how small downtown Juneau really is. You can easily walk anywhere inside the city, and there are only a few stops outside of town that you’d want to take the bus to. We walked over to Tahku, a giant humpback whale statue on the waterfront. After visiting him and walking the SeaWalk, we were at a little bit of a loss on what to do. Our initial attempt to take the bus over to the DIPAC fish hatchery failed because we didn’t have change. The weather wasn’t exactly on our side either, the fog was rolling in and so was the rain. We made another lap around town and made a pit stop at the Red Dog Saloon. Ben tried the famous “Duck Fart” shot, and people watched until we were out of beer. The afternoon was winding down and we were running out of options for last minute stops. We had already shopped, visited, and viewed everything we wanted to. That left one last place to go. Alaska Brewing Co’s location near the cruise dock is a little bit too handy. We split a beer and enjoyed being out of the rain for a little while. The tender line back to the ship was beginning to get longer and we made the journey back to the ship before it started to get too long.
The evening on the ship was slow, we are not leaving Juneau for a little while yet but we went for dinner anyway. Ben and I shared baked zitis, scollops, baked trout and bratwurst. All of that written down sounds like a bad mix but it was fantastic. After dinner we did a few laps around the jogging track with my camera. The ship was just beginning to leave port and we started seeing whales surfacing in the distance. It was magical to see them as the sun was getting lower on the horizon. Our night ended shortly after, relaxing in the room for the night.