Day 3: Juneau, Alaska

I woke up early today, before 5pm, and when I felt the bed next to me, G was already out of the cabin. He loves his early morning walks around the ship. It was already light-ish out, and, knowing the buffet didn’t open until 6am, I fell back asleep until closer to that time. We finally met up in the buffet at 6am, but before we had even a cup of coffee, we took a few minutes to walk out to the Sea View Terrace, the large open deck at the back of the ship where the sail away party had been held. The scenery had already started, with tall mountains and snow capped peaks on either side of the Nieuw Amsterdam as it slowly navigated the narrowing passages north to Juneau. It was overcast but not too grey, and, most happily, not raining. 

The Southeast Alaska pilot approachng the ship

We were drinking coffee in the buffet, enjoying the scenery, when I heard the couple behind us saying something about reading on Cruise Critic that this week’s cruise on the Majestic Princess seemed to be going well. When I turned around to see who was talking, I noticed it was the same couple we’ve been running into since the shuttle waiting area at the airport on Saturday. She looked vaguely familiar, but, until I turned around to face her, I hadn’t realized that I definitely had met her before this cruise. I asked if they were going on the Majestic Princess on Sunday. They are. Then it hit me…she is Eileen Weiner, the most traveled most traveled guest on Princess Cruises (nearly 2800 days!!). People magazine  even did an article about her travels and how she had met her husband Carl on board a cruise a few years so.  We had cruised with her once, a long time ago. She said she and Carl had booked the Majestic Princess cruise a few months ago, but added this Nieuw Amsterdam cruise on Wednesday also, deciding to get out of the  heat of Florida. What a small world. 

We chatted for awhile (and commiserated about the sale of the perfect Pacific Princess, which was all of our favorite ship) and then G and I went to breakfast in the dining room when it opened at 7:30am. Today I chose the southwestern scramble made without cheese and it was my favorite breakfast food so far. Our morning was going to be a relaxing one; we didn’t arrive in Juneau until 1pm. 

This breakfast was a winner

G went to the veterans and first responders get together at 9:30am and came back from that…pretty emotional. Apparently, someone who was on the USS Midway when Saigon fell was talking about the humanitarian crisis that resulted…well, it was some pretty moving stuff. I’m glad Holland America provides a forum for people to talk and hear about these memories. Some might say they don’t belong on a cruise but I disagree. No one bas to be there, and these people deserve to be heard. Of course, there were some funny stories too, to lighten the mood. 

The scenery was continuing to close in around us, and G and I decided to walk on the Promenade Deck to combine exercise and sightseeing (we easily could have skipped the former, because of how we spent our afternoon). We fully expected to get a cell phone signal at some point, but even when we were docking in Juneau, we weren’t getting one. Ruh roh. The dining room opened at 11:30am today, serving the port day menu of  just fish and chips or chicken Caesar salad, and we were sitting there while the guy at a table near us was uploading videos via cellular. He works for ATT and filled us in: our T-Mobile, which has provided us service all over the world, wasn’t going to do squat for us in Alaska.  ATT has a monopoly there. I don’t like the sound of that. This means no blog posts will be published unless we get WiFi somewhere in port or until we get back to Seattle. Sorry sbout that. I will continue to write and will upload when I can. It’s going to be a nightmare to keep these photosi and menus straight until I do. 

Standard Dining room lunch menu on a port day

The Nieuw Amsterdam was cleared in Juneau just before 1pm, and we dressed for the day (it was fairly overcast until about 5pm, and chilly but not too) and bought Blue Bus shuttle tickets to go to Mendenhall Glacier and back. I think they used to cost $15 round trip; they’re $45 now ($40 if you have a National Park pass). Pricey, but still the cheapest way to get to the Glacier. The buses run every 30 minutes until the last bus leaves Mendenhall at 6pm. We were at the glacier by 2pm, and first did the short (1/4 mile) Steep Creek Trail looking for bears and salmon. We found the salmon, but no bears. Although it is salmon running season, the bears feed mostly in the morning and late afternoon.

We walked up to the Visitor Center then, which we remembered had some good displays and a video, and talked with a ranger about hikes in the area. We had done the Nugget Falls trail when we were here in 2012, and she suggested the Trail of Time and the East Glacier Loop Trail, just under 4.5 miles of hiking. We knew we had time (the last bus was at 6pm, the ship didn’t leave until 10pm tonight) but couldn’t dawdle, so we spent no time exploring the Visitors Center (we had covered it well on our previous visit) and headed out.

Mendenhall Glacier get smaller every time we see it. 

Nootka lupines everywhere 

Nugget Falls

Steep Creek waterfall

These leaves were about two feet wide. 

In my happy place

Salmon are bright red. Who knew?

The East Glacier Loop Trail had some serious  climbs and more serious downhills,  and although we saw lots of salmon and waterfalls, we didn’t see a bear. We arrived back at the Bear Stop waiting area and hopped (flopped, really) on the 5:30pm Blue Bus. Before we even left the parking lot, our driver said she could see park rangers holding people back on the sidewalk nearby, which meant there was a bear sighting. Well, G and I were out of the bus in a flash. 

Finally!  We saw a mama and her two cubs, then decided to re-hike the Steep Creek Trail because we’d heard there was another mama and her cubs there.  Sure enough, we saw them too. I actually heard one of the cubs before I saw it…stuck high in a tree, he saw his mom starting to walk away and was calling her. Don’t leave me!!

It doesn’t get any better than this

Mom!  Wait for me!

We finally caught the 6pm bus, completely wiped out. The driver Vince was great, and gave us a wonderful narration on the 30 minute ride back to the ship. Once again we heard how grateful the tourism sector in Juneau is that ships are sailing again. He said they get a rebate on their electric bill every month from the money that is made when the ships plug into shoreside power.  He also told us that Juneau, which we knew is locked in by by mountains and can only be reached by boat or plane, and not by road, has two high schools. All high school sports require flights to get to their games and meets, and the school district pays to fly the athletes and chaperone parents to events and foots their hotel bills. Interesting!

It was all we could do to get to the buffet for a small dinner (I had baked salmon and a non-tomato based cioppino) before crashing -hard- in our cabin. G is used to that kind of activity but I was toast. The only thing that saved me is that we were hiking at low altitude. There are several entertainment options tonight, but we won’t get to any of them. The Nieuw Amsterdam will be in Glacier Bay National Park tomorrow and the first ranger talk is at 7:30am. 

I’d forgotten that cruising can be such hard work. 

Oh, but I can’t forget to mention that, while we were off the ship today, the crew that deal directly with guests changed out their blue Holland America cloth masks for N95s and KN95s. Now, that’s a good thing but I’m not sure what prompted that change today. We continue to stay masked on the ship and in port and, in fact, only removed our masks today when we were hiking alone. Frankly, I’m glad we’re on these cruises now. This winter is looking increasingly questionable. 

Go away COVID!!

Day 3 When and Where

,

Day 2: At Sea

G fell asleep so early last night that he was up before 5am today, sifting through his carry on bag trying to find something and wondering aloud if his Liars Club buddies were in the International Cafe yet. If you’re new here, that’s a joke, harkening back to our transpacific cruise in September 2019 on the Ruby Princess. Thankfully, he soon left the cabin in search of coffee, and let me get a tiny bit more sleep. 

The reality of blogging in the absence of any WiFi at all hit me like a brick late last night. I had spent last night’s dinner uploading all the pics in yesterday’s post while we were still cruising Puget Sound and had an excellent cell phone signal, intending to add the narrative later. I had done this everyday when we were cruising in Europe and Asia…upload photos while we still had a cell signal and write the post hours later offline and then log into the Princess WiFi and publish the post. Last night, using the BlogTouch Pro app and writing the post on my iPhone, I went to save it when I was finished and my only choice was to save it offline. That shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, but it was, and it means that all those photos will have to be re-uploaded when I finally publish the post from Juneau tomorrow.  I don’t know if any cellular internet is fast enough to load that many photos at one time. I guess I’ll find out. I may have to remove them and add them back one or two at a time. I told you this might be a rocky process. 

G returned to the cabin to see what I was up to, and by 6:30am we were both in the buffet. He went all out and had a made to order omelet prepared, his first omelet since he was on the Majestic Princess. I had just coffee and melon; I had been checking out the breakfast menu in the dining room on the Navigator app and saw something that appealed. We decided to head there when it opened at 8am (leaving me to utter that traditional cruise phrase, “Hurry up and finish eating so we can go to breakfast”).  It’s good to be back!

The view from our breakfast table

Let me take a moment here and talk about the Navigator app. I have issues with it (quelle surprise!); I’m logged in as me, it shows that it’s my account but it only displays G’s on board statement, and my name doesn’t appear in the Chat directory at all. When he searches for me, people with my first name and people with my last name show up, but I do not, leaving him to tease me that I’m not really on the ship and this is all a dream. I’m so over all this app stuff. I told myself I was not going to spend one second fighting the Medallion app on board the Majestic Princess and I’m not going to do it on the Nieuw Amsterdam with the Navigator app either. We’ll just skip using the Chat feature. 

However, saying that, the dining menus part of the app work perfectly. I can wake up each morning and check the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus for the day in each dining venue. That is a really wonderful feature, especially when the menus are all so new to us and we’re dining around. The activities portion of the app works well too. In fact, it wasn’t until last night that we realized we still get a paper activities guide, called the When and Where, in our cabin each night for the next day. G had set something on top the embarkation day When and Where that was in our cabin when we first boarded, we never saw it, and just assumed we had to rely on the app.  

So back to this morning…

My chosen breakfast item in the dining room was a wild rice, quinoa, veggie combo and I was underwhelmed. It was more wild rice than quinoa. I won’t make the effort to get that again. 

The dining room breakfast menu does not change from day to day. 

Dining room breakfast menu page 1

Dining room breakfast menu page 2

Dining room breakfast menu page 3

Dining room breakfast menu page 4

Wild rice and quinoa bowl

Not quite my thing 

Having managed to eat breakfast in both the buffet and dining room, we did a quick tour of the ship (with a capacity of 2100 people, we love this size ship), and then returned to the cabin where G slept a little more and I didn’t. Instead I read for awhile, and did feel a bit more refreshed. We checked out the available daytime activities and found one or two this afternoon we were interested in, but mostly we decided we were going to have an unstructured day. 

We next relaxed by the Lido Pool, with its glass covered roof, and that is as wonderful a thing as exists for this cool weather itinerary. There are no crowds anywhere, and it certainly shows in the availability of loungers by the pool and on the Promenade Deck (a full, wraparound promenade deck). We actually met a couple last night who are on the ship for three cruises in a row, although they were originally told they couldn’t book that due to COVID and then were told they could. They said the ship was at 60% capacity on its first sailing last week and has about 200 more passengers this week. It’s nice. 

The Lido Pool area

It’s wonderful!

We returned to the dining room for lunch around 12:30pm. I had a calamari starter followed by a southwest quinoa bowl and this time both were fantastic. G ordered the Mexican street tacos followed by a Cobb salad followed by a hot fudge sundae. He is one happy camper. 

Dining room lunch menu

Calamari starter

Southwest quinoa bowl. Delish!

I had wanted to get to the cooking demonstration at 1pm, but meals in the dining room take quite awhile. We’ve often found this to be the case on Holland America. Instead we went directly to the- well, I think it’s called MainStage, though it’s called World Stage  on the deck plan. Basically it’s like the Princess Theater.  There was a documentary on the Iditarod race hosted by the cruise director/ travel host. That they are one and the same person is a bit unusual to us, but hey, every cruise line has its differences. The origin of the Iditarod race is quite interesting. It began as a relay race for the purpose of rushing medical supplies for  diphtheria patients in Nome, Alaska. 

Then it was hot tub time (also in the glass covered Lido Pool area), squeezed in before we got ready for tonight’s formal night. Can’t say I missed those over the past 18 months!  G brought his tux (he usually likes formal nights), but wasn’t feeling it tonight and instead wore a dress shirt and slacks.  He looked entirely appropriate; we saw everything from tuxedos (a few) to fairly casual wear in the dining room. 

On the way to the dining room, we went to Lincoln Center Stage for some music performed  by a violinist, a violist, a cellist and a pianist. Oh my heart. I love that kind of music!! We continued on to dinner at 5:30pm and limited ourselves to just an entree and coffee; we wanted to get to MainStage for the captain’s champagne welcome. Holland America does this by having the senior officers line up outside the theater to greet guests as they enter, and then handing out flutes of champagne. 

At 6:45pm, the captain was up on stage and welcomed everyone and made a toast and, if not exactly a socially distanced champagne party, it was fairly close. He told us there were 1593 passengers on board for this cruise, which is in line with what we had been told by the back to back couple, and about 500 fewer than the ship’s capacity. There is nothing crowded on this ship. It’s really nice!

The first of three production shows was performed at 7 and 9pm. Tonight’s show was called Humanity, and we should have known when the activities guide said it was going to be performed by Step One Dance Company that it was going to be simply dancers. There were six of them, and they were all fantastic, but we missed the vocalists that we’re used to in production shows, not to mention we love live musical accompaniment. The major feature of the show is the digital backdrop which really is quite amazing. I remember that about Holland America; when they invest in a technology for their theaters, they really use it…a lot. (Memories of that cantilevered and moving stage on the Maasdam that would make a grinding sound the whole time it was moving still make me laugh). But six in house dancers with no vocalists or musicians…I can understand why we’ll be treated to three production shows in a one week cruise. Happily, the three male dancers are not a bit unattractive. Note to self:  sit closer to the stage next time. 

After the show, we left the theater and caught the end of a piano duo playing 70’s music at Billboard Onboard (oh my, I’m struggling with these venue names) and then returned to Lincoln Center Stage for more music on the strings and piano. Holland America is known for its live music venues and I can see why. They’re simply wonderful. 

And finally it was time for coffee and dessert, and we went up to the buffet to get both…and only then remembered then that the buffet closes at 8pm on Holland America, and then re-opens for late night snacks at 10:30pm. Not a fan of that! We could have headed back to the dining room I guess, but weren’t as comfortable doing that as we are on Princess, where we are always welcomed to the dining room with open arms (literally), regardless of how many times we’ve already been there that evening.

We decided instead that a night without dessert was probably not the worst thing, especially since most of our nights for 18 months have not featured a dessert, and returned to the cabin. We’re watching a movie in our cabin and, at 9:45pm it is still light outside.  We move clocks back an hour tonight. I predict an early wake up again tomorrow. 

And, finally tonight, I thought I’d give you our thoughts on how this cruise feels in the midst of COVID. I’m sure there’s a lot of cleaning and new health protocols going on behind the scenes, but, frankly, it doesn’t feel any different from a pre-COVID cruise…except for the entire ship’s company being in masks and the reduced passenger load. There are only a few passengers in masks, and since we rarely are in an elevator with anyone else, I’m fairly comfortable with that. But if I expected there would be seats blocked out to ensure social distancing in the theaters, bars and dining areas, I was wrong. We were told that we need to wear masks when inside or on public transport in the Alaska ports, and outside too when not socially distanced, but that’s how it was at home for over a year (and, frankly, probably still should be). 

So, cruising on this relatively small ship sailing at reduced capacity with fully vaccinated crew and guests feels really safe. So far. Let’s hope it continues. 

Day 2 When and Where

Day 1: Embarkation day on the Nieuw Amsterdam

 We are here. 

WE. ARE. HERE.

Wow, does it feel amazing to be able to say that. 

You know, it suddenly occurred to me yesterday afternoon, while I was racing around the house packing, that we had been on the Nieuw Amsterdam before. We’ve only done four Holland America cruises in the past, but, looking back at our cruise history, sure enough, one of them was on the Nieuw Amsterdam, nearly eight years ago. Apparently, we liked it then (http://pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com/2013/11/holland-america-line-and-nieuw.html); we’ll see what we think after eight years and a pandemic.

And let me take a minute and set up a keyboard shortcut for Nieuw Amsterdam.  As you can imagine, autocorrect is giving me fits about the “Nieuw”.

As I said in yesterday’s post, we had a very early morning today. We got up at 2:00am, and by 3:30am were driving away from the house. We already knew that we would be out of luck with an Uber or a Lyft at 3:30am on a Saturday morning (the bars were closing about then!), and the prices of hotels at the airport have more than doubled since we last stayed in one in September 2019. We decided that our best option was to drive to the airport yesterday, rent a car, drive both cars home and return the rental to the airport this morning at 4am. Naturally, even that solution was not worry-free. Would the rental car company actually have a car (shades of Seinfeld here)?  Would our Southwest flight be late or cancelled due to system-wide computer issues, or pilot, aircraft or fuel shortage? So many travel things we used to be able to trust would happen pretty much as planned can’t be relied on right now. So we packed an extra helping of patience and hoped for the best.

I’m happy to report that, on our first travel day in 18 months, it all went off without a hitch.  I’m always amazed, when we leave our neighborhood that early in the morning without encountering a single other vehicle, to find the expressways busy and the airport absolutely packed. At 4:30am! Our TSA Pre check saved us a lot of time going through security (nice to be using it for the first time since we renewed it earlier this year), and though our plane was full, the travel time was relatively short.  After all, my most recent flight had been the one home from Sydney, so anything shorter than that was all good.

Sunrise over the Cascades

There was no YouTube-able mask drama on our flight; people were too sleepy at that hour to put up much of a fuss. We wore KN95 masks from the time we boarded the rental car shuttle until we were in our cabin on the Nieuw Amsterdam and added a cloth mask on top of them on the plane. Interestingly, I did a Blood Oxygen check on my Apple Watch toward the end of the flight. It was 97%, which was higher than it’s been in the smoke at home for weeks.  I wish some people could be convinced that wearing even a double mask is not depriving their brain of oxygen, and would stop behaving like it actually is.  Just sayin’.  

We had an early flight, and knew we’d have to wait somewhere before boarding the ship, and I really didn’t want to be standing outside the cruise terminal while we waited. Not knowing when we were supposed to be boarding, and this being the Age of COVID, we thought we’d let Holland America figure out when to take us to the ship and so purchased transfers through the cruise line.  Once we landed in Seattle and collected our two suitcases, we were personally escorted from baggage claim to a waiting area carved out of the airport parking garage.  It’s convoluted to get to this shuttle waiting area on your own unless you know where you’re going, and I can see why we were escorted over there, despite that fact that our names didn’t even appear on their list (since the list was printed before we booked).  I’m also quite sure (but not certain) that this is the same place guests wait for the Princess shuttle, as the lady who helped us said she would be a greeter for the Majestic Princess tomorrow.  She was quite happy to be back to work, and even if she hadn’t said so, we could have surmised that from the friendly way she did her job  

At 10am we were allowed to board the large bus to travel to the ship, but were stopped just before we left the parking garage. Apparently the ship was not going to start boarding until at least 11am, and travel time to the pier was about 35 minutes.  Oh, and the driver had been informed that she wasn’t to deviate from the normal route getting there, so we were going to have to sit on the bus for a bit once we arrived at the pier. Well, the driver didn’t deviate; she simply drove slowly and gave us a great narrated tour the entire way.  She also said (and again it was obvious this was true) that she was so happy to be back at work. It’s nice to feel appreciated for doing what we love to do. We all know that the tourism business has been devastated by the pandemic, but it’s quite poignant to meet the people who have been most affected, and made me feel glad that we are contributing in even the smallest way to the industry’s recovery.

She did so well with that driving slowly thing that when we arrived at the pier, we were able to disembark the bus immediately and start the boarding process.  And considering where G and I were starting from, even that went well.  When I completed the Holland America online check in on Wednesday, their system told me that we were too late to get boarding passes for the cruise (less than 72 hours pre-cruise). No worries. We figured we’d simply show up with our booking number and passports and vaccination cards and we’d eventually be allowed to board. Then, this morning, while we were waiting for our flight to depart, I checked the HAL Navigator app on my phone (yes, they have one too; it’s just that guests still check in on their website) and saw that we did have e-boarding passes and a UPC code. No worries!

We were required to show our vaccination cards before we even entered the port terminal, though I heard an announcement that anyone without a card (like the couple of kids on board, I guess) had to be COVID tested before they proceeded any further into the terminal.  

Despite our e-boarding passes stating we were Boarding Group E at 1:20pm, at check in we were assigned Group B and were onboard and in our cabin shortly after 11:45am.  

Gladly!

Correct mask usage (over the nose and mouth) was strictly enforced at both airports, on the plane, on both shuttles and in the cruise terminal.  At the SeaTac airport, an announcement stated, over and over again, that gaiters were not acceptable unless they were double-layered, and handkerchiefs weren’t allowed at all. Entering the cruise terminal, I saw one person stopped for only wearing a single-layer gaiter.  I’m not certain how that got resolved, because I heard him say he didn’t have anything else to use. 

And G and I will continue to wear masks, probably for the entire cruise.  I am simply most comfortable doing that, because it’s already obvious that there is limited social distancing on the ship. Guests have the option of dining alone or with strangers, seating for shows is not spaced out other than what happens naturally from a lower passenger load and there are no limitations in elevators (which, thankfully, on this ship arrive quickly and mostly empty).  We have another cruise after this one, and I am leaving to visit Mom five days after we return home. I want nothing to interfere with those trips (see previous post re: mom hug) and would never forgive myself if I inadvertently took COVID into Mom’s retirement community.  Maybe we’ll feel differently in a few days, but for right now, we are among the very few masked passengers on board.

We dropped our carry ons in our cabin and immediately headed to the buffet.  We were starved.  We hadn’t eaten yet today and, frankly, our entire diet since we booked this cruise three days ago consisted of a large salad I made by chopping up everything that was left in the produce drawer.

This was offered at the first station in the buffet and it was as far as I got!

I took this photo at our house earlier this summer, just to prove that my watermelon obsession is not limited to cruises.

We were happily served water, lemonade and ice tea in the buffet, but coffee seemed to be “get it yourself”.  And I happily did help myself, and was a little thrilled that it was the same excellent coffee I remember from Holland America eight years ago.  Despite the self service, the wait staff (on Holland America they are all from Indonesia) was extremely friendly and welcoming.

 

QR codes for all menus…but you don’t have to use them. Paper menus are also available. 

Water in metal cans instead of plastic bottles.  Yay!

We returned to our cabin to find that our large suitcases had been delivered, and it took no time at all to unpack them.  Even better, there was plenty of room in our cabin for everything.  It was tough finding enough storage space when we were on this ship in 2013, with a winter’s worth of luggage.  But two weeks worth? Piece. of. cake.

The only nod to social distancing was a different kind of muster drill.  Most cruise lines are doing some variation of this now: We watched a safety briefing on our cabin TV, we went to our muster station sometime during the afternoon (on the Promenade Deck) and had our key cards scanned, and we listened to the captain’s safety announcement. We were also encouraged to try on our life jackets in our cabin, and you know us…we really did. With 26 years of military service and 12 years of Catholic school between us, we are rules followers. 

There was a sailaway party on the aft pool deck starting at 3:30pm, and it was very nicely and somewhat subtly done, with a perfect DJ playlist, a fair amount of alcoholic beverages consumed and the beautiful Seattle skyline in the distance under overcast skies.  And here’s the thing…unlike what others have reported when they first stepped on a cruise ship post-COVID, I had managed to get to that point in our day without feeling the least bit emotional about finally being back.  But when I looked over the side of the ship and saw the water churned up by the Nieuw Amsterdam pushing away from its berth, I literally choked up. I don’t know what that stirred up inside of me, but it did it quickly and thoroughly…and then I was fine.  I took advantage of our cell phone signal to call a few friends who didn’t know until they read my blog that we were even leaving home a week early.  Sorry about that.  Like I said, we’ve had an intense few days.

That left us about 15 minutes to nap and five minutes to shower before going down to dinner.  We wanted to be there at 5:30pm when the dining room opened, to try to get a table for two in a nice location with the same waiters for the rest of the cruise. Yeah, this one will work. 😉

The view from our dinner table.  Oh how I’ve missed this!

Waiter Karma (we call him Good Karma) from Bali and his assistant Aziz from Java were so so so friendly. Like everyone else we encountered, they are thrilled to be back at work. The entire ship’s company (all vaccinated) is wearing masks, but Karma made a point of telling us that we didn’t need to if we didn’t want to.  No, really.  We want to.

Day 1 dinner menu, page 1

Day 1 dinner menu, page 2

OMG. A meal I didn’t have to prepare or clean up from afterwards.  This nearly choked me up for the second time. Even after I was vaccinated, I’ve eaten in a restaurant (mostly sitting outside) just a few times.  I think the meals in the dining room are going to be my favorite part of this cruise.  I’ve survived the past 18 months at home by choosing to focus on things to be grateful for, but it is admittedly getting harder and harder to be grateful for washing dishes eleventy-seven times a day (I can’t stand leaving even a single spoon unwashed in the sink). 

Alaskan crab seafood cocktail

Salmon with cilantro rice

Love the way they serve my soy milk for after dinner coffee

Triple berry Alaskan tart

By the time dinner was over, we were in hour 20 of our day and decided that nothing happening on the ship this evening held as much appeal as sleep. It usually takes a little longer that first night to get settled, but G was asleep in less than a minute.  As will I be when I finish this post (edited later:  no, I wasn’t. It was a rather sleepless night). 

Day 1 When and Where

So many good things happened today. I am grateful.