Waiting To Dock In Juneau

 We must have gone through 

the Piazza again,

 probably for coffee refills.

So I wanted to share a bit more 

about this space. 

 It's the center of the ship.

The leaf decorated glass shapes on the left

side are the panoramic elevators.

There's a bank of regular elevators on the 

other side of them as well.

The stairs and balconies were prime

photo taking spots as well as good 

places to watch the goings on down on 

the Plaza deck 5. 

It's where they held the champagne waterfall.

We saw them start to set up the champagne

glasses, but missed the event with the Captain,

crew members and passengers pouring 

champagne into the glasses.

Off and on during the entire day,

and into the evening there were usually

musicians, or entertainment of some sort

going on there.

It was a great place to run into our friends

as finding each other at times was difficult.

We would run into them here

 while getting coffee at the IC,

or we'd find them up on the Horizon Terrace.

Sometimes it would be pure luck

to run into them near a stairwell,

and even in the bathrooms.

We only turned our cell phones 

  on while we were in the Alaskan Ports.

Otherwise, they were off

and left in the safe.

We could call each other from our rooms,

but we didn't. No one stayed in their

rooms long enough to answer a phone.

Some passengers resort to leaving 

post it notes on each others doors.

But.. you have to remember

 to bring post it notes.

Most of the time, 

we pre-arranged a meet up time.

Plus, we most always had dinner together

in our assigned dining room at the early 

seating at 5:30 PM.

There's Juneau up ahead,

and a Coast Guard boat coming to greet us.

Something was looking a bit odd though.

Just as it passed us,

it turned around and came closer to us.

Armed?

Yep,  it was really strange.

Seems like the Coast Guard boat

was escorting us in.

It turned around yet again,

and stayed between us and this pleasure

boat until it had passed us.

I don't know what that was about.

Our balcony neighbors.

We lost our covered balcony when we 

got upgraded to the mini suite.

I was concerned about the lack of privacy

on our balcony before we left.

In the end it didn't really matter

and it wasn't as uncomfortable

 as I had expected.

It was so very green there.

The clouds were clearing

and we had another perfect and warm day.

 We wanted to have lunch on the ship

before we got into Juneau at noon. 

This time we decided to try the 

British style pub lunch that was 

offered in the Crown Grill.

I especially wanted to try the mushy peas

that I'd read about on Cruise Critic.

I had no clue what the peas would be like,

but it was really good.

It tasted like.... mashed peas.

Yep. Mashed peas.

I looked up recipes online just a bit ago,

and some recipes call for a certain dried pea

that's soaked, cooked, and mashed.

Other recipes called for mint leaves and lemon

juice along with regular

 fresh or frozen green peas.

I didn't taste mint at all. 

Just mashed peas.

Who knew?

I'm not even sure how close the 

Princess recipe is to a traditional British one.

Besides the fish and chips that I had,

there was  breaded prawns and chips

which is what Rick had.

The other two Pub Lunch offerings that day

were  Chicken Curry,

 or Scotch egg and salad plate.

A Scotch egg is a hard boiled egg

wrapped in sausage meat,

coated in bread crumbs and deep fried.

I wasn't interested in that. 

Just pass the peas please.

They were good.

We tried the British style bread pudding.

Oh my gosh it was delicious

and not heavy at all like the bread pudding 

we're used to.

This was mostly a very light,

not too sweet fluffy egg custard

with a thin slice of  custard soaked

 soft white bread toasted brown on top

and served with a dusting of powdered sugar.

We headed back up to our room

to grab our backpacks, 

and stuff we needed to get off the ship.

We were in port from some time around noon,

until well past the time we were supposed

to be all back on board by 9:30 PM.

Hello Juneau!

There was a bald eagle perched in one 

of those trees.  I took photos,

but it was too far away to get a good shot.

We were told to look 

for the white golf balls in the trees.  

 That was how to spot the eagles.

Just a couple hours  later,

 we were up there on top of Mt. Roberts.

  

Those tramway cables looked awfully 

small from down on the ship.

Time to get going.

The gangway was open

and passengers were disembarking

and already heading into town and on tours.

See those fuel tanks in the front of the ship?

Those had become a familiar sight to me

from the previous months of 

watching the ship's web cam.  

The ships weekly trip to Alaska

became familiar.

Sundays were sea days.

Mondays ~ Juneau,

Tuesdays ~ Skagway,

Wednesdays ~ Glacier Bay

Thursdays ~ Ketchikan

Fridays ~ Sea day until evening then Victoria

Saturday back in Seattle.