Sunday, July 21, 2024

Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Sea Day

Cruise Day 2

Monday, June 10, 2024

We slept well last night and were up by eight.  After getting dressed and cleaned up, we went down to the Neptune Lounge for a continental breakfast.  After breakfast we relaxed in the room a bit and then decided to head down to the casino since we had missed out last night.  We didn’t win anything, but we did get to play a while.

After the casino we went to a talk on Alaska by Kurt, one of the guest lecturers.  He was a very good lecturer, both informative and entertaining.  The talk was kind of an overview, and he will be with us the rest of the cruise giving talks on various aspects of Alaska.

After the lecture, we returned to our room where I worked on the blog until it was time for lunch.  One thing I haven’t mentioned is that we are sailing the Inside Passage north.  That means we have the Canadian mainland on one side and the east coast of Vancouver Island on the other with lots of islands in between.  It is a beautiful passage and although it was cold, we spent time out on the balcony taking pictures and enjoying the scenery.

This is a map of the Inside Passage.  Today we are sailing from Seattle to Ketcikan, the first port of the cruise.

This is a beautiful wilderness area, but you can see the clearcutting going on in the middle of the picture.




We met a Princess ship heading south probably ending their cruise.

This afternoon at three our Cruise Critic Roll Cal Meet and Greet was held.  There were over three hundred people attending so it had to be held in the World Stage, the ship’s main theater.  It went okay, but there were really just too many people to really get to know everyone plus having it in the theater meant everyone was sitting in theater seating, and that isn’t conducive to mingling.  We did see a few familiar faces from other cruises, but other than that, we just listened to the announcements and left.  It was amazing to have a roll call this big; our roll call amounted to about 20% of the total number of passengers on board.

Late in the afternoon we received good news from home.  As I mentioned, Val is the administrator of her sister Vicki’s estate, and our last big hurdle is selling Vicki’s house.  Even though it has only been on the market for three weeks we were still getting a little anxious since we hadn’t received any offers, but tonight that changed.  Val received a text from our realtor Joanna saying an offer was on the way.  Soon after that we received the offer via e-mail and decided to call Joanna to discuss it.  It was a pretty good offer, but we decided to present a counteroffer that Joanna will prepare and present in the morning.  Very good news for us!

After that, it was nearing time for dinner and since tonight was a dressy night, we started getting ready a little early.  We both had excellent dinners tonight and afterwards we went to the casino.  I was a bit worried as we had dropped by the casino a several times during the day and I had lost almost my entire allotment for the day, but right off I had a nice win that made up for my losses and let me play for quite a while.  We finally made it back to our room a little after ten and then read for a while before calling it a night.  Tonight, we set the clocks back an hour and go on Alaska time, so we should get plenty of sleep tonight.  Tomorrow we will be in Ketchikan.

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