In case you missed it, click here to start with Day 1 of the Trip Report.
Day 5 – Juneau & Dawes Glacier (Endicott Arm)
We were up early again this morning to shower, eat breakfast and then meet our representative with Coastal Helicopters for our 9:15am appointment. We walked off the ship around 9:00am to a cold and rainy day in Juneau with lots of low clouds.
We walked out to our meeting spot and discovered our helicopter tour was cancelled due to low visibility. Boo!! We asked the rep if tours were cancelled often and he replied “Yes. It rains 300 days out of a year here, so we have to cancel a lot.” Bummer! We were really looking forward to this. That just means we have to go back soon, right?
The guys just wanted to go back on the ship and forget about exploring Juneau entirely, but I didn’t! I won that battle, we got in line for one of the shuttle buses to town, lol. On the way we were debating whether we should go to Mendenhall Glacier or just stay in town. Since it was 9:30am at this point and all aboard was 1:00pm, we decided to skip the Glacier since it wasn’t the best weather. Some pics of Juneau:
We shopped around a little and then stopped for some coffee/hot chocolate from a coffee shop. We killed time until around 11:15, when we decided we would go eat lunch at Tracy’s King Crab Shack and hopefully avoid the lunch rush. We were happy with our decision to stay after eating this delicious lunch! Seriously the best crab we’ve ever had! The crab legs and crab bisque were delicious. The mini crab cakes were good, but I’ve had a lot better. We ordered two lunch buckets to split. A lunch bucket came with one HUGE crab leg, a cup of crab bisque, four mini crab cakes and two rolls. For the two buckets and drinks, we spent around $100. It was expensive, but it was worth it and probably the best meal we had during our trip.
Tracy’s King Crab Shack – order at the counter and then find a seat
Outdoor Seating
Soooo good.
We headed back to the ship around 12:30pm. The all board was earlier on this cruise, because the day is split between Juneau and Tracy Arm (which ended up being replaced with Endicott Arm due to the amount of ice at Tracy Arm). I don’t think Disney has been able to get to Tracy Arm the past couple of years. Eddie and I went to the Port Adventures Desk (which was closed) to see if they were offering the excursion to take the Glacier Explorer Boat up close to the Glacier. I knew I had never seen it online for cruise, but wanted to make sure it wasn’t something they only allowed to book onboard. Unfortunately, we learned at Guest Services that it wasn’t offered at all for this sailing.
We decided to go to the 1:00pm presentation by Scott Foster: Fjords, Glaciers & Icefields in the Buena Vista Theater. It was a pretty good presentation with a lot of good personal pictures, similar to the presentation we went to earlier in the week by Doug Jones.
Next we had a Champagne Tasting at 2:00 in the Cadillac Lounge. This was organized in our Facebook cruise group. We both enjoyed this a lot better than the martini tasting. The presentation was a lot more interesting, and we liked all of the champagnes that we tasted. Our first was Moet Imperial, next was Veuve Clicquot Brut (which I believe was our least favorite, but still good), followed by Bollinger Special Cuvee, then Moet Rose, and finally Moet Ice Imperial – which was our favorite!! This one is actually served with ice. We really liked it a lot! All of the champagnes we tried are priced around $50 – $70 a bottle and most of them contained about 12% alcohol. The Champagne tasting was $35, compared to $20 for the martini tasting. This is due to the higher cost of the champagnes.
Don’t you love his shirt?
After our champagne tasting we met Hunter in Azure for our first round of Bingo! We always play Bingo every cruise (we’ve been jackpot winners before!). We bought the family pack which gave us two electronic sets, and 2 paper packs.
There are four rounds of bingo, and the prize increases a little with each round. The first round, we were lucky winners! Unfortunately, so were two other people, so we had to split the prize three ways – but still walked away with $88! That paid for our family pack and then some!
After Bingo it was around 4:00pm, and that’s when the Captain said the viewing would get good for Endicott Arm. I have lots of pics to share, so I’m going to do a Part 2 for Day 5, otherwise this post would get really long! Part 2 will be up soon!
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