Relaxing on board (Saturday)

I woke up at 5:30am (my usual time). I wish I could sleep late on vacation at least! A little before 6 I got up and went to the cafe so Sandra could snooze a bit longer. I was hungry. The cafe is open 24 hours, and I thought they started breakfast at 6, but that was only continental breakfast. So I had tea and a croissant and played on my iPad. While they were setting up for breakfast, one of the workers was singing the theme from The Titanic.

At 7, I went back to the room and Sandra was up. We went to breakfast and had the usual eggs and sausage and fruit. It's nice there's lots of fruit.

After breakfast, we talked about what we wanted to do for the day. We decided after all the rushing and stress of getting here and getting aboard, it would be good to have a low-key day. We won't get to our first port of call until tomorrow, so we decided to spend the day relaxing.

We first went to a naturalist talk in the grand theater. We were so laid back we were 30 minutes late. The ship has had a little more motion this morning, although still mostly smooth. While sitting in the theater, I felt oddly tipsy ("oddly" because I hadn't been drinking) and realized it was the ship rolling a bit. During the talk, we found out we'd be going through a very narrow channel that afternoon, so we'd be able to see the shore well.  We also found out that tomorrow, we'd see whales at 7:30pm. I don't know how he could know that, but I guess we'll see tomorrow. After the talk, we went to a shop and bought a book about the ports of call we're going to so we'll know more about them.

We had also discovered while hunting around for the theater how to get to the indoor pool, so decided to go to the pool after taking a walk on the "jogging path" on the pool deck. I'm guessing it was maybe an 1/8th mile circuit, but we added a little side trip each time around up some stairs and onto a stern observation deck. We did 4 laps and then changed for the pool. The big indoor pool is for "thalassotherapy." We need to look up what that means. Experientially, it was very salty, bubbly, and warm (not hot). There were these parallel bars under the water that formed a sort of group lounge seat to lay in the water. It was very relaxing to lean back on the bars, except I had to hang on to keep from floating up out of the water.

After the pool, we tried out the whirlpools, both an indoor and an outdoor one. They are just warm, not hot, and the jets are cold water and under your seat and feet, but not at your back. So that was different. Sandra stuck her toe in one of the outdoor pools, but she said the water was cold and we didn't really want to swim.

We had lunch in the cafe. We've learned now that one of us grabs a table and the other goes through the line. Then we switch. That way we don't stand around with food in our hands looking for a table. That worked pretty well. We had a variety of vegetable salads and Sandra had ling cod and I had a seafood jambalaya with squid, muscles, and shrimp. Yum!

We took a nap after lunch, then went up on the upper deck as we were now passing through a narrow straight and could see land close on both sides. The decks were pretty crowded and it was windy. After a while we went back down to the pool deck and sat in lounge chairs looking out the side(see photo). It's through plexiglas so not quite as clear, but also not as windy.

After our naps we went and got ice cream for a snack. Back at the room, we read some in the guidebook and figured out that we would try walking to the 2 miles to Saxman along the shoreline from Ketchikan tomorrow, rather than the 3 1/2 mile straight up hill trail we'd been thinking about doing. Saxman is a Native American village where they had a totem pole park.

Tonight the main dining room is formal night. So we dressed up in slacks and fancy tops. I was a little worried we wouldn't be "formal" enough, but really there was a pretty wide range of formal, from very formal evening dresses to simpler pants and blouses. So I felt fine. For dinner, we had a salmon mousse with salmon caviar and cucumber on top, frog legs and a Cobia Salmon plank (Sandra), and duck a l'orange (Nita). We got dessert: chocolate fudge cake for Sandra and a phyllo tulip (phyllo, lemon cream, and fruit) for me. The chocolate cake was the best of all.

During dinner we noticed that the ship was almost completely stopped. Apparently, they were ahead of schedule, so we had to kill some time. We're supposed to be entering U.S. water tonight around 8pm. They have to let off the Canadian pilot and take on an Alaskan pilot. Maybe they had to stop to do that.

For a postprandial libation, we had drinks out of our bar in the room and toasted a very relaxing and pleasurable day.