Day 22 (31st August) Juneau

As we ate our breakfast this morning we were sailing through the narrows towards Juneau. Docking time was 9.30am with disembarkation to explore being around 10.00am.

This allowed us to fit in yet another Digital Workshop. KC, the instructor, is very friendly and offers great lessons. This morning's lesson was on Cortana. This is Microsoft's version of Siri. Originally designed for the Microsoft phone it has been further developed for use on computers with Windows 10. We will wait and see if we actually make use of what we learned. As internet is needed for this to be set up and we have limited use of the internet, we were unable to practise what we have learnt.

We had not booked any particular trips for Juneau. On leaving the ship we picked up a map of Juneau (Capital of Alaska) which is 4sq miles in size and it has 39.1miles of roadway. You arrive in Juneau by air or water or walking. It sounds rather crazy that a state capital is so isolated. Not to mention that the population for Juneau is approx. 33,000 whereas Anchorage is close to 300,000 in population.

We walked along the dock and noted that two other ships were in port. Norwegian Sun Cruises and Coral Princess. (we wondered what happened to Ruby Princess that left Ketchikan shortly before us yesterday. It turned out that the Ruby Princess took their time getting to Juneau and arrived later that day.

We then walked around town. Not as many general souvenir shops but still an abundance of stores selling jewellery. We asked in one store we were visiting why so there was so many gem trading stores as Alaska was not where we believed diamonds were naturally found. The answer was that they are international ports and so very competitive in the jewellery market. (not something that we really looked into for truth in the statement).

As Vince's knee was playing up (a change from the aches of Margaret's joints) we did not do as much walking as we might normally have considered. Getting back on board we checked out the Dive Inn situated next to the pool. You can order burgers, hotdogs and chips. We settled on the self-serve taco bar. Very tasty and for the most part healthy. We won't mention the hazelnut mousse eaten with our coffee!

A roam around the decks and then another workshop. This time organising photos with Photo Gallery. Great class, now all we need is the time to tag the photos! Hmmm, we do have a couple of days at sea coming up.

Dinner was in the Pinnacle Grill tonight. This was organised by our travel agent. Normally to eat in this restaurant there is an additional fee (I am sure we have paid for it in the background). The restaurant specialises in steak and seafood meals. As we had eaten a late lunch neither of really felt like the three course meal on offer. The meal was nice but we enjoy the meals in the dining room just as much.

That's it for today!