Busy Juneau

After sailing through some gorgeous scenery, we finally made it to our first port of call Juneau. This state capital is home to about 30,000 people. On the day that we were in port we were  joined by 2 other ships, the Ruby Princess and the Eurodam. 

Once we finally docked, mum and I made our way down to join the line to get off the ship and explore the city. unlike the other ports that we visited we had no plans or excursions to do. The only definite this that needed to happen was to contact dad back at home. 

Once off the ship, we were greeted by pure sunshine; not the liquid sunshine that was pretty prevalent for the rest of the cruise, but genuine cloudless sunshine. 

The night before we arrived we received a map of the city as well as some vouchers for some free items that we could get at a couple of stores and a list of other places where we could get some really good bargains. After collecting our pieces, we wandered through the shops, who were all having end of season sales. If all you like to do when crushing is to shop the end of season sales are not to be missed however most of the stores throughout our ports of call were all the same or had the same items for sale, but with little space in the shops due to the quantity of cruisers in town that day. 

Eventually, we found a cafe that had wifi where we could try to talk to home. After an entertaining attempt to talk to dad filled with miming and lip-reading as we could not hear him or vice versa, mum and I headed back out into the city to explore Juneau some more. After walking around for a while we made our way back down to the waterfront area where we found some little local craft stores and food vendors. 

After making our way back to where the ships were docked we sat down by the water and watched the world/people go by. In passing for a brief moment we even managed to see a seal swimming around under the wharf. While there we thought about what to do next. by this time it was around 4 pm so we still had a while before we needed to head back onboard the ship. The options that we knew of were to go up the Mt Roberts Tramway or to head out to the Mendenhall Glacier. Looking up we decided not to do the tramway as for one thing I am scared of heights and mum is not all that fond of gondola rides, especially at that height (which in the above picture of Juneau is located at the top of the hill right about the middle ship). So we decided to see how much the trip out to the Glaicer was and if it was still running.

When we got to the tour centre, we found out that the trips out to the Glacier had finished for the day but that there were still spots on a trolley car tour of the city. So tired and weary from the long day of walking around and still suffering from a little bit of Jetlag, mum and I booked to go on the trolley car tour.

The tour was pretty cool and we would recommend it to anyone who was not sure if they wanted to do anything in Juneau. We drove through the city and out to a local salmon hatchery and then over to Douglas Island where we stopped at a lookout point and could see the full panoramic view of the Juneau area. From there we got some pretty cool shots of Juneau including the picture above with all three ships blocking out most of Juneau.

After the tour, we decided to call it a day in Juneau, especially as we knew that we had an early excursion the next morning in Skagway, so we headed back to the ship for dinner.

Just as we thought that our day was ending and we were heading to bed, clumsy me stubbed her little toe on the base of the sofa bed in our stateroom and broke it. So our day in Juneau ended with a trip down to the medical centre on the ship to get that checked out and strapped up so that I could keep walking on it and not let it ruin my holiday.  Just what I needed at the beginning of a holiday where walking was going to be a pretty common occurrence.