Cruising Hubbard Glacier and Juneau

 A sea day with a long pass at the Hubbard Glacier while the rich people get tendered off to do excursions, lets us get the lay of the land with the Windjammer Café, Oscar decides that he loves kids’ club

more than life itself and doesn’t want to leave it much. John and I get to rediscover what it’s like to cruise with just the two of us while he’s there for 3 hours. We can see the glacier best from our window in our cabin because we’re on the right level for it and have found a warm, sunny spot where we can sit and read our books as if we’re on a warm cruise when it’s still just too cold to think about putting on a
swimsuit. We play around with the app to try to figure out what’s happening where on the ship, but find that the little newsletter they put in the room every night is just better than the app. Oscar gets his

first towel animal on this evening and is so excited he can’t sleep, but we don’t care anyway because we made it on the cruise. I was really worried about not making it in so many ways, but we’re here now and our second day is our first port with an excursion out to the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau. Worst excursion in some ways, great in others. We’re at a outer dock so that the Royal Caribbean Quantum class ships can get the good port, but at least we have a dock and aren’t tendering in like another ship. We get to the main boardwalk along the sea in Juneau and walk around the town. Oscar has found the joy of going into a cruise lines’ jewelry store and getting jewelry for free. He got a whale tail charm necklace for nothing and is over the moon about it. We catch our excursion and have a father daughter team narrating that I think are trying to make it

on an Alaska show. He brags about how off the grid they live and how his daughter has never seen a Taco Bell or anything else like that, but she has an Instagram page of course. We see a black bear on the road out of the glacier which has everyone ooohhhing and aaahhhing, but don’t get a picture. Oscar doesn’t care though, we saw one and that knocks everything but Orca, wolverines and polar bears off his list of things to see on this trip. He knew we weren’t going to see any polar bears and I told him that wolverine would be like seeing a unicorn, it ain’t going to happen, but the kid dreams big. When we get to Mendenhall, we find the salmon stream and get to see huge fish swimming up this small, shallow creek, fighting each other and the river to get where they need to go. Oscar has decided that salmon are the best part of the wildlife we’ve seen and he doesn’t want to see any more bear because they will most likely be eating salmon and he doesn’t want that. So, no more need to try to see bear….awesome. We hit the ranger center and get his booklet, start hiking up to the waterfall and take a little detour to see the beach to find icebergs washed up on the beach. We get to have glacier iceberg ice like we got to in Iceland a year ago and are the only ones on this beach. It feels like a secret spot and ritual that we get to recreate here and is special. We continue on to the waterfall and enjoy seeing it, but I won’t let Oscar climb on the rocks around it and we realize that we now have 30 minutes to hike the mile back to the bus….so, we book it back and Oscar runs ahead to turn in his booklet, take his oath and get his awesome patch for the glacier and we even get to see the salmon again for a second before the bus pulls up. We find out when we leave some people that the next bus from our company will grab them….well, shit. We could have spent some more time there, but this is also supposed to be a city tour, but there really isn’t one. I mean how can it be a city tour when you don’t leave the main highway and in the capital of Alaska, you don’t go by the capitol building? Not acceptable. When the expensive taxi ride is over, we head to Alaskan Brewing Company to get an order taken and then completely ignored after that…..we receive no food, no check and we have to stop another waitstaff to find our original person again. She apologizes profusely and while I’m irritated as all get out, I tell her that with 5 large cruise ships in port, she’s allowed to completely lose track of people. She comps us our pretzel bites which was very nice and we pay it back in tips. We walk our happy asses up quite a steep hill in order to see the (dare I say it) ugliest state capitol in the United States and St. Nicholas church. It’s a Russian Orthodox church that was built in 1893, almost 30 years after the United States had bought Alaska from Russia. That little building was worth the trek. We head back down to the city boardwalk and take the shuttle out to the boat to reboard and have a real lunch in Oscar’s favorite restaurant now, the Windjammer. We realize that the cool kids’ pool is open with the slide because it’s actually sunny today, so we put on our suits and go for a swim too for several hours, move to the hot tubs because it’s cooling off. We see a woman at the bar with a Blanchard shirt on and I have to go ask if it’s Blanchard Michigan and it is!!! A group of 4 or more is on the boat from Blanchard, Michigan…..what are the chances? It’s a good thing I make friends with them because the bartender is exclusively serving their party of heavy drinkers and I get a word in edgewise to get John and I some drinks and Oscar a virgin peach dacquiri which he loves. Dinner in the actual dining room and Oscar loves their spaghetti, so we might actually get to come back some time. We’ve been seeing the shows every night and now that I’ve been on this boat for several days, I can definitely say that I’m not impressed by the food, the shows, the service or anything else on this cruise. This is our first cruise on Royal and I’m not feeling much of a need to return really. It’s the night before our anniversary and we get a faint pic of the aurora from the window in our cabin when I wake up close to midnight. That feels special and the Juneau day ends well for all of us after an interesting start.