The Alaskan Jewel! Welcome Aboard….You don’t Exist!

[Misskitty72]

Just had the funniest thing happen while reading this part of your review.

 

I usually go through and look at all the pictures first, then go back and read what you wrote.

 

Well, when I hit the picture of the fur bikini, I scanned the text and I read:

"I tried on several" ..."and so did Claire"

 

I was was like what!?!? :D

[jenseib]

The tunnel us very short and just continues on the road......we walked through it last time we were there...,,also regarding the stragglers, I don't think people worry as much in Alaska because the next port isn't that hard to get to.

 

Cool!

 

I really think it was more that people just don't pay attention...or don't care. I find this at a lot of ports all over.

 

Great review! It is bringing back a lot of memories of my trip in June! I sailed on the Star Princess, but I'm an NCL fan...We only had a few hours in Ketchikan and I wish we would have had more time. We didn't make it to Creek Street or much else, but I figured it is a great reason to go back!

 

I'm also from Toledo originally, there are actually quite a few Toledos around the country, but the Glass city is my favorite so far. Some day I'll make it to Toledo, Spain...

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

How did you like Princess? I sailed on Princess a year ago and enjoyed it too.

Thanks for reading....and what a small world! ;)

[jenseib]

Don't laugh...or laugh. While we were in Ketchikan, we took a taxi to WalMart and drove through the tunnel you took a picture of. Why did we go to WalMart? Well, we forgot stuff. We didn't do any excursions, so we walked around a lot - Creek Street, Street of Stairs, Married Mans Trail, the Heritage Museum, rode the trolley, and ate lunch. We still had hours before we needed to be back, so we went to WalMart. It was so hot while we were in Alaska - it was 75 every day, and I didn't pack any shorts. Neither does WalMart, not much of a selection, so I bought cheap jeans and cut them off.

 

It's so easy to forget stuff...so what the heck...try walmart out any time you need too. :D

 

The one bad thing is we really had short port stops and I think next time I will watch how long we are in each port when deciding which ship to go on.

 

Just had the funniest thing happen while reading this part of your review.

 

I usually go through and look at all the pictures first, then go back and read what you wrote.

 

Well, when I hit the picture of the fur bikini, I scanned the text and I read:

"I tried on several" ..."and so did Claire"

 

I was was like what!?!? :D

 

LOL! We really love those fur bikinis!!!!

[jenseib]

I have an update ready to go but I need to leave in about 5 minutes and I know I won't get the full update up in that time, so I will try to get back tonight and post it, if not first thing tomorrow. It's been a couple of crazy weeks and I hope to be caught up with everything at home and work in the next 2 weeks so I can move a little faster here.

Thanks for your patience.

[jenseib]

We now were slowly moving and sailing out of Ketchikan. It was really a very slow process and I took several pictures as we moved along.

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Another dead jellyfish….seems so odd I have seen 2 this trip.

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The misty mountains still look so cool to me.

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[jenseib]

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Well this is one way to fix a roof!

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A sea plane coming in…I just can’t get enough of those…they are so cool to see take off and land.

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[jenseib]

Now this is one steep road.

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A plane taking off.

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[jenseib]

Good bye Ketchikan!!!

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As we sailed away I went and looked at our purchases and showed Skip his new coat…and looked at mine….. XXXL. Well no wonder it seemed quite a bit bigger than the large. Oh well nothing I can do about it and it wasn’t overly big and I could wear a sweatshirt under it. And for the price, if I never wore it again after the trip I would still be ok.

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A ship in drydock.

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And another.

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[jenseib]

I don’t know about you, but I always find it kind of creepy to see the ships out of water like that.

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I just think these misty trees are beautiful.

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After we got a ways out we headed back to the room to find our snack of the day.

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Skip ate some cheese before I had a chance to photograph it.

[jenseib]

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Up next……a relaxing afternoon and missing the whale sightings once again.

[bumorgan]

We took a floatplane ride while at Ketchikan to the Tongass National Forest. We landed on a pristine lake in the park and were allowed to go stand on the floats to take pictures. Great memories! Love your travel log. Thanks.

 

Dan

[jenseib]

We took a floatplane ride while at Ketchikan to the Tongass National Forest. We landed on a pristine lake in the park and were allowed to go stand on the floats to take pictures. Great memories! Love your travel log. Thanks.

 

Dan

 

My friend did something similar too a year ago and she said it was so cook. They even saw a bear not far from them. She got some amazing pictures.

[jenseib]

At some point after we headed back out to sea, Claire was ready to go to the kids club again so I took her.

I hung out and took pictures, played a little in the casino and just enjoyed the afternoon.

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I wanted some icecream so I went in search of it…And the machine wasn’t working right, basically just spitting out a little bit, so I assumed it needed a refill so I went for something else instead.

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I found a table and there were a bunch of people who spoke mainly Spanish, but mixed with English too, were saying how there were whales. I kept looking and looking and then someone would point….I would look and then they would say, oh no that’s not one.

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[jenseib]

I think I basically sat down right after we basically passed the whales as one was never confirmed after that.

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This was my snack. It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst either.

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I headed then out back to see if I could perhaps get lucky and see a whale.

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If course while I stood there a mother caught up with her teen daughter there and the daughter was going on and on about all the whales she saw a little earlier. I was jealous!

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[jenseib]

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Part of the wonderfulness of cruising is just staring off and watching the world go by.

 

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My next pics are inside, so my guess is I was changing decks.

 

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[jenseib]

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At some point it was time to get ready for the evening and I showered. I also went to the task of trying to dry our tennis shoes out. I stuffed them with tissue to get some moisture out and then I took a hair dryer to the inside of each pair. Let’s just say, blowing warm air in tennis shoes does not produce the loveliest of smells…..but it did help them dry up and by the next day there were all comfy again.

At some point Skip and Claire returned and we all got cleaned up.

I think I must’ve taken a little walk while they were getting ready.

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[jenseib]

And then we headed to the early show for the evening. Tonight was Jean Pierre, though they called him JP. He was advertised as a magician but also was noted there was comedy with it.

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It was already pretty crowded when we arrived. We sat in the balcony and those stupid glass dividers really make it hard to get a good look at the stage. You either have to kind of duck down and look through the glass or get taller to look over it.

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JP was funny. He did some tricks along with jokes and we really enjoyed him. We were laughing pretty hard at times. He is rated PG13 and there was some adult humor, but nothing too bad.

At the end he was selling little magic kits of some sort, which we did not buy, but I did catch a picture before we left.

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After the show we headed outside for a few minutes and then it was time to head to dinner.

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Up next…Dinner!

[Cruisin Oma]

Honestly to me....a lot of the crew on the Jewel did not want to go out of their way for anything. I think of the crew' date=' the bartenders were the best. Very different than our experience with DCL and even Princess. However we still had a good time, I just didn't feel like they were overly friendly or helpful. Now there were a few that were great and friendly.....and they all worked on DCL before. LOL. I carried my DCL backpack around and had a DCL lanyard on and many former DCL crew members would stop and ask which ships I had been on and they all seemed to have loved working for Disney. From what I gather, with NCL they work less hours. One even told me right off the bat that I was going to notice a lot of differences.

 

Even with all our issues, I will still sail NCL again. For the most part we had a good time and enjoyed many things.[/quote']

 

 

Do you wonder if maybe you were treated the way you were was because of the DCL backpack and Lanyard? Not trying to criticize you for doing it, just wondering if you felt it had any impact on how you were treated.

[jenseib]

Do you wonder if maybe you were treated the way you were was because of the DCL backpack and Lanyard? Not trying to criticize you for doing it, just wondering if you felt it had any impact on how you were treated.

 

 

No I don't. I really don't think many of them probably paid attention to them and the backpack is in your face DCL either. It's black and blue and says Castaway Club on it.

The only people who ever really noticed it were people who used to work on Disney (or a few who have sailed them before) and they were always the most friendly of the crew.

[jenseib]

Dinner tonight was at Cagneys, which is a steak house.

We checked in and were seated shortly. I went to take a picture of Skip and Claire as we were seated and our hostess offered to take one of all us.

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As we settled in I took a picture of the chairs and area around us.

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Our view.

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And the menu.

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[jenseib]

We started with some rolls.

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Skip and I also ordered a drink. I think it was called a Speakeasy Martini.

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WOW!!! This sucker was strong and not that tasty to me. I ended up giving most of mine to Skip.

A photographer came around at one point and took our picture.

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We ordered appetizers and I got the lump crab salad.

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This was just ok to me. Not bad, but really more just not my thing.

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And the potato soup, which I enjoyed.

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[jenseib]

Claire got the chicken wings and said they were good but she preferred the ones at O’Sheehan’s better.

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Claire and I got the filet mignon. Claire thought it was way too small. She likes her steak. They did butterfly hers so it looked a bit bigger, but she still wished she had more. She also got the truffle fries, which were the same they had been serving in Moderno and she was in heaven.

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Skip got a steak too, but not sure which one. It looks like he got onion rings as well.

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We both got mushrooms as a side.

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I thought the meal was very good. It was all cooked well and tasted great. The service was slow, but our waitress was very nice. We could see the Moderno staff coming in to get meats to take next door (they share a kitchen). We found it odd but it seemed like they would stand around chatting more than taking their meats off to the other room. I had heard Moderno service can be slow and seeing this made me realize why.

Time for dessert, and we were all pretty full at this point, but we still ordered.

Skip got the some sort of warm brownie with ice-cream and caramel brittle.

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Claire and I got the Oreo Cheesecake.

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[jenseib]

YUM! With a Capital Y. It was so good and we were so full but we stuffed as much as we could in.

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After we were done we rolled out and headed outside for some fresh air.

Skip got to talking to some guys and Claire and I noticed a lighthouse blinking off in the distance. That Squiggly light is the light house.

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We were pretty tired after a busy day and headed back to our room for the night.

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This guy met us in our room tonight.

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We all got ready for bed and went out fairly early…though I think Claire watched TV later than us. The TV had a timer which I would set to go off each night…otherwise Claire might be up half the night channel surfing.

Tomorrow….Will I finally see a whale?

[jenseib]

Day 5, Aug, 4, 2015, Juneau

We were up nice and early today…Our bodies still were not adjusting to Alaskan time…Well Claire’s was already on it, but Skip and I weren’t. I think I was up before 5:30. We did have an early excursion meeting time today as well but I knew it wouldn’t be an issue for us with the time change.

I went out to take a look.

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We were getting phone signals too, so we knew we were close and sure enough there were signs of civilization.

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Edited October 18, 2015 by jenseib

[jenseib]

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Every view was just breathtaking.

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