Cruising Christine turns Gold in Gold Country: an Alaska/Legend Review

[bakersdozen12]

In addition to rocky seas that day, it was overcast as well, not making for very good pictures. On the bright side, it didn't really rain during the excursion itself. It only started raining towards the end of the tour, when we were on the way back, and it stopped in time for us to be able to walk around downtown when we got back to port.

 

So needless to say, my pictures from the tour aren't too spectacular. Early into it, they stopped at a spot which allowed us to take pictures of Mendenhall Glacier from a pretty good advantage point.

 

 

The way whale watches work is that they don't track the whales by radar, rather, the tour boats talk to each other in order to determine where the whales are hanging out that day. Or, they just look to see where the boats are, and if they see more than one in a single spot, they figure, "Hey, there must be one there!" And they head that way.

 

 

While we did see a few blows from whales (from far away), we really didn't see anything else that day as far as whales are concerned. I'm not sure if the roughness of the seas had anything to do with it, but it was what it was. I got one picture of a blow that is so blurry it's not worth sharing, since I was inside the boat when I took it, but I did manage to get one picture of a tail. And trust me, it was a miracle I even got that because you have no idea when a whale tale or the like is going to appear above the surface.

 

 

But we did see other cool things that day, so it wasn't a total bust. We saw a very picturesque lighthouse.

 

 

 

We also saw many more eagles, but trying to take pictures of them from a boat that's bobbing up and down in the water was nearly impossible. At least with my amateur skills and equipment. My favorite part of the day, though, was seeing the sea lions.

 

 

Even though we were much closer to them than the eagles, it was still very hard to get good, clear close-ups of them, unfortunately.

 

[bakersdozen12]

A pretty mountain picture that I managed to take from the boat...

 

 

On the way back, the bus stopped at a viewing area so that we could take some more pictures of Mendenhall Glacier. The tour companies are no longer allowed to drop you off directly at the Glacier park, unfortunately, so this viewing is the best you can get on a whale watch tour.

 

 

 

 

Overall, while we didn't get to say much in the way of whales that day, I do highly recommend Harv and Marv. They were just fantastic, especially the young naturalist that had much to teach us that day. I think as far as whale watches are concerned, it's pretty much a hit or miss. You just can't control nature, so you don't know what you are going to see. If we were to ever do another cruise to Alaska, I don't think that a whale watch would be on our agenda. That's not to say I don't recommend doing one, but it's kind of one of those things that once you've done it, home many times to you really want to keep trying to see better views of whales when there are just so many other things to see and do in Alaska? Next time, we would probably opt for a glacier tour instead. At least you are guaranteed to see those. :D

[bakersdozen12]

Juneau

 

Since we had plenty of time, we enjoyed a nice, leisurely breakfast on the lido. This was the first time I had every tried Carnival's french toast (besides the funnest french toast they serve during sea day brunch), and I have to say that I very much liked it. And this was also that I noticed that they have salsa available at the omelet station. Either that or they've never had it on other cruises that I have been on. Or at least, I never noticed.

 

Ugh, sorry for the duplicate photo again. I really need to proof read these posts better before I hit submit. And I really hate that the forum doesn't allow you to edit posts for a longer period of time. Anyway, this was supposed to be the picture...

 

[bakersdozen12]

Juneau con't

 

Anyway, to continue on with the review now that I sort of fixed my failed food porn post...

 

We returned to the ship in early afternoon, and since we were in port until 10 pm that night, we had more than plenty of time to explore downtown and find someplace for lunch. After dropping off our larger items (cameras, binoculars, etc), we got back off the ship and proceeded to head into town.

 

The Legend docked in Juneau.

 

 

Heading down the dock towards town.

 

 

Downtown Juneau is typical of pretty much any cruise port, complete with and endless amount of jewelry stores. There's really no difference between Alaska and Caribbean ports in that respect. They have all been taken over my Diamonds International and the like.

 

 

After walking far enough, we finally came to the place that I had in mind for lunch: the Red Dog Saloon. This place was mentioned many times when I had previously done research of places to have lunch while in Juneau.

 

 

Personally, I think this place is quite cute. It's very touristy, but as soon as you step inside, it's like you've been transported to a different time.

 

 

I'm sure the bar today is as popular as as saloon was back in the day.

 

[Rivermyst]

I wonder if you got the other balcony room that was available when they called me. That one was also in the same area on deck 8. Anyway, were you happy with the upgrade? I have to say, for us, I thought it was definitely worth every penny. We would have been find without a balcony, but having one made the whole vacation seemed more relaxed because we could go out there and enjoy the reviews without having to go up on deck, look for a spot, and deal with the crowds. It was just fantastic having our own little oasis to enjoy the beautiful scenery from. I just wish it wasn't so cold during the cruise, or else we would have spent a lot more time out there!

We loved the room and so excited since we were in an interior before. I bet we did get the other room. It was a great cruise.

[bakersdozen12]

Juneau cont'd

 

I thought the killer whale tap at the bar was a nice touch.

 

 

The floors are covered in sawdust. I guess this is what saloons did back in the day?

 

 

The absolutely best part about the place was the little old man playing piano and singing funny (and slightly inappropriate) songs. It was just a riot and very talented.

 

 

I contemplated getting a Glacier Margarita, but since it was pretty early in the day and I was cold from the excursion, I decided to warm up with a hot cocoa.

 

 

For lunch, my husband had a reindeer sausage, and I decided to try something new and have the fried Alaskan rockfish.

 

 

The food was ok, but nothing to really rave about. I actually really didn't care for the fish. It wasn't the fish itself, but the batter. Honestly, it tasted like frozen fried fish that you can buy at the store. But, the food was really inexpensive, and I would still recommend trying out the place because the atmosphere makes it all worth it. The place was very lively and everyone there seemed to be having tons of fun.

[bakersdozen12]

Juneau cont'd

 

A few other random pictures from downtown. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince my husband to go up the Mount Roberts Tramway. Poor guy just doesn't like heights.

 

 

 

 

The USS Juneau Memorial. If you've never heard of this ship, it's worth taking the time to read about it's history. All 687 men on board died when it was sunk on November 13, 1942, including five brothers known as the Sullivan Brothers. Their story was later immortalized in the movie, The Fighting Sullivans.

 

 

[bakersdozen12]

Juneau cont'd

 

After walking around and shopping for quite some time, we eventually retired back to the ship for yet another fabulous MDR meal.

 

For my appetizer, I had the potato soup. Which really hit the spot because I was still trying to warm up from being out in the cold all day. But I have to say it was different than I expected. It didn't have chucks of potatoes, it was more like a pureed potato soup. But I quite enjoyed it. The appletini also helped warm me up. ;) My husband's appetizer in the background was duck. He didn't care for the noodles that it came with, which I believe were rice noodles.

 

 

For my entree, there wasn't anything on tonight's menu that I cared for, so I went with the fried chicken (with the famous Carnival one-piece-of broccoli) from the everyday menu. It was delicious. But omg, it was so much food and so filling! It's funny, because most entrees are so small, which I like because I normally don't have three courses. Without the small portions, I have a hard time getting through the whole meal. With the amount of chicken, I was almost too stuffed for dessert.

 

 

Butttt...somehow I managed to find room. I mean, it is dessert after all. ;p I had the white chocolate bread pudding, and it ended up being my favorite dessert during this cruise.

 

 

After dinner, the only thing we did that night was to go to the Love & Marriage Show in the main theater. I'm not really sure why we went, because there is no way I would allow us to ever be picked to go onstage. I've seen shows before where the CD got way too personal with the questions that he asked the contestants, and I would never feel comfortable putting ourselves out there like that in front of everyone in the audience. But our CD Jen was pretty darn tame. I think she pretty much stuck to what she had to do on stage with the contestants. Remember when I said she doesn't really ad lib and improvise much while on stage? This was a good example of it.

 

Anyway, if you've seen one of these shows, there's nothing really nothing new when you go to one a second time. And for us I think this was our third time seeing it. But there wasn't much else to do that night, and I really felt like getting out for awhile before going to bed.

 

We eventually did retire for the night with a new froggy friend. There was no trying to save all of the towel animals on this cruise, btw. The steward dismantled them every night to make a new one. Which was fine because without a sofa in our room (the downside of having a sideways room), we didn't really have a place to store a week's worth of them anyway. But I did miss getting a group photo of them all at the end.

 

 

Next up with be my review of Skagway, which I hope to be able to write tomorrow. That one will probably be longer as I took way more pictures on that excursion than I did on our excursion in Juneau. Our White Pass/Yukon train ride with a shuttle back down, a stop for lunch at Caribou Crossing, and a dog sled ride was absolutely amazing! It was hands down my favorite excursion of the cruise.

Edited June 4, 2017 by bakersdozen12

[Missmeglea]

Loving your review! We sail on the Legend in July :)

[LuvCruiSun]

I'm really loving your review. Thanks so much for sharing!

 

Can you tell me when you're actually charged for the small boat excursion? I'm hoping it's when you get on the ship because I wanted to pay with OBC.

[cocacola86]

Would you book a balcony or save the money and use it on excursions

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[redstapler7]

This is going so great. That white chocolate bread pudding looks amazing!

[georgiacat]

Love your review. Keep writing.

[crusinpsychRN]

Nice! Do you have the whole set? I bought the set because of the fact that the middle sized one has a cruise ship on it. That's normally the one I use, but had to use the bigger one (with the car on it) for this trip. Just needed the extra space.

 

No just the big one. All my stuff fit into it with plenty of space left. I'll remember that next trip and put more stuff from carry on in it.

[crusinpsychRN]

In the Enchanted Forrest one of the chairs looks like it has a large hole in the seat. ??

[Crusin Karen]

Oh, my.....I recently finished your other review and I am just remembering you were doing the AK cruise. I had a B2B planned for AK oh, maybe 9 years ago on the Spirit. We had to cancel....you should have SEEN all the information I had accumulated. I could have written a book without even going there! Sadly, we have never been able to book another. We are lucky we still have our Caribbean cruises, but someday I just HAVE to go to AK. I am NOT a cold weather person. I am darn freezing here in NJ right now :eek: but I will go prepared and suck it up! :cool: THANK YOU for sharing this. There have been almost no AK reviews in such a long time and I am living vicariously thru you! I honestly couldn't be bothered with whales, but seals and sea lions....I just LOVE them.

[bakersdozen12]

I'm really loving your review. Thanks so much for sharing!

 

Can you tell me when you're actually charged for the small boat excursion? I'm hoping it's when you get on the ship because I wanted to pay with OBC.

 

It gets charged to your S&S account. So you are in luck!

 

 

Would you book a balcony or save the money and use it on excursions

 

Personally, if it were a choice between one or the other, I would use the money for excursions. Those are what you are going to remember more than anything, and it's how you really see Alaska.

 

 

In the Enchanted Forrest one of the chairs looks like it has a large hole in the seat. ??

 

Hmm, I don't think so! Lol. I don't remember seeing a chair with a hole in it. :)

 

 

Oh, my.....I recently finished your other review and I am just remembering you were doing the AK cruise. I had a B2B planned for AK oh, maybe 9 years ago on the Spirit. We had to cancel....you should have SEEN all the information I had accumulated. I could have written a book without even going there! Sadly, we have never been able to book another. We are lucky we still have our Caribbean cruises, but someday I just HAVE to go to AK. I am NOT a cold weather person. I am darn freezing here in NJ right now :eek: but I will go prepared and suck it up! :cool: THANK YOU for sharing this. There have been almost no AK reviews in such a long time and I am living vicariously thru you! I honestly couldn't be bothered with whales, but seals and sea lions....I just LOVE them.

 

I'm so sorry you had to cancel! I do hope you get a chance to book another one. Believe me, I am NOT a cold weather person. I actually hate it, and lack of sunshine seriously depresses me. But, Alaska is so worth it even when it's cold. It was absolutely amazing. I hate New England and I keep telling myself that I want to move to someplace warmer someday, but I could actually see myself living in Alaska. Never in my life would I have thought I would say that, but there's just something about all of it's untouched nature and scenery.

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway

 

Sorry guys! Didn't mean to go all MIA. But as usual, life and adult responsibilities just keep getting in the way of my true passions, which is writing, cruising, and writing about cruising. ;)

 

When I left off we had just visited the first port on this cruise, Juneau. The day after was our second port stop, Skagway. For this one, I had booked another non-Carnival excursion. After doing my usual extensive research, I booked an excursion called "Yukon Rail & Bus Excursion With 15-Minute Dogcart Experience" with Chilkoot Charters. https://chilkootcharters.com/ I'm not going to lie, this one was expensive. I believe this was the most expensive excursion we did on this cruise. But it also happens to have been my favorite.

 

My morning started with...you guessed it...a balcony picture! We hadn't arrived in port yet, but we were close.

 

 

Our arrive at port time on this day was 7 am, and our excursion had a departure time of 7:30 with a meeting time of 7:15. Because this was going to be an early day, we decided to order breakfast to be delivered, and left our card hanging on the door before we went to bed. I seem to remember the cards allowing you to write in a time range for it to be delivered, but the ones we were giving only had handful of already populated time ranges you could select from. I choose the earliest time range, 6-6:30 am.

 

Well, they took our card, but we never got our breakfast. We waited until 6:45, but decided if we were going to have time for breakfast on the lido, we couldn't wait any longer. I had letting food go to waste, and I sincerely hope if they showed up eventually, that it didn't get wasted. But with a long day ahead of us, we just couldn't risk having no breakfast at all.

 

So I had another yummy omelet and some french toast. As a side note, I never found the lines at the omelet stations especially long on this cruise.

 

 

You'll have to forgive me, because I don't recall if the next pictures were taken before or after breakfast. I believe right before because while I saw us pulling up at port, I didn't watch us dock or anything like that.

 

 

And interesting thing about Skagway is that the rocks near the dock area have a whole bunch of painted messages. From far away, I thought it was just graffiti and I remember thinking it was something I would expect to see in a city, but not in Alaska. But when you look at the rocks up close, you can see that they all have something to do with cruise ships. I would really love to know the story behind these. I was thinking that they are probably to commemorate when a ship first sails to Skagway. But really, if someone knows the history, please share!

 

 

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

After we ate and grabbed everything we needed for the day, we were off the ship in no time at all. And I found a perfect opportunity to take a picture of the ship with the beautiful mountains in the background. It was already looking like it was going to be a nice day out, weather-wise!

 

 

Chilkoot was very easy to find at the dock. At this point I've done many excursions through vendors outside of the cruise line, and we've never had a hard time meeting up with any of them. So if you've never done one because you are afraid to, don't be. I know I was at first, but really, they all do a great job explaining exactly where to meet them.

 

I didn't think to take a picture of the tour bus at the dock, but this is a picture of it that I took later on in the day. The guy in the picture was Brian, our tour guide. He was absolutely fantastic. I could have listened to him all day. He was a fantastic storyteller and very knowledgeable.

 

 

This particular excursion would have us taking the train first, then we would be picked up in Fraser by Brian in the tour bus, and driven back with stops along the way. I highly recommend doing the rail/bus option because it gives you the best of both worlds.

 

It didn't take very long at all to get to where we would board the train. I also forgot to take a picture of the train before we got on it (I think it's because I'm always just so excited for these excursions to begin), but I will post a picture of some train cars that were sitting off to the side of the train tracks, not being used. They were exactly like what we were riding in.

 

 

A tip for the train ride portion: if you do the train first, sit on the left side for the best views. If doing the bus portion first, and the train on the way back, sit on the right. Another awesome benefit to booking with Chilkoot was that we had an entire train car to ourselves. And we had the one in the very back, which you will see the advantages of later on in my review.

 

The conductor and the view from where we were sitting. The little room behind him is a bathroom, which was nice to have available for the long train ride.

 

 

We were the first ones to arrive and board that day, so we had awhile to wait before the other tour buses showed up (including the large and extremely packed Carnival tour buses), and while we were waiting, I was freezing just sitting there! This was probably because they kept a couple doors open until we took off. There is a small wood stove in the front of each train car that they light up as soon as the train starts moving, and after awhile, it did warm up. Actually that small stove really cranked out the heat, and it was nice.

 

[Frank12]

Thanks for the review and awesome pictures! We are doing the legend to AK next summer. Your review is getting me pumped! Our first AK cruise was on the Spirit. I wondered the same thing about the cruise ship graffiti on the rocks at Skagway!

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

 

The beginning of the train ride isn't quite as picturesque as when you eventually get up into the mountains. Because of this, if you have a choice between train first or last, I would pick first. There's something about saving the best for last that is fun, in my opinion.

 

In the very beginning of the ride, we did have curves to go around which gave you the opportunity to take a picture of the outside of the train as you went around the bend.

 

 

At one point, there is an area where you can see the cruise ship, which was pretty neat. I believe that we might have stopped at this point, but I'm not sure. The train did stop at certain places along the way to allow you to take pictures.

 

 

It was a little cloudy here and there at the start of our excursion.

 

 

 

We also passed another engine car that must be a spare, because it was the same as the one pulling our train cars. Btw, I'm not a train expert, so feel free to correct me as to my terminology. I'm sure it's not called an "engine car" but I honestly have no idea what to call it. I know it's not a caboose, because that's at the back of a train. But that's about all I know.

 

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

 

Living in NH, I hate the snow. I hate having to shovel it. I hate having to drive in it. I hate losing the power because of it. But, seeing it from the train that day was totally different, and I loved that we were riding through a winter wonderland.

 

 

Another couple shots of the train, from within the train:

 

 

 

The beautiful countryside:

 

 

At one point, the train goes through a tunnel, which was so unbelievably cool because it does get pitch black dark and you can't see a thing!

 

[bakersdozen12]

Thanks for the review and awesome pictures! We are doing the legend to AK next summer. Your review is getting me pumped! Our first AK cruise was on the Spirit. I wondered the same thing about the cruise ship graffiti on the rocks at Skagway!

 

I'm glad you are liking it! And I do hope someone can explain what the graffiti symbolizes. I know it must be something. I'll have to double-check, but I think after a bit of searching I did manage to find the Legend's and was able to get a picture.

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

 

A couple more pictures before we entered the tunnel:

 

 

 

I tried to do what the guy in that last picture was doing, and that was to take a picture of the entrance of the tunnel, but it didn't really come out, unfortunately. In hindsight, I probably should have busted out my phone and taken a video. Also, I don't remember if I mentioned this already, but as you can see in that picture, there are areas where you can stand outside of the train in order to get better pictures. They are at the front and back of each car.

 

At times, the train was right on the edge of cliffs, so if you have a fear of heights, well, there might be times that you will want to avoid looking out the window.

 

 

More white mountainsides:

 

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

 

Now, remember when I said being in the last train car had it's advantages? That's because it allowed us to stand outside on the back deck and take unobstructed pictures. I liken it to being at the aft of the ship and taking pictures of it's wake.

 

From the inside, looking at the door leading the the small observation deck:

 

 

Just a shot I took looking down from the deck, at the train tracks:

 

 

And some really cool pictures from that outside deck. At this point, the landscape was getting more white as we were getting higher up into the mountains.