Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Royal Princess in Skagway, Alaska August 27

Hello from Skagway!

We had a pretty rainy night last night and it lasted into this morning. We hit a fog bank early as we were just approaching Ketchikan and the horn blowing multiples times was enough to wake me up. I'm glad it did as I made it outside in time to watch the ship pull alongside the dock. While it was still rainy, it was beautiful in the pre-dawn light.
We had others ships in town with us today. We had the Celebrity Solstice docking behind us at the Railroad Dock...
and the Ruby Princess and Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam were over at the Ore and Broadway docks.
Between those four ships we had over 10,000 passengers in port today. The town was packed with people and it was probably the most crowded we've ever seen it. Thank goodness we weren't staying long! Today's priority in Skagway for us was getting to the Sweet Tooth Cafe for the best patty melt in the world. Just look at the meat and grilled onions and melted cheese and grilled rye bread all blending together. Just awesome.

Since we never made it to the bank before we left on the trip, after lunch we made an ATM run to the Wells Fargo down at the end of town. We also needed to get a stack of one dollar bills for the Encouraging Words Project as I already ran out dollars. Now I'm good to drop off the notes for the rest of the trip.

If you want to find out more about what to do in Skagway and other Alaskan ports, check out my Cruising Alaska resources:

We headed back to the ship after lunch and by that time the sun was popping in and out of the clouds. Still a bit cool, but then again it is almost September in Alaska. When we got back to the cabin we were reminded how much we absolutely love this cabin. It's big like a hotel room, not a cruise cabin. And for hubby to be able to easily take a shower in this bathroom requiring no steps? Just flippin' awesome.

Something else flippin' awesome? My Medallion clip issue is being addressed. Thank you J and V for your help, and K for delivering it! I imagine all the folks waiting for my first-hand passenger Medallion videos thank you ten times over as well.

More awesome is Matt O'. We watched the Wake Show taping again last night in the Princess Live studio. I gotta tell ya, that guy is good! I'm hoping to get to interview him in the next couple weeks and post it on here. I've got some great questions and I'm sure he's going to have to great answers. There are people who are just naturals at what they do, and he is certainly one of them.

Now for the frustration of the day. I've been adding these frustrating notes each day to remind everyone that cruising is not perfect and that there will always be something not going the way you'd like. I guess you could call them my own little Public Service Announcements.

Today's everything-isn't-always-perfect-in-the-cruising-world PSA comes courtesy of the tidal shifts in and around Vancouver. While it doesn't matter much to us, there are some other passengers grumbling about finding out we are cutting our port stop in Ketchikan short. According to the letter we all received,
"The port authority has advised us that due to tidal constraints around Vancouver, we must sail under the Lions Gate Bridge earlier than anticipated for our arrival on Saturday."
I also received word from someone on next week's sailing (and confirmed here on board today) that the next cruise will be leaving Vancouver super-late because of the same issue. Like, super, super, super late, and it too will change our arrival and departure times in subsequent ports. Flexibility has to be part of any vacation but I do understand their frustration, particularly when it's their first and possibly only visit to Alaska. But yep, everything isn't always perfect in the cruising world.

I had a request to post the Alfredo's Menu, so if you're interested, here it is:

Tomorrow we are off to Juneau and I'm planning on spending the entire day filming Ocean Medallion videos onboard.