Day 11: College, without the exams

This was almost a sea day. We didn't reach College Fjord until after 5pm. 

We ambled up to the atrium, and settled on Deck 7 for a coffee at mid-morning. Turns out the bar doesn't serve coffee, but would be quite happy to get us alcohol. Now I may not actually have much to do, being on holiday, but even so getting hammered at 10am isn't the way I like to relax.

Didn't stop some of the table around us picking up the slack. 

The atrium is one of the key public areas, and often has musicians playing. Today was a soloist playing the pan pipes. While I have very broad musical tastes, but they aren't broad enough to include pan pipes. I can endure them for short periods of time, at the cost considerable teeth grinding that will require a substantial dentist bill to fix.

I was off to get coffee from deck five, having just cracked my second molar, and passed the piper as he was finishing his set. Relief.

Then the audience called out "MORE!"

The next musicians on the schedule were standing by he didn't play an encore.  So I put the knife down and proceeded to order my coffees.

Lunch was another burger from the Trident Bar on Deck 14. We've found the quality of the burgers is much higher than for our first cruise on Princess, and for that matter is generally higher in the restaurants and buffet. 

This isn't necessarily a good thing. I'm eating more-or-less moderately, with a higher percentage of "more" days than I've had on our previous cruises. 

And that's why we finally made our way to the gym.

The gym is about the same size as I remember on the Sun Princess. The difference is that this gym was close to packed, partly due to more passengers on the Diamond Princess, and partly because the median age on  cruise ships seems ten years lower than on our first one.

We returned to our cabin around the time we were entering College Fjord, so Emma welded herself to the balcony. The weather wasn't as kind as it had been in Glacier Bay, with a low mist through most of the fjord. Not enough to prevent us from seeing the closest glaciers, but enough to mute the lighting and give the landscape a subtle monochromatic quality.

Which is very much part of the Alaska experience. And very pretty in its own right.

There was also a slight drizzle, so when I joined Emma she said, "I'd recommend getting something dry to sit on. And the bottle of red."

So I did. 

Which was followed by the bottle of white (hey, I'm allowed a little decadence. I did pass on booze for breakfast.)

Once again I left Emma outside when the cold started freezing my toes together. She refused to leave, vigilantly scouring the seas for signs of life. She kept spotting otters, "popping up like little balloons, lying on their backs, then vanishing again, but the orcas continued to evade her.

They will pay. Someday, somehow, they will pay.

The next day was our last day in Alaska. We were booked on a "26 Glacier tour" on a catamaran. The rain was getting heavier, and we weren't sure what to expect weather-wise.

Certainly not what we got.