ZGSCL live from the Eurodam - 7 Night Alaska Explorer - May 13, 2023

[MisterMatthew]

The presentation of that dessert, is wonderful.  I'm sure it is yummy.  Maybe DOUBLE yummy.

 

I've never been to AK... but, will sail in a couple of days.  I've been monitoring the Juneau weather online -- i've seen rain, sunshine, and a mix of everything else.  Sounds like your weather has been amazing!

 

----Matthew

[Florida_gal_50]

Just now, canadianbear said:

Wow. Now that looks like a nice dessert-can I order it when I’m on the ship in November!!! 

I would try.  I think if you give them a few days notice they will try to accommodate. I never thought to ask before.  I was glad she volunteered. It was yummy.  I was glad to have its twin the next day for dessert.

[canadianbear]

Just now, Florida_gal_50 said:

I would try.  I think if you give them a few days notice they will try to accommodate. I never thought to ask before.  I was glad she volunteered. It was yummy.  I was glad to have its twin the next day for dessert.

Might pop by there the first night to ask or ask the Neptune concierge if the Tamarind staff are too busy.  Thanks!   

[zgscl]

1 hour ago, MisterMatthew said:

The presentation of that dessert, is wonderful.  I'm sure it is yummy.  Maybe DOUBLE yummy.

 

I've never been to AK... but, will sail in a couple of days.  I've been monitoring the Juneau weather online -- i've seen rain, sunshine, and a mix of everything else.  Sounds like your weather has been amazing!

 

----Matthew

We have been so lucky. Everyone has been telling us it is not normally like this in May. 

[MisterMatthew]

My guess is... you're??  at Victoria BC now (or heading there)?  Hope things are well, ZGSCL.

 

Quick question, are the Main Dining Room menus (and, Lido menus) for the Eurodam to ALASKA basically "set" for the summer.  Or, ???  I only ask because, I have logged onto the Navigator APP (here in Las Vegas, lol) and I am able to see the menus even though I am not yet on the ship.  Sorry, if my question is too wordy!  Thanks.  :)

----- Matthew

[zgscl]

11 hours ago, MisterMatthew said:

My guess is... you're??  at Victoria BC now (or heading there)?  Hope things are well, ZGSCL.

 

Quick question, are the Main Dining Room menus (and, Lido menus) for the Eurodam to ALASKA basically "set" for the summer.  Or, ???  I only ask because, I have logged onto the Navigator APP (here in Las Vegas, lol) and I am able to see the menus even though I am not yet on the ship.  Sorry, if my question is too wordy!  Thanks.  🙂

----- Matthew

Just leaving Victoria!! 

 

They are generally set for the season. What you see in the app is most likely going to be accurate. 

[zgscl]

I highly recommend the "Luxury Whale Watching" tour in Juneau if you can fit it into your trip budget. It is pricey, but it is one of the best tours I have ever done. This is my third time and I will definitely do it again. They take you out on a yacht with no more than 8 passengers. They are very good at finding the whales and they spin the boat around so the stern is facing it. Excellent viewing and no need to fight for deck space. It is $479 per person and is 100% worth every penny. I have had great sightings all 3 years we have done it. They also stop to show you Mendenhall Glacier on the way (and you get a great view from the boat also).  
  
Side note - take this with HAL and not Celebrity. Celebrity wants nearly $700 for the exact same tour in July. Good for them I guess as they have been sold out for months. We will be doing something else when we are back here with them, as much as I love this tour I don't think it is quite worth that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

For dinner on Monday I went to the Pinnacle Grill. The food was good, although I do notice that the pre-desert sweets have been downgraded from previous cruises. I totally forgot to get a picture of the pork chop. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

Tuesday - Glacier Bay

Is there a more beautiful placed in the world to wake up in than Glacier Bay? And we couldn't have asked for better weather. I think we made it farther up the Johns Hopkins inlet than I have before. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

Tuesday Menu & Programs

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

Lunch in the Pinnacle Grill was good. It is also a short and scenic sail over to Icy Strait Point. For dinner I went to Canaletto which was also excellent. The Crab Risotto was excellent - After being blown away on the Nieuw Amsterdam this dish has been a bit of a disappointment for on every cruise since so I am glad they got the flavor back into it! 

 

 

 

 

I always ask for some of the popcorn from the brownie with my ice cream at lunch. It is a great addition. Sometimes my mom will just ask for a bowl of it for desert. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

We had a nice evening sail away from Icy Strait Point with a beautiful sunset. 

 

 

Seattle offers a fantastic service - Port Valet. You can get checked in to your flight from the ship and they take your bags from your room directly to the airline. The program is free to all guests and paid for by the Port of Seattle. As far as I know they are the only port that offers this as a free service (in fact I haven't seen this offering from any port I have sailed out of since the pandemic other than Seattle). 

 

Somehow I made the naughty list for the muster drill. I definitely scanned into my station during the drill. The safety video was not playing on the TV when I got to my room so maybe it didn't count it when I navigated to it through the TV menus. As it turns out they just send you a letter with instructions if you don't attend.  

 

[zgscl]

Wednesday - Sitka

 

 

 

 

[Haljo1935]

On 5/14/2023 at 7:33 PM, slidergirl said:

 I was on the Eurodam on the Apr 29 cruise.  One side bank of elevators was down for awhile because the elevator doors on the 3rd floor (I believe it’s was 3) turned in nice waterfalls.  Staff was hustling around with those 5-gallon buckets trying to catch what they could.  I found it kind of funny - I hear these anecdotes of leaks and such on the ships and I got to see my own!

Also on Eurodam April 29 - May 6: mid elevators 1 was out for most of the week as well as 1 of each of the glass elevators on the sides, so mud-ship had half the elevators down. May want to consider aft or forward elevators or just allow a little extra time.

Enjoy the trip- you should have mostly nice weather. ☺

[oakridger]

What great weather you are having!!  Thank you for the pictures.

 

~Nancy

[Florida_gal_50]

My last 2 cruises the safety drill was not playing until later that night or afternoon.  I’ve gotten the nasty safety drill letter when doing a b2b.  I’ve said to them you said I didn’t have to do it again and they said correct and said it was an error.  Yeah, no kidding.  Your pictures are great.

[zgscl]

7 hours ago, Haljo1935 said:

Also on Eurodam April 29 - May 6: mid elevators 1 was out for most of the week as well as 1 of each of the glass elevators on the sides, so mud-ship had half the elevators down. May want to consider aft or forward elevators or just allow a little extra time.

Enjoy the trip- you should have mostly nice weather. ☺

Midship elevators are now only missing one of the side ones. They have all the others working. Definitely slowed things down during embarkation and disembarkation in ports as you have to take the midship elevators to the gangway most of the time. 

 

3 hours ago, Florida_gal_50 said:

My last 2 cruises the safety drill was not playing until later that night or afternoon.  I’ve gotten the nasty safety drill letter when doing a b2b.  I’ve said to them you said I didn’t have to do it again and they said correct and said it was an error.  Yeah, no kidding.  Your pictures are great.

Good to know if I ever do a back to back! I just ignored the letter and no one ever said one word about it. 

[zgscl]

We were treated to a beautiful sail into Sitka Sound this morning. I can't believe how great the weather has been this sailing. After we had cold weather in July last year maybe the weather fairy decided that I deserved a warm trip? 

 

Sitka used to be a tender port but now has a cruise terminal outside of town (they still tender ships on days with many ships). Passengers are bussed into town which is a 15 or 20 minute drive. When we were here in 2021 we had to take busses and then tours departed from downtown. This year tours appear to depart from the cruise pier which is a major improvement. At the end of our tour we had the option to get off downtown or stay on the same bus back to the ship. 

 

The “Best of Sitka: Otters, Raptors and Bears” excursion truly highlights the best of Sitka. We started with a 3 hour boat tour on Sitka Sound searching for wild life. It is fairly uncommon for the whales to breach (jump out of the water) in Alaska, this is more of their mating rituals and displays and usually occurs in the tropical waters where the whales mate. During that time they don’t eat for months before migrating back to the North to feed. You typically see them at the surface, diving down with the fluke (tail) and then come back up with a big puff of air. We got incredibly lucky and found a mother humpback whale teaching her calf how to jump and saw at least 25 breaches. Absolutely an incredible sight. The guides were completely blown away. We also found a grey whale which is rare this time of year in Sitka. Combined with the perfect weather this was really an incredible tour. 

The Fortress of the Bear is a fun place to visit. When bears are shot for getting too close to humans one thing I never knew is that the cubs are often also killed as they cannot survive on their own. The Fortress of the Bear was founded to give these cubs a place to go. Unfortunately once the bears are in captivity state law prohibits them from being released to the wild. They do their best to give these bears a realistic environment and even go as far as to hid their food around the enclosure so the bears have to forage for it. The bears are incredibly smart and have an amazing sense of smell. They can smell which handler came into the enclosure to hide their food and will usually trace the same route they took just by smell. There is an artificial river and during salmon season they release salmon for the bears to catch and eat. 

 

 

 

 

On the drive to/from the Fortress of the Bear you come across a funny sight - the retired San Francisco Bay ferry "Vallejo." She was retired in 2018 and I guess found a new home up in Sitka. I wonder if she will get a new life as a tour boat eventually? Or maybe it is just for private use? Would be interested to know. She was built in 1994 and has a capacity of 267, and is capable of 34 knots according to the SF Bay Ferry website. 

 

Finally we visited the Raptor Center which takes in injured birds of all varieties and rehabilitates them

and sends them back to the wild. In general the birds are kept in a special enclosure designed to minimize contact with humans. There is a one way glass for visitors to see in and the handlers spend as little time as possible in there. The goal is for the birds to heal and be released back into the wild. When release is not possible they will transfer them to the educational side of the facility where they will have more contact with humans, can see visitors, etc. During the educational session we met Kylie, a male red tailed hawk. Kylie was found injured as a young bird and found by someone who decided he would be a good pet. Instead of sending him to a qualified facility like the raptor center they raised him at home during his formative years. While he worked with a falconer and is fully capable of hunting on his own, he cannot be released back to the wild. They released him twice and he would repeatedly beg for food from street vendors and when they didn’t feed him he would start dive bombing people which is of course dangerous for both him and the people. Kylie lives in the educational portion of the raptor center and is often used for demonstrations as he is very comfortable around people and does not get uncomfortable with large groups. 
 

 

 

 

After returning to the ship I headed straight to the lido cabana for lunch. The Lido had already closed but I had another of my favorite "Cannonball" burgers from dive in and I also tried the strawberry smoothie which was great but somehow not quite as good as the orange. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

We were treated to a scenic sail away from Sitka through Sitka Sound. For dinner I went to Tamarind which was excellent. The Wasabi Crusted Beef is fantastic and not too spicy (tastes more like a mild horse reddish). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, I totally missed the fact that they converted the screening room into a library! I imagine they got a lot of feedback about taking them out and replacing them with a bookshelf in the crows nest (come to think of it I totally missed the crows nest this cruise, will have to go see what they did with that in October unless someone wants to share a picture. 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

I went for a late second dinner at Canaletto - I figure this will have a better selection than the late night buffet. Everything was great and the crew did a very nice job. 

 

 

 

Day 6 - Ketchikan menus & program

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

I finally made it to breakfast again in Ketchikan! The bread pudding was good but missing the pomegranate seeds. I ended up making this a spa day and stayed on the ship. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

An enhancement this year is the Pinnacle Grill is open for lunch in Ketchikan - it was only closed in Seattle, Juneau and Sitka. 

 

 

 

 

Ketchikan was another beautiful sail away on another beautiful day! 

 

[zgscl]

Third meal in the Pinnacle Grill today - the food was very good, clothesline bacon was some of the best I have had (it was a bit sweeter and less peppery than normal). They also finally got the mac & cheese exactly right. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 Menu & Program

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

Alas the last full day came along much more quickly than I would have liked. I slept in and had lunch at the Pinnacle Grill. I always forget to ask but I love having the burger with the au gratin potatoes. 

 

 

 

 

After lunch I relaxed in the cabana - they brought a special chocolate covered strawberries along with cake (the chocolate covered strawberries and sparkling wine are served daily at 3). I also had to have one more orange smoothie before leaving (or maybe I had 2...that will remain a mystery for everyone). 

 

 

 

[zgscl]

For dinner I went to Tamarind again. Another excellent meal with great service. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made it back to my room just in time to see us pull into the pier in Victoria, we arrived about an hour early. I had fun watching the port folks get the gangways set up on the Royal Princess. They spent at least a half an hour trying to get it right before they let people off. Our ship had no trouble and people were getting off with no issue long before anyone on the Princess were off. 

 

And of course, the dreaded disembarkation letter. 

 

 

I received my cruise sticker - a new update they do not give out the booklet by default any more. They now put a card saying that your stateroom steward has it if you need one. This makes so much sense to me as I think I have 4 or 5 of empty journals in my drawer for when my first one fills up.