Juneau

What a lovely little town. It's nice to visit functioning cities. Skagway was a theme park. Juneau was an actual city where people live. Of course tourism is a huge source of revenue but it wasn't set up specifically for tourists.

What a shit show of a day though. Firstly I'll tell you that the weather has been ridiculously beautiful. Today the sun came out again and I didn't even need long sleeves. We ate outside in town and relished every moment of sunshine.

We strolled into town about 9ish and poked around had tea and coffee and shopped a bit. Then we ventured back to the ship to drop off some things before heading to the helicopter tour of the Mendenhall glacier. Leave the ship to meet the guide and ...ummm...guess what. We effed up. The tour left at 9am and we thought it was leaving at 11:30. Shite. So we went back on the boat only to discover that the tour desk was closed and we had to talk to someone outside. Back off the boat (keep in mind we have to scan our cruise card and go through security every time. they must have thought we were nuts) to find out that the tour had been cancelled anyway due to weather. PHEW that could have been a nearly $400 mistake. Back on the boat to drop off the cold weather gear we needed for out tour and back out to Juneau for lunch. Now, had we shown up for the tour at 9 like we were supposed to we would have known early on that it was cancelled and booked something cool on our own like a sea plane ride, but no, we blew it. We had a wine tasting back on the ship at 3 and didn't want to risk being late. Which we ended up being late for anyway since the line to get back on the ship was like 4 miles long. Thank goodness the weather was good today and we just chilled in Juneau otherwise it would have been pretty frustrating.

We found an out of the way bar and got a beer and watched the seaplanes take off. then we took a tram to the top of a nearby mountain and strolled around up there. Saw a bald eagle that had been shot and rescued. They are very impressive birds.

All in all it was a decent day in Juneau. I am hoping for the improbable, a third straight day of awesome weather. Michael will be one soggy zipliner if we get rain tomorrow.