The MANY MANY photos associated with this post can be found here: Day 05 – Glacier Bay.

I could barely sleep the night before Glacier Bay. We hadn’t set an alarm, but we had ordered room service for 9am. We ordered lots of items that we would be able to snack on throughout the day, as the plan was to hole up in our room. After all, that’s why we paid for the upgrade to a balcony! We had also grabbed extra cocoa packets to make Poor Man Mochas in our room. (NCL, unlike other cruise lines, provides a coffee maker in your room. Yay NCL!) We’d been told that the park ranger would be in the Spinnaker lounge starting at 8am to answer questions. I woke up at 6:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I wrapped up in my NCL robe (resplendent with the rebellious fish logo…which I love, btw) and went out on the balcony to check out the view. So far, there wasn’t much, but I did get to see the ranger’s boat pulling up next to ours and them boarding us. That was pretty cool. (I didn’t get pictures because I couldn’t find my camera in the darkness of our room, and I didn’t want to disturb DH.)

At 8am, DH was awake, but commentary hadn’t started on the TV, and we weren’t sure if our TV was wrong or if we weren’t supposed to be hearing it yet. We were already going by pretty things, and I didn’t want to miss a moment. We decided to go up to Spinnaker to check on things. Spinnaker’s outer seats/couches were already being reserved but aside from that, the crowd was sparse. A small crowd was gathered around the ranger table. They had brought some items from the gift shop, as well as a bunch of extra maps. We asked and learned that the commentary wouldn’t start until around 9am, as we got further into the bay.

We headed back down to the room to wait for our room service to arrive and to get ready for the show. We started out with some Poor Man Mochas, and I added pillows to my deck chair outside so that I’d be boosted by the pillows to above the railing. I also put my camera and the binoculars out on the balcony so they’d adjust to the cooler temperature and avoid fogging. We bundled up in jeans, socks, and sweatshirts. At first, we mostly just saw mountains. You’ll also notice a general trend in my photos of waterfalls. There were tons of thin, but incredibly fast-moving, waterfalls all over this part of Alaska. I love waterfalls, so, yeah, I took lots of pictures of them.

Seagulls were following us as we went. It was almost like they were bodyguards for the ship. The Pearl’s staff had been very specific about not feeding the birds. They mentioned that, last week, they’d gotten fined for someone feeding the birds. They had also mentioned that you shouldn’t throw things in the water, and that you shouldn’t even bring loose paper or anything that could blow away onto the balcony.

So, I’m sure you can imagine our dismay when we saw our next door neighbors tossing things into the water. I called out, “Hey! Don’t throw things in the water!” A female voice said, “it’s just food.” DH replied, “They specifically said not to feed the animals or birds here…and not to put things in the water.” The female voice said, “Oh.”

We thought that was the end of that, but it wasn’t. Our side of the ship (starboard) was the less interesting side for the trip up the bay. The ranger kept pointing out all these glaciers we were passing on the port side. Now, it doesn’t matter in the long run, because the ship turns around, so both sides get to see everything eventually, but it was frustrating for the first two hours to keep hearing about things we couldn’t see. I suppose that might be why our neighbors decided to start feeding the birds:

We said something to them, again, but it didn’t stop them. So, we took the above picture and several others. The neighbors to our right loudly agreed with us about how these people suck; they could see the bad neighbors’ actions, too. When it comes down to it, not only are you fucking with an ecosystem, you’re making things bad for the ship and guests. It’s really a terrible thing to do from any angle. DH and I discussed it, and we decided (once we had enough photos to really prove they were actively feeding the birds) to report them. When the map indicated that we’d have a bit of a scenic break, DH took the camera and ran up to the Spinnaker lounge. He said that he talked to a ranger, gave them the room number and showed them the photos. Unfortunately, the rangers can only fine the ship, not individual people. But, they said that they can give NCL the information of who it was so that NCL can penalize them if they choose. We don’t know what happened to the people, but we did what we could for justice. We thought Mr. Moo would be proud of us. (I contemplated ways to shame them for the rest of the cruise…like putting a sign on their door that said EVIL BIRD FEEDERS!!!…but I didn’t do anything.)

We saw lots of little icebergs:

We saw people camping (look for the red dot, and around this same area of the gallery, look for another picture with a yellow dot):

And, of course, we saw glaciers.

This is the Grand Pacific Glacier. It looks like it just ends in dirt over to the right, but that’s actually just ice with a lot of silt in it.

This is the Margerie Glacier. It’s the one that people photograph the most, I think, because it’s so huge and you get pretty close to it. Keep in mind that your/my/our perspective is thrown off when looking at it, because there’s nothing normal sized to compare it to. It’s like six miles wide, and we were quite far away from it…but kind of like how Vegas buildings throw you off, the glaciers throw you off as to how far away you are and how big they are…because they’re that fucking huge.

I call this the glacier nostrils:

In the bottom center-ish area of this picture, you can see where there’s an outpouring of water. That’s water that has melted inside the glacier and is shooting out at incredible velocity, because of the high pressure of the glacier around it. The ranger said that most retreating glaciers have one or two of these “fire hose” areas.

Next, we saw Johns Hopkins glacier, which was incredibly blue.

This is the Lamplugh glacier. We had lots of time to stare at it.

This is the Reid glacier, which you can only see from a fair distance…but thanks to my camera’s awesome zoom, you can’t really tell how far away we were.

There are a TON more glacier pictures in the Glacier Bay folder of the gallery, so check them out if you’re bored and curious. On the way out of Glacier Bay, I stood out on the Great Outdoors area (aft) to watch for wildlife. The rangers had said we were likely to see a lot of wildlife as we were leaving. Sure enough, I saw whales and at least thirty otters. I could not get any pictures of the otters, because they were too fast. They were laying on their backs watching us and riding the wake, though.

I’m ashamed to admit that I dozed during the ranger’s talk in the theater later that day. It was in a darkened theater, and as mentioned earlier, I did not get much sleep. He was interesting, and I remember him telling funny stories, but I snoozed. I just hope I didn’t snore!

All the photos and videos from our Alaska trip are uploaded. Apologies if you’ve been bombarded with status notifications while I uploaded everything.

Photos:
All the photos are in this gallery

Videos:

This is a YouTube playlist. Click the grey left and right arrows to switch between videos.

Photos associated with this post can be found here: Day 04 – Skagway

The ship arrived in Skagway at 8am, but we had decided to wait until 9am to leave the ship. We had the entire day in Skagway (until 9pm), and we figured that we had plenty of time to accomplish our plans. Skagway was the only port that didn’t have beautiful weather for us. It was cold, grey, and rainy in Skagway. However, we bundled up in layers. DH hadn’t brought a raincoat with a hood, so I lent him my travel hat (sun and rain resistant, and folds up for packing…gotta love L.L. Bean!). He looked adorable in my green flowered floppy hat all day. But, it kept his head dry!

It was quite a walk from the ship to town down the dock, but the Pearl was actually parked at the most convenient of the four docks in Skagway. You could actually look straight down Main Street and see our ship at the end of the street.

Most people do the White Pass railway in Skagway, which is part of why the ships stay there so long. Neither of us were that interested in the railway, especially because it took up so much of the day to do. Instead, we planned to visit a summer dogsledding camp and spend some time with puppies!

As we were walking into town, we saw a red hut selling tours, and we booked our dogsledding with them. We saved around $30-$40 versus the ship’s pricing. We did have to meet up with the tour at a different pier (the NCL Star’s pier) that was quite a walk away, but it was worth it. We booked for a 1pm tour so that we’d have time to do the evening White Pass railway if we decided we wanted to do it after all. That also gave us plenty of time in town in the morning to browse shops and locate internet access. DH was desperate to update his podcasts and ended up setting up camp at a wi-fi hotspot. I browsed the stores and picked up souvenirs for folks at home, including Pancake. (Pancake is getting some Alaskan salmon, intended for humans, as his souvenir.)

We went back to the ship for a quick lunch before our tour. The ship’s buffet always had some kind of curry meat (like pork curry or beef curry), and I ate that for lunch almost every day. It was very tasty and just spicy enough to be interesting without burning your mouth. We also dropped off our laptops. Then, we headed over to the Star’s pier to meet up with our tour. It was a bit hectic trying to find the meetup point, mainly because the train was also loading at the time, but we got there eventually. A mini-bus picked us up, along with Star passengers, for the tour. The actual tour is run by Alaska Excursions. Here’s a link to their site.

They drove us out of Skagway up a mountain road that was, in many areas, just wide enough for the bus and a small car. This is a map showing the road that we were on and where we went. The bus driver told us about the town and scenery as we headed to the camp. It was around forty minutes to get there from downtown. The bus driver told us that Skagway has one school, one bank, one grocery store, one post office, but thirty jewelry stores.

This jewelry thing makes sense in the Caribbean, but in Alaska, it perplexed us. In the Caribbean, at least you might have the vague impression that you’re saving money (despite the stores all being owned/operated by the cruise ship companies), and people tend to be more willing to spend money while on vacation anyways. The only reason we could think of to buy jewelry in Alaska from one of those Diamonds International places or similar is because of the lack of sales tax. Anyways…

The camp was near Dyea, which was a homestead camp during the gold rush, near the start of the Chilkoot trail. Our bus driver (I wish I could remember his name!) told us that people will still hike the Chilkoot for fun, usually over several days, but that his crazy girlfriend did it in one day. (His girlfriend is also a musher, and she gave the talk to us at the camp.) The area we drove past was beautiful, and that alone was almost worth the money…getting out of town and just getting to see the area.

After the drive, we switched over to smaller mini-vans to ride through the camp and up an even steeper and narrower (and unpaved) road to where the dogs were eagerly waiting for us. We were divided into smaller groups and assigned a musher and team. Then, after a brief explanation of how the summer sled (essentially a large golf cart that was modified and had no engine) works and how to be safe, we were off!

What the video doesn’t show very well is that one bad turn, and we’d be hanging off the edge of a cliff. But, the dogs clearly know where to go, and the mushers actually ride the brake on them the whole time to keep them from taking us too fast for safety. Our musher pointed out that if he wasn’t riding the brake, they’d be taking us so fast that we’d end up out of control on the curves. He also noted that on the real sleds for racing, there’s no brakes. After the run, we got a chance to meet the dogs that had taken us for a ride.

Then, we rode in the vans back down to the camp to listen to a quick talk on dogsledding. We learned that the most important rule of dogsledding is to never let go of the sled, because then you’re alone in the cold, and your sled will be miles ahead of you before the dogs get tired.

We also learned that dogsledding is a dying sport. It costs a huge amount of money both to enter the Iditarod and to run the race, and there’s safety issues as well. Because it’s not (yet) TV friendly, it doesn’t get sponsorship, and so it’s getting smaller and smaller every year. All the mushers we met at the camp were either former Iditarod mushers or soon-to-be Iditarod mushers, and they’re working at this camp to get experience, build up their pack of dogs, and earn money toward the cost of running the race. We also learned that the dogs these days are a mix of greyhound and husky generally, versus the pure huskies that used to run it, that the dogs burn about six thousand calories a day when they’re running, and that the dogs wear little booties to protect their footpads from the ice.

Then, it was puppy time! I mostly held a puppy named Oscar. Oscar really was far more interested in chewing on my hoodie than me, but he was fun to hold and cuddle. We got to meet little 3-week old puppies, and we met a puppy named Pancake!

After puppies, the bus took us back to Skagway, stopping at an overlook so we could get some pictures of the valley (which are in the gallery linked at the top of this post). Our driver (same guy) told us about how the tide changes by 20+ feet in this area. Sure enough, we got onto the ship on the fourth floor and had to use stairs. We’d gotten off on the sixth floor, and we were level with the dock at the time. I did a little more wandershopping in Skagway while DH enjoyed the internet. I also wrote and mailed postcards. Then, we headed back to the ship. We were worn out, and we were planning to wake up early the next day for the Glacier Bay trip, so we just grabbed some wings at Blue Lagoon and crashed.

Find pictures associated with this post here (Org* Gallery > Alaska-2010-06 > Day 3 – Juneau).

One nice thing ab out Alaska cruises is that all the ports are set up for gangways. You never have to tender into port, which makes getting off the boat fairly fast and efficient. We arrived in Juneau at 1pm and had to be back on the boat by 9pm.

On the advice of CruiseCritic and other forums, we had refrained from booking any excursions with the cruise line for the Alaska ports. Instead, we planned to find independent booking companies and tour operators at each port. Overall, we saved quite a bit of money by doing this, and I think we ended up with better tours. This strategy is risky in theory, as tours may sell out, but so long as you don’t have your heart set on one particular tour or excursion, you should be fine. We were able to get every excursion that we wanted to do with no problems, but we also made a point of arranging our tours first thing as soon as we got off of the ship.

In Juneau, I wanted to book a whale watching tour. We booked with Orca Tours (an independent operator) in port. This was the only case where we actually paid about the same price as booking through the ship, but Orca Tours limits each tour to forty people, so you end up with more personalized attention and less elbowing when trying to see toward one side or another. We were taken in an (air conditioned) motorbus to the docks, which were about 20-30 minutes outside of Juneau. Then, we boarded the ship, helmed by Captain Larry, who is really the epitome of a scraggly sea captain in looks…but he has a very warm smile and demeanor, so don’t let that put you off.

We got some great pictures of the whales as well as two different glaciers that aren’t easily visible from land. We also arranged while on the boat, for an additional $20 per person, to be taken to and from the Mendenhall Glacier after the whale watching tour.
After the whale watching tour, we boarded a smaller bus to head to Mendenhall. The glacier is gorgeous, and there’s a lovely waterfall to the right. We had read on the boards that there was a trail to get you closer to the waterfall and glacier, but it was flooded out during our visit. It looks like it goes through the wetlands, so the tide and time of year will determine if it’s available to you. At any rate, we got a really good view from the overlook. We also chatted with a park ranger who had some glacial ice in a bin near the visitor’s center. She was getting it out of the lake so that visitors could look at it. It was incredibly clear and had an almost round and bubbly pattern to it as it melted. I asked about the colors of ice, and she said that the color of the iceberg indicates how tightly compressed the ice is. Blue indicates very compressed ice, while white is less so and clear is not compressed at all. When the glacier calves, the ice is usually blue, and then it gets white and clear as it drifts and absorbs air.

We had about forty more minutes at the park, so we decided to walk the trails near the Visitor’s Center. We started on a creek trail that actually closes in mid July because of bear activity. The creek is popular for salmon and thus bears. DH was hoping to see salmon, and I wanted to see a bear, so we decided to take a shot on that trail. It was a very easy 1/4 mile trail, mostly boardwalk with placards describing the wildlife. The creek was pretty and peaceful, but neither of us saw what we were hoping to see. We were a little early in the month for bears and salmon. When we reached the end of the creek trail, it was very easy to walk across to the end of the Trail of Time and do it “backwards” toward the visitor’s center.

That was a bit of a mistake. If you’re going from the visitor’s center, it’s downhill for most of the trail. If you’re going the opposite direction, as we were, it’s uphill. Nonetheless, I liked that trail better. It was more scenic, and it had a nice waterfall about halfway through. By the end of it, we were getting a bit worried about time. We were making great time, but we had no idea if it was going to get steeper or how much farther we needed to go. We had plenty of time though. We even wandered around the visitor’s center for a bit. We were the last on the bus, but we were on time getting there at 7:30pm.

It took about twenty minutes to get back to Juneau. The bus driver (Brent) offered to drop anyone off anywhere in town. DH and I decided to get off at the Red Dog Saloon in the “local” (not cruise-owned) part of town. We were famished, having not eaten since breakfast on the ship, so we split a Reindeer Sausage pizza and each got a Diet Coke (with free refills!). We did a little shopping at the Red Dog’s gift shop before leaving. At this point (8:30pm), it was dusk, and it was beginning to drizzle. Though I had been interested in taking the Mt. Roberts tram, it was no longer running. (The view wouldn’t have been great at that point anyways.) We headed back to the ship for some dinner and onboard activities. With the balcony cabin, it was always fun to sit or stand outside when the ship left port. We ended up crashing early, particularly because we knew we were getting up in the morning to go to Skagway.

Written at 10:50 AM 6/29/2010 — Photos associated with this post can be found here

We’re currently passing tiny icebergs. There’s a glacier just outside, creeping down between two mountains toward the water. I saw a bright blue iceberg before I could see the glacier and wondered where it came from, but that’s where!

Earlier this morning, just after having breakfast at the Great Outdoors, we saw several pods of whales go by. One whale came out of the water briefly and then banged his/her tail on the water several times, so there must have been good fish nearby. It was amazing. That alone was worth the trip, and watching the whales with the binoculars justified that purchase, too. Seriously, good binoculars (mine cost ~$60, so I didn’t even go for the best ones or anything) are worth it for this trip. DH brought some little cheap ones that he had, and he swears that they don’t even make anything bigger.

We met up with some folks from the CruiseCritic boards yesterday afternoon and then had dinner with them. They were very nice and fun to chat with. I did a martini tasting in the afternoon and got hammered. They bring you five mini-martinis for $15, including a dry martini, a cosmo, an appletini, a French kiss, and finally a chocolate tini. It was funny that everyone was sitting very primly and not talking to each other at first, and then after the first martini, everyone was like, “Hey! How ya doin? Where ya from?” Grey goose brings out the friendly.

While I was tasting tinis, DH did trivia games and met up with a cool couple who are marathon runners and also enjoy lots of the same TV shows that we like. Speaking of, one of the channels on the TVs onboard is basically just replays of entire seasons of sitcoms, including Big Bang and 30 Rock. We also saw the end of Star Trek on one channel, and we watched part of Wall-E last night. Percy Jackson is playing periodically, but it’s been hard for me to justify staying in the room to watch it.

I had been wanting to go in the jacuzzi, so we enjoyed that. The cool weather and sprinkling rain meant we got a private jacuzzi. I do really like that the NCL Pearl has two adults-only jacuzzis and a large adults-only pool. Then, we had dinner with the CC folks, played Majority Rules in the Spinnaker lounge, did live band karaoke in the Bliss lounge, and then DH wanted to do the Dancing with the Pearl Stars contest/event, and he ended up being one of the dancers. I took video of most of his performances.

DH was exhausted after dancing, so we headed back to the room to curl up in bed. Now, we’re about 60 miles from Juneau. We dock at 2pm, and we leave Juneau at 9pm. We won’t have a ton of time in port. Our first priority is checking out the Mendenhall Glacier and surrounding trails. Second priority is going on a whale watching boat that is hopefully smaller than the massive ones that you can book through the cruise ship.

Photos associated with this recap can be found here.

Author’s Note: I’m writing this at around 10am on 6/28 (ship/Seattle time) from the Great Outdoors café (aft, deck 12, outside but covered) on the NCL Pearl, en route to Alaska. We are traveling at 21.8 knots. It is raining lightly, and the skies are mottled grey. The sea is described the captain as having “wavelets”. Seriously…wavelets. I thought I had made that term up on our last cruise, but it appears to be a true nautical description. We are just southwest of Bolla Bolla, Canada. The speed of the ship is resulting in some serious rocking action. The pool looks like a blast to be in right now…unintentional wave pool! DH had to take some dramamine this morning, and he’s currently in the room sleeping it off. I had breakfast out here, and now I’m sipping my current hot beverage of choice: coffee mixed with one hot cocoa packet. As you might infer, it’s chilly out here. I think it’s officially fifty degrees, but there’s a cold breeze and the rain. I’m in a t-shirt, jeans, and sandals, and I’m seriously wishing I’d brought my fuzzy jacket with me from the room.

Seattle:

DH and I were delayed getting to the Milwaukee airport due to traffic, but we still arrived at the airport in the specified hour in advance, with a few minutes to spare even. However, there was a giant line at AirTran to check bags, even if you had already paid and checked in online! We dutifully got in line and waited. Once we got far enough in the queue to be able to see the check-in kiosks, we quickly realized that the problem was that people in line seemed to be waiting for a person to call them over rather than using the kiosks to complete the bag check process. DH and I, as well as another person in line, tried to tell the people at the front of the line that they could just use the kiosks, but they ignored us. I don’t mean they just offered excuses or said they couldn’t use the kiosk. They outright ignored us. So, DH quickly stepped out of line and approached an AirTran rep who wasn’t busy. He tried to explain that the line wasn’t moving because people weren’t approaching the kiosks, and could they please announce to the line that they could use the kiosks to complete bag check? But, the woman was either confused by what he was saying or unhelpful…we’re not sure which. The net result of all of this is that we were checking our bags about 25 minutes before we were supposed to get on the plane. AirTran didn’t give us any grief over this–really, how could they?– but it sucked for us because it meant we were rushing to get to the plane. DH had eaten a small meal before leaving the house, but I had planned to eat dinner at the airport. Fortunately, the bank (which I had gone to like an ADULT) had been having a bake sale for charity, and I had bought and tucked into my purse four homemade cookies. Those cookies saved my sanity, I think. AirTran doesn’t even let you *buy* food onboard. Without those cookies, I would have been in some serious trouble.

To make matters more unpleasant, my seat was wrapped in a garbage bag. I don’t know why, and I didn’t want to ask. The plane was full, so I couldn’t switch to another seat. I was sliding around on a trash bag for four hours, and I was sweaty-butted as a result. It is a testament to the power of cookies, World of Goo, and Glee to bring me joy that I was in a good mood throughout the flight.

One of DH’s good friends from high school lives in Seattle now. (He was the Best Man on DH’s side at our wedding, so you might know him from there. ) We planned to come in early so we could spend some time with him and his long-time girlfriend. I got to see their house for the first time, and it was awesome. They have a bonus room, which immediately made me think of a bouncing star that would give me invincibility.

On Saturday, we helped them with the Microsoft Intern PuzzleDay beta test. Basically, we did the puzzles that the interns would be doing, in similar conditions, to check for any bugs or problems. We were in a group of 12 people, mostly Microsoft employees. The puzzles were incredibly fun, and it made me jealous of the Microsoft interns. I was glad to have gotten to do the event, and I was surprised at how useful I was. I’m not much of a puzzle person, but I am pretty good at cryptograms and crosswords, which came in handy. I’m also smarter than the average bear, and by the end of the day, I certainly felt that statement to be true. Puzzle Day beta went from 9:30am until 5:30pm, including a postmortem. I have to say that I credit all of the organizers of the event. It went almost without a hitch in the beta, and based on rallying experience, I know how much pre-work must have gone into it for it to run that cleanly.

After PuzzleDay, we went to one of their friend’s houses for game night. We played a game called Dixit, which was a much better version of Apples to Apples…it was actually playable and got rid of the “judge decides everything” element. Dixit, if entered in Mindgames, would be a clear winner. Then, we played Vegas Showdown. I should also note that I found the host of the game night to be so hot, I wanted to cry. Plus, he’s a cook, and he had made lamb for us, with the fixings for making soft tacos. It was delicious. I’m beginning to think that the ability to cook well immediately makes a guy hotter to me, in the same way that being a gamer and being smart immediately makes a guy hotter to me. DH would fault me if I didn’t also note that AlexFrog, of BGG fame, was there. AlexFrog wrote the definitive strategy guide for Puerto Rico.

We got back to the house around 1am and crashed promptly. The next morning, our hosts drove us over to Mercer Island for brunch. I had a warm apple granola mix in hot milk, with fresh fruit and apple sausage on the side. DH had super-thick french toast. They had the best grapefruit at this restaurant, no joke. They also provided agave syrup for sweetening tea and whatnot, which was a pleasant treat. Then, we proceeded to the docks, which are literally in downtown Seattle.

On the way to the doc ks, DH spotted the Flying Spaghetti Monster going down the street, and I identified that we were passing by the Seattle Pride Parade. In fact, the space needle had a gay pride flag on top of it.

Embarkation was a bunch of standing in lines…no trouble really, but we were just in lines over and over again until we were finally on the ship.

We got delayed about two hours outside of Seattle because one of the passengers had a heart attack. The ship stopped, and they lowered the man, who was in a stretcher, down to a waiting ferry boat. I felt very sorry for him. What a terrible way to start and end a vacation. Still, if you’re going to have a heart attack and be okay (he was moving his head and seemed alert), that’s an awesome adventure to talk about at home. The casino opened an hour and a half late because of the delay, and, presumably, that’s why we’re hauling butt today. We’re up to 22.5 knots now.

Oh my goodness…they just brought a person in a dolphin costume out here to take pictures with guests. That’s cool. He’s adorable. It’s raining really hard now. Though we’re not that far from land, we can’t see it. I’m getting chilly, so I’m going to head to the room to get my fuzzy and check on DH.

So far, I like the Pearl. The décor is very modern. Our room is smaller than on the Legend, but it’s still adequate; it’s more of a standard cruise ship size.

The colors are bright and cheery. We have run into a couple of problems. I found a kids’ sock in our room from the previous guests, tucked at the back of a shelf. We didn’t have bathrobes or swim towels in our room, and, having asked for them, we still haven’t gotten them. Freestyle dining is great, though. We ate in the “formal” dining room last night. (On an Alaska cruise on NCL, jeans and a polo shirt count as formal.) Then, we went bowling. I started well but finished weak. DH finished strong and ended up with nearly twice my score. The bowling place didn’t have enough shoes in my size, so I had to wait on someone to return a pair to have shoes. That’s what I get for having oddly small feet, I guess. It’s worth noting that my shoes had been used by an 8 year old boy before I used them. They disinfected them and whatnot…but still…I have the feet of an 8 year old boy!