Greetings from somewhere west of Juneau headed towards the Hubbard Glacier. It’s Tuesday and Day 3 of our cruise. Outside it’s quite foggy, cool, and occasionally showery. Now that’s no surprise as we’re sailing through a fairly major rain forest. We’ve just entered Yakatuk Bay and in a couple of hours we’ll be up around the glacier. Since the glacier is so big (some seven miles wide), it generates a lot of its own weather so there’s no reaason to expect that the weather there will be the same as it is here.

Yesterday, however, was one of those outstanding days! Bright, beautiful sunshine with a light breeze. We arrived in Juneau about 10:30 a.m. and we disembarked about 11 to take the bus into town. The accompanying picture was taken from the top of Mt. Roberts looking down on our cruise ship, the Oosterdam, as it was moored at the pier. Three other cruise ships were also in port that same day putting potentially 7,000 tourists in town. It sure seemed like there were that many! Mom and dad hung in there very well during the day. We walked through a number of stores, bought some small items, spent some time in the city museum across from the state capitol building, and walked back to the bus stop. They went back to the boat while Nina and I took the tram up to the top of Mt. Roberts. We spent a few minutes up there taking pictures, but the line to come down was very long, so we didn’t stay all that long up there. Of course, the fact that we were both quite tired with very tired feet had nothing to do with heading back to the boat about 4 p.m.!

We all gathered on the veranda and visited before going to dinner. The evening dinner is one of the highlights of the cruise. The meal is well served, very tasty, with good options. Our table stewards take very good care of us. After dinner most of us went to the show — a comedian — and then retired for the night. Because the weather was so good yesterday, we thought that might extend into today. We made arrangements to have breakfast served in the room with the intention of eating together outside on the veranda. However, it was somewhat foolish to think that wonderful weather would continue for two days in a row. The law of averages would argue otherwise. However, the weather isn’t bad, actually. Cool but not chilly, somewhat damp with occasional light showers.

We’re in the library. I’m on the computer updating the weblog. Nina is writing out postcards which we’ll mail tomorrow from Sitka. This is a new configuration of a cruise ship for Holland America; quite unlike the other ships in some significant ways. On the other three boats we’ve been on, the library was near the back of the boat on deck on the upper promenade deck. Here it’s near the front of the boat on the promenade deck. The biggest difference is the view. The other ships had huge windows looking out from the ship. This library has much smaller windows, much further away from the desks, that looks out at the promonade deck. The views are actually poor compared to the other boats. This is one unfortunate change. The boat is bigger by some 400 passengers or so than the last boat we were on — the Zaamdam. I think that may account for the reason that we sail so far out from shore and through rougher waters. It certainly accounted for docking in Juneau out where we had to take a bus back and forth to town. I’m certain it’ll mean that we anchor in Sitka and use the ship’s tender boats to shuttle back and forth to the pier tomorrow.

We’re having a very lovely, relaxing time. I’m looking forward to being up close and personal with the Hubbard Glacier today. After being out and about yesterday, it’s nice to have a much more quiet day today. Perhaps the weather still has a surprise in store!