Alaska, Day 5 (7/2) -- Talkeetna to Whittier, and to the Coral Princess

Today was the first time I'd had the opportunity to get in my morning exercise -- all the other mornings had started too early. But today we were at liberty until late morning. I got up and went to the alleged fitness center. It consisted of a small (and stifling) room overlooking the hot tubs with one stationary bicycle and one treadmill. I would have jogged outside instead, but it was raining -- the first real rain we'd seen on the trip. I did half an hour on the treadmill, showered and changed, had breakfast by myself in the buffet, and met Carol and Gabriel for a nature walk at 9:15. The walk along the marked path took about 20 minutes, and by the end it was raining harder and we were getting quite bitten by mosquitoes.

I went back to the lodge to drink coffee and work on my cross-stitch until it was time to leave. We took the bus back to Talkeetna, and transferred to the train. This train was on time, luckily. The weather continued rainy and cloudy for several hours, but finally cleared up somewhat near the end of the five-hour trip to Whittier. Lunch on the train was (for me) a Caesar salad topped with several slices of smoked salmon -- quite good. We went through two long tunnels on the way, the longer one (Anton Anderson tunnel) being 2.5 miles.

We finally arrived at Whittier and boarded the Coral Princess. We were among the last ones aboard -- that's the one downside of doing the land trip. We got to our staterooms at 7:30 or so, and the muster drill was at 7:45, so we didn't have a chance to eat dinner until afterwards.

Alaska, Day 6 (7/3) -- College Fjord

Today, the first real day aboard ship, was spent at sea. I got up early to go glacier watching, because they would only be visible today from 6:30 to 9:00 or so. I had breakfast in the dining room, which gave a good view of outside. It was too cloudy to see much of the shore, but there were impressively large chunks of ice floating in the water. Tomorrow will be Glacier Bay, with much better chances for glacier watching.

Other than that, the day was fairly uneventful. I played in three trivia games, and our team won two of them. The evening show was a selection of numbers from Broadway musicals, and was very good. I do think the production shows are better on Princess than Royal Caribbean -- and it feels exceedingly decadent to have enough experience to have an opinion on the subject.