Several glaciers from a distance, and snow up close and personal;  *now* it feels like Alaska.

This was not my best day. I barely got any sleep, because every time I started to drop off to sleep, my own snoring woke me up. How pathetic is that? My nose was stuffy, and my voice raspy. Not a pretty sight.

We needed to meet with our excursion group just after 8:00, so we skipped the slow sit-down service at Versailles and ate at the Market Cafe buffet. The food really wasn’t much worse, and there was a pretty good selection. The worst part was finding a seat; it’s a giant cafeteria and always full of people.

When we booked this excursion, the woman at the desk said that it gets very cold at the glacier and we should be prepared. So we wore our ski pants that we had brought for dog sledding. Big mistake! It wasn’t that cold, and both of us were roasting.

On the way out, my key card didn’t work in the swiper when checking out of the boat. Odd.

The tour bus dropped us off in the visitor center parking lot, and said he’d come back in an hour and a half. So we walked out to a big waterfall, which is as close to the glacier as you can get (there’s a lake in the way), then back to the Visitor Center. The most interesting thing there was a block of ice from the glacier, which you could touch. It flakes off, like some pine bark and some rocks do. It takes 100 feet of snow to make 6 feet of glacier; that’s how compacted it is.

We got back on the bus, and he dropped us off again at the Mt Roberts Tramway. The ride itself is very cool, right up the side of a mountain. Once up there you can’t do much because everything is still covered in snow. We visited gift shops and scored the second pen of the trip for Juli, and admired the view from up there. I was ok with not being able to go anywhere else because I was pretty much exhausted by this point.

We arrived at the bottom of the tram with time to spare, so I used my cell phone to find a drug store and we hoofed it over there for Advil and Mucinex. It was a long fast walk in snow suits, and by the time we got back I was *really* tired! We came very close to missing the bus back to the boat; that would have been ok, since there are other shuttles and it is walkable. But we were still very glad to sit back down on the bus.

I went to Guest Services and got a new cabin card, and then we went to our cabin and spent the rest of the afternoon snoozing.  The highlight of the afternoon was a detour to a glacier.  Apparently we were supposed to go to a different one but there was too much ice in the water, so we went to this one instead (no idea of its name).  Considering how large and lumbering the ship is, we got pretty darn close:

I felt a little better when we got up, so we set off to La Cusina for dinner. This one is Italian, and it was actually quite good. I thought the food everywhere on ship seemed a bit salty (even the eggs at the buffet seem to be pre-salted) but aside from that La Cusina was the best we’d had so far, hands down.

After dinner we went to the Spinnaker Lounge for live dance music played by Odesea, the ship’s band, but after one fast West Coast Swing I was beat. We ended up heading over to Gatsby’s and listening to Mr. Motown until we were ready to go up for bed.