Paddling a canoe, going on a “hike” (more like a stroll) and trying not to completely succumb to a virus were all high on the day’s agenda.

When we woke up we looked out the window to find the boat docked in Ketchikan. There’s something way cool about being on a floating hotel that takes *you* to the sights!

I also woke up with a sore throat. :( I had noticed it the night before, but it was slight and I had hoped it would just go away. Overnight it developed into an unmistakeable sign of things to come. I was determined not to let a stupid cold virus ruin our trip, though, so off we went as scheduled for our first off-ship adventure.

First stop was breakfast. There are only three options for breakfast; the Market Cafe buffet, which is crowded and the food isn’t very good, the Grill buffet, which is outside by the pool and too cold to visit most of the time, and Versailles, the place we ate breakfast yesterday. We had been so unimpressed with the buffet, we decided to do full-service instead and went back to Versailles for a second day. But the service was *very* slow, even worse than yesterday, and the food just wasn’t very good. We left determined not to make that mistake again.

We went back to the cabin before leaving the ship, and there was a flyer at our door hawking cheap Citizen watches. The continuous selling, particularly of cheap shiny junk, is the number one thing I don’t like about cruising so far.

There was a bit of time to spare between leaving the ship and needing to meet up with our canoeing tour group, so we walked around Ketchikan. Our friend Juli, who is staying at our house taking care of the fuzzes while we’re gone, collects those pens that have sort of a snow-globe built in. We always try to find her at least one of them when we go on a trip, which gives me a *great* excuse to visit all the gift shops Wayne would otherwise resist. :) So we walked around until we found one, and then went to rendezvous with our group.

Beautiful downtown Ketchikan!

I was starting to feel kind of crappy by this point, and wasn’t really looking forward to the trip. But it turned out ok. We all piled into a Sprinter van and our driver took us about 30 minutes outside of town, to the edge of a lake. We suited up with life jackets and got in the canoe (a very large one that held 12 of us and two guides). Once we started rowing, I felt ok. We rowed over to a small camp, where another guide had clam chowder and hot drinks cooking over a wood fire, and snacks (including the only smoked salmon I’ve ever actually enjoyed eating). We then went on the hike portion of the trip, which turned out to be a loop that took all of about 10 minutes. Then we got back in the canoe and went back to where we started from, but went around the lake the long way so we could circle a small island.

Remember that Newlywed show we were on last night? During the trip we got a taste of what we were in for. When we returned back to “camp” from our “hike”, the next canoe-load of people had arrived, some of whom were also from our ship. One of the couples recognized us and made a big deal out of it, like we were some kind of local celebrity.

After we got back to town, we had just enough time to have lunch at Subway, which sounded much more appealing than another trip through the lunch buffet.

The ship left for Juneau, and we decided to take a nap. I was starting to feel worse again, and thought maybe the sleep would help. Unfortunately, I felt worse still after we woke up.

We needed to choose a replacement excursion for Juneau, since ours had been cancelled. We looked at the list of what was available, but it was a long list with not much detail about what they actually entail. So we headed on down to the Shore Excursion desk to get some help. We ended up choosing something more sedate, a bus trip to the Mendenhall Glacier visitor center and a ride up the Mt Roberts Tramway.

Still in search of decent food on board, we had dinner at Endless Summer, the tex-mex restaurant. The food itself was pretty good, though making lobster tacos with box taco shells seemed a bit low-rent. but the desserts were awful. Whoever made the flan clearly has never had one made properly; the texture was slightly chunky, as though the mixture was on the verge of breaking. *sigh* the search continues…

During dinner a woman came up from behind Wayne, put her arm around his shoulders, and started gushing about having seen us on her in-room TV. This local celebrity business is strange! Wayne was very startled by the way she touched him; as he says, had he done that to a strange woman, all hell would have broken loose. My only explanation was that women hug each other all the time, so maybe it didn’t seem out of line to her. We also had several people call out “It’s the Newlyweds” as we were walking around on ship.

Cruise ships are supposed to be all about the dancing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. There’s only one bar with a dance floor, the Spinnaker Lounge and the dance area is *tiny*. We went there after dinner for pre-recorded dance music but it was mostly Latin style, so we didn’t dance much since we don’t know any of those yet. When that was over, we went to Gatsby’s, another bar, and listened to “Mr. Motown”, Stan Sykes. He’s *really* good.

Then it was off to the Stardust Theater for “Band on the Run”, a show celebrating 80s music. The performers are from all over the world, and most of them are very good.

After the show I was starting to feel a bit better, but was starting to lose my voice. The ship was starting to rock more, but so far my stomach was holding its own.

In the shameless promotion department, there was a flyer at our door advertising hot coffee drinks which can be ordered from room service.

Time for bed!