Our second port day and we arrived in Juneau. We had a good breakfast in the restaurant and then got geared up for going outside. Xtra Tuffs and raincoats marked us as locals according to the tour guides. Our plan was to ride the city bus out to Mendenhall Glacier. This was to save ourselves $100 to take the tour bus from our cruise ship. However, this adventure of taking the city bus takes us a lot longer because of all the stops, but we did see a lot of tattoos and a guy wearing a bird skull necklace. The local bus drops you off 1.5 miles from the entrance to the park. This is when it really started raining as well. The kids were not fans of this plan as you can imagine. L did manage to lose a tooth in a Hi Chew so that brought some excitement. We made it to the visitors center and decided to leave the kids there with a phone, and Ty and I went towards the glacier to take some pictures.
The glacier was beautiful, as well as the waterfall. Then we decided to save ourselves the stress of the 1.5 mile walk back to the bus. So we called a cab to take us back to the boat. By this time Ty was feeling pretty sick, achy, and sore from his 10 mile run and twisted ankle yesterday. It was smarter to just take the easy route.
We had some lunch which revived everyone a bit. The kids decided to get in the pool with the other Ryder on the boat. Ty stayed with them to soak in the hot tub. So I had some free time to go explore Juneau on my own. It’s a bit ridiculous how much of the same shops are in each port. Also why are there so many jewelers shops? Or who buys luxury sheets while on vacation? But there are some beautiful locally owned shops. I saw lots of amazing native art. I had to head back to the ship by 5:30 so we could leave port.
Ty took a nap, the kids relaxed while I blogged a bit. Then I took them to dinner before they went to the kids club. Ty reserved us seats at the comedy show. I joined him after dropping the kids off. The comedian definitely was working towards the demographic of this ship. Every joke was about being older, the good ol’ days, and how spoiled kids are these days. (insert my giant eye roll) I lasted about 30 minutes before I had enough. So Ty and I headed to dinner at the restaurant. We got the kids just after 9pm and got everyone snuggled in bed for hopefully a good nights sleep, and some healthy recovery.
