Thursday, July 31, 2014

Alaska {Part 9}

Day 10 - Thursday, June 26 - Day at Sea
Our last day on the cruise ship was another day at sea. I loved the fact that our two days at sea were the first and last days. The days at sea are always pretty relaxing, so it was nice to have a relaxing day coming off of the land portion and another one at the end of the trip.

My mom and I started the day off at Zumba. I love Zumba, but I don't usually do it that often, so I was happy to see that they had a free class on board! We then ate breakfast in the Windjammer and stopped by the coffee shop for an espresso brownie. The coffee shop sold specialty coffee for an additional charge, so we just assumed that everything there must cost extra. But our cruise director, who had led Zumba, told us that morning that the espresso brownies were free and that we had to try them. They were SO good, and I just wish I had known about them sooner. Ha!

We met up with my dad in the Centrum because our cruise director was challenging the captain to a cake decorating challenge. You know I had to see that!

One of the pastry chefs walked them through assembling and decorating a black forest cake. It was actually really fun to watch!

Next we headed up on deck to watch the polar bear plunge. One of the things that I love about days at sea are all the fun things to do around the ship! For this activity, they were asking people to donate money to the Make-a-Wish foundation, and if they reached a certain amount of money, some of the crew would jump into the pool. And considering we were in Alaska at the outdoor pool, the water was pretty cold. They ended up reaching their quota though, so we got to see them jump in! Here's the captain doing a belly flop....

....and our cruise director.

We also watched an ice carving demonstration (although I didn't get a good picture of it!). When we were at the Hubbard Glacier earlier in the week, some of the crew had gone out and grabbed a large chunk of floating ice that had fallen off the glacier, and that's what they used for the carving.

We grabbed lunch at the Park Cafe (which was probably my favorite place on ship even though it was small), and we went back to our room and ate on the balcony.

We did some packing and then sat out on the balcony again with some drinks. Pure bliss!

There were still a few places on the ship that I had not been to yet, so later in the afternoon, we walked around and saw some more of the ship. You know you're on a pretty big ship when you've been staying on it for a week and still haven't seen everything!

Our first stop was this cute little Starquest bar on the very top of the ship.


We went to the helipad too. Since that was at the front of the ship, it was extremely windy!


I really miss being on this cruise ship!


I did some more relaxing on our balcony with my book as well. I had a pretty nice view too.....

Pre-dinner selfie. Ha!

For dinner that night I ordered the Spanish tapas plate (which I did NOT like, but at least I decided to try something new, right?), the seafood & mash (which was great - a variety of fried seafood and mashed potatoes), and key lime pie for dessert.

As we were leaving dinner, I realized that we hadn't taken any pictures in the dining room, so I snapped these on the way out.


The views from the ship were so pretty for our last night.

The final show was a comedian with a little farewell show at the end. They brought up a bunch of the crew to say goodbye to us.

And we (of course!) had to spend our last evening in the Quill & Compass. We did music trivia movie tunes and then just hung out. One of the waitresses there recognized us and knew our order by the end of the week since we went there every night. I wish I could go back there tonight!


That was all the fun of our last day on the cruise ship. Next I'll be blogging about our day in Vancouver since we chose to stay an extra night there!

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