Day 3 (July 27, 2023) Crown
Princess docked at Juneau from 1 pm to 9:15 pm. I visited Juneau again after 2
months and this time the weather was much better. It was sunny🌞all day with warm
temperature.
I didn’t provide much information
about Juneau when I wrote my blog in April, let me do that here.
Juneau is the capital city of
Alaska since 1906. According to Wikipedia, the population in Juneau in 2020
census was 32,255. In May to September, more than 6000 people from cruise ships
visit Juneau daily.
If you think the name Juneau is
an indigenous name or the Tlingit name, that's not correct. It is actually
named after a gold prospector from Quebec, Joe Juneau so this is a French name.
Still it has a Tlingit name called Dzántik'i Héeni.
As you can see, quite a few passengers were outside enjoying
the scenery and nice weather while our ship was heading to Juneau. Some
passengers were even using the outdoor pool and outdoor hot tubs in the
morning. That explains the temperature was not cold at all 😊
Although
it was not a day at sea, lunch was served in Botticelli Dining Room from 11:30
am to 1:00 pm. What a perfect timing to have lunch there before we got off the
ship! The look and ambiance of all dining rooms in Crown Princess are the same.
I would say it is more like a classic design (古色古香).
I ordered Mexican Albondigas Soup & Skillet-Fried Sole
with Lemon and Parsley. Who served us? No idea. Unlike Koningsdam, the name of
waiter or assistant waiter was not displayed. Only a simple table number sign was
provided for both lunch and dinner.
While we were eating, Crown Princess already arrived in Juneau.
By looking at the rear window 🪟, I could see two cruise ships were already there.
The one behind ours was Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam.
Here’s the view from
our stateroom which was facing a street in Downtown Juneau 😊
At the pier, I could
see the other ship behind Nieuw Amsterdam, it was Celebrity Eclipse.
In May I saw the booths selling
excursions but didn’t have time to check them out. This time I looked around
and I believe the most popular ones were bus to Mendenhall Glacier and whale
watching🐋 Sometimes local excursions found at pier are less expensive than the
excursions offered by cruise lines. One thing that everyone has to be careful
is time control. Don’t worry if you join an excursion with your cruise company,
even if you come back late the ship will wait for you. But if you join an
excursion from somewhere else, the cruise ship will not wait for you if you
return late😐
How did we manage our
schedule this time?
First,
we lined up for Goldbelt Tram (Goldbelt Tram - The
only tram in Southeast Alaska) at 1:50 pm. In May 26, 2023 I was at the
entrance of Mount Robets Tramway Centre in pouring rain ☔ to meet my Juneau City
& Mendenhall Glacier tour group. This time I decided to take the tram🚡as I
was told the scenery should be great on a sunny day! Also the price of Goldbelt Tram ride
increases annually. In 2023 it was $50 USD per adult and $35 USD per child. In
2024 it is $55 USD per adult and $40 per child😮
There were tons of people lining up for the ride. Each tram
has a maximum capacity of 60 passengers We waited in line for 25 minutes,
luckily we were the first few to get onto a tram for the best spot! Now
starting our 6 minute ride up to Mount Roberts which is 1,800 feet above.
Finally we reached the top. I
deeply appreciated the perfect weather and the perfect spot I got on the tram
to make this ride worth the money (each of us paid $50 USD)😌
We could see four cruise ships at the dock. From left to right: Norwegian Jewel, Crown Princess, Nieuw Amsterdam and Celebrity Eclipse. Compared to the other three, my partner said our ship is a jumbo size 巨無霸!
Also we could see the Doulgas
Island on the other side, it is connected to Downtown Juneau by Juneau-Douglas
Bridge.
We were taking photos (zoom in) and started to
count the number of outdoor pools or hot tubs on these cruises.
不如玩吓遊戲, 數吓啲船有幾多個泳池同溫泉 ♨
Norwegian Jewel – could only see
1 pool and 3 hot tubs. Crown Princess – 4 pools and 5 hot tubs? Anyway the
bigger the ship the more pools or hot tubs it has in a logical sense🤔
What
else could we do on Mount Roberts?
Some enjoyed a meal in Timberline
Bar & Grill. Fish & Chips (4 pieces) for $26 USD, Classic Burger 🍔for
$15 USD, Juice for $4 USD …
How about free
activity … Hiking🥾🥾
How wide are your
arms? Do you think anyone can be as wide as eagle’s wings 🪽
Time to go back as we joined the
Mendenhall Glacier bus tour at 4 pm. We purchased this excursion directly from
Princess ($64.95 USD each).
This time I was more satisfied with
the bus ride🚌 Remember back in May, I couldn’t see anything outside from the
foggy window when I was on the bus to Mendenhall Glacier due to the rainy
weather.
Once again, I was at
Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Site!
What a lovely day! No
rain this time. Let’s take a couple of enlarged photos.
We were allowed to stay here for
almost 2 hours, longer than the time I had in May. My goal was to visit Nugget Falls. We were
passing by several photo points📸during our 35 minute walk to the Falls.
As I mentioned
before, this 377 feet Nuggets Falls is equivalent to the height of 26 storey
building, very magnificent!
It was not cold, it
was cool (好清涼)!
On the way back, we visited
Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center around 6:20 pm. There were only a couple of visitors
left. The view from the visitor center was beautiful!
Once again, the size of Mendenhall Glacier is much smaller compared to 1958 or 1985. It is like a signal of global warming. 全球暖化影響 🌍🔥
When we returned to the dock, my
partner wanted to purchase a local sim card for internet data in Alaska. Great
idea! But all the stores were closed. In May when my friend and I looked for
free wifi in the public library, it was closed due to statutory holiday. Sounds
to me not easy to have wifi or internet in Juneau😂
Never mind! Let’s return to our
ship and have dinner … getting hungry already😋
Besides the standard menu, ramen could be served too🍜 Everything
looked good since I was too hungry (it was 8:20 pm already, a late dinner). The
bread with butter was delicious. The minestrone soup was nice and warm. Two
dishes were not enough for us, so we ordered three to share: seared wild Alaska
sockeye salmon with red wind reduction, sauteed shrimp and sea scallops,
grilled rockfish. Same as dessert, we could eat at least three so we shared
tiramisu, lychee, raspberry & rose mousse plus Princess Love Boat dream. No
extra charge, all complimentary👍
Our ship was leaving at 9:25 pm. Bye Bye Juneau! I don’t
know when I will visit this city again.
On July 25, 2023, I was on another cruise to Alaska again (2
Alaska trips in the summer!) This is also the 3rd cruise experience
in my life so far. Same as last time, I took Canada Line to Waterfront Station
in Downtown Vancouver and walked 7 minutes to the Canada Place Cruise Ship
Terminal 🚢
This
time I was with Crown Princess👑which was launched in 2006 and last refurnished
in 2018, a large-sized ship with 113,561 tonnage. It has capacity for 3080
passengers and 1200 crew members. There are 19 decks and 1541 passenger cabins.
It is definitely bigger than Koningsdam but also an older ship.
My administrator was kind enough to lend me the cruise tags
for my backpack and luggage when I went to Alaska in May. I found them very
useful so I purchased some for my July cruise. There are two types of cruise
luggage tags – narrow or wide. The narrow one is suitable for Royal Caribbean
and Celebrity (they are under the same company) and the wider one is suitable
for Holland America, Princess and Carnival. Do you know what they have in
common? They are owned by the same company.
All Princess passengers are offered a Medallion device and a
lanyard for it. I didn’t like to wear the long lanyard around my neck. All the
accessories for Medallion device were expensive from the Princess shop. After I
spent so much time and effort to look for a substitute product, the best option
I found was 🌟the Airtag wristband from Temu 🌟 The size of Medallion device is the
same as Airtag. I purchased two for less than $5.00 CAD. They were very
convenient to wear on the wrist and were waterproof, even in the hot tubs (I
did this on the cruise)😁
This time check in was very fast and no long lineup since
Crown Princess was the only ship at Canada Place on July 25 😄 However
once we were in the seating room around 10:45 am, we had to wait until 11:30 am
before everyone was able to board on the ship. The crew member did apologize
for the delayed boarding time.
Normally I don’t bring household electrical items for my
cruise travel. I remember a friend of mine told me that her son brought an
extension cord to a cruise and it was withheld until the disembarkation day.
Let’s visit our stateroom E630 at the back side of the
mid-ship area on Deck 8 (Emerald). Each of us paid CAD $1273.02 inclusive of
taxes and port fees for a 10 day trip. It was at a good location since below
was a specialty restaurant Crown Grill which was very quiet. We didn’t hear
anything from below. Our room was also not far from the elevator and stairs👍
On the left side of entrance you can see the shelves and a
safety box. Also an open closet with many hangers. The laundry service list is
on one of the hangers.
Shirts/Blouses👗($3.50 USD each), T-Shirts👕($3.00 USD each),
Jeans/Pants👖 ($4.50 USD each), Shorts ($3.50 each), Undershirts ($2.00 USD
each), Socks ($2.00 USD each pair). This is for reference only as Princess
ships have a self-serve laundry room on most of the decks. I recall Koningsdam
doesn’t have a self-serve laundry room. Our stateroom was very close to the
laundry room, less than 20 steps away and most importantly the use of
washers/dryers was free of charge! I confirmed this with guest services. We only
needed to pay for the accessories such as detergent but we brought our own eco
detergent sheets and fabric sheets😉
E630 is an obstructed overview cabin that’s why the view is 20% blocked. But the size of this cabin is bigger than the one I had in
Koningsdam. However there were not too many power outlets, maybe because it is
an older ship😦
The bathroom is not as big and modern designed as the one in
Koningsdam. Both ships offered some sanitary disposal bags in the bathroom. Do
you know what I used them for? Remember in May I still wore masks? I used these
bags (just two or three) to keep the masks 😷
Although I requested to change the fixed shower head to a hand held shower head in advance 🚿, they never had it changed. I followed up on the first day when I met our room attendant Roderick in the afternoon. He said the plumber would do that later. I followed up again on the second day, still nothing happened. After that I gave up. Roderick was good and able to accommodate all our requests except the change of shower head. Also unlike Koningsdam, he was the only person cleaning our stateroom (I felt there was shortage of staff).
Crown Princess provided shower gel in a bottle and shampoo/conditioner in another bottle. Koningsdam separated shampoo and conditioner while Crown Princess combined them together (2 in 1). I didn’t have any issues with toiletries provided by both ships. The brand that Crown Princess used is Lotus Spa.
There are two important things to do once we are able to get
into our staterooms. Do you remember them?
1) Sanitize the tables, shelves, closets, drawers,
telephone, dryer and bathroom counter. Imagine the drawers (which the previous
passengers may use to store dirty clothes), telephone and dryer are never
cleaned. Room attendants are already busy to clean the bed, floor, table and
toilet in a very limited time, don’t expect they will clean every single area
like what you do in your house.
2) Visit and check-in at our emergency muster
station, watch the safety video on our stateroom TV 📺.
This is a standard requirement for all cruise ships.
We received the schedule for the embarkation day😊As
you can see, Crown Princess had more activates than Koningsdam. The activates
could be viewed on the stateroom TV and Medallion app installed on the
cellphone. It started with our itinerary.
July 25 Vancouver
July 26 At Sea – Formal Dinner (1 hour backward at mid-night)
July 27 Juneau
July 28 Skagway
July 29 Sitka
July 30 Icy Strait Point
July 31 Yakutat Bay (Hubbard Glacier)
Aug 1 At Sea – Formal Dinner
Aug 2 Ketchikan (1 hour forward at mid-night)
Aug 3 At Sea
Aug 4 Vancouver
Everyone told me not to miss the lunch buffet on the cruise
on embarkation day, but not many passengers realize that normally the main
dining room offers lunch on embarkation day and sea days. These are
complimentary 😊
My partner and I decided to try the lunch in one of Crown
Princess dining rooms (it has 3 dinning rooms: Michelangelo, Da Vinci and
Botticelli so I don’t remember which one we went).
I believe it was my veggie day🍃so I ordered Tuscan-style
chickpea soup as appetizer, spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli as main course
and sherry trifle as dessert. It was a satisfying meal and the ambiance was
great, not too many people as majority had lunch buffet in Horizon Court😄
Let’s browse around after lunch! There is a decent size library on deck 7 and some sudoku sheets available at its entrance.
Then we found an information room close to Princess Theater.
Crown Princess did not provide any hard copy of the ports/glacier that we would
visit. Passengers needed to read the information on Medallion app or in this
room.
I still remember the animal in the right picture below is
called porcupine (豪豬) and it's back is full of sharp quills😖
Then I discovered a place that is similar to Grand Dutch
Café in Koningsdam. This is called Internatial Café on deck 5 which opens 24
hours a day😃The coffee and tea are not free there but the pastries 🍰are
complimentary. Sometimes I just grabbed two pieces at night from this café and
went back to my stateroom😋
We kept browsing and joined Lotus Spa, Salon and Thermal
Suite Tour on deck 16. One of the ladies showed us around. As you can see from
its price list below, it offers lots of services including facial treatment, teeth
whitening treatment, body massage, acupuncture, nail treatment, hair salon,
waxing and grooming, etc.
I found its list is more clear than Greenhouse Spa in
Koningsdam. At least I could tell which one is the length of time 🕑 and which one
is the price💸Aroma stone therapy and bamboo massage sound interesting, I would
love to try if I have money to do so. $199 USD for 50 minutes is a bit
expensive. There was a lucky draw for $500 Lotus Spa prize. If I would have
won, I would use it for these therapy treatments😊
We also passed by
the fitness center and briefly visited the thermal suite which includes heated tile
beds, sauna, and rainforest showers 🚿
After the tour, we took an elevator up to the highest deck
(star deck⭐)! If I am not mistaken, there was only one elevator that can go up
to deck 19.
There is a mini golf course. I was happy to see the sky
turned great in the late afternoon. It was a bit rainy and also cloudy in the
morning.
Outdoor movie and
pool on deck 16
Our cruise was parked at the best berth so I was able to see the
seaplanes 🛬 again. Around 5 pm🕔Crown Princess departed from
Canada Place. Same as last time, we were heading to pass underneath the Lions
Gate Bridge!
The sky and scenery
were just amazing!
Another activity on the first day was “Guess the Weight to
Win” offered by Fine Arts Gallery on deck 5. I thought I wouldn’t get anything
from its arts gallery 🖼 Surprisingly they were giving free art collections to
us. Each one has a certificate of authenticity. Do you like the pictures? I
think they are good to put on a wall for new homes 😊
Finally came to the dinner time. We didn’t make reservation
as we expected to get a table in 10 minutes (that was my experience with
Koningsdam). We were asked to share table with others or we needed to wait for
a long time😕It was a bit disappointing as we were being asked to share a
table.
Anyways I forgot how long we waited, probably 15 minutes to
get a private table.
Our first dinner on Crown Princess👑 I had rum-infused pina
colada chilled soup (with coconut-pineapple) and asparagus risotto.
I was looking forward to the dessert menu 🍰. I wish I had room
to eat many of them! This time we chose Princess Favourites: lychee, raspberry
& rose mousse and Princess Love Boat dream. Both tasted very good👍I was
more impressed by the dessert😍 than the starter and main course.
Once we left the main dining room
(I think it must be Michelangelo on deck 5 aft ship), we saw Internet Café with
nobody there. I wonder if anyone used it during day time?
As expected, July 26 was a whole day at sea but it would
never get bored as there were lots of activities on the cruise!
Just to list a few: starting with Zumba fitness, team
bean-bag challenge, arts & crafts etc. in the morning, spend the afternoon
to watch outdoor movie, listen to live music with pianist and attend Deal or No
Deal game show or Line Dance party, etc. At night passengers could enjoy
cocktail experience and Captain’s welcome aboard party then watch production
show in the Princess Theatre, etc.
Basically it was full of activities in different parts of
the cruise 💃 🎵🎤🎹 🎥
Also there were
freebies to collect, pendants in different colours were available each day.
Besides freebies, there was a chance to win a $1600 prize💰 Anyone knows what the prize was? Was it the Princess Plus package that included
Wi-Fi, beverages (coffee, juice and cocktails), crew appreciation and premium
desserts?
My partner went for breakfast in Horizon Court on Deck 15
before 6 am. There was no way for me to get up before 6 am 😴 Even if I have to
work, I get out of bed at 6:30 am. Well he told me nobody was there so these
are the photos taken by him 📸
As you can see, there were many choices: tomato salsa,
smoked salmon, salad, bagels, buns, croissants, smoothie, yogurt, fruit,
cheese, ham, sausage, bacon, cereal, oatmeal, scrambled egg (plain or with
asparagus), roasted potatoes, harsh brown, pancakes, cheese biscuit, steamed
rice, congee, boiled eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushroom, etc.
There was an omelette station which normally would take 10
to 15 minutes to make the fresh omelette 😊
Finally I was able to get up and dressed up for the day 🌟 The
necklace and bracelet were handmade by my brother many years ago. I should wear
them more to show my appreciation💕
My partner brought me the breakfast from Horizon Court. I had
no complaints since I was in a perfect stateroom and got a breakfast with
variety of food (plus a fresh coffee) 😊
But we also wanted to check out the breakfast menu in
Botticelli Dining Room on deck 6. It was available from 7 am to 9 am. Some of
the items could be found in Horizon Court too. Let’s try Fresh Fruit Plate and
Eggs Florentine, the items not offered by Horizon Court😉
It was a relaxing and sunny day to walk around indoor and
outdoor. I like the way they organized the towels, that’s creative. The Piazza on
deck 5 midship with the curved staircase looks bright and elegant. There were
always fun activities there.
One of the activates on the second day in the Piazza was
Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party and Champagne Waterfall. Passengers could lineup
to pour the champagne into the glasses.
Almost every night there was a fantastic show at 7:30 pm and
9:30 pm in the Princess Theatre! Most of time the two shows were the same to
accommodate people with different dinner times. For those who would be able to
finish dinner at 7 pm or had late dinner around 8:30 pm could watch it at 7:30
pm. For the others who finish dinner after 7 pm could watch it at 9:30 pm.
The experience of second night was the same as I had in
Koningsdam. The ship was waving🌊when it passed by the inside passenger. But no
worries, this time I brought Gravol ginger tablets with me😉
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