ACorgan

If you have a fixed dining time (floor three), like we did, there is no separate section for club orange. There is a separate menu, but it’s identical to the normal one except for the addition of one more main option. The very first night, we had to remind our server that we were club orange, but they remembered after that. Neither of the two gala nights had a club orange menu printed, but the waiters verbally told us the bonus club orange entree. If you are doing As You Wish dining (floor 2), there is a separate check in podium for club orange. We never did this option, so not sure if people are seated in a distinct section or not. It did sound like they had a much shorter line and wait to get a table than the non-club orange people, though

Today is going home day. When I woke up at 6 am, we were already docked. A little after 7, we headed down to floor 2 to join the queue. It’s surprising so many of us are in such a hurry to end our vacation, but we want to beat the traffic home and several were trying to catch earlier morning flights. They started letting us off the ship at 7:20. We scanned our key card one last time while leaving, took a ramp off the ship, went down an escalator and then just quickly showed our passports. Very efficient and easy. From there, walked right out to a waiting shuttle to the parking lot and were in our car on the road by a little after 7:30. Overall, it was a great trip 😎

Last stop was Victoria. It’s a little over a mile walk to the Empress hotel, so if you have any mobility concerns, well worth taking a shuttle or a taxi. We have three big ships in port all next to each other and all with people spilling out of them, so it was a slow walk to town as there were many groups with strollers and small children that made sudden stops and blocked the sidewalks. We just walked far enough to take some pictures of the Empress and headed back. From leaving the ship to returning from our walk took us an hour and 15 min. The neighborhood we walked through was very picturesque with cute old buildings and gardens. They also had crossing guards at busy intersections, so felt very safe walking. I’m sure it would have been lovely to explore town a little more, but I just ran out of steam. Already thinking about the early morning wake up tomorrow

No idea why some of the pics posted twice. Ship wifi strength seems to plummet whenever we’re in port and my AT&T only has one bar at the pier, so might be due to connectivity issues

Just finished our last dinner on the ship 🥲 We were back at the Pinnacle grill and started with a wedge salad and more of the crab cakes (my table mate really enjoyed them at lunch, so went for round two) Mains were the chicken and a NY strip with sides of creamed spinach, mushrooms, and mashed potatoes Dessert was chocolate soufflé and baked Alaska Our ship made better time than expected, so they hope to have the gangways ready by 8:30, rather than the 9:15 they anticipated this morning. That just puts us 30 min behind our original scheduled arrival time of 8pm, so makes it that much more of a bummer they canceled most of the excursions. Still plenty of daylight here and temp is 60 degrees F, so not a bad evening for an outdoor stroll

We went to the Pinnacle for lunch today. Right after we took our seats, I saw an orca swimming off the side of the ship. It wasn’t there long, since it was going the opposite direction from us (and they are FAST), but great to see it, although briefly. For starters we got the tomato broth and the crab cakes. The tomato broth was excellent, but quite spicy, so be prepared for that 🌶️ Mains were the burger and the tenderloin with Oregon blue cheese I tried the table side gin and tonic. It’s an interesting concept and tastes ok, but it’s a bit challenging to drink between the ice cubes and free floating whole spices Dessert was the strawberry pavlova and the fresh berries with sabayon. I had the berries and they were phenomenal! Easily the best dessert I’ve had on board. Granted, I’ve mostly had fruit plates and some off bites of cheesecake and chocolates, so not a huge range of things to compare it to 😂 The wafers were delightfully crunchy with a hint of vanilla, the berries were sweet, the whip cream was a good consistency, and the sabayon was delectable. I could have just eaten a pot of the sabayon and been a happy camper When we returned to our room, we had the dreaded notice of our tour being cancelled We’ll just have to go back to our original plan of wandering along the waterfront towards town. Next, I’m off to participate in the On Deck for a Cause event. I definitely need to walk that 5k since all we’ve been doing today is eating

I was reading your post to my traveling companion and he let me know there were actually 5 shrimp; one was just hidden in the picture 😉 You are correct that the brunch salmon chowder came in the bread bowl. When I had ordered it at a dinner in the MDR, it was just a normal bowl, so guessing the bread was unique to the Alaska brunch. I feel your pain trying to avoid carbs. At the start of the cruise, I had the lofty goal of never eating from the breadbasket at the start of dinner. That only lasted the first two nights and by the third night, I’d broken down and sampled some of the rolls. They’re just so good 😋 We rarely have any bread products at home other than some occasional whole wheat English muffins or whole wheat bagel thins, so all the fresh baked goodness on board is hard to resist

The captain just came on the loud speaker to announce that we’re having an issue with one of the pieces of equipment (already forgot what it was). Supposedly it doesn’t impact the safety of the ship at all, but does limit us from going top speeds. As a result, we’re going to be late into Victoria and some shore excursions may be cancelled. Those impacted will be receiving a note at their doors. We should still be on time for Seattle tomorrow though. I’m fairly confident that my Butchart gardens tour will be impacted, since timing was already tight for it, but we’ll see what the official word ends up being 😞

Technically not a sea day, since we go to Victoria tonight, but functionally, we’re spending most of the day at sea:

I think it’s a fairly new offering (ie, just in the last few weeks). I don’t know about all the Alaska ships, but thought I remembered seeing someone on a different ship post about it, so it’s likely

Today was our last full day on the ship and we lost an hour last night getting back to PST. We decided to take advantage of our vacation day and sleep in, so no Pinnacle for breakfast. Instead, we hit up “The Alaska Brunch” in the MDR. I went with the smoothie and with the biscuits and gravy with reindeer sausage. The smoothie was a very beet-forward flavor. I don’t actively hate beets, but they just taste a little like dirt to me, so I don’t go out of my way to eat them. If you enjoy beets, though, this smoothie is for you. The reindeer sausage served with the biscuits and gravy was very good; texture reminded me of an Oktoberfest sausage. It wasn’t at all dry and had good flavor My dinning partner got the salmon chowder and the monte cristo sandwich and said booth were tasty One thing I’ve been pleasantly surprised by here on the ship is the wide availability of decaf tea. I try to avoid caffeine, but am not a huge fan of camomile, so always appreciate when there is a decaf black available and they’ve been plentiful on the ship

Nothing I could keep, sadly 😞 I did catch a king, but he was just a small guy. It sounds like it just wasn’t a great day for fishing. Of the almost 40 of us on the bus back, only two people had caught keepers. It was beautiful weather though, and we saw plenty of whales, so I didn’t feel like it was a wasted trip. Great day to be out in the water

I’m sure they had over veggies and would happily have given me something else. My traveling companion isn’t a huge fan of the MDR and hates lingering there, so I try to avoid any special orders since it might make things take longer. Our servers are very efficient and most dinners only take us 45 min from us sitting down at the table to leaving

Tonight was the “chocolate surprise” event. I had forgotten about it until I was walking back to my room through deck 2. In the music walk hallways there were people lining both walls waiting to mob any waiter who came by with a tray of sweets. By the time I weaved my way through to the mid-ship elevators, there were way less people and tons of waiters (that’s where they were coming out from the kitchen with the trays). I didn’t stick around, but on the trays I passed, it looked like they had chocolate cupcakes, white chocolate covered raisins, chocolate macaroons, and something that might have been either chocolate covered almonds or just some kind of small truffle. Since it was the second gala night, there was a cute towel animal and more chocolate waiting for us in the room

We made it downstairs a little early for dinner, so took advantage of the nice weather and strolled on the promenade deck. We spotted some animals swimming next to the ship. I think they might have been dolphins, but not sure. For dinner, we had the apple and cucumber salad and the jumbo shrimp cocktail as appetizers. My salad was quite good and the apples were very crisp and sweet, as apples should be The club orange special was pork belly. I decided to roll the dice on that one since most of the other mains came with green beans, which I don’t care for. Joke was on me though, because the pork belly also came with green beans (hidden under the meat in the pic). They must have had a surplus they were trying to dispose of. Other than the vegetables, the dish was good. The pineapple had some kind of crust/coating, so it was more like a dessert, but the sweetness worked well with the pork. Mashed potatoes and gravy are a weakness of mine, so hard to go wrong with those. My table mate got the steak Dessert was my normal fruit plate and a chocolate lava cake, which were both good ends to our respective meals