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So it was Mr. Blofeld's turn to walk the corridors with bed hair and fetch the coffee. We were up and about around 08:00 and still not in the port of Juneau but due to arrive in the next hour.

After sampling 'posh breakfast' yesterday today it was up to the windjammer for buffet style eat as much as you can madness and then off the ship.

Royal Caribbean actually do offer a great range of on shore trips that you can book with them but preferring to so our own thing we had read up on everything that they had to offer and then used that as a base to know what we wanted to do. As soon as we stepped ashore we headed over to the visitors centre and grabbed all the necessary leaflets and

info and in the process saved ourselves $100 each. Our first stop was the Mendenhall Glacier. This was a twenty minute journey on and old school bus being driven by a school bus driver called Myriam. She had just got here five weeks ago after on a whim looking for something to do in the school holidays and applied for a job on craigslist (like gumtree in the UK). She got the job and here she was reciting her spiel on the way up to the Glacier as if she had always lived here.

We should of course first tell you about Juneau, well its actually the capital of the state of Alaska and it was one of the main gold and silver mining towns from the era of the great gold rush and the Yukon trail. The bizarre thing about it being the capital is that there is no roads in or out of it, you have to come here by sea or plane. There are roads here, one dual carriageway that stretches for around forty miles and then it just stops. Everything is built in and around that road and everything is not more than five blocks back from the sea so its all very narrow and long. Juneau also has a 0% unemployment record, everyone has a job and they actually have to ship people into the town to fill all the vacancies hence Myriam our bus driver being here for the summer. The population is around 30,000.00 so not small but as a capital city, tiny in comparison to others.

So back to the Mendenhall Glacier, again this was discovered and mapped by a certain Mr. Mendenhall who moved to Alaska in search of gold like so many. This glacier has actually shrunk by over 5 miles since the 1950's and when we reached the visitor centre you could really see that this is a huge amount of thawing. There was a fact that if all the glaciers in the world were to thaw the ocean levels around the world would increase by some 200 feet!

The glacier itself was again stunningly beautiful, a real neon blue in colour set off by a backdrop of pine forests and snow capped mountains. This glacier was even more impressive because you could actually get up quite close to it. We took the 2 mile walk through the pine forests (you could really smell the pine cones and it smelt like a watered down bottle of floor cleaner but in a good way) and headed out to the glacier look out point at Nugget falls (see there is that gold mining reference again).

The falls and the glacier were a real knock out combination and then twin that with the lake at the foot of the glacier with its floating icebergs and the beautiful sunny day we were having, well it was all just perfect. Apparently they only have about 16 days of sun a year here in Juneau and today by what the locals were saying was an exceptional day, we were very lucky indeed.

After taking yet more photographs and then some more trying to make sure that we had really captured everything we headed back down the trail and to the buses to get a coach to the the harbour as know we were off whale watching!

Now the last time that we went whale watching it was not a total success, yes we saw whales but Jonathan was very sea sick so it was going whale watching with some trepidation. Luckily for us it was the perfect day with mill pond like conditions.

One thing that this second bout of Whale watching did have in common with the forst is the ability to be patient. Whales seem to be quite shy animals and as they can store their breath in their bodies for over twenty minutes a time it's hard to find them and then when you do they only have to come up to take three or four breaths before diving again and then they are gone so you have to be realistic in knowing that the only thing you might see is a blow hole at best.

We were lucky as we had only been out on our aluminum catamaran for around twenty minutes as we saw at least two whales. No they wee not breaching or making a huge show of themselves but we saw them spraying through their blow holes and their tales crashing down on the waters surface as they dived but then they were gone.

Luckily for us there is other wildlife to see as well so whilst we were out on the boat we saw sea lions and bald eagles and some of the most beautiful scenery. Being on a smaller boat really did make a difference as you could head into smaller coves and bays and get closer to the shoreline.

We spent about two hours out on the Pacific Ocean chasing whales but our first sighting was to be our only one but it had been more than worth it. Whale watching time over we headed back on the tourbase into the centre and the cruise ship for some massively over due lunch.

Satisfied and fed we headed back off the boat to walk the one main street that made up the shopping and downtown area of Juneau. Its a wooden town, all painted slat board and traditional hand carved shop signs. We were told that a lot of the newer shops had actually been opened up by the cruise lines and these were the ones that were really being pushed by the cruise companies. The majority of the sotres were selling what seemed to be the standard Alaskan tourist fare such as T-Shirts and ULU knives and soapstone polar bears and eskimos.

Avoiding all the shops as we did we sat and had a coffee then headed back to the ship. It was already past 17:00 and it was an early theatre show tonight and we wanted to go.

The theatre show was a ships production tonight called The Piano Man with songs by Billy Joel & Elton John and Barry Manilow etc but it had a bizarre Wizard of Oz sideline that did not really make sense. The show was good but not fantastic but we enjoyed it and it was a great way to pass the time aboard.

Next it was time for dinner and because we had eaten such a late lunch neither of us were feeling it to be honest so much so that we both passed on desert and had fish vitality courses for our main as we were just not that hungry.

We retired to the Champagne Bar and our favourite bar person Rebecca form Indonesia. Tonight it was Appletini's and Key Lime Martini's that hit the spot and we sat by the floor to ceiling windows and watched the sun go down (even though it stil remained perfectly light?!?). We stayed for a couple but once again we just both felt so tired that our bed was calling.

We dock early tomorrow and with no planned tris we need to get up and get out and on with stuff. Quite what that will be only tomorrow will tell us.

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