Inside Passage

Greetings from the Inside Passage! We are having a great time so far. Let me give you a little recap yesterday after I blogged. Yesterday, at 4:15 we had to report to our muster station. This is where you go in an emergency. Once we were there we had to wait for instructions from the crew on board and listen to them tell us what to do if we have an emergency on board and have to use the lifeboats. I think it would be a great thing if after so many cruises, you could opt out of these muster drills. They are all the same. We go, we stand, we listen, we fight the crowds to get to where we need to be after the drill. Anyways, after the drill we headed up to the greenhouse spa. This is one of my favorite places on board the ship :) They were having a drawing for free services at the spa. Well it just so happens that Mom won the very first prize of a seaweed wrap massage. We were both so excited!!! Now I just needed to win. And guess what……I DID!!!!!!!!!!! I won a 25 minute facial. Go me!!! :) I was just talking yesterday about how I would really like to get a facial on this cruise, and then I won one. So, we will be taking full advantage of our free services next week. After that, we went to dinner. It was tasty. We weren't that hungry but of course we ate. Check out the pictures…….Can you guess who ate what? After dinner, we headed to the shops. We looked around, checked out what there was to see and then headed back to the room for a little bit. Then it was time for free Bingo. Yes, you heard me, FREE BINGO. One winner would get $500. We thought we should go see if we were lucky again. So we went. No such luck on winning. Oh well. By this time, I could barely keep my eyes open. But we stayed in our seats and waited to watch the show. The dancers danced a little jig and a magician that is supposed to be really good (he's been on a ship before that Mom has been on) came out and did a few magic tricks. Then it was time to call it quits for the night. So that brings us to today. Today began with room service being delivered at 6:30 am. For those of you that have never cruised before, room service is included for free. You just have to fill out the paper the night before and hang it on the door. We did just that. What a better way to start the day than breakfast served to my room overlooking the Alaskan seas. Of course I had to have my hot tea and mom had her pot of coffee. I know 6:30 sounds early and it is, but why waste your morning sleeping when there is so much to see and do. Plus the sunrise time was about 4:30 or something like that. After breakfast we got ready to spend the morning in the spa. We bought passes for the whole trip to use the thermal suite (pictures coming soon). So we went to use the jacuzzi for about 15 minutes and then spent about 10 minutes on the heated beds. The view was wonderful as we looked out the window. It was very relaxing. Then it was time for our full body massage and facial. It was an hour and a half of heaven. Yes, it was so nice!!! I haven't had a massage in forever and a I've never had a facial, so it was definitely a nice treat. After our morning at the spa, we went to a Suite Welcome Reception where we met the captain and hotel manager. We were asked on our invitation to "please refrain from hand shaking at this event in an effort to avoid transmission of common person to person germs." They don't want the Norovirus to outbreak on the ship and neither do I! We thought there would be lunch there but it was just a place to mingle with other people that were staying in suites and meet some of the crew on the ship. The future cruise consultant came up and started talking to the people next to us while we were there. After she talked to them, she made her way towards us. When she asked where we were from, of course we just say Dallas. People that aren't from Dallas don't know Wylie and Rowlett. Well it just so happened that she was from Dallas too, born and raised there. Her mom is a teacher at an elementary school close to Bishop Lynch. She asked where I taught and I told her, and she has rental property that she rents to a family in Wylie. Crazy!!! It's such a small world. We stayed there chatting with the people next to us for a little while, then we went up to the Lido for a burger (yes Ruthie and Amy, you can be jealous). I actually had a veggie burger and it was delicious. So for now, I'll leave you with this. I'll update the rest of our day tomorrow. Enjoy! :)

***Pictures are taking awhile to upload so I'll have to upload those later. Sorry!