And we celebrated being husband and wife

And FINALLY...

If you made it this far, congratulations.
I'll give you a jolly rancher the next time I see you.
Brevity is a virtue. One that I lack (like mother like daughter I guess.)
Now you don't need to go on a cruise to Alaska because you've been there vicariously
and you don't have four pounds to lose.
Anyway, we did enjoy every minute of it.
Check out some of my favorite pictures that I took
(minus the post cards at the top) and my new Alaskan creche.
Bon voyage!

And of course we ate, and ate (and ate)

Click to enlarge these pictures to read the amount of food consumed each week on a cruise ship.
Some of my favorites:
110 to 115 TONS of food is delivered to the ship before sailing
500 lbs of fish prepared daily
1,200 lbs of chicken and1,200 lbs of beef - daily
28 gals on mayonnaise used daily (sick!)
60 gals of ice cream prepared daily
200 cakes and pies served daily
350 lbs butter used daily (now we're talking)
2,000 lbs of fresh fruit served daily

Amount of serving dishes washed daily - 60,000 - glasses 20,000
62 men work continuously throughout all the ship's galleys pre-washing, sorting and feeding a constant stream of china, glasses, silver, pots and pans into the dish washing machines (poor guys)

It's a well known fact that you are well feed on a cruise, right? Food is available pretty much 24/7. We didn't know this when we went on our first cruise. Now we board the ship and head for the food. Pizza is available almost always and room service is available free of charge. You can also request a fresh fruit bowl for your room, if only you were hungry enough to eat it. You can be served breakfast, lunch and dinner by waiters or you can go to the buffet and choose whatever you want for yourself. If you are going on a shore excursion, they provide wrapped sandwiches, fruit and cookies to pack a lunch. There's Italian night, American night, Captain's night, among other themed nights. There's unlimited ice cream cones, hot chocolate, milk, OJ, apple juice and lemonade. Soda pop costs extra.
We had some serious fresh sea food. They could have been fishing from the boat for all I know. Pictured below was the seafood buffet served on the deck of the ship while we cruised through the glaciers. Rick took a pass, but I'll try anything once. I credit my mother for this. She didn't raise any wimpy or terribly picky eaters (as far as I know.) I especially LOVE seafood. Love, love it. Throughout the cruise I had my fill of salmon, crab legs, halibut, shrimp, prawns, lobster and clam chowder. I tried caviar and sushi, although they aren't my favorite taste (too salty.) The breads, rolls, desserts, soups and salads were divine throughout the week.
All this and I ONLY put on 4 pounds. Trust me, it could have been much, much worse.

We were waited on hand and foot by the crew

Cruise ships employ A LOT of people from all around the world. Where were about 2300 passengers on the ship and nearly 820 crew members taking care of us. What is that, a one to three ratio? Ship service is amazing. We had a cabin steward named Ricardo from the Philippines. Our waitress was named Marnell from South Africa (a darling red head no less with a delightful accent) and our waiter was named Marjan from Croatia. It was fun to chat with them and many of the other crew members who were waiting on us.














In typical five star hotel style, Ricardo cleaned up our room daily and folded down the sheets in the evening, putting chocolates on the pillow. He kept our room spic and span and paid attention to every detail that proved that we were staying in a swanky place. We enjoyed soft feather pillows, high thread count sheets and a down comforter for a good night sleep (although the bed was kind of hard.) And yes, the toilet paper had a coat of arms and it and the tissue paper were folded to a sharp point twice a day!















One day as we were going into the room, Ricardo was coming down the hall and said that there was a problem in our room and he was sorry he had to tell us about it, but he figured that we would want to know. He said that he had seen two mice in our room. They were on our bed. He called in the report to the take care of the problem, but he warned us that we might see them again. I was freaked out until I saw this...




















For the rest of the trip we played a little cat and mouse game, hiding the mice around the room in various places. Ricardo would hide them and I would find them and re-hide them. I took care of them once and for all when we left. Poor little mice!

We spent two days floating among glaciers

• Main Entry: gla·cier
• Pronunciation: \ˈglā-shər also -zhər, especially British ˈgla-sē-ər or ˈglā-sē-\
• Function: noun
• Etymology: French, from Middle French dialect (Franco-Provençal), from glace ice, from Latin glacies; akin to Latin gelu frost — more at cold
• Date: 1744

: a large body of ice moving slowly down a slope or valley or spreading outward on a land surface

From Wikipedia:

A glacier is a perennial mass of ice which moves over land. A glacier forms in locations where the mass accumulation of snow and ice exceeds ablation over many years. The word glacier comes from French via the Vulgar Latin glacia, and ultimately from Latin glacies meaning ice.^[1]

Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth, and is second only to oceans as the largest reservoir of total water. Glaciers cover vast areas of the polar regions and are found in mountain ranges of every continent except Australia. In the tropics glaciers are restricted to the highest mountains. The processes and landforms caused by glaciers and related to them are referred to as glacial. The process of glacier growth and establishment is called glaciation. Glaciers are indicators of climate and are important to world water resources and sea level variation.

The distinctive blue tint of glacial ice is often wrongly attributed to Rayleigh scattering due to bubbles in the ice. The blue color is actually created for the same reason that water is blue, that is, its slight absorption of red light due to an overtone of the infrared OH stretching mode of the water molecule.<sup>[7]

One day we cruised through Glacier Bay National Park - check it out here
and the next day we visited College Fjord Alaska check it out here.</sup>
College Fjord is named after renowned East Coast colleges.
The bottom four pictures are of the Mendenhall glacier (no it's not named after Bronco as Rick thought...) which is located just outside Juneau. All of these glaciers are MAGNIFICENT!!!
(Although we couldn't stop thinking about Jack and Rose, poor kids.)

We explored the ship including three ports of call

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