We were awake at 06:30 and got up and ready. As soon as we were ready, we headed up to the Windjammer for some breakfast. It was grey and dreary, but it was dry. I took some photos of the beautiful scenery and I finally got around to take a photo of the totem pole. Then we got some breakfast. Graham had a cooked breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, baked beans, bacon and sausages with a crusty roll. I had some sausages and hash browns. Normally the hash browns on Royal Caribbean are great, but they had a cardboard quality. I did not bother again. I did however enjoy my bowl of congee. It was again quite busy. As soon as we finished our food, we left. I took some more photos of the scenery as well as the artwork outside the spa. I particularly liked a terracotta panel of an eagle in flight.
We decided to head straight to the Schooner Bar as it had been so busy for morning trivia the previous day. There were some people around, but we had our pick of tables with a view. We decided that we would use one of our drink’s coupons each for a decent coffee. They have an outlet called Cafe Latte-tudes on deck 5. It is not a Starbucks concession, but they serve Starbucks coffee with a limited Starbucks menu. I went to get the coffee while Graham stayed upstairs to keep out table. I got an Americano for Graham and a Caramel Macchiato for me. This was definitely some decent coffee.
This was our first port day, but as we were not due to arrive into Juneau until 14:00, the morning still was very much like a sea day, and this meant there was plenty of trivia to be had. Before the first trivia session of the day, they always have some puzzle challenge where they give out sheets and you have 15 minutes to complete this. Sometimes it is sudoku and sometimes it is a crossword puzzle. That day it was something called an ABC Puzzle Challenge. Those challenges are not something we go out of our way to do, but if we are around, we have a go. This went totally over our heads, and we gave up.
Next up was morning trivia. We had not found our groove again and only scored 10 out 20. However, as the winning score was only 13 and most teams only got single figure score, I did not feel too bad about this. Next up was riddles. There were only 10 of them. Some were almost scarily easy, but others completely stumped me. We got 7 out 10 and the winner had a perfect score.
They offered a napkin folding class in the Schooner Bar that morning. One of the entertainment staff started his career on Royal Caribbean in the dining room and he taught the class. I was not brave enough to join in, but he had good turn out and I watched with great interest. They did three different kinds of napkin origami with increasing complexity. Everybody did great and I was really fascinated by their creations.
There was one more trivia session that morning. This was City Nickname Trivia. I figured that we would be on easy street, but this was trickier than I had anticipated. We were given a sheet with 30 city nicknames, and we had to write the corresponding city next to is. Somewhere very obvious and some we could make an educated guess, but some were really obscure. We got out 14 out 30 and the winning score was 19.
By the time the last trivia was finished, the scenery had become really pretty. We saw plenty of mountains and some of them had waterfalls. I tried to take some photos and it turned out that the windows in the Schooner Bar had a blue tint. This was not visible to the naked eye, but the phone picked up on this. As a result, I have a lot of blue photos. I did try to play around with various editing options, but nothing really worked for me, and blue is a pretty colour.
Around 13:00, we headed up to the Windjammer to get some lunch. We figured that people who had excursions would start to get ready for them and it would be a little quieter. This turned out to be correct. Graham had some assorted salads, cold cuts and breads. I had polenta fries with Romanesco sauce, fries, breaded chicken, chicken nuggets and a nacho burger. That day they have both the mango water and fruit punch, and I went with the mango water. Graham passed on dessert, but I had a vanilla and chocolate soft serve ice cream.
By the time we had finished lunch, we had arrived in Juneau. I took another photo of the totem pole with a mountain in the background. Then we went back to the cabin to get the stuff we needed to go ashore. As soon as we got to the cabin, there was an announcement that the ship had been cleared. We headed down to deck 2 to head out. Things were a little chaotic that day. There were people coming from all directions. The reason I got the basic photo package was that I wanted the frames for each of the ports. In Alaska, the photographers are not allowed to take photos outside the ship, which meant that they had set up on deck two. To give them credit, this ended up being the first Alaska cruise of the season and they had not yet worked out how to best handle this. There was one photographer with a certain deer in the headlights look in the middle of the worst crowd. Graham took one look at this and headed for the gangway. I stayed slightly back and managed to get my photo. By the following day, they had sorted this out.
I caught up with Graham not long afterwards. We were the only ship in Juneau that day and therefore were docked downtown. The weather forecast was abysmal. Fortunately, it was not raining when we got there. We did not really have any plans beyond that I was hoping to do some souvenir shopping and Graham wanted to get some cash. As soon as we were off the ship, we came across a beautiful totem pole. I took a photo, but there were a lot of people milling around. We then checked out the tour booth. When we were in Juneau in 2022, there were a few different companies that offered shuttles out to the Mendenhall glacier. The price was about $40 per person, which included the permit to access the national park and the shuttles ran around every half an hour. It was up to you how long you wanted to stay. This year, the price had gone up to $90 and you had to return two hours after leaving from the port. This gives you about 90 minutes at Mendenhall glacier. We had about that much time on an excursion in 2022 and it was nowhere near enough. That is why we had wanted to go back. We gave up on this idea for our repeat visit to Juneau.
As preparation for this cruise, we had watched some videos from a couple that did the same back-to-back cruise on the same ship in 2022. They were showing a selection of Alaska Spirit Jerseys in a shop called Alaska Shirt Company in Skagway. I love my Spirit Jerseys and have a nice collection of Disney Spirit Jerseys as well as Spirit Jerseys from various ships. This would be my favourite souvenir ever. I had found out that the Skagway branch was permanently closed, but they have three shops in Juneau. The closest one was very close to the port and was huge. I did have a good look around, but could not see any Spirit Jerseys or anything else to tempt me for that matter. I asked a member of staff if they had Spirit Jerseys, and she did not even know what I was talking about. I took that as a no.
We had a look at the Goldbelt Tramway, which is a big cable car going up the local mountain. We had no intention going up there that day, but this was a potential option for our second port call a week later. We took that trip in similar weather conditions in 2013 and it was a waste of time. The main attractions are the views from the top of the mountain and the hiking trails. With heavy cloud and rain, neither of them were really an option. Other than this, there is a restaurant, a craft beer bar, a gift shop and a theatre that sometimes offers cultural presentations. Back in 2013, there also was an outpost of the Juneau Raptor Centre near the summit, but the Juneau Raptor Centre closed down in 2022 and all permanent residents were transferred to the Alaska Raptor Centre in Sitka. We checked out how much the tickets were, which at just over $50 per person was not cheap. Then we did some more exploring.
There is a campaign in Juneau at the moment trying to reduce the number of cruise ships. I was kind of bewildered by this. Juneau is essentially a town of three parts. As the state capital of Alaska, part of this is dominated by state government. Then there is the residential area, which things like schools, hospital and Walmart. This is actually a fair way from the port, and I doubt many cruisers will venture there. The area around the port has increasingly turned into a vile tourist trap. Back in 2013, I really loved Juneau. Yes, there were some of the big chains like Diamond International and Del Sol that solely cater to cruisers already there then, but there were also plenty of slightly quirky independent shops. Nowadays the port area of Juneau is strictly for the cruisers. There are a number of bars and restaurants that cater to the cruise traffic, multiple branches of the international chains that only exist to sell to cruisers and a whole range of gift shops ranging from large to huge mainly specialising in t shirts, hoodies, ulu knives and vacuum-packed salmon. There are also a lot of empty smaller shops. I assume that they were once the small independent shops that I loved so much in 2013. They probably did not survive the cruise shut down. I really find it hard to see how this could appeal to locals.
We had a wander around town, and I had a look at another smaller branch of Alaska Shirt Company in the hope that they had a different selection from the larger shop. This was true, but they still did not have what I was after. Apart from some of the core collection in larger sizes, they seemed to specialise in parody t shirts and socks. I don’t think I have ever seen so many novelty socks in one place.
One shop that I really love and that has stood the test of time is Glacier Smoothie Soaps. This is a local family run operation that makes soaps with local glacier silt that is inspired by local history and landscapes. I discovered this in 2013 and was able to stock up in 2022. Unfortunately, they are closed on Sundays and both our port calls in Juneau were on a Sunday. I did however find out subsequently that there is a shop in Ketchikan that sells their soaps. We were heading there during the second week.
I took a couple of photos. Graham wanted to get some cash for tips, and we did actually manage to find a bank. This was the only thing we saw within walking distance of the port that was not strictly for the tourists. With this taken care of, we headed back to the ship. This time round I got some photos of the totem pole minus the people.
We made it back just in time for afternoon trivia. I had figured that nobody was there as we were in port until late that evening, but there was actually a pretty good turnout. Graham had a drink of the day, and I had a dessert pear margarita. This afternoon we got lucky. We scored 14 out of 18 and this was the winning score. We got two keychains that double as bottle openers. Those were new to us, and I was thrilled that we were able to add them to our collection.
After afternoon trivia, the string duo was doing another set. We fancied another drink, but we did not fancy this. We decided to check out how busy the Crown Lounge was. The answer was not busy at all. They were doing steady business, but we had no issue finding a table. Graham had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and I had a Passion Spritz. They also had happy hour snacks out and I had some sweetcorn fritters, chicken bites and some chocolate covered strawberries. Once we had finished our drinks, we moved on.
One further reason we had come up there was to check out the artwork. Royal Caribbean prides itself on the art collection on its ship and we normally spend some time admiring this. Not everything is to our taste, but it definitely is eclectic. Radiance is meant to have the best art collection in the fleet that was created in conjunction with London Contemporary Art and is worth around $6 million. The art collection on Radiance of the Seas includes paintings, sculptures, and other pieces by more than 100 different artists from countries around the world, including England, the United States, Norway, France, Italy and South Africa. It is definitely diverse, and I am sure just about everybody can find something that speaks to them. In a way, I felt that the artwork on deck 13 was the best of the bunch. There was a huge mural, a statue of Marilyn Monroe and windows with inlaid Swarovski crystal designs. It really was breathtaking.
We headed back to the cabin and got showered and changed. Then we went to the dining room. On the way we stopped for some photos. Then we went for dinner. The menu that evening was A Taste of the USA. We had first encountered this on Navigator in November, and I really enjoyed this. We both started with the baked potato soup with Cheddar cheese, crispy crumpled bacon, sour cream and chives. I also had the Buffalo chicken dip with crispy corn tortillas. I had really loved this on Navigator, but on Radiance, this was just OK. For his main course, Graham had Bourbon-glazed salmon with buttermilk mashed potato, crispy roasted Brussels sprouts and Dijon honey. I picked my main from the children’s menu that night and had chicken tenders with chips. Graham had some Royal cheesecake for dessert, but I passed.
After dinner, we headed back up to deck 13 so that Graham could take the photos of my outfit. We figured as we were there, we may as well check out the artwork on deck 12. This mainly consisted of historical photos, which was absolutely fascinating. We also found the specialty restaurant that I was interested in. It is called Samba Grill and is a Brazilian steakhouse. It is very tucked away and it was not surprising that from what I had read before the cruise, this is rarely busy. Once we had checked out all the artwork on deck 12, we headed back to our cabin and got ready for bed as we were planning on an early start the next morning.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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