Monday - Wrangell, AK

After a very late night I am not sure why we decided to have our breakfast delivered so early. Joaqui arrived at 7:55 am with our breakfast. Needless to say we were all still asleep and that doorbell is that last thing I wanted to hear! We were only in Wrangell until 2:00 pm, so we needed to get going with our day. The most amazing thing today – it was sunny and warm!! After another fabulous breakfast, Dad and I ventured into town. Mom decided to stay onboard and enjoy the warmer weather out on the verandah. The town of Wrangell only has about 2300 people and is what I would picture as a typical Alaskan town. It is unspoiled by all of the jewelry and t-shirt stores that littered Juneau and Skagway. It is a very simple town, with phenomenal views. Everyone spoke to you on the street, and local artist sell watercolor prints, beautiful wooden items and the children sell garnets. The Boy Scouts of America own the area where they gather garnets, and children up to the age of 18 are allowed to chip them out of the rock and sell them. We walked all of the way down to the local museum, which was very well done for such a small town. They had the history of the town that dates back to the gold rush days. We saw all that there was to see and returned to the ship about 1:15. We found mom sitting out on the verandah, sipping a mimosa, and reading her book. Now that is the life! We left a little bit late due to the fact that we were missing some passengers. Once everyone was on board, we departed. Since we had gotten up so early we were all ready for lunch. I think everyone decided to go up on the pool deck due to the sunny, warm weather. The burgers at the pool grill are some of the best! We each had one along with a margarita – must have been the weather. After a very leisurely lunch we went down and looked around the shops on board, and then of course it was naptime. I guess travelling with the parents is a little like travelling with children they need to eat and have their naps! The ship had started moving quite a bit more than usual, so we were all a little uneasy as we dressed for dinner. We had reservations up in La Terrazza, the Italian restaurant. We ended up being late for dinner, but it was not a problem. We had tuna carpaccio for an appetizer followed by a white bean and prawn soup. Dad is on a risotto kick, so he had that secondi. We all enjoyed the monkfish medallions for our main course. We kept dessert light, just a little gelato. We went to the lounge for a marionette show. I thought we would just stop by, but the show turned out to be really interesting. It is truly amazing to watch how he maneuvers the puppets. It is way more complicated – some even have more than 16 strings. We were losing an hour as we head down to Victoria, so we called it an early night.