June 25th, a day at sea.

It was about 6:30 when I first opened my eyes. It was completely light outside. There is something really nice about lying in bed and watching the landscape roll by. The water is very still and as the morning progresses it is getting clearer. We are a little further from the shoreline, which has remained unchanged during the night...lots of trees with the mountains in the background. It is unbroken except for the occasional cluster of building. There are also small islands with rocky outcroppings. There is another ship right ahead of us. It is probably the Celebrity which left Vancouver before us and has been in sight most of the time.

We had breakfast delivered to our room, which we ate on the verandah. It was a bit chilly, but where else do you get to do that. Since this is a full day at sea, there is a plethora of on-board activities, which actually require I get dressed.

At some point, trees turned to water, lots of water. The remainder of the day there was nothing but water. We had traveled 250 nautical miles since Vancouver, with about 250 more until we reach Ketchekan sometime tommorrow morning.

We get papered to death. There is the daily Explorer, outlining the activities for the day. Then there is a little shipboard newspaper, which synopsises the New York Times is about 12 eight and a half by eleven inch pages. And then there are the flyers, piles of them, from the shops advertizing about everything.

There were activities all day, We went to the "must attend" shopping talk. All it was, was really a should miss. It was an overly long narration from the shopping director on her 25 years of shopping, what to buy, read: expensive jewelry and more jewelry. She ran overtime, partly because of crew only fire drill, but we missed the reception with the captain for the people in the deluxe verandah suites and penthouse.

Learning from out "open seating" experience the night before, we headed to the Neptune Lounge, which is just for the people on our deck. It has magazines and newspapers, a television and coffee and other refeshments. There is always food there appropriate for the time of day: Continental breakfast, midday snaks, afternoon tea and canapés starting at 5:00. Better yet, we have Shirley, the Neptune Lounge concierge. The scary thing is she knew our name when we walked in. We made reservations for dinner and had a snack while we decided what we wanted to eat for lunch.

We opted for the Liddo buffet. It was a zoo, even though we waited until after 1:00. With everyone on-board it was pretty crowded. We had a little sushi and I tried the Swiss Steak. It was really good, The sushi was just ok. The sushi line was entertaining, the guy in front of us, who was holding up the line, wanted sushi without nori.

We walked around the ship, just to see what was on the other side...but it was just more water. So we returned to our room for an afternoon nap. Tonight is the first formal night, so that will take some getting ready for.

After drinks in our room and some Canapes from the lounge we were ready to face the rest of the evening.

At 7:00, we went to the champagne toast with the captain, where he introduced the ship's officers. We were with the commoners, but not many people showed up. Julie, our personnal concierge managed a table for two for an eight o'clock dinner. It just takes too much energy to constantly meet new people and have to talk to them. Last night's featured culinary council chef was David Burke, tonight it is Marcus Samuelsson. So they have a couple of the recipes on the menu.

We had a nice bottle of Malbec, recommended by the wine steward with our dinner. The appetizer was and incredible carpaccio of beef tenderloin. I am sure how you slice meat that thin, but as described it was literally razor-thin. It was drizzled with olive oil, topped with shaved Reggiano-Parmigiano and accompanied with a whole grain mustard sauce. For our salad course we had thesmoed salmon, pear and fennel salad. For the entrée, we chose Chef Samuelsson's roasted rack oflambwith smoked-paprika crust. It came with a cheesy potatogratin, sautéed green beans and roasted sweet peppers. Wow! I wanted to chew on the bones. I should have brought my camera, but I didn't want to look like a geek. For dessert I had the other Chef Samuelsoon dish: coconut rice pudding. It had ginger and lemon grass, which gave it a very delicate and unusual flavor. It was really creamy. Lois had the baked Alaska.

After dinner, we went to the 10:00 stage show, "Love Songs of Broadway." It was love songs sung by people who wouldn't make it on Broadway. It was a nice way to finish off the evening with an after dinner drink. It was over by 11:00 and it was still light outside. We change time zones tonight, so we get another hourto sleep in. We arrive in Ketchikan early in the morning.