jamielyssa | Last Alaskan Cruise entry ;)

June 6^th, 2017 Northern California

This will be the last entry that I write on the cruise ship. I mean I’ll probably write one more entry to describe the journey back to Texas and such, but this was the last day of the cruise. And I’m sorry to say that today was an extremely boring day and there really aren’t any exciting stories. The distance traveled on the cruise from San Francisco to Alaska and back to San Francisco was 3161 Nautical Miles.

Today was the last day of the cruise, the last day is always sad, I mean the ship sort of becomes like a mini home for a week or so… you really get to know your waiters and you recognize people that you’ve crossed paths with during the cruise, and in a way, it’s like leaving your family.

Justin and I slept pretty late today since we had nothing to rush to. We hung out in the room, playing our various video-gaming systems until we met my parents for lunch around noon. For lunch, I attempted to order grilled cheese. The cooks didn’t really understand exactly what grilled cheese was, so they gave me partially toasted bread with barely melted American cheese on it, but know what? Cheese and bread taste really good no matter what shape or form they come in, so it was fine. I also had some chocolate chip ice cream on top of chocolate chip cookies for dessert and that tasted good as well.

After lunch, Justin and I came back to our room and started packing… well okay, Justin started packing, and I played more video games, I’m very a much a last minute type of person. I mean I ALWAYS get things done, but I find if I plan things too early, I’m more likely to forget things, which I suppose seems contradictory, but that’s just how I am?

Justin and I had our final massage at 3:30; we had a 100 minute seaweed wrap massage. Basically, they cover you in this seaweed paste stuff, and wrap you in tinfoil like a burrito or sushi or something, and then you sit there for about fifteen minutes as the seaweed detoxifies your skin or something. It didn’t feel bad? I sort of felt like my entire body was burning, but it wasn’t burning in an uncomfortable way or anything, it sort of felt like your skin would feel if you put icy hot or bengay on it or something similar, it was sort of a burning tingling feeling. After the fifteen minutes, we showered, and washed the seaweed paste off, and then we had a regular full-body massage, and it felt good. I like massages.

After the massage, we got pizza. Justin says the thing he’ll probably miss most about the cruise is the ability to walk up on flight of steps and be able to get as many slices of pizzas or diet cokes as he wants. Then we went back to our room, and I finally started packing.

After packing, we met my parents for our last dinner with Herbert and Jasper. The last meal is always sad to me. I had chicken fingers and mashed potatoes [yes I eat like a six year old] and Justin had a New York Strip Steak, which he said was good. For dessert, we had Baked Alaska, which is the best dessert in the entire world. It’s basically burned marshmallow surrounding chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream and it’s amazing. Since we didn’t have traditional dining, we didn’t get the Basked Alaska parade like I had on my Iceland cruise, but that’s okay because I’m sure the junior waiters are probably really embarrassed when they have to dance around with a fake dessert on their head. But our waiters, the good sports that they are, put on a mini Baked Alaska dance for my mother complete with napkin waving, a fake dessert, and glasses with blinking LED lights.

After dinner, Justin and I went down to the internet café so we could print our boarding passes for our flights tomorrow. I know we can check into our flights at the airport, but this is more for our own peace of mind. Then we came back to the room, and packed some last minute stuff [like the clothes we were wearing for dinner] and now we’re just killing time before we go to bed. Justin is played Switch and I’m writing this entry.

Tomorrow, we catch our ride back to SFO airport, and then our flight to Dallas is at 3:45 pm, and we’ll get to Houston around 11 pm, which really sucks since we both have to go back to reality and work on Thursday, and not only will we be jet-lagged by two hours, we’ll barely get any sleep before we have to wake up, oh and we’re both getting sick and catching colds.

But overall, the cruise was a lot of fun. Justin did say he would go on another cruise, if the opportunity ever presented itself to him. It was nice to get a break from reality, and it was amazing to explore Alaska, I loved Alaska. I’ve visited a lot of the states now, I think I’ve visited close to 40… a lot of the lower 48, but I haven’t visited Hawaii yet, and we’re missing some of the northern states like North and South Dakota, for example, and some random states in the middle of the US like Kentucky and Oklahoma…. But anyways, out of all the states I’ve visited, Alaska is certainly one of my favorites.

It will be sort of nice to get back to the world of internet and social media, but it’s been really nice to not have internet and be able to actually relax and disconnect from the world without worrying about who’s engaged or pregnant on facebook, or what your favorite celebrities are doing on Instagram, though I am looking forward to sharing all the photos I took on the cruise and the stories about Alaska with my friends.

And that’s it for our cruise to Alaska. I hope you all enjoyed following along on our vacation and that you enjoyed the stories and pictures.