Juneau

Our first stop on our cruise was the town of Juneau which is Alaska's State Capital. Approaching the port we caught out first sight of some whales. They're actually quite easy to spot because they blow water so far in the air that you can see it from quite a distance. We didn't actually manage to see any tails, just them blowing water but we were still excited at our first wildlife spot!

Once we arrived at the port, we got off the ship (which was a much smoother process than we thought it would be be) and booked ourselves a whale watching and glacier trip. We had time first for a walk around the town so we walked up to the State Capital building which was voted the ugliest state capital in the country, I didn't think it was too bad. Apparently it's the only one to not have a dome. Then we walked over to the Governor's house which looked like a lovely building from photos that I'd seen but as we got closer to it, we realised it was covered in tarpaulin and being renovated so we turned back to town.

In the afternoon we met up with our tour to go whale watching. There were lots of excursions available to be booked through the cruise ship but we had decided to avoid them and find something ourselves when we got to shore. We were really happy with the tour that we found, we spent 3 hours whale watching then an hour at the Meadenhall Glacier. We spotted loads of hump back whales and some of them were really close to the boat.

After the whale watching, we went on to the Mendenhall Glacier. The blue colour of the glacier was amazing.

Our bus driver had told us to walk down to a stream near the glacier because a few days ago a bear had been spotted down there.  So we walked over and look who we found doing a bit of fishing...