Cruise Day 4 - Kodiak

 We had a peaceful morning as we were not scheduled to arrive in Kodiak until 11:00 am.  After breakfast I checked out the party bridge game and found a threesome waiting on a fourth.  We played until 11:30 then broke for lunch and other activities. Mary and I had burgers on the Lido deck, which always brings up pleasant memories of her father.

Next up was tendering.  We fully expected most people to be off the ship after 2-3 hours so we planned to get our tender tickets at 1pm.  This was based on our experience with tendering on Princess where by that time they typically announce there is no need for tender tickets, just go to the gangway.  Well, when we got  to the place to pickup our tender tickets, we were very surprised to see the area filled with people waiting to tender!  It took another 45 minutes for our group to be called.  We finally got to Kodiak after 2pm, only to have to wait to get off the tender while returning passengers went down the gangway.  Maybe HAL needed more tenders or something since it took 4 1/2 hours to tender 1900 people to the city.  That's a rate of only 3 tenders per hour. 

We also tender at Valdez where we have a morning excursion so our group will get priority. Good thing!  

There was not a lot to see in Kodiak.  We walking around and found the Kodiak Marketplace, a small  indoor shopping center with many stores where Mary enjoyed some shopping time and seeing all the different merchandise.  On our walk, we also saw this pretty Russian Orthodox church that was juts begging to have it's picture taken. 

The one thing that Kodiak has is boats! On the left is the small boat marina while the larger fishing boats have their own marina on the appropriately named Near Island.  

Tendering back to the ship went OK.  I was able to get some pictures of the Noordam from the tender, but the lighting was not good, with the sun behind the ship.  

After dinner in the buffet, we went to hear a violinist play some classical music by Vivaldi and Bach.  She had a nice, humorous style of interacting with the guests that made the concert quite interesting.  HAL does a great job of having music like this on their ships. 

On to Anchorage tomorrow!