Day 3 - Ketchikan, Alaska on Discovery Princess
This morning Discover Princess is scheduled to dock in Ketchikan, Alaska. The weather is typical Alaska: cool, rainy and cloudy with a little fog.
Once again, I begin the morning with coffee at International Cafe. They offer a wide variety of hot drinks here throughout the day.
Drink menu at International Cafe
At 8am this morning, we disembark the ship in Ketchikan to meet up with our local guide for our Ketchikan Photo Safari excursion. It is cold, windy and rainy today.
There are 8 guests in our group today and we are soon greeted by Ben, our local guide for the day.
Ben is our local tour guide for the day
Our group climbs into a small van and Ben begins explaining what we will be doing during the excursion. Our first stop is just a few minutes from the port at an overlook to get photos of Deer Mountain.
At each stop on this tour, Ben attempted to teach the group a different photography technique such as how use leading lines, rule of thirds, etc. These are all well known to seasoned photographers, so the informational part of this tour is really geared toward novices.
Our second stop is at a creek bed where we have an opportunity to shoot some photos of driftwood and rushing water.
Taking a photo of driftwood
Rickee tried out the Portrait Mode on her iPhone to take the photo below and blur the background.
One iPhone technique we did learn was how to use the LIVE function on the iPhone to blur the rushing water of a creek or waterfall.
We drove to Creek Street where we had a chance to use the leading lines technique to get some shots.
Creek Street
Another stop at Bar Harbor was used to teach how to use various filters in the iPhone to get different looks, like the monochrome filter I used below.
Even though a few people had proper mirrorless or DSLR cameras, most guests on the tour were using their iPhones and honestly, the tour had more to do with iPhone settings and techniques than anything else. That said, we can recommend this excursion.
Photo of Rickee using Portrait Mode with blurred background
After we return to Discovery Princess, it is time for a light lunch. We head to World Fresh Marketplace, the ship’s Lido Buffet. We have a light lunch because we do not want to spoil our appetite for our Chef’s Table dinner later.
At 5:30, we head to Crown Grill Bar for a pre-dinner cocktail.
I am once again disappointed that there are no Canadian rye whiskeys being served on board. That leaves me with little choice. I even tried to order Knob Hill or Maker’s Mark as a backup, and neither of those were available. I even went so far as to order a Mai Tai just to have something to drink.
As you can see in the photo above, Princess has gone to the dark side with paper straws.
At 6:30, the Restaurant Manager gathers the guests from Crown Grill Bar who have signed up for the special Chef’s Table Dinner this evening. We have enjoyed the Chef’s Table on a few ships, and on one other Princess ship, the Island Princess in 2017. We are escorted into the Ketchikan Dining Room to the Lumiere table.
Chef’s Table Lumiere
We are greeted by Francisco Patricio, the Maitre’D and Davide Menabo, the Executive Chef.
I could post a dozen photos of the eight-course meal (I stopped counting courses after eight). The preparation and presentation of the dishes is next level at the Chef’s Table dinner. Our main course plate included beef tenderloin, lamb loin and poached salmon.
If you want to know more about our Chef’s Table experience, and all of our Discovery Princess dining adventures, make sure to watch for our Discovery Princess Dining Review video on our YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/cruisereport) coming soon. You can also see many additional photos and video clips on our Instagram (@cruisereport) and Facebook (@cruisereport)
Tomorrow morning we will be sailing through Endicott Arm to Dawes Glacier followed by an afternoon in Juneau where we will going on a whale watching excursion.
