Vegan Alaskan Cruise Part 2

It is going to be tough to get back to reality after so much fun this last week on this Vegan Alaskan Cruise, the last few days have been filled with a tons of food and great people. And I have tons more pictures! Picking up on day 2 of the cruise, we had a great meet and greet with the guys of The Vegan Zombie, Jon and Chris.

Basically we gathered in one of the lounge bars on the ship and grilled the guys with questions and how they create their show, where they come up with inspiration, and their history as vegans. They’re very interesting and down to earth, we’ve had a few opportunities to hang out since.

Later that day we had a wine, “cheese”, and chocolate party featuring chocolate treats from Fran’s recipes and Miyoko’s Artisan Vegan Cheeses and were greeted with a tray of alcohol when entering the party.

And toasted these two lovely ladies and their amazing creations!

Mmmmm, tons of Miyoko’s cheese.

And we got to enjoy cruising through a storm from the upper deck lounge, so pretty.

So I tried some of the cheeses…

Actually I shared this plate with hubby, really. We hung out, chatted with The Vegan Zombie guys and other vegans, sipped sparkling wine, and enjoyed the views. Does it get much better?

We had about an hour to get back to our room and get dressed up for the formal sit down dinner … did I mention lots of eating is done on cruises? Whew! Good thing for the nice gym too!

Each night we have a new vegan menu to choose from and they seem to be getting better as the kitchen and chefs make improvements from feedback from our group.

I started with a simple, light veggie soup that was savory and warming.

And got a wonderful Indian curry lentil dish with rice and crunchy cracker roll that probably has a more sophisticated name.

Dessert was a simple and sweet apple cake with a hearty and moist texture.

On Monday we had a great meet and greet with the Vegan Black Metal Chef, Brian Manowitz, while pulling into Juneau, Alaska which was great. He’s a highly educated metal fan/musician from Florida that has turned his eccentric cooking style into a successful one man series of cooking videos.

He’s also very interesting to hang out with and funny, looking forward to his cooking demo later today!

We then hit the vegan lunch buffet to fuel up for our Juneau shore excursions.

Simple steamed veggies, more curry veggies and rice, and rhubarb crumble dessert.

Then layered up in rain wear and left the ship to head to our first shore excursion in Juneau, Alaska.

We did a longer, Best of Juneau excursion that was only for the vegan group on the ship. As a member of the group, you could pick from either the regular shore excursions or the ones with just the vegan group and we did a little of both. The Juneau excursion included spending about an hour at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, just enough time to take in the glacier views, snap some pics and maybe get in a little hiking before jumping back on the bus. It was pretty awesome, I have never seen a glacier in person and just wow!

After we moved on to Allen Marine Tours for a late vegan lunch/early dinner at Orca Point Lodge and whale watching. The lodge was beautiful on an island and we got amazing views of mountains and a rain storm as we ate.

The meal was interesting – tons of salad, rice, and fruit. Because the lodge usually serves a salmon meal as part to the tour, we joked that we got that minus the salmon. But it was still good to get a fill up on plenty of fresh veggies and fruits.

Then it was back to the boat to start the whale watching sunset adventure.

I promise that’s a bald eagle, I snapped him from across the water with a telephoto lens on a moving boat, so I’m surprised it came out that good.

And we had opportunities to snap other wild life too like these seals chilling on a buoy and picturesque light house in the background.

The views and colors of the snow capped mountains from the boat as the sun set and clouds shifted were just amazing.

We got amazing views of more glaciers too.

And bald eagles flying right over the boat.

We saw about 7 whales total on the trip which is supposedly a lot, but they’re also hard to snap pictures of!

And fun!

And that was Monday. Wow, can’t believe Friday is here already! We have more cooking demos and vegan group events planned on the ship today before pulling into Victoria tonight, so more to come!