The Last Day at Sea

After Ketchikan (yes this is the correct spelling) we headed out to sea. There is a legal catch that we have to stop on a non US port so the ship is able to sell the duty free merchandise. So last night during dinner we stopped in Prince Rupert British Columbia for 45 whole minutes to meet the formality.Last nights dinner was formal so Heather and I got dressed early so we could have our portraits taken. For dinner I had a fruit plate, a salad, and two entrees because the menu was particularly good tonight. I had lobster tail, and veal cordon bleu. After the main course the wait staff preformed their special baked Alaska parade. I was expecting something that out did the Carnival dance thing they did on the last formal night, but it wasn't even close. And for desert we had the baked Alaska that they danced with.Last night was also the Grand Buffet, again I was comparing it to the Carnival's Grand Buffet and it wasn't nearly as good. It didn't have nearly as much presentation and sculptures as the Carnival one.Today we are cruising the inside passage toward Seattle. It's a day at sea and we have 2 beer events, The History of Beers Tasting, and this evening, our Hearty Beers Tasting.The History of beers was a fun little tasting, we drank beer styles in the order that they were created, brown ales, pale ales, lagers, etc. It seemed to me that it was mostly an excuse for drinking beer. They poured a lot of beers in a short period of time. By the time they had given samples of all 8 beers I had 6 that I hadn't touched yet. After the tasting we had our final dinner aboard the ship. I had a spinach fritter, cream of broccoli soup, a salad, and Prime Rib. for desert I had some fancy smancy chocolate cake. We all didn't eat much because we knew what was coming next.The Hearty Beer Tasting, our final tasting on the cruise. Our bags needed to be packed and in the hallway for pickup before we went to bed, and nobody wanted to pack after the beer tasting so we packed earlier in the day. At the tasting we tasted Maritime Imperial Pale Ale, Dicks Belgian-Style Tripel, Dicks Grand Cru, Midnight Sun's La Maitresse du Moine (The Monks Mistress), Fishes Old Woody, and Silver Gultch Grand Reserve. They were all big beers ranging from 8% to 14% ABV.To cap off the evening we had a very special guest beer, a beer that I never thought that I would have the privliage to taste. Alan, was able to get Boston Beer Company to donate 3 bottles of Sam Adams Utopias, the worlds strongest beer, to our cruise!. I never thought that I was going to get to taste Utopias as it sells for $150 a bottle. The Utopias was very good, drinking it is more like sherry than beer. After the beer we had a drawing to give away merchandise that the breweries donated to the cruise. I got a glass from Fish Brewing, and Heather won a bottle of beer. At the end of the tasting they kept drawing names until all the beer that was left on the ship was gone. So I'll be carryng home a few bottles of beer to share with all of you. They also drew names for the 3 empty utopias bottles, but I wasn't lucky enough to win one of those.