It’s hard to believe that nearly a month has gone by since my cruise to Alaska. My husband and I cruised with 2 other friends. The natural beauty of the Last Frontier was breath taking. I have so many photos of spectacular mountains and waterfalls, each one more awe inspiring than the last. We were blessed with beautiful weather, sunny each day with not a drop of rain (despite everything I’d heard about being prepared for rain daily). It was an experience I’ll never forget. We want to return someday just to explore more inland. I highly recommend our travel agent, Terri, she was great – and put up with lots of questions 🙂

We cruised the Inside Passage of Alaska aboard the Norwegian Joy in a balcony stateroom on Deck 11 Starboard. Our housekeeping steward was very attentive and even gave us a bottle of champagne to celebrate a belated birthday. I loved going out on the balcony to see the busyness of the port at two of the four cities we docked at. The ship was huge with 20 decks, even housing a go-cart track and a laser-tag field. You can make reservations for both of these activities for an additional fee. We chose to do the go-carts on one of our at-sea days. I actually came in 3^rd place in our race, it was a blast!

The food was great and plentiful, with 3 main dining rooms plus the Garden Café buffet. There were also many specialty restaurants available for an additional fee. We were happy to be able to get seated near a window each evening for dinner. It is still hard to wrap my head around watching the sun set after 10pm. The serving staff was great.

I was really impressed with the entertainment on board. We saw a wonderful production of “Footloose”. My only complaint would be that even though we made advanced reservations (weeks before the cruise), and arrived 20 minutes before the show started, we still had crappy seats and couldn’t even sit together. I think they should offer seat assignments that you can choose what is available at the time you make your reservation. Also, with nearly 4000 guests on board, perhaps they could schedule more showtimes. We also enjoyed their “Elements” show. We arrived even earlier and got decent seats. In essence, it was a visual/musical representation of earth, water, fire, and air.

We really enjoyed the music of Albatross Air. They often played in the Atrium, but I really loved their “Rock Anthems” set in the Cavern Club. We also loved the Abbey Road Beatles … a wonderful tribute band. We went to all 3 of their shows – they were great! We also enjoyed a couple of the comedy shows. There was always something fun to do ?

 

I will be telling you all about our excursions in future blog posts …

Have you cruised before? Where was your favorite destination?