Alaskan Cruise Adventure

A World Travel customer, MB,  blogs about her family’s Alaskan Cruise.

An Alaskan cruise had always been on my bucket list and in June of 2015, I finally got to experience it!  My eldest granddaughter, Katie, had just graduated from college in May of that year so as a graduation gift, this grandma took her to Alaska, which interesting enough was also a destination she’d wanted to visit.

We traveled with 7 other people, some of whom were family members so it made the trip that much more enjoyable.  Our Alaskan cruise began in Seattle, Washington and our ports of call included Juneau, Skagway, Tracy Arm, Ketchikan and Victoria, BC.  As my granddaughter had never been on a cruise before, she was especially excited!  What made our cruise even better was having a balcony room.  It’s true what my cousin Lydia said, once you’ve experienced a balcony on a cruise ship, you never want to cruise again unless you have one every time.

We sailed on Princess and had a wonderful experience on our cruise. There was so much to do on board and age didn’t matter.  We all spent one evening dancing the night away together although our ages ranged from 21 years to 67 years old.  My granddaughter had confided in me after the cruise that she didn’t think there would be much to do but was amazed when the opposite was true.  She told me she couldn’t fit everything in that she’d wanted to do!  One of her favorite shore excursions was zip lining with the younger people in our group.  In addition to dancing and attending variety shows, we gambled, attended wine tastings, visited the spa, walked around the deck for exercise, swam in the pool, bought souvenirs in the gift shop and most fun of all, attended a tailgate party for the Seattle Seahawks, who were on board our ship for the duration of the cruise! We were all impressed with the attentive service we received from the waiters, room stewards and the Princess staff in general.

Of all the ports we visited, my favorite was Tracy Arm, where we witnessed first hand the majesty of the fjords and glaciers.  Their beauty is evident in photographs but to see them in person is breathtaking.  It was also the first chance we had to actually wear our jackets because prior to that port, the weather was warm enough to wear shorts and tank tops.

Thanks to our great travel agent, Heidi Nanigian from World Travel, our trip went off without a hitch and we returned with many fond memories and lots of photos!