Growing up loving animals and nature, I always wanted to go to Alaska. Madeline had two brothers that worked on the pipeline for months at a time, and she showed me some of the pictures that they brought home. Still, when it came down to it, we never really wanted to vacation in a cold climate considering we lived in Chicago and were tired of the cold. Once we got the cruise bug, though, we thought an Alaskan cruise would be a pretty good way to vacation there. We loved our cruise in 2007, and someday hoped to get back to the state and explore it more. As sort of a last minute thing, we booked another in 2021. |
Alaska |
Our twenty-first cruise returned us to Alaska. We used Marriott Vacation Club points to book a fairly last minute cruise while the pandemic was still going on. The ship was the NCL Encore, which was large and seemed exciting. We had beautiful weather and enjoyed the use of the Thermal Suite when we weren’t out on an excursion. One of those excursions included a hike on top of Mendenhall Glacier. It was fun to put on our ice cleats and walk across the frozen river. This was also really the first cruise we took after we learned about how to avoid issues with Madeline’s food allergies. We found a wonderful restaurant manager who helped us order food every day for the following day. It was a blessing to find such a wonderful group of people who cared about her diet as much as Disney cares. Overall it was a great trip, but it may very well be the last time we go to Alaska… at least on a cruise. |
NCL Cruise 2021 |
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Our sixth cruise was to the 48th state that I've been to, Alaska. Alaskan cruises only happen in the summer, and we needed to go between softball seasons, so it turned out the available week was the first week of school. Because of that, we didn't take the girls with us, especially since Alicia was living in Texas at the time. We tried a new cruise line with Princess, and went on the Golden Princess. It departed from Seattle and then went to Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, and Victoria over a 7 day period. The weather was about as good as you can get for an Alaskan trip, with a quick shower once while we were shopping in the Juneau. We wouldn't recommend Princess, by the way. They weren't bad, but we liked NCL better. |
Princess Cruise 2007 |