First Alaska Cruise

The past summer in Seattle is really intolerant, it is really stuff and humiliate. Also there was not rain for a long time. Therefore, I decided to go to Alaska to escape this hot summer. I did a lot of research on the internet, but still couldn't decide which cruise is the best to me so I asked several friends who had a experience with the Alaska Cruise before. They told me that the Princess Cruise is much more suitable for elders; The Carnival Cruise is a party cruise; Norwegian pearl Cruise is the medium between the Princess and the Carnival. Also the suite price of the Norwegian Cruise seems much more reasonable for me.

Here is a video that introduce the Norwegian Pearl.

  

After I had made the reservation on the norwegian website, i soon started packing my clothes and accessories for the Alaska "summer"

On the departure day, I went to the port on the Alaskan way in the morning. The check in line was really long, but the process speed is really fast.

View of Seattle from the Cruise

View of Seattle from the Cruise

After I had finished checkin, I went to the Garden Cafe, which is a 24-hours buffet, to had my lunch and waited there until the Cruise departure.

Here are some of the pictures from the restaurant on the cruise. The food was marvelous and it would be definitely a add-on for this trip. I originally thought that free restaurant won't serve good quality food. However, i was totally wrong, the food was really high quality and they changed half of the menu everyday so you can had different dish everyday.

The first day is Cruise day, of course, you won't feel bored on the cruise because  there are football court, SPA, swimming pool, theater, auction, party and a lot more!

The second day, the Cruise arrived the Juneau where is capital of Alaska.  We originally had an reservation to go to the glacier by helicopter. Unfortunately,  the wind speed that day was too big and the rain is too heavy that the helicopter couldn't take off so we had to switch this reservation to the next port: Skagway. Since we had no other reservation here, so we wandered around and checked out the places. When we walked trough the street, we noticed that there was a USPS store so we dashed into the souvenir shop and bought several postcards and sent them out before the USPS was closed. We also bought two packs of smoke salmon in a fisherman shop.

The second day, we arrived the port: Skagway. A lot of passengers went to take the white pass, but we only had little time before we needed to check-in our helicopter trip so we chose to stay on the ship and have our lunch.

When it was almost time, we went to the port and check-in. So after all the members arrived, we were took to the helicopter headquarter and the people there helped us to chose our snowshoes and life jackets. 

Helicopter Headquarter

After we were all settle down, our helicopter departure in the foggy weather. The helicopter was really fast, but sometime felt unstable as the wind became stronger.

View from the Helicopter

 After 15 minutes flight, we saw a flag of Alaska on the ground. Our pilot told us that we would land there.

On the Glacier

When all the members joined together, the leader handed each of us a rain coat and a crane, which would help us to stable on the slippery glacier.

On the Glacier

During the tour, the leader showed us a lot of whole like above, some of them were really deep hole and you couldn't see the bottom of the hole. The overall experience there was so great! Although it was expensive, you won't have a lot of chances to do this in your life.

The third day was the Glacier Bay day. The cruise would arrive the glacier bay and stop at some spectacular glacier. However, the cruise arrived the glacier bay at 5 in the morning and I was too sleepy to go outside. Therefore, I missed one glacier :( 

Here is a video that other people who took the same ship and same path as mine. 

The fourth day, we arrived Ketchikan where is famous for brown bear and salmon. We walked around and bought some fudge here. During the lunch time, we went to a restaurant to have Alaska king crab leg. The crab leg was really sweet and really fresh, I wish I would have that again!
After we had our lunch, we started crazy shopping because this is the last port that we stopped in Alaska.

The fifth day, we arrived Victoria where is the capital city of British Columbia.  We didn't go to the Empress Hotel to have the fancy afternoon tea. On the other hand, we chose to walk around the place because we don't want to drive to here from Seattle next time :)

Victoria is a really beautiful place that full of old-fashioned buildings. Also, there were a small market that sells food and small accessories near the port. Moreover, there were also some people performed on      near the sea bay and sang beautiful songs. 

The last day. we arrived at Seattle in the early morning. We slept until 8 and enjoy our last breakfast on this cruise.  This was the most memorable trip that I have ever had.