Cody and I have been talking about going on an Alaskan cruise for about 5 or 6 years now. The timing just never worked out for us before, but we've been to the Caribbean quite a few times now and we really wanted to try something different. Also, the ships in Alaska used to be really old/small ships that didn't really interest us... but ever since Norwegian built their newest ship, the Norwegian Bliss (the biggest ship currently in their fleet) we've been chomping at the bit to get to go on it. The first year that the Bliss came out it was hella expensive, but after a year and a half the price was more manageable for this summer, and we also thought that we'd like to go to Alaska before we had our baby.
Pre-Cruise - Flight
Cody surprised me on our trip by upgrading our flight to first class!! Flying first class has always been on my bucket list, and I guess it wasn't very much to upgrade on our flight to go on first class so he booked it without telling me. We got into line to get our boarding passes, and Cody walks over to the priority "first class/high loyalty" person line instead of the usual longer line to wait in. And I was like honey... we're in the wrong line. And he's like... umm... because we're TSA pre-check we get to go in this line. I was a bit confused but I didn't argue with him. Once we got to the gate and boarding started he told me that he upgraded us! So we got to go onto the flight first, and the service was great! We had a flight attendant dedicated to the 10 people in first class... so she was on top of everything (and gave us extra snacks!!!!) and Cody was excited because he got free alcoholic drinks on the flight too. We also got a blanket and a pillow on the flight. On our connecting flight we had our own personal entertainment area and we got a full meal on the flight. I was surprised that the meal that they gave us was actually pretty decent.
Pre-Cruise - Seattle
We flew into Seattle super late on Friday night, but then we had all day in Seattle on Saturday (our cruise was a Sunday to Sunday cruise). We found an awesome tour by Seattle Eats which was a guided tour of Pike Place Market by a chef. Basically our Chef took us all over the market and let us try samples at different places. We discovered the Pike Place Market is the oldest and longest consistently running farmers market in the country. It's been continually operating since 1907 and most people in the booths are 3rd-4th generation owners there. The market sits on 9 arces and has several stories with different levels of products on it. Also they are a big community and they all know each other.
They also have a lot of community areas within the market place. They have an outdoor garden that helps feed their local food bank, they have a senior center, day care, health care areas, and other services for the locals of the market. This little garden area produces 400 lbs of food for their food bank each year!
In the center of the market they have a giant "piggy bank" that people can donate their change to that goes towards funding their community programs.
Our guide was a "hyper-local" and said that she grew up within a few blocks from the market place and lived there her whole life. She said that she's been to basically everywhere in the market and had lot of tips on where the best places were.
Our first stop was at Ellneo's real greek yogurt (if you look up Seattle and/or Pike Place this is a top recommended stop to visit). Our guide explained to us that the yogurt was richer and had a better taste than what we're used to because the cows in the north have richer dairy than cows in the south. Cows that live in colder climates have to put on more fat to stay warm in the winter, so they have a higher fat content which makes the dairy taste richer. She said that people are used to getting dairy products from southern cows that are more lean and don't have the same fat content. The yogurt was very tasty! After this stop we went to Frank's Quality Produce and got to eat some super fresh cherries. I won't lie, I would love to shop for our produce at this market place regularly because all the fruit looked awesome there.
We passed by the Pike Place Fish Co. We had seen this place on the travel channel. They are famous for throwing their seafood to people. It was pretty funny to see them singing and tossing fish around!
This picture doesn't do it justice... but they also had the BIGGEST lobsters we've ever seen!
We were at the market place on a Saturday afternoon so it was pretty crowded. Some of the shops/stalls we were getting samples from were pretty small so we weren't able to get into all of them. But our guide went into each area and brought stuff back for us and gave it to us "like baby birds." Famous Uli's Sausage was probably one of my least favorite stops. Our guide talked about how Uli had training from Germany to be a master sausage maker... but I won't lie... I wasn't the biggest fan. It tasted dried out and not the greatest to me... but maybe I just don't know anything about "real/good" sausage.
Next we went to Simply the Best frozen/dried produce. And our guide passed out these dried apples that were SO good! I bet a lot of the dried fruit their was good, but I really liked the apple samples. Afterwards we got to try dried/smoked salmon from Pure Food fish market. The salmon had a good flavor, but ehhh I don't know if I'm the "eat smoked salmon" on it's own type.
We went to the Truffle Queen next and they gave us "before and after" samples. So we tasted a bit without the truffle oil and then some with it. I will say that the truffle oil does make quite a difference.
The next sample was my FAVORITE! It was clam chowder from Pike Place Chowder (and I'm not usually a big clam chowder fan). Our guide told us that this place used to be a sandwich shop and wanted to make a soup of the day. So they experimented around and found a DYNAMITE clam chowder recipe. I guess they have won first place awards all over the country. And once again, they use the dairy base from "cold cows" so it tastes richer and it was DELICIOUS! I loved it.
Our guide told us that rain or shine this place has a 45 min or longer wait every day! It was THAT good. If we ever go back to Seattle I'd love to eat there! If you're ever looking for a place to eat something in Seattle I'd highly recommend it. And I'm not even normally a big clam chowder eater either. It was just SO tasty!
One of Cody's most anticipated stops was at Beecher's Handmade Cheese (also one of those places that if you google Seattle it's one of the top places that pops up). You can also see that this place had a super long line to get in as well.
They had an area that allowed you to watch them making their cheese process. Our guide explained it all to us, but BLEH! Cheese! If you know me, you know I wasn't really listening... at least not enough to be able to come back and explain the process on my blog!
Here's Cody with his mac and cheese sample. Our guide was quite taken aback when I was offering Cody my samples. But according to Cody... it was only "Ok."
Next we got chocolate cherry samples from Chukar Cherries. Our guide walked through each cherry that we tried and talked about each one.
While we waited we got to see some great views of Seattle.
Last we went to Indi Chocolate and the owner of the store came over and talked to us for a while. She talked about her dream of sources chocolate from local places in poor nations that have good quality chocolate, and she says that it's helping these poor villages have money by sourcing the chocolate from them. It was a really nice mission. However, the chocolate is completely pure unprocessed dark chocolate (Yuck!) very much not my flavor palate. But I can appreciate the mission. This tour was UNBELIEVABLE. I feel like we learned so much about the market place, but it was more than just a tour of the market because we got to stop at each place, learn about it, and try samples. Cody and I both agreed that it was one of our favorite tours that we've ever been on and it honestly was only about $60 a person... so it was a very reasonable tour compared to other offerings in Seattle. I would highly highly recommend going on this tour if you're ever in Seattle!
After our tour we walked around and explored the market on our own. We can across the giant gum wall/alley.
This picture pretty much sums up my feelings about it...
Our hotel was only a mile or two away from the market place so we walked home on the boardwalk area right against the water. We stopped by the famous sculpture park. I was looking at some of the sculptures.. and I guess I'm just not that cultured because I just didn't get it. It wasn't really appealing to me. Our hotel was right next to the Space Needle, but we didn't feel like stopping at it. We also didn't have a car, so we decided to just walk somewhere to dinner. And I must say that I'm a flat-lander so I really didn't like the hills we were climbing up to get back to our hotel area. We ended up going to the Shake Shack for dinner.
Afterwards we sat out on our hotels Terrance at a firepit with views of the Space Needle. We had a good time in Seattle and I wish we had longer than just a day there.
Norwegian Bliss - Day 1
Now finally it was time for our cruise!!! Yippee!! We woke up earlier and took the hotel's free shuttle with another older British couple to the port. We were signing up for the shuttle as they were checking into the hotel and realized we were going on the same ship. So they asked to come on our shuttle as well. This was the first of many times of running into them during our vacation. Even though we got to the port pretty earlier (around 9am) we still got boarding group 7! Also, this pier was not nearly as well organized as some other piers that we've been to. I believe that Norwegian is building a new pier area in Seattle to go out of.
But regardless of Norwegian's lack of organization as to where to go to put your luggage and where you board the ship once you're in the waiting room... It was still a pretty easy process. They had a lady stationed as we were checking in that helped us change/make some of our dining reservations that we wanted on the ship. So once we got on it wasn't much of a hassle. That was one nice bonus. But even with having already made the dining reservations before getting
on the ship, we still had to go to the comedy club area to make
entertainment reservations. We were confused because we were not able
to book much in advance before the ship. We were only able to book the
Jersey Boys, but we weren’t able to book any comedy shows. I feel like
we’ve been able to do this in the past. Also, Norwegian was just about
to switch to new entertainment options on the ships, so the Jersey Boys
was the only show playing during our cruise! I heard a lot of people
complaining about that, and it did make for a lack of quality
entertainment throughout our cruise.
This was the first cruise that we’ve been on where we checked our luggage ahead of time (we packed TONS of clothes because we weren’t sure how we would want to dress in Alaska so we each had a suit case and a carry on). It was nice to not have to haul our carry ons around with us before our room opened. We went up to the Observation Lounge which is unique to the Norwegian Bliss. We thought that the area was absolutely beautiful!!
And they had these super comfy lounge chairs too. The only problem that we found was that due to the fact that it was kind of colder outside almost everyone was in this lounge during the day! It was rare to be able to find a seat in there at all during our whole trip. And honestly, it was usually pretty packed… it wasn’t just people “chair hogging” and having their stuff left on an empty chair. We found that people were mostly sitting in this area playing cards or different games, or just looking out at the scenery. We never woke up early enough to get a good spot in here.
We were impressed that our rooms were ready by 12:30pm, and our bags got to our room by 2:30pm. We thought that was really good compared to some cruises we’ve been on in the past.
After getting into our room we headed to Taste (free dining room) for lunch. They always have the same lunch options at this place, and it seems like every cruise we start out by Cody eating their mahi mahi burger and I get their lamb and mashed potatoes.
On the first day in Seattle it was actually warm enough to go out and sit by the pool. We actually hopped into the pool for a little bit and relaxed. The pool HAD to be heated because it was a pretty nice temperature, and while we were in port in the sun it was pleasant to be out there in our bathing suits. However, once it started to get shady and the boat left the port it got pretty chilly pretty quickly!! We kept running to different areas of the pool that were in the sun so that we could stay out there for as long as we could, because we knew that the pool was probably going to be out once we got to Alaska.
I kept trying to soak my poor ankles in the water too! They were so swollen and hurting so bad even this early into the cruise. I soon found out that stairs were really hard for me to walk up because of my ankles. :( I think that we took the elevator on this cruise more than we EVER have on any other cruise. I was just limping down them.
We ended up sailing away a little bit early and we had fun watching the sail away party.
The view of Seattle from our ship.
By this time it was time to start getting ready for our dinner at Cagney’s. And to our absolute delight they had LOBSTER and Filet Mignon back on the menu! The last couple of times we’ve gone on Norwegian they had shrimp and filet as the surf and turf option. We were sooo excited! The food is always dynamite in Cagney’s and we love their crab cakes. Their truffle mashed potatoes are good too. I would highly recommend Cagney’s to anyone on Norwegian! Make sure that you make your reservations right away because their reservations fill up pretty quickly (people were complaining that the dining locations didn’t have enough reservations and that they couldn’t use their 3 day dining options).
After dinner we hit up the comedy club, and the comedian was really funny. We were a little bit lost on this cruise without Howl at the Moon on it, because we didn’t really have a late night “spot” and ended up going to bed pretty early throughout the cruise.
Norwegian Bliss - Day 2 - Sea Day
In the morning we got up to go to the Garden Café. And it was an ABSOLUTE ZOO! I think that this is the first time that we’ve cruised back on Norwegian after going on Royal Caribbean, and I couldn’t help but compare how much better RC is at managing their buffet area! Norwegian does NO crowd control at all. Basically you have to walk around and around until you can find a table to sit in. There were no tables open and it was incredibly stressful to find a place to sit. The whole buffet was full of people circling around looking for a table, so a table would be snatched up before the people leaving barely even stood up! It was incredibly frustrating!! RC has you wait outside for maybe 5-10 minutes and they have workers managing what tables are open and they seat you at your table. I found that this was SUCH a better process. I’d rather wait a couple minutes up front than have to scavenge around trying to find a seat. I will say that the food in the buffet was really good though. I didn’t think anything tasted like it was a “powdered boxed” version and most of the food tasted really good to me especially the bacon!!! YUM!!! It’s rare that you find a buffet with crispy good tasting bacon.
After breakfast we went to the cruise critic meet and greet. They had different apps and mimosa’s that they served. But there really wasn’t much going on their. The crew introduced themselves and then left, and we were kinda left just sitting around there. So probably not our most exciting meet and greet.
After that we went to our favorite spot the Sugarcane Mojito Bar! We’ve always loved their raspberry mojitos and can drink them all day. I was sad because no drinking on this trip for me! I normally really like drinking strawberry daiquiris so I was planning on drinking strawberry smoothies. But I quickly realized that the smoothies are made with milk vs the ice that the daiquiris are made with… and it was way to filling! So I was prepared to switch to shirley temples.
However, to my luck our bartender was Clarence, the Chocolate Cowboy. He’s somewhat famous on Norwegian for being one of the best bartenders around. He’s super positive and nice, and he realized that I wasn’t drinking like Cody so he asked me why. When I told him that I was pregnant, he said “Oh no problem! I’ll make you a non-alcoholic version” He went into the back and made a special drink mix for me and it was AMAZING!! It looked and tasted just as I remembered them. I think that I liked the non-alcohol version more than the alcohol version! So I was very happy to have my mojito! However, I found that none of the other bartenders made it as good as Clarence. His version was spot on and tasted great…
The other bartenders that tried to make it… not so much… (Note all the raspberries seeds in this version. This was my picture before I tried the drink haha).
While we were hanging out at the mojito bar, a performing group called the “Prelude Duo” started performing live music. They were an asian couple and I didn’t have any expectations of what they were going to play. But they blew the ROOF off! They were amazing! I loved listening to their songs. The guy performed “What a wonderful world” and sounded SPOT on to Louie Armstrong. It was incredible! People were up on their feet cheering and I even video taped it. Once the Prelude Duo was done, we mossied on down to the casino. They always say to play at the casino on the first day or two, because the slots are looser to suck you in to play during the rest of your cruise. And we found that to be absolutely true! The first night, Cody and I actually won a good bit at the Casino (Enough to buy us a bucket of King Crab the next day in Juneau).
We went to the Garden Café Buffet for dinner. This was the first time that we’ve eaten at a buffet on a cruise ship during dinner (normally we always go to a sit down/restaurant) but they were advertising “Seafood Night” in the buffet so we figured we’d try it out. WOW… the seafood on the buffet was literally what was pictured on the flyer. It was hardly any seafood at all. Combine that with the hard time that we had at finding a seat and I have to say that it was the worst dinner that we’ve ever had on a cruise. We were super bummed out by it.
Norwegian Bliss - Day 3 - Juneau Alaska
This morning during breakfast we saw 6 whales outside of the ship! It was very exciting and it made me super excited for our whale watching excursion later in the day. I had heard that there were a lot of whales in Juneau, and seeing these whales in the morning just seemed to confirm it.
After breakfast, we went into the Observation Lounge and we probably saw a total of 15 whales!!! Everyone was in there looking for wildlife and pointing them out. There was a little kid next to me, and I kept showing him where the whales were. He was super excited and it was really cute. I love seeing wild life! I was SO pumped and excited about this. I was very excited for the Alaskan cruise for the chance to get to see a lot of wildlife, and day 1 did not disappoint. In the afternoon, we tried to go shopping on the ship but it was an absolute madhouse. Where sometimes people are outside on the pool deck, it was kinda colder in Alaska so more people were confined to the ship. So people were EVERYWHERE! You couldn’t even walk in the shops, let alone try to buy anything. Cody was very enthusiastic about looking at watches on the cruise, but the price was way high for them.
The Garden Café Buffet area was SO packed, and we circled for like 10 minutes trying to find a seat, before we just decided to take the food and go eat on our balcony before our ship docked in Juneau.
I was really surprised by all of the Alaskan ports, because our ship really didn’t dock by hardly ANY of the main shopping/excursion area… In just about every port, you either had to walk at least a mile into town or catch a shuttle into it. I’m not sure if other cruise ships don’t have this problem, and maybe it was just our ship because the Bliss is WAY WAY WAY bigger than most ships that cruise in the Alaska. Above is the view we had of Alaska when we pulled into port (ship containers... no city/shops)!
I thought that Juneau did a really good job of shuttling people though. They literally had EVERY tour bus in the city lined up ready to take people in the main area once we docked. So we only had to wait in line for a few minutes. Literally one bus would load, drive off, and another one right behind it would pull up and start loading people too. I thought that this was incredibly clever of them to use all their tour buses this way.
Then at night, there were two or three shuttle buses that were taking people back to the dock. But at that point, most people’s times were staggered for when they wanted to go back to the ship, so it really was a super easy process.
We booked our excursion with Juneau Tours and Whale Watch. We liked that they had a combination where we could go whale watching, go to the Mendenhall Glacier, and get king crab legs at Tracy’s Crab Shake.
The first part of our tour was whale watching. Our day in Juneau was probably one of the coldest days of our cruise, but even with that it was still in the 60’s. We were super lucky, because the forecast had been calling for possible rain showers, but we were SUPER lucky and dodged those!
Our tour started with us hopping on a bus and driving towards the whale watching dock. The bus driver was very interesting to listen to, and he told us all about Juneau's history. I guess it was bought from Russia years ago in 1867 for $6.2 million. It was later discovered that Juneau had tons of gold mines, and now Juneau is worth trillions of dollars! They actually still have active gold mines in Juneau and that is a popular job for people that live in Juneau. By the way, about 33,000 people live in Juneau, but Juneau is a separate island for other Alaskan cities. You can't drive to Juneau, you have to either take a boat or a plane to get there. And high school teams actually have to take a ferry to another island to play against a team. I guess a player from the opposite team "hosts" a player coming from a different island. So the opposing teams actually live with each other for a couple days to help with the costs so that the kinds can play sports. I guess they say you expect a team to host your kid when they travel to the island, and then you host theirs when it's a home game. I thought that was pretty wild! Another interesting fact that I learned is that Alaska has more coast line than the other 48 mainland states combined, but most of the land is uninhabited by people. Most is a wilderness that is overflowing with various wild life.
The bus driver had me all excited because he said that we would see bald eagles at the dock, and we did see quite a few... but they weren't nearly as big as I expected. I honestly had a hard time telling the difference between which birds were seagulls and which were eagles.
I will say that we did see quite a few whales during our tour. It was exciting to run from side of the ship to side of the ship to see the whales on either side. The only problem is that the whales that are common in Alaska (and during our last trip to Maui) are Humpback whales. Humpback whales are solitary creatures… meaning that they don’t live or really communicate with any other whales. Years ago when I was in Sydney, Australia I went Blue Whale watching. Blue whales do live in pods and do communicate with each other. This means that they are a lot more active, and they slap their tails a lot and jump out of the water a bunch (I’ve heard that pods of Killer Whales are super fun to watch too, which is probably why Seaworld chose them to be in there shows vs other whales). And when you find a pod of whales, even if one or two aren’t doing much… there’s always a bunch more of them to watch… so it’s SUPER exciting. Literally I have to say that going blue whale watching is probably one of my favorite excursions I’ve ever done (and I’ve done A LOT of cool excursions in my life.)
But watching humpback whales??? Yeah… not quite so exciting. Usually you see one or maybe two whales together and usually they are just kinda… there… they are swimming by you and you can see them (unless they dive down into the water) but otherwise they don’t do a whole lot.
So while we did see a bunch of whales, I can’t say that they were overly exciting to watch. This will probably be my last humpback whale excursion… maybe I’ll go whale watching if I’m ever in Australia again haha.
However, I don’t want to sound too negative about our tour, because it was really nice and we really enjoyed learning about the whales and seeing Juneau from the water. Our guides were very informative and told us a lot of good details about the whales. We also got to see a mom and her calf swimming together which was really nice. We got to see porpoises (small dolphins) and we saw a bunch of sea lions.
While it was a little cold out, it was still very beautiful, and we really enjoyed our time out on the water. And you know me, I was very enthusiastically taking pictures of the whales (I probably have at least 100 pictures of them).
We had the option of going down to sit in a seated area or we could ride it out on the top of the boat... Well we didn't want to miss anything so we sat out... cold or not. It was still nice, and honestly we were super lucky with the weather. I guess the people on our ship the week before us had rain the entire week... so we were happy with the nice weather.
Our guides told us an interesting story about Sea Lions. She said that
all of the sea lions on this bouy were male sea lions. Apparently there
is a large island where most sea lions live (usually around 30 female
sea lions) and then there is one dominant male on the island. I forget
what title the guide officially said that the sea lion had… I think
“king of the island or king of the land” or something like that.
Basically this one dominant male sea lion will chase off any other male
sea lion, and he will be the only male on the island with the females.
The guide said that the life expectancy of sea lions is pretty high, but
once a male becomes the “king” he’s only expected to live a year or
two, because he will constantly be challenged and will get into fights
with other males. But basically this leaves a lot of male sea lions
“homeless” so our guides said that you often see them laying on odd
things in the water together because they have no where else to go.
After our whale watching tour, we hopped onto another bus to go to the Mendenhall Glacier. Our bus driver told us that if we went onto the Steep Creek Trail that we had a good chance to see some wild bears. He said that there was a creek there where salmon swim, and that the bears are currently trying to get a lot of salmon to fatten up before hibernating in the winter. I guess the salmon had arrived to the area in the masses about two weeks before we got there, so this was prime time for bears.
I had to resist running right over to that area, and instead we went on the trail that lead to the glacier first. I will say that the glacier wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I remember in Switzerland I went into a glacier there in the Alps. And we got to walk through it, and they had different colored lights that lit up the ice and it was really cool. So I had that in my mind as we were going to this glacier, and I was surprised by how far away we were from the glacier. There was no walking up/touching/or seeing this glacier up close. It was off in the distance, and it was the first glacier that we had seen on our trip so I wasn’t really sure how to compare it’s size to others.
A cool fact about the Alaskan glaciers is that as the glacier moves it creates “silk” which is nutrients and minerals from the rock sediments that get into the water system. This highly nutrient based water helps create a thriving fish population which in turn feeds the larger wild life population. This is why there are so many whales in Alaska. They come to feed on the smaller fish in the area during the summer, and then in the winter they go down to Maui to breed (but they don't eat at all during those months in Maui.)
On our way to the glacier we saw a porcupine eating up in a tree. Our
guide told us to look in the trees for them. I never knew that
porcupines climbed up trees… but I guess you learn something new
everyday. I was SO excited to see this porcupine, because we were right
below him in the tree.
Here is probably one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip!! Mr. Porcupine just so happened to look back at me as I was taking pictures of him. (My justification for my 18mm-300mm zoom lens!) There was another guy by us that had a lens with a super big zoom on it, and he was climbing up on rocks and was like RIGHT in the porcupine’s business. Cody joked with him that he must have been trying to get pictures of his teeth, and sure enough the guy came over and showed us some in-depth pictures of this porcupines teeth!!!!! Haha!! Interesting what people think is fun to photograph. I’ll stick with my picture here over getting that zoomed in.
We only had about an hour or so at the glacier (really disappointed that we didn’t have more time) so we kind of had to rush. Mr. Porcupine took up a good bit of our time honestly, so we only kinda looked at the glacier and took a few pictures... because I really wanted to head over to the bear area.
Now when you think of wild bears in Alaska… you’re probably like I was and think Grizzly Bear. But I guess Grizzly bears aren’t too common to see where we were. On our boat tour, the guide pointed out an island with one house and a light house on it. He said that whole island was swarmed with thousands of grizzly bears! They said that grizzly bears are very large and very aggressive, and that while seeing them might be "neat"… you really don’t want to go near them (makes sense!) The bears that they said were safer to see because they have a more even temperament is black bears.
So black bears is what we were looking for at the glacier. Apparently a momma bear and her two cubs came almost every night around sunset (the time that we were there) and helps her babies catch fish in the stream! OMG! You do not know how desperately I wanted a picture of this! There were tons of local people at this stream too hoping to get a picture as well. So it was interesting to hear their stories about the area. Since all the locals were there, I had really high hopes that we might see this momma bear. But at this point, we only had like 20 minutes to go until we had to catch our bus to head back to town. So unfortunately, we did not get to see them. It would have been a dream to have been able to take that picture though (and I’m still slightly bumming about having to leave so soon and missing it).
After our whale watching and glacier tour we went to Tracy’s Crab Shake for some king crab! With our tour that we bought, we each got a crab leg claw, lobster bisque, 4 mini crab cakes, and some delicious garlic rolls. However, we knew right away that a crab leg claw a piece wasn’t going to cut it. So we bought an additional crab leg bucket (thank you casino winnings!!).
These were the biggest and yummiest king crab legs that we’ve ever had!! The food was so good, and we were SO stuffed after eating there. It was the perfect way to end our trip to Juneau.
We got back to our ship around 9:30pm (we were docked from 2:30pm – 10:30pm) so we had a pretty full day in Juneau. Luckily it didn’t get dark until a little bit later, but by the time we were done with dinner it was dark out. We did see the Welcome to Juneau sign as we were heading back though! (I love getting pictures by the welcome sign of each port we visit).
Bliss Day 4 – Skagway
This morning we were in port early in Skagway, so Cody and I went to eat breakfast at Margaritaville. This spot is not packed at all, and there were plenty of open seats to sit down. Only problems is that you have to walk outside in the cold to get to it, and they only have a limited breakfast selection. But whatever… worked great for us on this day. We appreciated that we didn’t have to struggle in the buffet area.
We had a full day tour with Frontier Excursions that started at 9:30am. Basically we traveled all the way from Skagway to the Yukon. Now, Skagway itself is a tiny “city”. Only 1,000 people live there and the whole city is 22 streets long and 4 blocks wide. We really weren’t in the actual city for long.
Our first stop was at the Bridal Falls. We quickly realized that Cody’s new Samsung phone took my vibrant beautiful pictures than my DSLR camera!! I was SO mad about this too…. Except that I really liked the pictures that came out on his phone.
The Yukon area is bigger than the whole state of California but only about 33,000 people live there. Our guide told us that you can only get up to the Yukon during the summer months, because in the winter the snow was so high that it’s not possible to get up there.
They literally had snow plow poles the size of telephone poles every hundred yards or so throughout our drive up to the Yukon. Because that is how high the snow gets up there!
In fact some of the trees up there only grow to about 3 feet tall because of the harsh conditions. I guess they are completely under the snow during the winter.
We were there on basically a perfect rare day where there was no wind and it was like 70 degrees out. I guess it’s usually very windy in the Yukon, and only 10% of the time will the wind be so still that the lakes up there are as smooth as glass. On these days, the surrounding mountains reflect off of the water, and it was absolutely beautiful.
Here is the picture my DLSR took…
Here is the same picture Cody’s phone took… (Grrrr but yaaay?)
Basically it was stunningly beautiful up there. I think that this was our favorite part of our whole trip. I honestly felt bad for people that choose to do the train tour (which I know is super popular) because I know that they didn't get the picture opportunities like we did. I was soooo glad that we choose to do this instead!
Just a few more...
Because we took so many and they were so beautiful...
And of course I have to show my baby off!
We stopped at the welcome to Alaska sign, and it was very competitive to get good pictures there. Tour guides from two companies would draw an angled line on the ground on each side of the sign, so that two groups could take pictures at the same time, and the other people wouldn’t be in your picture.
They had enough experience to do this so that picture taking could go quicker. Great job, right? You'd never even now all those people were there!
Had to get one with the baby in it!!
My favorite stop on the tour was the Caribou Crossings. That is where the sled dogs were and it was just a very interesting location. We really didn’t have much time there to enjoy it fully. I could have spent a half a day there alone. By the time that we went to the bathroom and ate lunch it was time for our sled dog ride. I had been really looking forward to our sled dog ride, and it was probably the excursion that we were most excited about.
Here are all the different sled group dogs lined up waiting to get their turn to run.
Now might I add, that they guides said that dogs start to bark when they get excited… and there were about 50-60 dogs in this area. So you can imagine how loud they were all barking.
Here are the guys hooking the dogs up. As soon as the trainers walked over the dogs on both sides of the fence started going crazy. Kind of like “Pick me! Pick me!” type of barking.
When you think of sled dog rides… this is what you think of… You always see pictures of huskies pulling a sleigh in the snow (mind you this is the exact type of pictures that the cruise ship shows you when talking about booking this excursion too). Now we knew that there wasn’t snow up there right now, but we were still expecting to be pulled in a sled.
My first shock was that the dogs that were on the sled teams weren’t huskies. The were basically well thought-out mixed breeds of dogs… Huskies, grey hounds, and german shepards. They said that they do this careful breeding program to eliminate health issues and to try to produce the fastest/strongest dogs. Ok… that one I could understand and get over pretty quickly…
But my biggest shock was that we weren't placed in a sled! Here is what we were actually in. It was a big motorized ATV. And they attached the dogs to the front of it, and basically we just chased down the dogs in the ATV!
The dogs weren’t pulling us at all, they were just running in front of us. I’m not gonna lie… I was a bit horrified by it. There was one dog that was newer to the “sled” team and this poor dog was barely keeping up.
I was sitting next to the driver and he was driving 10 MPH, and the whole time I was sitting there like run little doggies, run!! They told us that these dogs only pull things in the winter and during the summer they run a mile loop a few times a day for conditioning. I did not know this ahead of time. No where was that explained. And I’m not gonna lie… I felt terrible for those poor dogs, it felt like they were running for their lives. I don’t think I’d ever want to go on a dog sled ride again. I should have suspected something when I asked if it would be safe for me to do this excursion pregnant, and they assured me that it wouldn't be a problem at all. No wonder! We were basically in a big 4 wheeler going 10 MPH. So buyer beware on what this excursion really is if you're ever thinking of booking it.
About half way through the run, the guy stopped and let them get a drink (out of nasty, dirty baby swimming pools no less). And he took some pictures of us in the “sled.”
Towards the back end of the run we passed by where the dogs sleep. They each have their own dog house in a fenced in area. And I remember my guide talking about how much snow hits the Yukon and how it gets to be -40 degrees outside. So I asked him what they did with the dogs in the winter… and he said that they are on tour with their musher doing competitions during the winter. So I sincerely hope that means that they aren’t sitting out there in the freezing Alaskan winter in those little dog houses… (poor doggies!)
However, after our dog “sled” ride we really enjoyed this area. They had a section where we were able to play with their puppies! They had a few puppies between 12-14 weeks old (look how big for that young!) So we got some puppy snuggles and playing in. They only let you in with the puppies if you paid for a dog sled ride. And when we first pulled up to the place I was shocked that only Cody and I and one other group from our whole bus tour was doing a sled ride (guess I know why now…)
but that worked out for us with the puppies because we were pretty much the only ones in there with them.
Puppy lovings!
Puppy nippings!! Haha! What could be better??
They had a little mini petting zoo at this place, and you could buy food to feed some of the animals. Well this one woman was trying to take a self with one of the mountain goats and it was basically knocking her over to try to get the food in her hand. He ended up stealing her whole bag while she was trying to get a picture. It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen!!!
Of course after that we had to try to get some pictures with him… Here's the bribe to get him to be nice...
The stern look telling him to be good...
The picture we wanted!
At this point, we only had like 5-10 minutes left at this place! So we were rushing around to see all the other things they had to offer. They had a museum and a taxidermy area that was UNREAL. I was in such a rush to run through it to just get to see it, that I didn’t even stop to take pictures…
But Google for the win! Here is a SAMPLE of all of the animals in this area.
They had all sorts of section of different animal scenes. It was really neat! Wish we had more time than to just run through it. Like I said, we could have spent a whole day here!
The Yukon is the only place in the world that has three climates that change as you go through it. One section is considered a rain forest, one is the artic, and one is a desert.
This desert area was truly unbelievable. I guess sand is blown to this area from the near by Emerald Lake. But basically it is a desert with trees growing in it, and this area regularly gets rain and snow.
I’m not sure if the pictures do it justice but we were really blown away by it.
At our last stop by Emerald Lake, we found out that our tour guide Patrick was from Binghamton! He kept talking about driving from New York to Skagway a few times, and Cody told him that he was from upstate New York by the Catskill mountains. And the guy goes don't tell me... you're either from Deposit or Hancock! And Cody was like holy crap! I guess our guide had done quite a bit of hiking in the mountains and had been on the trail not far from Cody’s mom’s house quite a few times. What a small world!
As we were driving back into town we saw a cinnamon bear, which is a brown colored black bear (our driver told us the nick name of brown bears on our trip up to the Yukon). It was on the side of the road and we stopped to try to get to see it, but it scurried away into trees before we really got to see much of it. This was the first time we saw a bear during our trip though (even thought it was brief) so everyone was really excited about it. I called out... Oh hey that's a cinnamon bear! And Cody was like... how the hell do you remember that?? And I was like because I pay attention! And I have a blog to write so I try really hard to remember stories and details like these! And now I'm super interested to see if anyone ACTUALLY does read my blog and my little facts... so if you've actually read this please post the word "cinnamon" onto my Facebook page under the link to this blog. I'm really curious if anyone takes the time to read these posts, because I know that they are pretty long! I spend HOURS writing these trip blogs, honestly I'm probably up to 10+ hours of writing and picture finding/adding/formating on this post alone.
After our tour we walked around the town of Skagway a bit. We ended up buying some local fudge and browsing around.
Walking back to our cruise ship was a bit of a disaster. There weren’t many shuttle buses so we thought that we’d just walk back to the ship. However, getting back to the ship was not marked well, and we walked WAY past where we should have. Do you see the sign saying that there is no access ahead??
No? Us either... Here it is blown up. Gee thanks Norwegian! This normally wouldn’t bother us, but remember… my ankle was swollen and hurt. And we’d be walking on it quite a bit throughout the day, so I was pretty ticked off by the lack of signage. By the time we walked the mile back to the ship, I was literally about to tell them that I needed to take the elevator up to our floor like the handicap people (they only let handicap people use the elevator once you get back onto the ship so that other people don’t tie them up.)
Once we were back on the ship, we got dinner at Savor for the night, and then hung out at the Mojito Bar for a while. By now we were pretty much regulars. We were friendly with the bartenders and they knew what we wanted to drink once we got there. They said that the missed us the day before when we were in Juneau.
The “show” for the night, was basically a performing group coming out of the Cavern Club and doing a show in the theatre. This group was a Beatles cover band and they were singing a bunch of Beatles songs. I’m not a huge Beatles fan, so I wasn’t exactly super excited for this show. Now I haven’t really mentioned it before, but baby did NOT like the food on the cruise. The water were sailing on was as smooth as glass (it literally didn’t feel like we were on a boat) but I got sick almost every single night on the cruise from baby. So we’re sitting through this show and I was starting to feel really sick so I was struuuuggling to get through it. We really didn't have a late night "spot" on this cruise, combined with me being swollen/sick too... so we ended up going to bed early almost every night on our cruise, which is very odd for us.
Norwegian Bliss – Day 5 – Glacier Bay
Today was our day in Glacier Bay to view glaciers. Well a park ranger got onto our ship around 7am and started giving commentary over the loud speaker. From our room, it sounded like someone from Charlie Brown talking over the loud speaker. We couldn’t understand a word the ranger said, but it was muffled mumblings.
So we got up around 9am and looked out of our balcony. We saw a glacier near us, but to me it didn’t seem all that impressive honestly. I figured that we were in glacier bay for the day so there were going to be all sorts of glaciers for us to see (the pictures they show of Glacier Bay show big impressive looking glaciers that the boat is supposed to go right up to). I honestly almost didn’t even take a picture of this glacier, but then I was like oh what the heck… mind as well… Well then we went to breakfast because we were just stopped by this glacier for the longest time. And after breakfast we were with this couple and they asked us how we liked the glacier and if we got to see the ice falling off from it or not. And I told her that we didn’t watch it too much because we figured we’d look at the other ones today, and she goes… oh no! That was the main glacier of the day. It’s the only one that we are going to be close enough to in order to see the ice shelves break off. And I was like… WHAT!?!?! I honestly couldn’t believe that. I swear the advertising for things is very misleading. I’ve read on cruise critic that people avoid cruises that go to Glacier Bay and that they prefer a different similar area that I guess has a lot better glaciers. Even though I read that, I still expected that we’d see more than one glacier! Especially since they passed out a brochure the night before saying that Glacier Bay was “The Crown Jewel/highlight of our cruise.” So I read up on the history of the area the night before, and I was truly excited for it. They really hyped it up quite a bit. Bah hum bug. It's like expecting to see the Valley of Fire and seeing the Red Rock Canyon.
Besides that initial disappointment, it truly was a beautiful day out. It had warmed up a bit and the captain had opened up the very front of the ship for guests to go in.
The view was very beautiful from there. We ended up going on the sun deck and got some chairs on the railing to watch for wildlife. We didn’t see them, but apparently some people saw a bunch of sea otters playing towards the back of the ship, and I guess there were some whales in the area too. I was looking my hardest to see some wildlife but I guess I missed them.
We went to the outdoors Mojito Bar and our favorite bartender was out there. He hung out and chatted with us for a while.
After a while we moved by the pool (too cold to go in, but we still saw lots of shivering kids running around). And I noticed how very few and tiny the hot tubs were on the ship. After being on Royal Caribbean this really shocked me by how small they were. Hardly anyone could get into these things.
We ended up trying out Spice H2O for a bit, and I’m pretty sure we took a little nap there.
We ate lunch at the Local and then got a yummy ice cream dessert at Coco’s.
The look you get right before getting to eat some yummy ice cream!
Mmmm!!! So tasty!!
It was so big that we easily shared it and didn't even eat all of it.
We ended up taking a nap in our room too (boring day… not much to do really… so we napped a lot). After our naps, we went to the Atrium to listen to the Prelude Duo for about an hour and half. (We loved them! They were our favorite performers by far!)
Then we went to dinner to Teppanyaki… which is one of my absolute favorite places! Their hibachi show is so much fun and their food is super good. They literally have the BEST hibachi show that I’ve ever seen. I think that Norwegian scripts it, because it looks like all the guys do the same spiel, but basically that means that it’s really cool to watch. They also made way more food than they should have (I think they brought out enough food for another person) so they kept giving us extra food! I was so stuffed and couldn’t even finish everything. I would highly recommend making reservations for this place!
After dinner we ran over to the comedy show that we had reservations for. And there most have been deaf people attending the show because an interpreter was up on stage. And the opening comedian came up and noticed the interpreter and started to make jokes with the interpreter. He’s like I love it when the interpreter is up here, because we get to learn how to say dirty words in sign language. And he proceeded to say a bunch of stuff, and the interpreter really played it up and it was hilarious. It was probably funnier than the actual comedy show.
Norwegian Bliss - Day 6 - Ketchikan
We had a super early day in Ketchikan (I think we got into port around 7am and left by 1:15pm). So we decided to order room service for breakfast instead of fighting to go into the buffet area. And it was GLORIOUS! Our food was delivered on time and we were super excited… until we realized that we didn’t get any silverware… so Cody ended up having to run up to the buffet after all to grab us some.
We booked our tour with Alaska Shore Excursions. The directions to where we needed to go for our tour were not spelled out very well. We had to ask around to find out where we were going to go. Finally we found the spot and they told us that we were going to go in a different bus because the one we were supposed to go on was full (mind you we weren’t late. As soon as our ship docked we were one of the first ones off and we tried to find our tour spot right away). We were perfectly fine with waiting for the next bus. So we sat down… and waited and waited.. And finally someone came over to us and told us that they changed their minds and they put us on the other bus. AH! So we were at the very BACK of the bus in the last seats available. We were on the tour with a bunch of old people from Holland America. It drove me crazy to sit at the back of the bus and have to wait for all these old people to get off the bus before we could get off! Some of our spots, we were only there for a few minutes and the people already had the best standing spots taken. I always try to be one of the first people in line so that I can get onto the bus first and get a better seat.
Our guide, Ken, was great though! He was super funny and he was native to the island. He was actually from one of the tribes from the area so he was very knowledgeable about stuff. He told us that there were a lot of killer whales in the waters by us. And he said that he actually spotted them on his tour yesterday. So he had us keep an eye out. He hopped out at one area, and started calling for “Free Willy” to come out and visit us… Haha! He said that he normally did that routine with a sun, because it rains 235 days a year in Ketchikan! I guess the previous week it was raining so hard that the cruise ship couldn’t even see to be able to dock at the Ketchikan. Our guide told us that they'd had over 200 inches of rain this year, and that was considered a drought! He actually said the problem was all across Alaska this year and that's why there have been stories of so many wild fires.
When we were in Juneau we didn't see a ton of salmon in the streams. But apparently Ketchikan is the "place" for salmon, because of all the rain that they get. I guess the creeks and rivers are ideal for them in Ketchikan. So we went to the salmon ladder, and I was prepared to be let down by the amount of fish in the area… but HOLY COW! There were THOUSANDS of them! Our guide told us that in about 2 weeks all those fish will be dead and that the whole city will smell terrible. The fish come back to Ketchikan to lay their eggs at the end of their life. I guess they have just enough strength to make the trip back (and they are past the point where they are good to eat). The dead fish nourish the fish eggs once they hatch. They eat the left over carcuses for about 8 months before heading out to the sea for a couple of years, and eventually coming back to lay their own eggs. Oh the circle of life…
Next our guide took us off the beaten path into “bear country.” Our guide told us that this area is full of bears and that in the past people have been within a foot of a bear! He told us that if a bear was by us that we were supposed to put our right foot out and stare at the bear. If the bear didn’t back down, he said to put your arms up to make yourself look bigger and to stare the bear down. He said 9/10 bears would back down in this case but that there is a rare “alpha bear” that won’t back down. He said in that case that you back away slowly and never run because it will chase you down. As we were walking on this dirt road, he kept pointing out bear paths where a bear had walked through.
And sure enough wouldn’t you know that when we got to the end of the trail there was a big black bear where he thought it’d be! He said that this bear was a large dominate black bear. He said normally there are quite a few bears in this area eating at this stream, but that this bear was keeping them all away. He said normally bears will catch a fish and then run off into woods to eat it so that another bear wouldn’t steal it from them. This guy was just chilling and slowly eating his fish…
As a matter of fact he had two of them… one he was eating and one that was on the ground. So our guide said that’s how you could tell that he was an alpha bear. We were actually a pretty good distance away from him, he barely noticed us… but my zoom lens could get great pictures of him! Take that stupid Samsung phone! Ha! I'm not gonna lie... these pictures make me so happy!
After watching the bear for a while, we were off to the Totem Pole Park. Apparently Ketchikan has the largest collection of Alaskan Totem poles in the world. And since our guide was a native tribe member, he was able to tour the park with a “master carver” so he knew all of the history and stories behind most of the totem poles at the park. He told us that if a pole was laying on the ground that meant that it had special significance and that was a sign of respect. This totem pole was the only one that we saw laid down, and it was to honor a famous Bear Chief. He also said that if the pole had a large blank area that it represented a significant event in history.
Here is the “Shame Pole.” Apparently before Alaska was apart of the United States a secretary of State, William Seward, came to visit the Alaska Chief. When he came the Alaskan chief gave him a gift. It was custom that upon the next meeting, Seward was supposed to bring the Chief a gift of greater value than what he previously received… but Seward did not bring the chief a gift. I guess Seward came 4 times and received 4 gifts from the chief but never brought him one in return. This pole is a mockery of Seward and was designed to “shame” him.
If you notice his nose, cheeks and ears are red on the totem pole to show his embarrassment. And on his head is four rings that represent the four gifts that he received and didn't return.
Now I really hope that you appreciate this next story... because I about killed myself trying to get a picture of this pole. The sun glare was really bad on my picture of this pole, so I was stepping over to the side to get a better angle (focused on getting a good picture), and I didn't realize that there were steps next to me. I ended up tripping and twisting my already hurt ankle and I almost fell to the ground. Luckily some nice guy caught me, but my ankle was REALLY hurt after I twisted it. I was limping so bad. I was lucky that we only had 10 minutes left of our tour because I couldn't have done much more walking after that.
The story isn't even worth it... but here it is... the Lincoln Pole. Basically there were two native tribes on the island, the Ravens and the Eagles and they couldn't stop fighting with each other. The military came to the island and told them that Abraham Lincoln was the "Chief of all Chiefs" and told them that they were no longer to fight with each other. And they used cannons and guns to enforce this peace. The natives built this pole to signify the end of wars on the island. It is basically a blank pole expect for Abraham Lincoln on top.
We only had like 20 minutes total to be in this location, and our guide spent most of that time telling us stories about all of the poles. So we really just had time to take a few pictures and go. I know that they said that Ketchikan has the most totem poles in the world, but from what we saw it didn't look like too many. Granted we didn't really have time to walk around. Maybe there were a bunch more behind that building that we just didn't get to see.
After our tour was done, we stopped at Creek Street to browse around a bit and buy a few things.
To my extreme excitement there were a bunch of seals in the creek! They were hunting salmon.
There he goes to catch one! I was extremely excited to watch them swim around and hunt for food. Our guide told us that they are there almost every day around this time to eat. There were probably about a dozen seals in the area. Yay!
For lunch we went to the Alaska Fish House. I had read good things about it on trip advisor and we figured that we wanted to try some local fish. So we got a sampler platter and tried salmon, cod, and halibut. I was shocked at how good the halibut was! It was very moist and tasty.
Once we were back to the ship, we hung out by the waterfront area and ran into our British friends that we met at our hotel in Seattle. We kept bumping into them during the cruise, so we figured that we'd sit down and hang out for a while. We were there for quite a while sharing stories about our trips and looking through each others pictures.
We ate dinner at a new restaurant to Norwegian, "Q". It was a barbaque joint, and they regularly played country music in there. We stopped by to watch the country performers a few times, but for some reason I just couldn't get into it. We did like the "Q" restaurant. It seemed like one of the restaurants that always had reservations open throughout the cruise. We thought their food was pretty good, and the platter that we got was huge!
After dinner we went to see the "Comedy Magician" in the main theatre. I'm starting to realize that the term "Comedy Magician" basically means a comedian with stupid tricks that makes fun of how stupid their tricks are... I feel like every "comedy magician" I've seen has fit that description. Norwegian always seems like they have such great potential to have really good shows on their ships, but this cruise was really a miss for us. I'm not even sure if we stayed for this whole act or not, because it was brutally basic/stupid. It was not the level of entertainment that we had come to expect from Norwegian... It felt more on par to Carnival honestly. I heard a lot of people complaining about it on our cruise too.
Norwegian Bliss - Day 7 - Victoria (British Columbia)
Alright... I don't want to end my blog on too negative of a note, but the truth is... the last day on our cruise was boring. It was cloudy and windy out so EVERYONE was stuck inside the ship. We got into Canadian waters at 3pm so the casino shut down, and Canada only allows one bar per floor to be open on cruise ships in their waters (no idea why). For some reason, they moved the comedy show that was supposed to be the main event in the theater to Comedy Club area at 5:45pm. And it was jam packed and people were ticked that they couldn't get into the venue. Luckily we got there a half an hour early and just barely grabbed some of the last seats way over to the side in the back. I really like seeing the final comedy show of a cruise because it's all the comedians doing their acts. And to be fair the show was really good.
Our port time in Victoria was from 8pm to Midnight on the last day of our cruise. And way before the cruise, Cody and I decided that we were going to skip this port. There was a problem with customs so people didn't even get off the ship until 8:30pm and it was completely dark, and you had to be shuttled to the actual city.
Instead... we went to dinner at Cagney's again. We had the BEST steak and lobster there. I can't sign the praises of Cagney's enough. Hands down it's our favorite... especially when they have lobster on the menu.
Overall, I'd say that we absolutely LOVED Alaska. The ports were so refreshing because they were so different from what we were used to. We've been wanting to go to Alaska for such a long time, and it was so beautiful! The Norwegian Bliss? Unfortunately, I can't really give it a glowing review... The ship was VERY nice, and the food was really good... but the entertainment was really lacking on it and the management of the buffet area drove us nuts. We place a high importance on the quality of shows on our cruises and I'm not sure that I'd want to go back to Norwegian again after this experience. I kept comparing this ship to RC's Allure and I have to say that I liked the Allure way better. Also, I know that this is a little unfair to the Bliss, because this ship was at it's capacity (no rooms were left available by our sailing) and because it was cold outside everyone was inside the ship... so I think that made it feel even more crowded to us. I think that if we could do it again, or were to do it again... I think that we'd probably go to Alaska with a travel company vs taking a cruise. It felt like we didn't really have a lot of time in a lot of the ports, and I could have stayed longer in just about all of them. We also didn't get to see a lot of other areas of Alaska (Denali National Park) which I've heard is amazing and even better than where we were at. I think if we were ever to do Alaska again, we'd probably try a land tour approach. However, I know in my heart that our trip to Alaska was extraordinary weather wise! We couldn't have had better weather in my opinion. We were incredibly lucky, and I don't think that any other trip to Alaska could compare to the great time that we had in all of the ports during this trip. This was definitely a bucket list adventure for us and we loved loved loved Alaska!
