Blogs from Alaska, United States, North America - page 8

In my last post, we had just completed Day 2 on board and I thought that this time, rather than bore you even more silly than I have in previous episodes, by giving you a blow by blow account of each and every day of the cruise, I would take a slightly different approach. In a nutshell, I decided to wait until the cruise is finished and then provide one overall post summarising highlights/lowlights, tips and suggestions, do's and don't's and thoughts on the excursions we participated in. But firstly, an apology.......there are a lot if words in this post and........a lot of photos as well........sorry!! So, in no particular order, here goes: * The Ship - whilst Mandy and I haven't really got any previous (large ship) cruising experience to go by, the Celebrity Millennium ... read more

You may well have been wondering why it has been so long since my last post; alternatively of course, you may well have been relieved to have had some respite from the trials and tribulations of the Famous Five. Well, the fact is, we have been aboard our cruise ship for the last 8 days and even with the ship's 'super value', 'special offer', 'one time only', 'bargain basement price' for a week's access to the Wifi, it would still have rivalled the amount that America paid Russia to purchase Alaska way back in 1867 - for those that are interested, America paid $7.2million! In fact, we even thought about just paying for the Wifi for the last day on ship (when we were at sea all day), but at $55 per day, PER DEVICE (!), ... read more

Today we spent the whole day in Misty Fjords, or Rudyerd Bay, to be precise! We had elected not to do any shore excursions, so we decided to be leisurely and eat breakfast in the main restaurant. After breakfast we returned to our suite and Tom made a start on an assignment he has to do for uni while I relaxed and made a start of one of the ebooks I’d borrowed from Penrith Library. Our ship is spending the day in.Rudyerd Bay, where there is no dock and the fjord is too deep to anchor. We are just kept in position by minor adjustments made by the engines. Our ship has some of the equipment normally found on their expedition ships - zodiacs, canoes and kayaks. There is also a float plane doing sightseeing over ... read more

We were up early this morning, noting the low clouds misting us with rain - we knew that our shore excursion starts pretty soon after we docked, so we went up and found La Terrazza hadn’t even opened, and we went to the Arts Cafe where we shared a smoked salmon and cream cheese roll, a danish each and I had a pot of mango yoghurt with oats in it, followed by a coffee. We were waiting at the doors when we were given clearance to go ashore so we went down, met up with our tour guide Ruthie and hopped aboard their covered, heated jet boat. This jet boat held about 18 tourists, plus Ruthie and Big John, our captain whose boat it was. We had to proceed very slowly initially, because we were heading ... read more

This morning we went up to brekky and sat outside on the deck - every other morning has been too cold, but today was glorious. We’d been seated about five minutes when another waiter greeted us! Nelson was on the Panama Cruise and the Russian one. It is so lovely - like being part of the community. After brekky we returned to our suite and then watched the docking procedure right outside our balcony. We had lunch outside on La Terrazza as well, and enjoyed some more Brown Brothers Sauvignon Blanc with my lunch. We then headed off to shore side for our separate shore excursions. Tom was off to drive an ATV along old logging trails, I was off on a wilderness odyssey on a jet boat on the Chilkat River. It was very pleasant ... read more