Alaskan cruise: The ship

Last week Matt and I went on a cruise to Alaska. It was amazing! It was so wonderful to get away and relax and see some gorgeous country. We sailed out of Seattle and stopped in Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and Victoria (BC). I will do a separate post for each port.

The ship was great. We were on Norwegian cruise line, which the one thing I really liked about it was that you didn't have an assigned meal time or table...you could go whenever you wanted. The first item of business was to figure out what we were going to do in each port!

They had these great lounges with some funky chairs that were great for watching the scenery as we sailed along since it was so cold outside. We spent a lot of time just sitting and looking out the window trying to find wildlife and looking at the beautiful scenery. (We ended up seeing fish, whales, dolphins, bears, seals, otters, eagles, and other birds.)

 

And what's a cruise boat without some shuffle board! 

Compared to other cruise lines I have been on (Carnival and Royal Caribbean), this boat didn't seem to have as much to do. That may have been due to the fact that it was cold, and so the outdoor activities weren't as prevalent. But we just had fun relaxing and taking in the beauty.

And you gotta love cruise food! Matt was obsessed with the sampling of cheese plate. He ordered it every night! And ate it with grapes. He says we are going to have a cheese party soon. It really was pretty good.

One of the nights they had a chocolate buffet where there was just a whole ton of chocolate desserts. It was pretty amazing.

And lots of cool chocolate and ice sculptures. Don't worry, they also had a gym and we walked a lot in the ports. :)

Here we are on dress-up night. You could either eat in a fancy dining room, a more casual dining room or the buffet. Or order room service. We did all of them at least once. The food was all pretty good, but for the record, Norwegian's was my least favorite of the 3 boats I've been on.

 

And every night we would come back to our room to find a different towel animal. It was nice being so pampered.

One of the nights, they had a Michael Jackson show. This lady was pretty amazing. We loved it! We also went to a circus, watched some game shows, and listened to a pianist and guitarist while we were on the boat, but the MJ lady was by far our favorite!

The scenery we sailed by was just incredible. My favorite were the glaciers. I have never seen anything like it before. I was amazed at how big they were and the blue ice.

This is when we sailed up into Tracy Arm to take a look at Sawyer Glacier. Pretty awesome.

And there were huge chunks of ice floating in the inlet for a really long ways away from the glacier.

See how blue the ice is?

It was just really beautiful. I feel like we didn't DO a whole lot, but we really saw some amazingly beautiful country.

It rained every single day we were there and was cloudy and cold, but this one night made for a pretty great sunset. At 10:30 p.m. The sunrise was around 3:00-4:00 a.m.

Lots of times we would just pile on the layers and chill out on the deck. It was cold, but great!