Just like our Disney cruise of January 2016, our 7 day Alaska cruise with 14 family members was awesome. I suffered, again, from quite a case of post-cruise-blues upon disembarking.....
 |
| Taken by Ev, I believe cruising the inner passage after Skagway and before Dawes Glacier/Endicott Arm. We were very disappointed to learn that we had missed a big night of Northern Lights (green!). The next night apparently there was very little to see. |
 |
| Morning of cruise, meeting mom and Rong for coffee |
 |
| First glimpse of cruise ship. Very excited. |
 |
| So excited to board. They kept saying throughout the cruise how much they liked "the ovation of the seas" rather than just saying "the cruise". |
 |
| The weather was perfect. Such pretty scenery throughout the entire cruise. |
 |
| View from our window, facing the front of the ship |
 |
| More views. We did see a pod of dolphins around Day 2 jumping right next to our ship, and then we saw some whales around Day 3. |
 |
| More stunning views right outside foosball |
 |
| Evening views |
 |
| Morning hot cocoa and views near Dawes Glacier and Endicott Arm. Apparently there was too much ice to go up right next to the glacier, so we just did some 360s and enjoyed the scenery and left. |
 |
| Night 1 |
 |
| Windjammer - site of many breakfasts and desserts. I made the kids eat a fruit every morning and a veggie with every lunch and dinner, but I wasn't all too strict about making sure they actually did it. I think, for the most part, they did. I enjoyed eating tons of fruit this trip. I just ate tons, period. But I did find that the cruise ship was so large that we were walking and taking stairs and participating in activities (see below!) all day, every day. We were barely ever sedentary, which felt really good. So I didn't really feel like I had to make an effort to go exercise because we were moving the entire time. |
 |
| We lived by the cruise compass, which laid out all the activities on any given day. |
 |
| Sample dinner menus. I would generally order 1-2 apps, 1 main dish, and 1 dessert. We definitely ate, and ate, and ate. |
 |
| Celebrating Rong's 80th birthday on Day 2! |
 |
| Day 2 happened to also be formal night |
 |
| Celebrated Ev's 44th birthday on Day 7! |
 |
| Family birthday photo |
 |
| There were so many kid activities, and activities that were actually fun for everyone, not just kids. We enjoyed and took advantage of almost every single one. This was iFly (same iFly the kids did with puops a couple months ago) and I was excited to do this because it's free onboard, and it costs like $60-70 per person if you do it in Tukwila! It was a lot of fun. I had thought that how fun could one minute of flying be, but it's a unique experience for sure. |
 |
| Christian |
 |
| Olin |
 |
| Dae. Don't know if you can zoom in, but his face was hilarious. |
 |
| Me. (I had a feeling going in that I would have good form. Ha!) |
 |
| Dae participated in any competition he could. Table tennis (out on the first round, but I give him cred for entering!), volleyball (very fun to watch), trivia, poker. We didn't win anything on anything, but it sure was fun. |
 |
| Open gym time at the Seaplex (where they spent almost all their time). Soccer. |
 |
| Beatles tribute band. So good. I went twice. |
 |
| Flowrider - you can boogie board or surf if you're tall enough. It was great. I think this was Didi. |
 |
| Mal. |
 |
| I was terrible at surfing. So hard. I was good at boogyboarding and getting up on to my knees. |
 |
| There was always a big line for bumper cars but once we got in to the rhythm of the cruise we figured out when to go. |
 |
| They played foosball for hours. |
 |
| My mom, Ev and I attended lots of dancing opportunities. This was a Jive class. We actually learned a lot and put it in to use a few evenings later! Ev was the man in our coupling. haha. |
 |
| Zumba was awesome. |
 |
| Mom doing jive. She got there earlier than us so she was paired with this person. |
 |
| Rollerskating. Again, very fun. |
 |
| Trivia. I made people come with me and went a total of 4 times, convinced we could win (a Royal Caribbean pen) at one of those outings. Sadly, our cumulative knowledge was just not enough, but I confirmed that boy do I love trivia. |
 |
| Kids treated themselves to soft-serve around 1-3 times a day and we adults treated ourselves to at least a cone per day. When it's available on the pool deck all day long it's hard to resist and it was delicious. |
 |
| There was some screen time, too, but surprisingly little. Xbox station pictured here. |
 |
| TV time |
 |
| More TV time. They loved going in to Mal & Didi's room (by far the biggest by some great luck) and they would turn off all the lights and play dark hide-and-seek. It was one of their favorite activities. |
 |
| Another dance outing. This was a 'dance party' around 11pm - way past our bedtime! ha! Pretty much Ev, my mom and I were the partyers. |
 |
| Day 3 - Juneau. This was the waterfall that was next to Mendenhall Glacier. Don't remember the name. The glacier is disappearing/melting at an alarming rate. I think they said in the 90's it receded by 30 feet a year. |
 |
| Here is the glacier just next to and above my head. |
 |
| I think the sweatshirts turned out extremely well. Not that I am biased in any way, seeing as how I oversaw design of them. hahaha. |
 |
| All traffic stopped for this mom and cubs. |
 |
| Tram overlooking Juneau. |
 |
| At the top of the tram. |
 |
| Day 4 - Skagway. We took a train tour for about 2.5 hours toward the gold mining area. The amount of railway and bridges those miners/workers laid in the late 1800's was astounding. |
 |
| Skagway Brewing company. We had some beer while the kids played corn hole. |
 |
| They enjoyed this caterpillar. Don't remember the name of it. |
 |
| Day 7 - Victoria. My family had never been here and it has been decades since I had, so we enjoyed the day. Such a beautiful city. |
 |
| Paper airplanes |
 |
| Aerial view from the NorthStar capsule ride thing that hung over the ship. We took the free (abbreviated) version of the tour, of course :) |
 |
| Too tired to find the version where my (and Dae's) eyes are fully open..... |
Quite an amazing trip. We are so grateful to Mom & Rong for being so generous!
