Last week (8/17-24) on the Amsterdam review

I know there's another thread going now from someone currently on the Amsterdam for the 14 day Alaska, but I had planned all along to do my own review when we got home from our trip. I hope you enjoy my review... I've never done this before :)

My husband and I went on the 7 day round trip Seattle Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon. We actually got married in November, but as we are both teachers, summer was the best time to go. This was his first cruise and my third. My two prior cruises have been on HAL - 7 day Vancouver Alaska trip in 1999 and Western Caribbean in 2001. It has been a while.

Pre-Cruise in Seattle

We flew out to Seattle via JFK on the Wednesday before the cruise. We live upstate in the Albany area, but my parents are from down on Long Island, a few minutes from Islip airport (if anybody knows where that is). We chose to fly JetBlue as they had a direct flight, and Southwest out of Islip would put us out with 2 stops.

The morning of our departure was an absolute nightmare. We had driven down the night before and my dad was going to drive us to the airport that morning. Well, that late night into early morning we had absolute torrential downpours on LI. You may have even heard about it, apparently it made some big news. Roads were flooded everywhere. It took us 4 different tries to get out of my neighborhood to any major road. Parts of the LIE were flooded, cars were floating in places. I have an app called Waze on my phone that is user updated and live... and I think if it weren't for that with the live traffic and condition updates, we never would have made our flight. As it was, we got there around 7:40 for our 8:45 flight. Curbside luggage drop/check-in saved our life. We walked up to the gate around 8:05 and they started boarding our flight at 8:10. Phew.

While watching the TV's on the plane, I saw lots of news coverage about the rain we had. Islip airport got over 13 inches on rain in about 5 hours. Parts of the airport had flooded inside. Thank goodness we did not end up flying out of there!!

We enjoyed our few days in Seattle prior to the cruise. We used the AirBnB service to find a place to stay and spent most of our time in the Fremont area. Husband and I are both geocachers, and their headquarters is located in Fremont. They had a whole bunch of special events all that week that we enjoyed going to.

Some of the other things we did while we were in Seattle were taking a private glassblowing lesson, Chihuly museum, Pike Place Market, Woodland Park Zoo and touring a bunch of breweries in Ballard. We saw the Space Needle but didn't go up... we were in Toronto at the CN Tower in November and didn't feel like spending the money on the smaller tower.

Seattle is a nice city. GREAT transit system. SO MANY HILLS!! We never had a bad meal anywhere - restaurant or food truck. We definitely enjoyed our time, but we were also ready to cruise!

To be continued...

I forgot something big!

I forgot something big on my last post!! When we left New York, we thought we were going to be in cat E oceanview room 1917. In a rush of crazy things happening before we had left, I had overlooked that I had gotten an upsell e-mail from HAL on Monday evening. I noticed it on our flight (which had wifi):

PREFERRED LIMITED UPGRADE SPECIAL! Please call us directly

**limited space**

Upgrade from category C-H to Vista A-BC for additional $299pp USD/CDN

We were game for that! I called HAL after we got off the plane, as we were waiting near the baggage claim. They had 2 vista suites left. We changed our booking to VA room 6182. For us, it was a good deal. The total price of the cruise almost came to what I intially booked last year for an inside cabin on this same cruise. Lots of shuffling around with price changes! I was so excited.

Back to Embarkation Day, Day 1

I woke up so excited that morning knowing that we were going to board the Amsterdam in just a few hours time. I went on cruise critic and found the thread showing where everyone is in port that day, and clicked the webcam link for Pier 91. There she was, waiting for us! We walked to Starbucks and had a quick breakfast and went back to finish packing up the rest of our luggage. Our bnb host was kind enough to offer us a ride to the pier, which was greatly appreciated.

I wasn't entirely sure when to get to the port, so we ended up getting there around 10:20 or so. We left our large suitcases with the people collecting them and held on to our carry-on's. There weren't many people around, and we essentially walked right up to the desk where they gave us our cards. We were in boarding group 2.

The Grand Princess and it's passengers were right next to us, separated by a row of chairs facing in the direction of our respective boats. The Princess employees were making everyone fill in seats next to each other waiting. HAL passengers sat where they wanted in the HAL area. A number of Princess people jumped over to our side of seats and seemed confused that it wasn't their boat. Didn't quite understand that.

We ended up sitting around for about an hour, but it was all good. The clock that showed embarkation time actually said 10:30, but I guess somebody just mixed up their hands on the clock when they moved it.

Many people walked right past the photographers, but we decided to stop for a picture, because why not? We're on our honeymoon, it'll be nice to have some pics that have both of us that aren't selfies.

As we board the ship, we are told that cabins should be ready in about 15 minutes or so and that the Lido was open for lunch. I confirmed with the staff the time of the Mariner Lunch and up to the Lido we went. My husband had a quick bite of something and I just had a drink of water, as we waited for the luncheon to begin.

Before heading down to the dining room, we decided to stop in our cabin to drop the carry-on's. We were happy to see that it was ready.

We made our way down to the dining room and we were seated with this nice older couple from South Carolina. We would find ourselves running into them often around the ship and even out in port. Lunch was good and the dessert even better.

After lunch, we went back to the cabin to unpack, as our luggage had arrived, and relax until the lifeboat drill. The last time I did one of these, we were still wearing the lifejackets. We were in Fort Lauderdale on a crazy rainy, windy day. It felt like we WERE in the middle of some disaster. It was a much different experience this time. I was very annoyed with some of the rudeness of the fellow passengers around during the drill. They couldn't keep quiet for 15 minutes. A man near me was standing there just reading from his tablet the whole time. The crew got on the PA and asked for silence during the drill and people totally ignored it.

After the drill, we went exploring around the ship. Captain Mercer told us that we would be backing out shortly, after the Grand Princess had departed from port. I guess something changed, cause shortly after, we started moving while the Princess boat was completely still in port. Behind us, we could see the Norwegian Jewel already on the move. We were off!

We had opted to do Open Dining and I had reserved a table for two at 5:15, so after our exploring we headed back to the cabin to change for dinner. Our waiter that evening, Tirta, was memorable and a lot of fun. He loved to sing and was always singing Bruno Mars songs at his station. I asked him if they still did the crew show and he said they do. I asked if he was going to sing and he told me he had done it last week. Last week was the Indonesian Crew Show and this week was the Filipino Crew Show. At least we got to hear a little of his performance

Dinner was excellent. Husband had a chicken and stuffing dish and I had Pork Buca, which was so delicious. It was also lovely to look out the back of the La Fontaine Dining Room and see Mt. Rainier off in the distance, along with the Grand Princess trailing behind us.

After dinner, we went outside to see if we could see Mt. Rainier anymore, but it had disappeared from view. We went to 7:30 Pub Trivia, which had some really tough questions. The Show Host, Claire, is from France and has some tricky European related questions sometimes.

Afterwards, we went to the first show, featuring the musicians on board the ship. My husband and I are both musicians, I mentioned in my first post that we were teachers, we are actually both music teachers. I actually enjoyed the HAL Cats, though I've seen a lot of gripes about them on here. The singers and dancers were all rather talented.

After the show, we browsed a few shops and went to the Explorations Cafe and got hot beverages. My husband tried to teach me how to play chess. I wasn't very good. We gave up and decided to call it a night. Back to the cabin we went. We were beat and we ended up falling asleep before late night, so we missed it

To be continued...

Enjoying your review, looking forward to more. Thanks for taking the time to write and post, and your nice photo's.

Thank you for the review . Looking fwd to more .

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

Day 2, At Sea

We had decided to order room service breakfast for the morning, so we woke up just a few minutes before it was delivered. The times on the form have you select in half hour slots, and our food was delivered right on the dot of that half hour. Talk about timing. We had thought about eating on the balcony, but it was a little chilly that morning, so we just ate in the cabin. My toast was a little bit burnt, but it was okay.

This day actually turned out to be our roughest at sea. I'm lucky and don't have problems with seasickness, but my husband was feeling a little down at times. He took Bonine and that seemed to help. That evening I had actually noticed that they had clipped what looked like barf bags on the railings near the elevators!! That was amusing.

I got ready for the day before my husband and started to walk around the ship a bit. They had their "Great Alaska Apparel Deck Sale" on the lido deck, and I wandered up to that. I didn't see much I felt I needed, but they did have these nice Alaska fleeces for only $15. I saw they had vest ones as well, which would be perfect for my husband, so I decided we would come back up again when he was ready. I stopped at the library on the way back to the room and took out Catcher in the Rye. Most people I know read this story sometime in high school, but my English class was one that never read this one. I was interested to finally get this one under my belt on this trip.

I went back to the cabin and read for a little bit, and then we went back up to the lido deck. My husband signed up for the Alaskan Beer Tasting that afternoon and then we bought those fleeces. We then sat around the lido deck and waited while they prepared the Beer and Bangers Buffet. My husband was more into the food than I was, but I had a sausage and enjoyed it. We both ordered fries from the Dive-In and enjoyed them. I ordered cheese fries and he had the fries with Dive-In sauce. I was skeptical of them at first, since they said they were made with mustard amongst other things (which I don't like), but I ended up really liking the Dive-In sauce (which I would mix with ketchup too... )

We walked around outside a little while before heading back for the Beer Tasting. I sat in the Lido Bar while he did the tasting. Beer isn't my thing. The sample sizes were actually quite generous. He liked the Alaskan Amber the best. They also gave them some pizza to munch on with their beer.

After that, we wandered down to the champagne art auction. Neither of us are that into art, but we can appreciate it. It was something to do and exposed us to things we aren't used to. The auctioneer was rather entertaining.

Later that afternoon, I went to the future cruise presentation to listen to what the consultant had to say. They also had a raffle for people there to win a dinner in the Pinnacle Grill. Of course, I did NOT win.

After the presentation, I rushed back to the cabin to get dressed for formal night and our reservation in the MDR at 5:30. My husband was already getting his tux on and I knew I could get dressed quickly. I've never been one for makeup or anything, so that saves me time.

Off to dinner we went, at a new table this time with new staff. Tirta, our server from the previous night, passed us and stopped to talk for a minute. I wasn't a fan of any entree on the menu that night, so I ended up getting the steak that is available every night. For my soup, I ordered a chilled soup, as I had done the night before. I really enjoyed the fruity chilled soups!

For dessert, we both ordered Baked Alaska and enjoyed them. As we were finishing up, Ali our server came over and asked if we were so and so on our honeymoon. We told him yes, and he told us "don't go away, I have a cake for you!" A few minutes later, he came back with a bunch of other servers clapping and singing a song in Indonesian. It was embarrassing and sweet at the same time. The cake tasted pretty good but we were already so full from dinner and our first dessert, that we only ate a little bit of it.

When we had finished dinner, we went off to find the photography stations to get our picture taken. As we walked out of the dining room, an older woman stopped us and thanked us for dressing up the way we did at formal night and said it was so nice to see since hardly anyone does it anymore. She told us to go off and enjoy getting our pictures taken as we looked wonderful It felt nice.

When we got to the photo stations, they were void of photographers. We had to wait about 15 minutes for them to come back from the MDR where they were photographing. They had four photography stations, and had these cards that you could bring to have the photographer at each station sign. If you did all four, you could either get $50 off one of the top 2 photo packages, or get a free slideshow. It felt like prom taking all the pictures, but I was hoping we would get some good ones (and we did... along with some bad ones too )

After our pictures, we made our way to the Queens Lounge for the Captain's Welcome Toast and then the Northern Lights show. Captain Mercer seemed like a great guy and his voice was always very soothing lol.. Oh accents. He introduced a lot of the senior staff and then led the toast.

The show started shortly after. The show was... just ok. The singers and dancers are talented, but it would be nice to see them with material that was executed different. A bit cheesy and not a lot of wow factor, not their fault at all.

Following the show, we were shocked that it was 9:00 and still light. Caught a beautiful sunset.

We then went up to the Crow's Nest and relaxed up there for a little while. As we were sitting there, another older gentleman came up to my husband and told him that he was the only other man on board he had seen in a tux. We did tell him that we had seen another man dancing in a tux down in the Ocean Bar before. He talked with us for a few minutes and then was on his way.

A little while later, we went to the Lido Deck and played a game of giant chess. I was less tired than the night before and actually played decently for my second time. Then we made our way over to check out late night. It was French Night at the lido deck. Not really anything I was into eating. I had some cucumber salad, but that was it.

To be continued...

More to follow tomorrow... it's now after 2 am here on the East Coast... and I really need to get back to being on the East Coast as school starts next week and I'll have to have a normal sleep schedule again :p Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy :)

Great review! Can't wait to see the rest. We board the Amsterdam next week!

Loving your review and pictures.

Congratulations on the upsell.

Great review...thanks for posting...love the pictures..and you guys look great:):):) My nephew just got married this month...his wife is a teacher and they are delaying their honeymoon until Spring Break I think..and are planning a cruise:)

Thanks for the nice comments everyone! :o I'm enjoying writing this and sharing some of my pictures (I love taking pics!) It helps me relive the trip a little right now which makes me happy!!

jbchw - Congrats to your newphew... cruise honeymoon was wonderful, definitely recommend it! :p

More coming in a few mins... got it typed, just getting the pics ready! :D

Day 3, Tracy Arm Fjord

We had turned back the clocks that night so we got another hour to relax. I must talk about how comfortable our cabin was! Very clean all the time, our cabin steward Cory was great. We both LOVED our beds. They call them Mariner Dream beds.. oh boy, they certainly were! Both of us were extremely comfortable and we are totally different sleepers. I'm a side/back sleeper, my husband sleeps on his stomach. All the different pillows they had on the bed were perfect for us too.. I used them all, while he found one that he deemed 'perfect' that he used for himself.

Now that I'm thinking back, I can't remember if it was today or yesterday that we did some laundry on board. We used the self-service machines that were just down the hall from us. Somehow, one of my socks managed to go missing. I don't know if my husband dropped it in the hall, or if the machine stole it somehow. I hope you're enjoying my sock, Amsterdam. Laundry facilities are fine. Pay for washing ($2 a load), drying is free. They have ironing boards for free use. I thought it was also nice they had laundry baskets to use.

We had our first breakfast on the Lido, which was our preferred breakfast of the morning. My usual meal consisted of French toast with some kind of sides. I loved the triangular hash browns. I feel like they had these same hash browns the years ago that I sailed... My husband would enjoy the Eggs Benedict of many flavors each morning. Happily, this morning would be our last code orange meal and by lunch we could serve our own food.

After breakfast, we did some walking around the lower promenade deck. Towards the end of our walk, I noticed some doors in the front opened and went through them. Though it was still early, they had opened up bow access. We went out and were the only ones out there besides another man taking pictures. How different it would be out there in just a few hours...

Mid-morning, we went to a Behind the Scenes kitchen tour. They gave us a fact sheet about the kitchen and food on the Amsterdam and we walked through, sampling a few things along the way. We all just kind of walked through ourselves and were surprised that it was over so fast. I'm not sure if they had wanted to talk to us, or if this is how it normally is, but I remember hearing one of the people saying they were amazed how many people showed up for it.

That ended much faster than we thought it would, with the galley ending walking out to the Pinnacle Grill. We decided to make our way up to the morning art auction with free mimosas as it would be starting soon. The previous day, people were buying art, some even expensive ones, but nobody wanted to bite today.

Afterwards, for lunch today on the Lido deck they had the salmon bake. I don't eat seafood so I didn't partake, but my husband did and enjoyed it. I decided to get a burger from the Dive In - I tried the "High Dive" burger and fries with dive in sauce. It was very good and my beeper surprisingly went off not even 2 minutes after my order.

We went back to the cabin to read and relax for a little while. We sat on the balcony for a bit and could spot a few whales off in the distance. The water was so calm and beautiful today, which made my husband very happy. The landscape was becoming very beautiful. (As a side note, waking up with the balcony and seeing out the window each morning was sooo worth it!!)

We ventured up to the Crow's Nest for Team Trivia with the cruise director Mike at 1 pm. We found his questions to be more accessible than Claire's. A number of whales were being spotted to the front and sides of the ship around this point. At one point at the beginning, there was a particularly active whale and everybody was running over and watching/taking pictures. Mike went "Okay everyone, pay attention to me again!" It was quite funny.

Another one of my favorite things was one of the bartenders walking around in the Crow's Nest saying "The more you drink, the more whales you see!!!" Apparently the night before the rough seas he was telling people "Drink more and you sway with the boat!" Funny guy.

After trivia, we made our way down to the bow as we were getting close to entering Tracy Arm. I wasn't sure what to expect and had heard about boats not getting close, etc. Wasn't sure if I would be disappointed that we didn't do Glacier Bay. Let me say, it did not disappoint. It definitely was wonderful in it's own way. Our location guide actually said at one point while in the fjord that they have been doing a lot of research in that area and there has been talk of actually closing the fjord to cruise traffic in the next several years. That made me even more happy with my choice, since there may not be a next time to see this someday.

It was a nice clear day, but it was definitely chilly. We ordered hot chocolates in mugs from one of the drink servers walking around the bow - it was a pretty good deal. I wasn't crazy about the hot chocolate, but at least it was warm!

The further we got into the fjord, the windier and colder it got. Shortly after we entered, the Zaandam passed us exiting the fjord. I secretly wished they would have blown their horns at each other or something After a little while, the Dutch Pea Soup appeared. I'm not normally a fan of pea soup, but it was warm and comforting.

After braving the bow for a while, we decided to head back to the cabin and watch from our balcony. The cover and sides made the balcony significantly warmer, but it was still chilly. We didn't see any wildlife anywhere, but the landscape was stunning.

Eventually we were pretty far in the fjord and heard that we would be nearing South Sawyer Glacier shortly. We decided to go back out to the front of the boat - this time staying up on the little deck below the bridge from our floor. It was absolutely beautiful. Our location guide accurately announced "If you are not outside on a deck, you need to get yourself out there right now"

We made it super close to the glacier. There were tons of seals everywhere all over the icebergs. Simply stunning. The glacier did calve while we were there, but I had looked away and only heard it/saw the splash. After spending a bit of time there, it was time for the ship to turn and leave.

We had dinner with a beautiful backdrop of leaving the fjord behind us. At one point, the Norwegian Jewel passed us going in. Speaking of dinner, I found out that you were able to reserve tables for up to 3 nights in a row. We had no problems getting reservations when we tried, and no problems getting a 2 top.

That nights show was "Super Juggler" Jeff Taveggia. He put on a good show, quite humorous. We called it an early night as we wanted to be up and ready to head out into Juneau when we arrived in port at 7 am the next day. We did pass through late night at the start though. It was Dutch Night.

To be continued...

If you would like to see more pictures of anything, let me know and I will post them if I have them!

You have some terrific pictures! What sort of camera are you using?

Day 4, Juneau, AK

Happy birthday to my husband! What an awesome way to spend your birthday in Juneau! He woke up to a card from HAL wishing him a happy birthday.

We arrived in port on schedule. We saw numerous eagles before we even got off the ship. A number of them were on poles in the water, and two eagles were sitting on a building right next to us eating breakfast at the Lido. Breakfast started extra early (5:30 continental, 6 am full buffet) to accommodate our time in port.

We couldn't have asked for a better place to be docked. We were right at the end, in front of the Patsy Ann statue. We had our picture taken with whoever was dressed up like the eagle, and away we went. We had rented a car for the day and needed to kill some time until Avis at the Goldbelt Hotel opened, so we did a little bit of geocaching.

Car pickup was a breeze. It wasn't cheap, but factoring in the cost of excursions, it was a bargain. We rented a compact and it got great mileage! Renting a car was such a great decision for this port. The one thing we didn't get to do was the Mt. Roberts Tramway. I had heard to wait until the day of to see your weather, and we had the most gorgeous clear day - it would have been nice. But I wasn't sure if we could park near it and we had some other things we wanted to check out. Maybe next time. There will be a next time, I'm sure.

We were off to Mendenhall Glacier first. We got there around 8:30. I have visited Mendenhall on our last cruise, but as I mentioned, that was just a few days shy of 15 years ago. Even though I haven't looked at my parents old pictures lately, I was shocked by how different the glacier looked to me. It has receded a great deal.

We went up to the visitors center and looked around, stamped our national parks passport (they have a Tongass forest stamp there) and watched a film. Then we decided to hit the trails.

We decided to to take the trail to Nugget Falls first. At the beginning of the trail, there was a sign that caution, trail flooded ahead. We didn't run into any flooding at all. Interestingly enough, someone posted on the Alaska Port of Call forum that they were there the same day and were walking through several inches of water. I think they took the part of the trail that's along the water more, we curved to the right and had no problems.

The falls were beautiful and impressive, but it was a bit chilly with the water blowing back at us. We stayed there for a while and decided to head back. We then did the short photo point trail before heading back.

By this time, the grounds were getting jam packed with people and tour buses. We were almost done and glad to have beaten the crowds out there!! We ran over to another trail and watched the salmon for a few minutes, hoping to also see bears, but not were around that morning.

We left Mendenhall after 11 and drove around a little while. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, no rain at all in the forecast. We had layered up cause we had heard to, and it was no problem with the car, but I wished I had put a regular t-shirt on under my long sleeved tee.

Then we went to of all places, Walmart. My husband had tripped on the stairs the night before and wanted to get an ace bandage. We ended up picking up some quick sandwiches to eat, rather than trying to find somewhere downtown to park the car for lunch. What I found amusing about the Walmart was that they had signs that said they had bush plane service - order products and have them delivered to you anywhere! As we were leaving, a Walmart courtesy shuttle was pulling up. Interesting.

After Walmart, we drove over to Douglas Island because I wanted to check out the Wall of Skis. Very bizarre and unique. We drove back across the bridge, where I noticed that there were now 4 boats in port with us. The Oosterdam was parked right up behind us.

We started driving back west again and made a stop at the Alaskan Brewing Company. They had free beer tasting, my husband enjoyed that. The place was empty and the sample sizes were rather generous - and you could get up to 6 samples! The design on the taps were great. As we were getting ready to leave, I guess a group had just been shuttled in as it suddenly got packed. Once again, we had just missed the crowds and were super happy about that.

From there, we drove out to Auke Bay. I had heard that sometimes this could be a good area to see whales. Unfortunately, we didn't see any. But we did spend a nice deal of time here hiking and geocaching around the Auke Rec Beach area, enjoying the wilderness that probably most people that visit Juneau on cruises don't ever visit as there aren't tours here. One geocache required us to cross over to this island that a small land bridge appeared to at low tide. Very cool.

After we were done all our hiking, we decided to head back to downtown to go turn in the car. All Aboard was at 5:30, and we had said we'd bring the car back at 5. We also needed to fill the tank. Gas was $4.08/gallon, but luckily we only put about $8 and it was full... over 31 miles a gallon in that little car!! Drop off was quick and easy. We did one last geocache down near the information center and we hopped back on board the Amsterdam.

That evening we had reservations to eat in the Pinnacle Grill for my husband's birthday. Such a good decision! We had a 7:30 reservation. The service was wonderful. I ordered a tomato dish for my appetizer and I felt bad not finishing it. They were concerned something was wrong and I was like "No, I'm just really trying to save room for dinner!"

My husband was super excited to order the porterhouse steak for dinner. I had a filet mignon. Both were superb. I had the garlic butter with my steak and it was amazing. Perfectly done. I ordered the french fries with garlic aioli... that was incredible.

Our desserts were both amazing as well. My husband had a vanilla souffle and I had the most incredible chocolate lava cake. I couldn't even finish it all as I had eaten so much... I was so sad, but starting to feel way too stuffed. I was curious if they would do anything for his birthday, as they had for our honeymoon the other night in the MDR, but it did not happen. He was totally okay with that.

We went to the Queen's Lounge for the shows that evening. First up was The Marriage Game. One of those things I like watching, but not being a part of! ha They asked for a newlywed couple but we did not volunteer. We played along in our seats with each other and realized we actually would have done really well if we had been chosen. The winners were a cute older couple that were celebrating their 54th anniversary that day. Cheers to them.

Following that show was the Filipino Crew Show. I like watching these shows cause you can tell how much they love being part of it and sharing their culture with you.

We ventured up to the casino for a little while after the shows. They have one of those coin drop machines in there and we are both pretty good at those, so we played. We quickly dropped one of the dice that we turned in for a bottle of champagne to enjoy at dinner the next night.

Then it was off to bed... we had another busy day ahead of us in Sitka!

To be continued...

You have some terrific pictures! What sort of camera are you using?

Thank you so much! I bought a new camera before we left for the cruise, cause I wanted to get nice shots, and was hoping for good wildlife shots! It's a Canon Powershot SX50 HS. A point and shoot but it's wonderful! 50x optical zoom, and it also has a powerful digital zoom after that which takes decent photos as well. I have been extremely happy with it, great investment!! :D

Thanks for doing such a great and detailed review! Your photos are wonderful.

Thank you so much! I bought a new camera before we left for the cruise, cause I wanted to get nice shots, and was hoping for good wildlife shots! It's a Canon Powershot SX50 HS. A point and shoot but it's wonderful! 50x optical zoom, and it also has a powerful digital zoom after that which takes decent photos as well. I have been extremely happy with it, great investment!! :D

That's encouraging! I have an older Canon sx20is with just 20x optical and 80x digital. The digital isn't much good after about 35x. The camera's done ok for me so far. I was thinking of upgrading to a DSLR, but I won't have time before we board the Amsterdam next week. I just hope my pictures come out almost as good as yours. Keep 'em coming!

Great review! I like the chatty style - as tho I am right there with you.

Day 5, Sitka, AK

I was very excited to visit Sitka, as it was a new port to me. My last cruise we had gone to Skagway, which we missed on this one. We had booked our only shore excursion of the trip for this day, the Sea Otter & Wildlife Cruise. We were both really looking forward to this one.

The scenery nearing Sitka was beautiful. We arrived on time and dropped anchor and they started getting the tenders ready. After breakfast on the Lido, we were one of the first tenders from the boat. We had another beautiful, clear and warm day on our hands. The people of Sitka were thanking us for bringing nice weather along. Apparently, that's cause we dumped all the rain on Long Island before we left... (see first post if you missed that!)

First, we set off down along the shore and walked down to Sitka National Historic Park. We looked around at some of the totems, but did not do a full walk through the forest as my husbands back was bothering him a bit. We stayed close to the visitors center, where we checked out the exhibits there, watched a movie, and of course, stamped our parks passport. It is nice that this park is there with free admission.

We walked back into town and visited some of the shops, where we bought a few gifts to bring back home to family members. We also walked around and found a geocache at the fire station.

We decided to head back to the boat and drop off the things we purchased before trying to stick around for the wildlife cruise. We had to wait a few minutes for the tender to take us over. When we got back on board, we really wanted to eat lunch, but we were in between meal times. We wouldn't be able to eat before our tour.

We took the tender back to the pier since food was the only thing we were interested in at that point. We didn't think we had enough time for a sit down meal anywhere though. Luckily, some local girls had set up a lemonade/baked goods stand at the pier - great thinking on their part. We each got a brownie, and they were delicious. It would tide us over for now.

We walked around a little bit more until we came back to wait for our wildlife cruise. They unloaded the boat coming back and quickly started to board us. Even though it was booked through HAL, the tour is Allen Marine Tours, which you can book on your own. Everyone on board the boat was great and the crew was knowledgeable. They sold food on board and had a few free treats.

Off we went in search of wildlife. The landscape around Sitka is breathtaking. We quickly happened upon a lone humpback whale, who they identified as Domino, a whale very familiar to the area. He gave us a nice show of his tail and waved us off on our adventure.

Next we came across 2 sea otters on their own. We stopped to look at them quickly and continued on. We got to see a gorgeous view of Mt Edgecomb, a nearby volcano. The next animal we came across was a bald eagle, followed by a group of seals. I was hoping we would see bears along the water, but they said the chances were slim since it wasn't near tide time.

We kept moving along and found a "raft" of male sea otters. There were probably around 15 of them there floating together. They were adorable. Two younger ones were wrestling with each other in the water. We moved along and found more seals laying out on some rocks relaxing. Eventually we came across another raft of otters, this time female. Some of them had their pups on their chest. It was such a cool site to see.

We started heading back towards the boat a bit and they focused their attention to some of the birds in the water. We spotted puffins, which apparently is extremely uncommon to see them out there, as we were not near St. Lazaria where they normally are. We saw another whale up close, and finally a sea lion who was passed out cold on a buoy. When the tour concluded, they brought us right back to the ship so we didn't have to use tenders. We are so glad we did this tour and would highly recommend it!

The fun part about today was that they had printed on the ticket to dress warm and in layers. It was such a beautiful day, we stayed in short sleeves the whole time, as did most people. Couldn't have asked for any better. We were so lucky.

We were starving when we got back to the boat and got some food from the taco bar at the Lido deck. We didn't want to stuff ourselves as we had dinner coming up in about 2 hours.

I don't think our server that night was the most comfortable speaking English, but he was funny. I ordered a turkey meal on the menu and he was like "Oh turkey... gobble, gobble, eh?" When he brought the meal out, he once again went "gobble, gobble" I asked my husband how he would have thought if the server mooed at him when he brought him his meal.

We went back to the room to read and relax and ended up falling asleep for a few hours. Our beds were never turned down that night. I'm wondering if our cabin steward knocked, came in with no answer, and saw us passed out on the bed at some point. haha

We woke up in time to go to the late show of comedian Lee Bayless. His comedy was clean and family friendly. Some of it was pretty good, especially when he was talking about his experiences in the cabin.

We did stop by late night and grabbed a snack, but I can't remember if there was any specific theme that night.

We were having a great time, but it was setting in that the cruise was winding down and would shortly be over...

To be continued...

Loving your review so much - thank you for taking the time to share your holiday with us! x

Thanks so much for taking the time to bring us along. Congratulations on getting married