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We found our gate, only to find out that the plane had not arrived so there would be a slight delay. Once it arrived, we were able to board but then had to wait longer since the luggage had to be loaded onto the plane. All in all, we left about 45 minutes later than planned.

As we started flying over Alaska, we had amazing views of glaciers and mountains.

Finally, we were approaching Anchorage!

Even with the delay, we still landed in Anchorage around 6:30pm. This guy greeted us at the Anchorage airport.

Friday, August 4th: Traveling to Anchorage & Sightseeing

Vacation was finally here! We had set our alarms bright and early, as our flight was supposed to leave at 7:00am, and we would arrive in Anchorage around 2:30pm with a connection in Seattle. However, at 4:00am, right when we were getting up, I received an email that our flight was delayed two hours, which meant we would miss our connecting flight in Seattle. Delta automatically changed the flight, and gave us a 6 hour layover in Seattle with an arrival in Anchorage at 9:30pm. After a mini freakout, we checked the website ourselves and found an earlier flight that would get us into Anchorage around 6:30pm. The downside was that we would lose our first class seats on the second flight, and would not receive any credit or refund for having seats in the main cabin. However, we didn’t want to spend our first day of vacation sitting in the Seattle Airport, so we changed to that flight.

We took a Lyft to the airport, checked-in, and went through security. Since our first flight was still first class, we were able use priority check-in and security, which were significantly shorter than the other lines. If anyone ever plans on flying out of Boston, you should definitely plan for at least an hour for the security line. Once we got to our gate, we learned that our flight had been delayed due to an air conditioning hose that needed to be fixed.

We always take a pre-flight picture at the airport!

Finally, we were able to start boarding. The blue lights were pretty cool!

Right after we were seated, the stewardess asked if we wanted a pre-flight drink. We’re on vacation, so why not?

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. It included breakfast, which was fine, and they also had tv’s in the seat backs that were playing recent movies. We had a nice view approaching Seattle.

Once we landed, we had about a three hour layover. We found a place to have lunch that served a lot of local beers.

I think it was called the Tap Room but I could be wrong. Lunch was good, and the bartender was nice.

I’m excited to share my recent Alaskan cruise with everyone here on Cruise Critic! These boards have been a valuable resource as we planned our first Alaska cruise. I’ll have to post this in installments, but please feel free to jump in at any point with questions or comments!

A little bit about us - My name is Jessica and my wife is Justine. We are in our late twenties and this was our third cruise with Norwegian. We live right outside of Boston with our two kitties. 2017 has been a pretty special year for us - we celebrated 10 years together in the spring, and we will both turn 30 (eeek!) this fall. Alaska has been a bucket list trip for us, and this summer was the perfect time to celebrate all of those milestones.

Planning & Packing

I love planning vacations! So last summer, when we picked Alaska, I was glad to have a year to research and plan, as it was initially overwhelming! After looking at different cruise lines and itineraries, we finally settled on the Southbound cruise on the Norwegian Sun. The cruise was Monday-Monday, which allowed us to fly to Anchorage a couple of days early. For our cruise in August, we had booked all of the major stuff (flights, hotel, car rentals and cruise) by December. When we booked the flights to Anchorage, it was only a couple hundred dollars more for first class so we even splurged a little! We’ve never booked a trip that early, but found that the prices increased as the trip got closer so I was glad to have booked everything way in advance.

Our itinerary:

August 4th: Fly to Anchorage & Sightseeing

August 5th: Matanuska Glacier Hike

August 6th: Talkeetna for Flightseeing

August 7th: Travel to Seward / Board NCL Sun

August 8th: Day at Sea / Hubbard Glacier

August 9th: Icy Strait Point

August 10th: Juneau / Tracy Arm

August 11th: Skagway

August 12th: Ketchikan

August 13th: Day at Sea

August 14th: Disembark / Day in Vancouver

August 15th: Land in Boston

For our excursions, we booked all of those by April so that they wouldn’t sell out. We didn’t book any through the cruise ship, and most of them were small group tours and activities. We booked almost everything through Viator, since they have a 10% discount when you create an account with them. For those that haven’t used it, Viator is a website affiliated with Trip Advisor that sells tours and activities. All of the tours were operated by local companies, and I will get into specifics for each of them later.

And then there was packing. This was tough. Most of our trips are to warmer weather, so it’s usually pretty easy to toss some shorts/tops, dresses and bathing suits in the suitcase. I read any information that I could find about what to wear in Alaska and how you should wear layers. Based on that, I knew I was packing a light rain jacket and two fleeces. Then, I found it helpful to plan by what we were doing by each day. I packed hiking boots and hiking pants for our more active excursions, and jeans or leggings for the rest of the days. I also packed a few nice outfits for evenings on the cruise ship. Planning each outfit by day helped me figure out where I could wear things more than once, and helped me not to overpack.

Now let’s get to the trip!

We were just there last week and rented an ATV through Hoonah Travel Adventures. It was self-guided, but it had a GPS with a pre-programmed route. We had a lot of fun going through the logging roads, and we saw a bear with two cubs! I'd recommend doing this tour first thing in the morning as we didn't seen anyone else around on the roads for most of the drive.

Just got off the NCL Sun on Monday. We did go into Tracey Arm last Thursday afternoon (8/10), it was beautiful!

Love the review, thanks for taking the time to post it! We will be there in August! I don't think the clouds take anything away from the pictures, it makes the scenery a little more dramatic

Love this!!! Would you mind posting the link to your post in the Alaska 2017 Trip Reports folder on the Alaska board? There isn't an NCL review up there yet and your pictures are amazing! :)

As others have said, a rain jacket is a must! If you're worried about shoes, maybe consider waterproof hiking boots or sneakers? I have a pair of Merrell hiking boots that are waterproof and they're great. I know they have other styles that look more like sneakers and don't cover your ankles if you don't want a full boot.

To echo everyone else, my wife and I have been on two NCL cruises and never had any issues! The room stewards were awesome, as were all of the staff!