Missing Nuts and Fido - A Trip Aboard the Jewel to Alaska 06/17-6/24

Introduction

I know catchy title, I got you to click on my review so it worked, and I promise I will get to the missing nuts and why my wife thinks I need to change my name to Fido, but you will have to read on….

This will be my wife and I second cruise together on NCL,though this will be my third cruise with NCL. We have both cruised other cruise lines, but prefer NCL for their freestyle dining, free at sea perks, and overall value. I am not here to start a debate about which cruise line is better, I encourage all of you to explore the lines or at least read about them, to find a cruise line that fits your style the best.

My wife made the mistake of telling me I could pick the honeymoon since she got to choose the venue for our wedding, so naturally I picked an Alaskan Cruise. Alaska has been on my bucket list since I first started cruising, but because I squeak a little when I walk I have never been able to justify the expense. A honeymoon gave me the justification that I needed. We were married back at the end of September 2016, so we had to delay our honeymoon until this summer. I have followed the Cruise Critic forums for many years, but this will be my first trip report so bear with me.

To give you a little insight into the perspective of this report, I am 33 my wife is 27. I work as a college student babysitter, providing free bracelets, and room and board for those that find rules a bit challenging and my wife is in the health care field. We have two kids who will not be joining us, as they get to spend quality time being rotated among the grand parents for this trip. I grew up in a family that traveled all the time, where my wife rarely left the state until she met me. I am the planner of the family, and have been researching this trip for the last year and a half. To say I get a little excessive about making sure everything is ready and organized for our trips would be an understatement. For those of you who are interested I will share a bit of my travel planning and organization with you in the hopes that it will help some of you out in your travels. For the rest of you, hopefully you will get a laugh at how much planning I put into my vacations. My coworkers always joke about my current travel binder, but some of them have even followed in my footsteps with planning. My wife is the photographer of the family, so you can thank her for the amazing pictures.

I had great hopes of providing pictures of the great food we enjoyed on our trip, but I will be honest I like food a bit too much and almost never remembered to snap a picture until my plate was nearly empty. For that, I apologize, but I promise to talk about where we ate and despite food being a very personal choice, I will provide a review of what we liked and did not like. I generally take full advantage of my UBP,but this is an Alaska cruise, and I don’t want to be hung over. If you are looking for DougOut quality review of alcohol and sleep deprivation this review is not going to interest you. We did luck out and snag a 4 night specially dining promo (which turned into five more on that later) as well just before they switch it to 3, so I will include some specially dining reviews. We did not take any pictures of the common areas of the ship, as others have done an amazing job of this.

I plan to lay out this trip report in the following order.

1)Pre-Trip Planning

2)Seattle

3)Day to Day review of our cruise

If you are not interested in the planning stages or our stay in Seattle, give me a couple days as I will get to the good part, which is obviously,will be Alaska! As always, feel free to jump in with any questions you may have. I will try to answer everything the best that I can. If you feel like I ignored your question fear not, It just means the answer will be coming up in a future installment.

Pre-Trip Planning

As with any trip I try to consult every forum to find things to do that may or may not be your typical tourist traps. My wife and I enjoy the outdoors and spend our very short summers camping and hiking, so our itinerary usually involves something outdoors. While doing my research I make notes on my travel planning checklist (file below) and use it as a basis for our itinerary planning. The form then ends up in my travel binder, which comes with us on every vacation. It works great for those times you have a few extra hours to kill before they beckon you back to the ship, and also doubles as a place to jot notes for your next trip.

My travel planning binder holds everything about our trip including a vacation day planner (file below), confirmations, maps, tickets, etc. It also holds a copy of our packing checklist (file below) that I go through just prior to leaving. This checklist is modified each trip based on the destination,length of travel, etc. In addition to my travel binder, I store all my files on my google cloud drive. This makes it easy to share the files for offline viewing among my various devices, and I can send a link to the folder to each family member in case of an emergency. If anyone is interested in the files I use for the binder table of contents and cover let me know I would be happy to attach them.

Travel Planning Form.pdf

Vacation Day Planner.pdf

Alaska Packing Checklist.xls

Unfortunately , I just got called into work so I will have to pick back up tomorrow. Here is a quick preview of photos. I also have all the dailies for the week they will be coming soon!

I now have even higher aspirations for my pre-trip planning, lol. Looks great! Can't wait to read along.

Nice photos! Will be following along.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Forums mobile app

Very organized. Nice!

Can't wait to read the rest! We were on the same cruise. Loved nearly everything about it. It was our first cruise, so a very exciting adventure.

Can't wait to read the rest! We were on the same cruise. Loved nearly everything about it. It was our first cruise, so a very exciting adventure.

Thank you for following along the next installment is coming shortly

June 15 Departure from Minneapolis arrival in Seattle.

Today was an early day; we booked an 8am flight that Delta kindly changed to 6:45 a couple months prior to departure. I was not too upset, because we wanted to get to Seattle early in the day in order to get two full days in Seattle before we left for our cruise. Unfortunately, we live a good distance from the airport, which meant a 3:30am departure from our home was in order. I had tossed around the idea of getting a hotel close to the airport, but I like my bed, so it wasn’t worth the cost associated with a hotel.

We parked our car at the Park N Fly near the airport and they shuttled us to the airport. Our diver was WAY to awake for 4:30am, I suspect he had an IV of coffee stashed somewhere. None the less the ride was uneventful and our plane departed on time. We actually arrived in Seattle about 45 minutes earlier then scheduled.

Upon arrival to Seattle, we discovered it was raining. I know shocking for Seattle, but this was not the normal misty rain they are known for it was actually raining. We planned to use Uber for our transportation, but I had a Lyft coupon so we did that instead. For those of you planning to use Uber, Lyft, or any other ride share program pay attention because finding where to get picked up on the 3rd floor parking garage is a navigational nightmare.

1.Get off your plane and collect your luggage (level 3)

2.Order your ride now, so you do not have to wait.

3.Go up to level four so you can walk across the skyway to the parking garage.

4.Once in the garage go back down to level 3

5.Look to your left and you will see a taxi stand, walk towards that.

6.Once at the stand, as you have given up hope of finding the App Based Ride Share area, look across and out to your left about 25 feet. That is where you need tos tand. You will need to walk through the parking garage for a bit, as the pickup area is not at the curb, as one would think. PS The taxi guys will tell you there is no App Based Ride Share waiting area

Once we found our pick up location, we scored a Lyft ride for about $32.39 after a $5 tip and $10 coupon. I had a very tough time understanding our driver, but where his communications skill slacked his driving skills very well made up for. He had us to our hotel in 35 minutes driving in rush hour though downtown Seattle, I was impressed. I witnessed at least a dozen traffic law violations, but the Seattle Police Officer we passed at 80 MPH in a 60 didn’t seem to mind, so I didn’t either.

June 15 Seattle Day 1.

We arrived at the Pan Pacific Seattle at about 9:45am obviously our room was not ready, but they stored our bags free of change and offered to call us when our room was ready. We set off to go explore Seattle, and take part in the free shower they were offering to all people walking outside.

We walked down to Pikes Place Market and had some delicious baked donut type things from one of the bakeries inside. Again sorry no pictures, I was HUNGRY!! Pikes Place was busy as normal and my wife is not a fan of large crowds especially on no sleep, so we decided to head back up to our hotel in the hopes it would be ready by the time we arrived. It was not so we decided to get breakfast / lunch at Tutta Bella, which was right next to our hotel.

The Food at Tutta Bella was good, but nothing I would need to try again. It was a Neapolitan pizza place, which means thin crusts and lots of weird ingredients I cannot even begin to pronounce. I would have liked to see some pictures in their menu and we just ordered something that did not sound too scary. After that our room was ready so we went to dry off for a few hours.

Shortly after we go up to our room a nice gentleman dropped off some wine and truffles for us to enjoy complements of the hotel management.

I guess they heard we were on our honeymoon! The Pan Pacific was an amazingly nice hotel. I scored a very good price using credit card points, but would have had no problem paying their full price for the quality of rooms. We were on the 11th floor in a queen city view room. The hotel was nicely situated between the waterfront area and the city center area an easy ½ mile walk to either venue. It also had a Whole Foods in the basement which was great for a inexpensive snack. For those of you interested in a downtown hotel that offers courtesy transportation to the port, the Pan Pacific has you covered.

View from our Room

 

View from the front of the Hotel



 

View of Pan Pacific from the Space Needle

After a nice nap, we headed to the armory for dinner. We at eat Blue Water Taco Grill.The food was quite good and my wife said it was better than Chipotle, I thought it was a close tie, but I’m pretty loyal to Chipotle. We both had Burritos, I had chicken my wife steak, they were very good and reasonably priced.

It was still raining and we were exhausted, so we called its night after dinner.

Day 2 in Seattle will be far less babbling and more pictures I promise!!

June 16 Seattle Day 2.

I had purchased a Seattle City Pass for both my wife and myself. We had intended on having two days to use them, but the rain and exhaustion cut day 1 short. The city pass, gives you a day & night ride up the space needle, access to the Seattle Aquarium, Museum of Pop Culture or the Zoo, and access to Chihuly Garden and Glass or the Pacific Science Center. In addition you also get a Harbor tour from Argosy Cruises that is upgradable to some of the other cruises they offer. All for $79 which is a very good deal if you can make all the stops

Now on to the Photos!!! First stop an early ride of the Space Needle.

My wife thought these spiders were pretty cool. They are painted on the roof but look 3D

June 16 Seattle Day 2 Cont.

Next stop Chihuly Garden and Glass.

June 16 Seattle Day 2 Cont.

Next stop Chihuly Garden and Glass Continued.

I'm going to take a break here tonight. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. I'm going to work on editing a few more pictures and tomorrow we will finish Seattle and embark onto the Jewel! Have a good evening everyone

I'll be following! I'd love to know your thoughts on the Jewel and your cabin later on.

Following. We will be on the Jewel the first week of September.

I'll be following! I'd love to know your thoughts on the Jewel and your cabin later on.

Thank you for following along. I'll touch on it more as we go, but we loved our cabin. We were lucky enough to upgrade to a mini suite. Having the larger balcony was sooooo worth it for Alaska.

Following. We will be on the Jewel the first week of September.

Thank you for following along. We loved the Jewel! The Jewel class ships are my favorite so far on NCL

June 16 Seattle Day 2 Cont.

After visiting Chihuly we decided it was time to grab a little bit of brunch. We had skipped breakfast this morning, so we were both starving. The Armory was close and convenient again, so that is where we headed. Those of you that are not aware the Armory is located in the Seattle Center and is filled with restaurants and reasonably clean public bathrooms. The children's museum is also located inside.

The winner today was MOD Pizza, and my wife even caught a couple pictures before I could eat my food. The pizza at MOD was very good. For a set price of $8.47 you get to make a pizza with any number of ingredients. Now if you just made a cheese pizza this would not be a great deal, if you love food like me and put every meat they had its a great deal. The wife and I ended up leaving very full for under $25, that is a win in my book.

After lunch we started our trek towards the sculpture park and the aquarium. The sculpture park was interesting, but not really our flavor of art, so we moved on fairly quickly to the aquarium.

The aquarium was part of our city pass. If we would have had our children with they would have likely enjoyed it, but as an adult I found the displays uninviting and overall we were disappointed. We have been to several aquariums in the past that can captivate an audience both young and old. The Seattle Aquarium failed keep us entertained and for that I would not recommend going to visit unless you are trying to entertain your children. We did manage to snap a couple pictures

Next stop the Great Wheel and a Harbor Tour

June 16 Seattle Day 2 Cont.

The winner today was MOD Pizza, and my wife even caught a couple pictures before I could eat my food. The pizza at MOD was very good. For a set price of $8.47 you get to make a pizza with any number of ingredients. Now if you just made a cheese pizza this would not be a great deal, if you love food like me and put every meat they had its a great deal. The wife and I ended up leaving very full for under $25, that is a win in my book.

Next stop the Great Wheel and a Harbor Tour

Thanks for the great review and for the pics of Seattle. It's definitely on our list of places my wife and I need to visit. We have a MOD near our house and my 14 year old can't get enough of the place. You're right about the cost not being a great deal if you only get a cheese pizza (that's all DS eats) so the MOD here charges a dollar less if you only get cheese and no other toppings.

June 16 Seattle Day 2 Cont.

After the Aquarium we continued down the road to the Great Wheel. At $14 a person I was a bit hesitant, but decided it would be worth the pictures. The Great Wheel does offer some amazing photo opportunities. I think it is something everyone needs to do once, and I'm sure our kids would have loved it, so there will likely be another ride in our future. We ended up with our own car to ourselves, one of the perks of getting there early.

Next up was our the Harbor Tour from Argosy. We had tossed around the idea of upgrading our city pass to do the Locks tour, but decided we would save that for our next time in Seattle and just do the harbor tour. The tour did not disappoint, and the tour guide was funny and informative. It also offered some great opportunities to get pictures of the city skyline and the Space Needle.

After the Harbor Tour we decided to head back to our hotel. We rested up and made plans for dinner. For dinner, we walked down to Cactus, which is a Mexican Restaurant. This restaurant had AMAZING food!!! Their service was incredibly fast, within five minutes of putting in our order our food was being served. The place was packed;I am not sure how they get food out so fast. The only issue we had was our server forgot to bring us our drinks. We had finished our food and the waters he gave us, when we were seated, before he came back to check on us and realized he forgot our drinks. He apologized brought us our drinks at no change and a free desert which I thought was a nice touch. No pictures for dinner today, I was faster than my wife.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel with plans of relaxing until it was time to go back for our night ride up the Space Needle and a visit to the Museum of Pop Culture, but............ My wife and I fell both fell asleep. Thankfully I had set an alarm for the next day because we did not awake until 7am and it was embarkation day.

June 17 Embarkation Day

Today we woke up rushed. Having fallen asleep the night before, way earlier than we had intended, we needed to pack and get ready to go to the dock. Within an hour we were ready to head out the door. We walked over to Einsteins bagels for breakfast, which is across the street from the hotel. I really wished we would have found this place earlier because it was delicious, filling, and very convenient. After breakfast we gathered our things from the room and checked out of the hotel. It was about 9:15 at this point. The Pan Pacific offered free car service to the port so we utilized this.

I forgot to mention this on my post about yesterday, but we had walked by the pier 66 the day before and the Pearl was Disembarking, it was chaos, so we had an idea it was going to be the same today. Sure enough as our driver crested the hill you could see thousands of passengers still trying to find rides and buses. Our driver had to drop us off a block down from the port, which was not a big deal. My wife and I snapped a couple pictures and people watched for a bit.

This is something that I think needs to be addressed by the city of Seattle especially with the Bliss coming into Port next year. There is just not enough space for everyone to get off and find their ground transportation. It was the most chaotic mess I have ever seen. Had I not been witness to the process twice at the end of my cruise it would have been pretty upsetting to deal with the disaster. My recommendation for anyone will be to self disembark and stay on the ship as late as possible to avoid the masses. I'm not sure what they can do to fix the problem as there is not much space, but it needs to be organized better.

In addition to the mess of disembarking, those of us who were trying to get on the ship have to wait in a long line to drop our luggage off (not the typical porter situation of other ports), and then walk around the building to actually get inside to check in for our cruise. It was a very awkward set up that I think is about at its max capacity with the Jewel Class ships. The bliss may push pier 66 over the edge with the extra passengers.

In the end we made it inside without incident, and ended up with a group 3 boarding card. We had about a 2 hour wait until the ship was ready to board. We were on the ship by about 11:45am.

Here are a couple pictures of the Jewel in port. I will continue with a review of our room in the next post.

im leaving for this tomorrow, i am so excited

I know you had a great time! I was on the Jewel the week after you. My review is on our Roll Call.

I am enjoying your review and photos. I will be on the Jewel for the August 19th sailing. Getting into Seattle on the 18th. I am hoping to be able to get into our hotel room earlier (Hotel Andra) as you did. Looking forward to hearing more of your adventure.:D:D