A Carnival Cruiser tries HAL ... on our Honeymoon to Alaska - Zuiderdam May 21, 2011

[SwissMyst]

Thanks very much! DH and I will definitely look into the Sky Train.

 

We used the urban metro Canada Line both to and from the airport to downtown near Canada Place port terminal. Perfect and easy, even with luggage. Got mixed up with our downtown exit and had to walk a few blocks, but this was our error so be sure to watch your signage or ask questions when you leave the end of the Canada Line downtown to take the right exit to the streets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Line

[LostwithoutPockets]

Am enjoying reading your review too. It's like a great novel you don't want to put down but kids keep interrupting so have to put it down and read more later! Keep it up.

 

I couldn't agree more! I love reading about your trip! And congrats on getting married!

[canadianbear]

I seem to have misplaced my novel....where the heck is it? Can someone find jenng1976 for me?!! :D

[johnlcruise]

EXCELLENT review. Keep it coming...

[shippmates]

Great reading and patiently or impatiently waiting for the next chapter.

[jenng1976]

Ok ... I am back! I just tried to attach some photos but apparently the file size is too big - so I will give it another go later.

 

In the meantime - on to DAY 2 - Sea Day!

 

To start off with, Jim & I love sea days. To us, they are so relaxing with no time pressures, nothing we "have" to do, just time to walk, lounge around, read, eat - whatever we feel like! So, you probably won't find anything too exciting with this day, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

Anyway, we got up between 8-9, and threw on some clothes and headed straight to the dining room for breakfast. I think breakfast is one of my favourite meals on the ship - always delicious and I love those fresh pastries they serve. I think I had 2 mini croissants and 2 mini cinnamon rolls today - mmmm, good! :) Jim tried the mini danishes and loved those. We had another great table by the window, though in a different section.

 

After breakfast, we headed back to the room for showers & getting ready. The reason we didn't do it before breakfast, was because we didn't want to miss the dining room hours.

 

For the rest of the day, we hung out on the balcony, explored the ship, read, went to the casino. We also went up to the Crow's Lounge and tried our hand at Group Trivia! It was quite a popular event, and we ended up teaming up with some people from Australia. There was a big tour group on our sailing - there were over 700 Australians on board!! We didn't win, but it was fun anyway.

 

Oh - I almost forgot, we did do something else that day! We had signed up for the Alaska beer tasting on our first day, and it was held on the first sea day in the afternoon. I think it might have been around $15/person - and you get to try the 4 Alaskan beers they have on board. There was Pale Ale, Summer Ale, Amber Ale, and my favourite - Summer Ale. Jim's preference was the Amber. They also served pizza to go with our beer! The event was held at the covered pool on Lido near the Grill. We were glad we went, as for the rest of the week we ordered Alaskan beers! Until they ran out that is - by the end of the week pretty much every bar was out of Alaskan beer - so if you're interested in trying it be sure to start early!

 

And, before you knew it the afternoon was over and it was time to get ready for dinner! Tonite was the first formal night - I was lucky and my Mom and I were the same size, so I wore her Mother of the Bride dress - boy, did I get a lot of compliments that night! The dress really was beautiful. Once we got ready, we headed out to get our picture taken at the various stations around the ship and ended up buying one from this night.

 

Dinner was delicious as always - Jim had some kind of lobster dish, and I had Prime Rib if memory serves me!

 

After dinner we did our usual casino stop, followed by the show. And then bed - we didn't stay up too late on this cruise. Once back in the room we had our cute towel animal on the bed - and also a card stating the clocks were going back one hour overnight. We hadn't realized that Alaska was in a different time zone, so we were suprised about that!

 

Anyway, that concludes Day 2 - lovely and relaxing - and we were looking forward to Day 3, Tracy Arm & Juneau! Stay tuned!!

:)

[jenng1976]

Pictures ... take 2! First one is of us on our wedding day (obviously, lol!).

 

Next few of the cabin/balcony. The balcony had 2 chairs with cushions, a footstool, and a small table to put drinks.

 

We took over 1200 pictures on the trip - so if there's anything in particular someone wants to see, let me know and I probably have a picture of it.

 

Hope this works!! :)

[jenng1976]

Trying again to make full-size pictures, rather than attachments:

 

 

 

 

 

[rwstout]

Hey thanks for posting I am loving it I am 35 and we are going on our second cruise and first on Hal we will be celebrating our 8th aniversy while on board can't wait 12 days until we board to Alaska on the Amsterdam

P.S. Love the elephant towel animal. Hope I get one. We did not get those on my last cruise.

[jenng1976]

A few pictures from around the ship:

 

Crow's Nest: If you want a comfy seat by the window on Glacier days - get here early!

 

 

 

 

 

[jenng1976]

And a few more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jenng1976]

DAY 3 ... Tracy Arm Fjord & Juneau

 

Well, here we are on Day 3 already. Today was a bit of an unusual day, as we were sailing Tracy Arm Fjord in the morning, and then docking in Juneau from 2:30 - 10:30 that night. All the other Alaska ports were AM docking.

 

Today when we got up we went to breakfast in the Dining Room - I had Cinnamon French toast, and boy was that good! I had it a couple more times during the week after that!! Jim had the "English" breakfast which he really liked and had it again later in the trip.

 

Once we were showed & ready, we started off on the Balcony - the scenery was just so beautiful as we sailed slowly along! There was also a Naturalist who was explaining the scenery, which you could kind of hear outside, and was also broadcast on one of the tv channels, but it kind of cut in/out on our tv. But, we did hear enough that it was still interesting.

 

Later we decided to venture out to the Bow of Deck 4 - they open it up on the Glacier viewing days so we went to check it out. There were quite a few people out there and quite windy but the view was spectacular from up there! They also had someone selling the souvenier HAL mugs with hot chocolate or coffee if you were interested.

 

We hung out there for a while, even saw another ship sailing in behind us! It's hard to describe how truly beautiful and peaceful it is in Alaska, the photos do not do it justice.

 

Oh, I haven't mentioned the weather at all. It was a little misty this morning, and around 10-12 C, not too cold. I had a spring jacket on, with a scarf and hoodie and was fine. Sometimes if I was outside for a long time I would put on little stretchy mini-gloves.

 

Here's a few ...

 

 

 

 

 

[jenng1976]

And some more pictures from that morning ...

 

That blue glacier ice was incredible!

 

 

 

 

 

[jenng1976]

And some more from the Bow of the ship ...

 

 

 

 

 

[jenng1976]

And some more!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rwstout]

Why is the ice so blue. It's beautiful

[lanord]

Your pictures are great! Thanks so much for writing your report and posting some pictures. I'm looking forward to reading the next installment(s).

Leigh Ann

[jenng1976]

To continue on ... after hanging out outside for most of the morning, we headed in for lunch. Today I was craving a hotdog, but Jim wanted "regular" food - so we headed to the Dining Room first. Jim ordered there, I had a beer, and a brownie for dessert ... then afterwards we headed up to Lido to the Grill where I had a hotdog and fries. And we both had cookies! :)

Then was just the wait to get off the ship. People started getting off around 2:15 or so, and we waited about a 1/2hr for the lines to go down. We weren't in a hurry anyways, since in Juneau we had booked a Whale Watching excursion with Harv & Marv, and we weren't meeting them until 3:30.

There were still lines when we went down, but it didn't take too long to get off the ship and we were on the dock by about 3PM. We thought about riding the Tram, but decided we didn't have enough time and didn't want to miss our excursion!! We had hoped to get to it after the Whales, but didn't have time then either. Oh well - that'll be something to do the next time!!

So, we walked around a little bit, then headed to the meeting place for H&M and found them no problem. Once everyone had arrived - we headed off into the shuttle bus to get to their location about 20 min away.

H&M is a small local operation, and most of their boats only hold 6 passengers plus the captain. We had Steve aka Harv, who was awesome!! Honestly, I can't say enough good things about this company - it was a wonderful, wonderful day. The sun was shining - and even though only 10-15% of people going Whale Watching get to see Orcas (pretty much 100% see Humpback Whales) - WE were lucky enough to see a few different pods of Orcas that day! It was simply incredible - we had seen whales before at Marineland (in Ontario, like Sea World) - but seeing them out in the wild in their natural environment was so special.

The sightings were so good that day, that Steve asked the group if we wanted to extend our trip (for free) just so we could spend longer out there. Of course we all said a big YES! Besides the Orcas, we also saw many Humpback Whales, including a Mom & her baby feeding, plus Sea Lions.


Sailling into Juneau:
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[jenng1976]

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[jenng1976]

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You can see a Bald Eagle ...
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[jenng1976]

After we finished Whale Watching - the shuttle bus then brought us to Mendenhall Glacier for a 20 min stop.

Another incredible stop!

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Then it was back to the ship - we got there about 8:30PM and quickly changed and went to dinner. We had originally made a reservation for 8 that night, but missed it since our excursion went long. But, there were no problems and they quickly found us another table for 2 - this time on the Upper Level. We didn't like it as much, but maybe it was just because we were loved Pat and our section downstairs.

After dinner I think we went to Karaoke (to watch, not sing!) - since we were later getting out of dinner than normal the show lounge was packed and we decided to do something different. It was fun to watch - then before you knew it it was time to head off to bed since we had another busy day ahead of us!!

With that - I will leave you for now and will pick up with Day 4 tomorrow!!

Jenn

[spacepotatoes]

Beautiful pictures!

[paganwoman]

to answer RWSTOUT regarding the blue ice-it is so dense that only certain wavelengths of light can get out and so we see the deep blue color. When we visited the glaciers we had a blue sky and with the deep blue in all the ice it was just amazing. I am sure there is a long scientific explanation but basically it has to do with the light wavelengths and the density of the glacial ice.

[rwstout]

Thank you

[nanuak]

[COLOR="Indigo"][SIZE="3"]Beautiful pictures... Thanks![/SIZE][/COLOR]