Alaska Cruise - May 2009

We went on an 11 night Alaska cruise out of San Diego. It stopped in San Francisco, Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and finally Vancouver. We stayed a couple nights in Vancouver before flying back home to San Diego. The scenery was amazing and we were lucky to have sunny and warm weather throughout our whole trip! The highlight of our trip was when we hiked on a glacier!

Our excursions included a private van tour in Skagway, hiking the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau, and a boat tour to the Misty Fjords.


I'm glad we got to see the glaciers, those were definitely the highlight of our trip and the real reason we chose to go on the cruise. We saw Hubbard Glacier from 400 feet away on the ship and we hiked on Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. It's amazing how much of the Mendenhall Glacier has retreated , even since the 70s. Hubbard Glacier is constantly moving, so we got to see a lot of calving and hear lots of "White Thunder" (when the ice breaks off it sounds like thunder).

We saw some wildlife, including several Bald Eagles and a mountain goat. We did not get to see any bears although there were 2 spotted on our train ride in Skagway. We were in one of the last cars, so they were out of sight by the time we came around.

A little about the ship, Royal Caribbean's, Radiance of the Seas.  We had an aft balcony room.  The balconies on the aft are pretty big and spacious.  We loved it and were always outside checking out the scenery.  Everyone on the ship was very friendly, the staff always said "My Pleasure" anytime I said "Thank You."  We had late seating and it worked out well for port days, but we missed sunsets.  The food was overall really good.  We didn't go to many of the shows, because they didn't interest us really.  I think my favorite part of the ship was the atrium.  One of my biggest complaints were the temperatures of the hot tubs, they were pretty mild.  No one was ever in the ones outside, because they weren't hot enough.  We used the gym almost everyday.  We signed up for spin classes and the instructors worked us out pretty hard!  This was our second cruise and we really liked the ship!


SAN FRANCISCO, 1ST PORT

We've been to San Franciso several times, so we didn't plan an excursion.  We just wanted to visit some friends.

We tried to wake up early to watch us go under the Golden Gate Bridge, but we couldn't wake up at 5:30am when our alarm went off.  We got off the ship after a quick breakfast and a work out at about 10am to meet up with some friends by lunchtime.  We walked a little down Fisherman's Wharf before grabbing a cab to the Mission area.

We got to Mission and had coffee at The Corner coffee shop. We had 2 huge cups of their french press coffee.  It was delicious.  They offered us a carafe of water for our table as well.

After finishing our coffee, we went 2 doors down to meet our friends for lunch at Weird Fish (Yelp Review).  This is a great restaurant with sustainable fish and vegetarian options.  It's a little on the small side, so it gets busy pretty easily.  After lunch, our friend took us for ice cream at a supposedly famous creamery, Bi-Rite Creamery.  I'd never heard of it before, but I had the cinnamon ice cream with snickerdoodles and it was amazing!

We left our friends to head back to our ship by using the Bart.  We stopped at Union Square to ride the cable car, which is one of my favorite things to do in San Francisco.  I like to ride on the outside in the front, but that part fills up fast.  We got off around Columbia St. and walked back to our ship.

We left San Francisco about 5:30pm and stood on our balcony to watch us go back under the Golden Gate bridge.  No reason to have gotten up so early in the first place, we had to go back under it to get out!

ICY STRAIT POINT, 2ND PORT

The cruise ship called this port Icy Strait Point.  At the point is a historic cannery that serves as a museum now with shops, a couple of restuarants, and it has a zipline.  The small village a mile away is Hoonah.  This village is an authentic Alaska village.  This town was the only place that wasn't touristy on our trip.  It's just a small town with a few stores, a bar, and a trading post.

We got off the ship about 2:30pm.  We decided to walk through Hoonah and look around.  We visited a local liquor store, a thrift store, a souvenir store, the trading post, and, of course, the bar.  We were just browsing around the different stores.  Everyone working in Hoonah was very nice and said hello and bye to us.  We stopped in the bar, The Office Bar, for a drink before heading back to our ship.

On the way back to the ship, we saw our first Eagle in Alaska.  After that, we saw them all the time.  We toured the cannery and shops after returning from Hoonah and got back onto our ship about 6:30pm.

HUBBARD GLACIER

We were scheduled to view the Hubbard Glacier from 10am to 2pm.  We got up and went to breakfast around 9am.  As we were enjoying our breakfast, we started noticing floating ice in the ocean going past our window.  We got up and went outside to check out the view and we'd started our approach of the Hubbard Glacier.  It was pretty windy outside and everyone was crowding around the front of the ship.  We stood there for quite a while until we finally decided to view the area from other parts of the ship.

With all the floating little icebergs, we didn't think we'd get that close to the Glacier.  The ship kept going and getting closer and closer.  We finally got within 400 feet!  We heard and saw the glacier calving.  It is a moving glacier, so it is always calving.  The sound it makes, "white thunder", was awesome!

The ship stayed on the port side for a while, then turned to the starboard side for a while.  All while we were within the 400 feet of the glacier.  Finally, we headed out of the bay and towards our next port.

JUNEAU, 3RD PORT

Our trip to Alaska on the cruise ship was all about seeing the glaciers while they were still around.  So, our plan for Juneau was to visit the Mendenhall Glacier.  Our original plan was to take the public bus to the visitor center and find some trails to go hiking.  We were watching the travel channel one day and saw a story on this company, Above & Beyond Alaska, that took visitors to actually hike on the glacier.  We immediately booked a trip with the company (TA Review).

We hiked though the forest for about 2 miles then climbed up some steep rocks and down the other side before reaching the glacier.  We stopped to put on our crampons and climbed onto the glacier.  Our guide taught us how to walk on the ice in the crampons and we followed him around the glacier to see some of the amazing things on the glacier.  We hiked on the glacier for about an hour before making the hike back to the trailhead.  We all filled up our water bottles with glacier water before heading back.

We ended up having a couple of people on the tour that went a little slower and we ended up 2 hours behind schedule.  One lady didn't make it to the glacier, because the steep climb up the rocks became too difficult for her.  This delay made for a long day with only snacks provided by the tour company (trail mix, granola bar, 2 mini candy bars, gummi fruit snacks), a bottle of water, and no bathroom break!  We made it back to the trailhead about 5:30pm.  Regardless, it was the greatest part of our whole trip and something that I will never forget and would do again in a heartbeat!

Our guide, Ed, was born and raised in Juneau and he was very educated about the area, glacier, and vegetation.  He said he's been hiking on the glacier since he was 8.  And, he made the trek on the ice fields from Juneau to Skagway in 10 days pulling all his supplies on a sled!

SKAGWAY, 4TH PORT

We got up early to meet a private tour guide off the ship that was going to take us to explore Skagway, the Yukon, and Emerald Lake outside of Carcross (Yukon Territory of Canada).  Dyea Dave was highly recommended on TripAdvisor and I read great reviews of his trips and how funny he was on his tours.  I didn't hesitate to email him and set up a tour during out stop in Skagway.

We got off the ship about 7:30am and looked for our guide.  Dave had said it would be easy to find him as he'd be standing there in a black top hat.  It took a while to find him, because he sent someone else in his place.  We finally found his van and his sister, Ruth, who was going to be our guide for our trip.  After getting loaded in the van, we headed to another ship to pick up another couple.

We headed into town and stopped at the Visitor Center to watch a film on the history of Skagway.  The town has a very interesting history that relates to the Klondike Gold Rush.  Ruth took us through the town to point out some historic buildings.  Then, we took of for the Canada border and Yukon Territory.


We stopped along the way to take pictures.  We saw the WP&Y railroad and a train moving along the moutainside.  We ended up taking the train back down to Skagway from the Canada border in Fraser.

We crossed the Canada border and drove to Carcross and Emerald Lake.  After visiting the lake, we stopped in Carcross to have lunch at a little diner connected to a gas station.  We drove through Carcross, got our passports stamped and headed back to Fraser to catch the train back to Skagway.


After getting off the train, we headed to the Red Onion Saloon for a drink and walked through Skagway before getting back on our cruise ship.  We stopped at one ice cream shop for a snack and they'd run out of ice cream!  They told us to come back the next day after they got their delivery!

KETCHIKAN, 5TH PORT

We arrived in Ketchikan an hour and a half earlier than planned.  We scheduled a boat tour to see the Misty Fjords that was going to take up our whole time in port, so this gave us the opportunity to get off the ship and explore Ketchikan a little.

We got off and headed to Creek St, a former red-light district.  It's a very scenic street, sort of reminded me of something you'd find in Silver Dollar City.  We took the elevator train up to the Cape Fox Lodge.  We orginally planned on eating lunch up there, but saw the Ketchikan Fish Market on the way and decided to go back down to eat there instead.  We did order a marshmallow latte from the little coffee shop in the Lodge first, it was very tasty!

For lunch at the Fish Market, we had halibut fish tacos and a halibut sandwich.  After lunch, we got back on board to get ready for our excursion to the Misty Fjords.  


We boarded the boat to the Fjords and found only 30 people or so on a rather large catamaran. It was an hour and a half to the heart of the Misty Fjords.  Along the way, we stopped to see an Eagle's Nest and EddyStone Rock (made out of volcanoes).  In the Fjords, we saw amazing scenery, waterfalls, and a mountain goat.  We stayed about 1/2 hour before heading back to Ketchikan.  On they way back, they stopped to see Harbor Seals and an Indian pictograph.

The tour had a snack bar onboard and they gave out strudels, vege chili, clam chowder, and smoked salmon on a cracker.  They also had free flowing coffee, hot tea, and cocoa to keep you warm.

It was a long trip, but I was too afraid to get in a floatplane to make the trip.  I heard it was a 2 hour trip that way.

VANCOUVER, DISEMBARKATION

We disembarked from our cruise in Vancouver on a Friday morning.  We got off our ship a little after 10am and got through customs and the taxi line in about an hour.  We were at our hotel by 11:30am.  Our room at the Hampton Inn (TA Review) wasn't ready, so we went out exploring.

We walked to the Marina in Yaletown to catch the Aquabus to Granville Island to visit the public market.  We spent a couple of hours there checking out all the booths and enjoying some food from one of the sandwich and sausage stands.  


We took the aquabus back to Yaletown and from there, we walked to Chinatown and on to Gastown.  We stopped to have a couple of drinks at Chill Winston and people watch before walking back to our hotel to check in.  We had dinner in Kitsilano at a fabulous place called Bishop's (Yelp Review) and spent some time soaking in the hot tub before calling it a night.

The next day, we walked back to Yaletown and rented bikes to cruise along the seawall bike paths.  There were so many people on the paths.  It was a great day to get out and ride up through Stanley Park.  We went 15 miles in about 2 and 1/2 hours.  After our ride, we had a drink and some fish and chips along the bike route.  This is a very fun thing to do as there are so many different people and bikes along these paths.  We had dinner in Gastown our second night at Water St. Cafe.

Our flight out was on Air Canada and it was non-stop to San Diego.

Mexican Riviera Cruise - November 2007

For our 1st wedding anniversary, we decided to try cruising.  Neither of us had cruised before.  We went on a 7 night cruise with Princess cruiseline.  We were on the Dawn Princess (Cruise Critic Review), which is a smaller ship in the fleet.  Our intinerary included 3 days at sea and 3 days at port.  Our ports were Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta.

The cruise was very relaxing...no cell phones, no computers...we were forced to slow down a little.  We ate so much food, now we know why they say you gain weight on cruises.  We are already looking forward to cruising again.

Our Room

The location of our room was mid ship on the port side.  The room was definitely small, but not all that bad, we managed. We had a balcony, which was nice. I think it's definitely worth having one if it is at a good price, especially when you have several days at sea.

The only bad thing about having a balcony is when people around you are smoking.  There were a few times, we couldn't sit on our balcony, because of the smell of smoke.  I'm really don't like the smell.  I have since learned that if you want to get away from the smoke to try and get a room closer to the front, but that may cause you to feel more movement from the ship.

Our room steward, Brando, was great. He came and introduced himself almost immediately upon our arrival. He always seemed to know when we were in our room. He serviced our room twice a day. We would leave for breakfast and dinner and always came back to a clean room.

Days at Sea

Day 1 was our embarkation day.  It's so nice living in a port city.  We just drove a few miles to the cruise terminal and jumped on the ship.  We were allowed to board between 1pm-3pm.  We waited until about 2pm, hoping there wouldn't be much of a line.  We did good, because there weren't any lines, we sailed right through everything.  Once onboard, we checked out our room and went to the buffet to get some grub.  By the time we went back to our room, our luggage was there and we unpacked.

Day 2 was a full day at sea.  The air was cool, so not many people were at the pool.  There were plenty of other things going on to keep us entertained though.  We went to the wine tasting event, which was the first real organized tasting we'd ever done.  The entertainment in the evenings was pretty decent, we were never really dissatisfied.

Days 6 and 7 were our last 2 days of the cruise and were both at sea.  We finally got to spend a day by the pool.  It was pretty crowded, but we were able to find a couple of chairs.  They had a band playing around the pool which was nice.  We also tried our hand at Bingo a couple of times, but neither of us won any money.  Lorenzo Clark was on both Fri and Sat night and he is a great comedian and magician, we enjoyed him the most.

Food on Board

Florentine Dining Room - We chose anytime dining on our cruise, because we didn't really know what we'd be doing.  We thought having a scheduled dining time might be too much for us.  It worked out really well and we will chose this option again when available.

We actually only sat with other people a couple of times and enjoyed each person we met.  The other times, we made reservations to dine alone.

The food overall was just ok.  I never really had an outstanding meal, but I didn't have a bad one either.  Mike, however, had to send an entree back one night, but it was no big deal to get another one right away.

The service varied.  With anytime dining, you have a different server everynight.  We had everything from really slow, empty water glasses, ok service to super friendly, always full water glasses, great service.  I guess this could be one reason one would prefer the assigned dining option.  We still like the anytime dining though.

La Scala Pizzeria - We ate at the pizzeria twice on the ship.  It's located at the top of the atrium area.

The first time I had the California pizza and it wasn't that great.  It had avocado and sun dried tomatoes on it.  The minestrone soup was pureed, which I'd never had minestrone that way before.  Mike had pepperoni and it was much better.

The second time, I had the vegetarian pizza with pepperoni added and it was very very good.

We had the same server both times and he was very friendly, more so than some of our dinner servers.  The ambience of the place was really neat, sort of had a sidewalk cafe vibe.

Horizon Court Buffet - We had the buffet the first day for lunch and it was pretty good. However, the next morning the breakfast wasn't as good.  The coffee isn't very good, but we are used to fresh ground coffee every morning.  The best part of the breakfast buffet was the omelet station.  We tried to have breakfast in the dining room when we could.

The buffet is open 24 hours a day, so you could always go in and grab a snack in between meals or have a late night snack!

Cabo – Day 3, first port

The ship docked in Cabo from 8am to 6pm.  You have to be tendered in at this port as there are no docks for the ships.  This means the ships lower some of their own boats to take people back and forth from the ship to the marina docks.

We had just visited Cabo a couple months prior.  We dove on that trip and enjoyed the warm water and all the fish, so we decided to dive again.  After diving, we had lunch at an outside cafe, drank a little tequila at another restaurant, and headed back to the ship for a much needed nap.

Underwater Diversions Diving - We set up our dive through the cruiseline.  This company met us once we got off the ship and took us to their shop to get our gear.  We had filled out a form prior and most of our gear was out waiting for us.  We tried everything on and the guides piled everything up and carted it out to the dive boat.

There were 8 divers and 2 guides on the trip.  The first dive, the guides divided us into 2 groups of 4.  We chose to go with some other beginners as this was our first dive below 60ft.  We were going to try to make it to the underwater sandfalls.  We had a little trouble getting started as one of the divers in our group decided she wasn't comfortable with ocean diving.  The guide took her back to the boat.  In the meantime, we descended and waited on the sandy bottom for our guide.  As we were waiting, we saw a school of manta rays swim by.  They weren't all that close, but it was an AMAZING site!

Once the guide arrived, we swam around and enjoyed the scenery.  I noticed my depth gauge said 100 ft.  I started to panic a little, because we weren't supposed to go past 90 ft.  I got Mike's attention and he showed me his gauge and we were only at about 60 ft.  So, my gauge was broken, which I didn't like.  We did get to 90 ft.  The temperature felt nice, in the upper 60s, low 70s.  We were wearing full wet suits (tank style on top) with shortys over them.  We knew we'd get colder on the second dive, based on previous experience.  We also saw a sea turtle sitting on the bottom and lots and lots of fish.

We had a surface interval of about an hour.  They drove us around the area and arch.

For our second dive, we joined with the other group.  The first guide wanted to spend his time with the newer divers alone.  This dive was to about 60ft.  We saw a sea turtle and a huge puffer fish.

Good dive guides on this trip.  I would dive with them again even though my gauge was broke.

Taco Loco - We stopped here for lunch based on a recommendation from another travel site.  They have 4 tacos + beer for $7.  I ordered all fish tacos and found out that was a mistake.  You can mix between fish, pork, chicken, and carne.  Mike got one of each and decided the carne was the best and the fish was the worst.  The fish was breaded for one thing, which isn't what we like.  They did have a toppings bar where you added  your own cabbage, salsa, and whatever you wanted.

If you want a cheap lunch, I'd recommend this place, but not the fish tacos.

Pancho’s Tequila Bar - I had wanted to go here last time we were in Cabo, but we didn't make it.  After lunch, we decided to check out the tequila bar and have a few drinks.

We sat at the bar and the bartendar recommended his 2 favorite tequilas that weren't all that expensive.  The Oro Azul was about $6 a shot and the Maestro Tequilero was about $8 a shot.  We trusted his recommendation as there were over 100 to chose from.  They were both very good and left us feeling very good.

You can also eat lunch here.

Mazatlan – Day 4, second port

Our ship docked in Mazatlan from 7am-530pm.  We had decided not to book an excursion for this port since we weren't sure what we wanted to do.  We also thought it would be nice to just explore the city on our own.

We ended up hiking to Faro Lighthouse, having lunch in the Golden Zone, and taking an hour tour ride through the city in an open air taxi.

Mazatlan has a lot of character and is very rustic.  I would definitely like to go back and spend more time in Old Town Maz.

Hike to El Faro Lighthouse - Our ship offered this hike as an excursion for $50 pp.  I wondered why someone would pay that much if you could get there on your own.

We walked out of the cruise terminal and went left towards the large hill in the distance.  Lots of taxis were trying to give us a ride, but we wanted to walk the whole way.  It was an interesting walk, we saw lots of locals out and about and we went by a school with all the kids outside having lunch.  It took us about 20 minutes to get to the bottom of the hill to the lighthouse from the cruise ship.  The hill is next to a sewage facility, so the smells weren't all that pleasant.

We headed up the hill and there were lots of guys working along the way.  It looked like they were making the pathway better, pouring concrete in some areas.  We saw several iguanas and lizards along the way.  It took about 20 minutes to get to the top and we were rewarded with some nice views.

There is a little store at the top that sells sodas and water, although not much of a selection.  There really isn't a public restroom, but the guy running the store let us use his bathroom.  I was glad we had brought hand sanitizer with us as it wasn't the cleanest, but when you have to go.

Open Air Taxi Tour - The pulmonia, open-air taxis, were a lot of fun to ride in.  There are a lot of them available at the cruise ship terminals as well as regular taxi.  You can usually bargain with them to take you on 1 hour or 2 hour tours of the city.  Our server from lunch set us up with a driver for an hour tour for $20.

 

They were going to charge us $10 just to take us back to the cruise ship anyway.

We went around seeing monuments, homes, and different areas of town.  He made several stops so we could get out and take pictures.  He also let us out to go inside the Cathedral in Old Town.

During our tour around Mazatlan, our pulmonia driver took us through the Old Town area of Mazatlan.  There are a lot of original buildings and the streets are very narrow.  There were also a lot of sidewalk cafes around the plaza areas.  On our next visit, I'd like to take some time to walk around the area more.

Puerto Vallarta – Day 5, third port

The ship docked in PV from 8am-10pm.  The first thing we noticed when we looked out our window was the Walmart and Sam's Club and wondered how many people from our ship would be headed there.

Our excursion here was our favorite.  We chose the canopy and rappelling tour.  Neither of us had been on a zip line or rappelled before this trip.  Our excursion lasted most of the day and wore us out, so we didn't see any other part of PV.

This was the most tropical port of our trip, PV is very pretty.

Zip Line Trip - We booked this excursion with our cruise.  Once we got off the ship and met our group, we all piled into a speed boat and headed across the water to an area that was mostly canopy.

We got off the boat and separated into 2 groups of 14 and got inside these big 4 wheel trucks to take us further into the canopy.  It was a very bumpy ride, but lots of fun!

We got to the facility and got our equipment put on by the guides.  We had 6 guides for our group and we were given good instructions before we started.  We started the adventure with a mule ride up to the first zipline.  We went on like 10 ziplines and rappelled down a waterfall.

There was a guy taking pictures of us the whole time as they won't let you take a camera.  At the end, you can see your pictures and purchase them if you want and have them sent to you.  It was $40 per person for all the pictures of you were in or like $300 for the whole CD of pictures.