Alaska Cruise 2025 - Thoughts on the trip (08/23/25)

 

Some thoughts, looking back on our trip...

• If one needs to fly across multiple time zones to take an Alaska cruise, make sure to arrive at least a day or two in advance of the cruise to: (1) Get used to the new time zone, and (2) Have some wiggle room in transit arrangements, so that a delayed flight won't cause a person to miss the cruise.
  
  
• San Francisco is a wonderful city to spend a few days exploring.  We loved our visit to the De Young museum to see the exhibition of Paul McCartney Beatlemania era photographs.
  
  
• San Francisco is a mass transit friendly city.  However, like New York, rerouted bus routes are poorly communicated to riders via their transit authority's app.
  
  
• San Francisco's Passenger Cruise Terminal is near the heart of town, and relatively inexpensive to reach via local ride services or cabs.
   
• One should book all Alaska shore excursions way in advance of one's trip.  Several excursions were sold out by the time we boarded the ship.  We were glad that we booked our trip on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad months in advance, as this 2½ hour excursion often sells out.
  
  
• In Juneau, there is an area in the center of the tourist district where cruisers can buy independent tours.  Most of these tours are professionally run, and are priced lower than those tours sold by the cruise line. We bought our Juneau excursion via shoreexcursionsgroup.com, and had only the minor inconvenience in finding the bus that would take is to the glacier and back.
  
  
• Although one can take Juneau's public bus system to the Mendenhall Glacier park, I would not recommend it, as one would still need to walk a distance before reaching the park's tourist center. I'd rather spend more of my time walking within the park, than spend it walking to the park.
  
  
• Glacier Bay is only reachable by ship.  Only 2 ships may enter the park in a single day.  One may see wildlife while cruising in the park, we weren't that lucky.  Focus on getting a cruise where one spends as much time viewing glaciers as possible - seeing a glacier calve is an amazing sight.  
  
  
• In Ketchikan, we went to see the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show.  We could have booked our tickets on our own, and used Ketchikan's free seasonal bus system to get from our pier to the show and back.  From the show, it's a short walk to Creek Street and the town's arts district.
  
  
• At many of Alaska's ports, one can book excursions for whale watching.  If one hasn't seen a whale breach before, it's an awe inspiring sight.  As for me, I've seen enough whales on my trips to Cape Cod, that I don't find breaching interesting anymore.
  
  
• Many people will enjoy sled dog mushing and glacier fly-over excursions.  These tend to be expensive, but most people who take these excursions feel they are well worth the money.
  
  
• Our cruise gave us a full day in the 3 Alaskan ports we visited.  We didn't visit any of the more popular ports (Vancouver, BC and Victoria, BC).  Instead, we spent ½ day in Prince Rupert.  And that was the perfect amount of time to spend in this port, as there isn't much to see except what's in the Museum of Northern British Columbia.
  
  
• Assuming one is returning to the East Coast after the cruise, one should book flights as close to 12:30 pm to arrive in one's home city to get home by midnight.  With this being said, I prefer to return from San Francisco on a "Red-Eye" flight, so that I can sleep on the plane AND have more options when I get home.
  

I highly recommend visiting Alaska's inside passage if at all possible.  The landscape and wildlife are unique and can be awe inspiring when the stars align just right.  

Alaska Cruise 2025 - Prince Rupert, BC - Port Day #4 (08/19/25)

 

Prince Rupert, BC.  Independent excursion providers such as viator.com and shoreexcursionsgroup.com have no options for tours at this port. It's a town where there's no "There" there. We have a half-day port stop in Prince Rupert only to comply with the US Passenger vessel services act.  It could be worse - especially when we had a nice walk while in port.  At the time I write this, one 4-day Bermuda cruise from the US East Coast is being diverted to Saint John, NB to avoid a nasty storm. 

We have visited all of the ports we planned on visiting on this cruise.  Yet, it's hard to believe that this cruise will be over soon, and we will soon be in San Francisco, flying back to New York and reality.  After this last port stop, it will be 2½ days of uninterrupted cruising, followed by a return to our more hectic pace of life. 

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Unlike other port stops on this cruise, we had no plans to get off the ship here, as there were few things to do.  Our main plan for the day was to do some laundry and relax during the day.   However, RQS needed to replace her cane, so we trekked off the ship to find a store where she could replace it.  Luckily, there was a shopping mall nearby, where she could buy a cane.  Even through the Walmart in town was permanently closed, there was a pharmacy and surgical supply store in the mall where she could buy a cane.

Prince Rupert is not a port where one goes for exciting excursions. It's charm lies in the fact that the port is a place where one can get off the ship and have some quiet time walking around the cruise terminal district before cruising onto the next port of call.  There are a couple of museums in walking distance of the cruise terminal, as well as a supermarket and a shopping mall where people can buy non-tourist related goods.  It's not a port for everyone. Yet, we enjoyed the time we were able to get off the ship and stretch our legs.

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The afternoon came, and our ship left port for one last time before reaching San Francisco.  RQS decided to take a nap, as she had walked over 2½ miles today, and was a little tired. 

 

 

Alaska Cruise 2025 - Ketchikan, AK - Port Day #3 (08/18/25)

 

Ketchikan, AK - The gateway to Alaska.  The last time I was here, I didn't take the opportunity to visit Creek Street.  This time around, I made sure that I had the chance to see it. 

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The day started by us waking up early and going back to the bed to rest for a while.  Then, we got dressed and went to the main dining room for breakfast.  There were already 6 other people sitting there, and we broke into conversation with 3 of them.  (Of the 3 we didn't speak with, 2 were not native English speakers, and 1 was on the spectrum.)  It was a pleasant and lively conversation about cruising in general, 1 person being a former travel agent. All too soon it had to end.  RQS and I had to make it to the staging station to take the shuttle to the Alaskan Lumberjack Show.

As expected, there was a little confusion in the theater when our group was called to go outside.  No one knew where to sit, and we (like others) were scattered across the theater and had to make our way to our group as it was leaving the theater.  But we made it OK, and got onto the shuttle which would take us into the heart of town for the show.

The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show is a competition between two 2-man teams competing against each other.  There is a bit of humor thrown into the narrative, but it is simply a friendly timber sports competition.  Everything one might have seen lumberjacks do in their work 100 years ago, one would see today in competition. These are skills which this show preserves for posterity as entertainment. 

 

After the show, we walked over to Creek Street and visited Miss Dolly's House.  Dolly, a former bordello owner kept her business running until prostitution ended in the 1950's.  However, the house itself is shown mostly as it was when Dolly passed - as an old woman who chose to stay in town when others of her profession left.  When done with Miss Dolly's, we walked along Creek Street and explored the area. Then we went for lunch at a local shop.  It started to drizzle (no surprise here - Ketchikan gets over 240 days of rain each year), so we decided to take the local free shuttle back to the ship and rest for a while.

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When dinner time came, we went to the main dining room and sat at our usual shared table.  Our dinner reservation was for 7 pm, and no others were at our shared table by 7:30.  So we ordered our food, and had a nice meal.  Since our waiter, Marco, had time, he asked us some questions about how we felt about cruising on Princess.  We mentioned that this is our favorite cruise line, and explained why.  Then, he asked whether we had cruised on Carnival, and we said 'no'.  He asked why, and we noted that they have a completely different target demographic, and he agreed with us.  Marco is a waiter who loves his work, and his professionalism and personality comes out in every meal he serves to "his" cruisers.

It was nice to have a pleasant conversation with Marco.  But I think the relatively empty dining room gave him the time and freedom to do so.  We would have loved to know more about his life, but he was slightly too busy for us to consider that conversation.  And it was just as well, as there are some things that are best not known.  With that being said, we want Princess Cruises to know how good a waiter Marco is, and that we'll be sure to write about him in both post-cruise surveys and in emails to Princess' corporate offices.

 

Alaska Cruise 2025 - Juneau, AK - Port Day #2 (08/17/25)

 

Juneau, AK, the 49th state's capital.  And we had a shore excursion scheduled to take us to the Mendenhall Glacier.  It was raining out, and I wasn't that interested in going out, as I hate going out in the rain.

But first....

RQS and I got up early, so that we could reach the meeting site by 10:30.  We had breakfast in the buffet, and were out the door by 9:30.  

When one gets of the ship at the pier we were docked at, one has a 10 minute walk to the center of the tourist district.   And we had to do it in the drizzling rain.  Both RQS and I were glad that we brought rain gear with us.  Once by the tram, we had 45 minutes to kill.  So we hung out across the street from our meeting place, in a relatively dry place.

Eventually, we crossed the street to find our tour guide.  Although we did so, we had to wait an extra 15 minutes in the rain before the bus arrived to take us to the glacier. Our driver was a man with a beard that would qualify him to be a member of ZZ-Top. Once on the bus, the driver talked about life in Alaska, and about how he home-schooled his daughter as a single parent. (I'd have loved to find out more, but it would have been way to impolite to ask.  Let's say that this 15 y/o daughter knows how to hunt, skin and tan an animal's hide, and cook the meat from that animal.  Father and Daughter meet the definition of the self-reliant frontier people that people associated with Alaska.

   

We reached the park, took some glacier pictures, and then hung out in the visitors center until our bus returned to take us back to town.  If the weather had been better, we would have walked to Nugget Falls.  But that's something we'll do if we ever get back to town.  Arriving in the center of Juneau, we decided to get some grub at Tracy's King Crab Shack.  Yum!  Although the food was expensive (this is Alaska, with its high prices), it was good. After lunch, we walked back to the ship with a couple of pit stops for souvenirs. We picked up some snacks for us to eat, a book on pre-statehood Alaskan bordellos, and some venison jerky for TCL.  Once on the ship, we decided to rest for a while....

Dinner time came, and we headed downstairs for dinner.  Although we requested our usual shared table, no one came to share it until we were being served our main course.  This didn't stop us from having a nice conversation with the people who ate with us.  And then, we were off to the main theater to hear Trenyce perform.

Trenyce is a singer who got her start on TV's American Idol show.  Even though she came in 5th, she has made a career out of her singing.  Tonight, she sang songs made famous by Diana Ross and Whitney Houston - and she made them her own, while performing them in the style of the original artists.  This performance made up for last night's lackluster show.  

All too soon, it was time to go to bed - and we did just that. 

 

Getting my ears pierced (again) & Dinner with a friend.

 

This is another one of the iPhone pictures that I had problems receiving and moving to my PC.  Seems like Apple found a new way to name image files which make people using non-Apple equipment have problems extracting and saving more than one image file in a single message.

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When I got up and ready to drop RQS off at the train station, I decided to wear the same dress she was wearing (albeit in a larger size).  This made her smile a bit.  And then it was off to the piercing studio to get my ears repierced.  I arrived at the studio around 12:30 pm, and was out the door by 1:30 pm, with studs in each earlobe, and $170 less in my wallet.  So what did I do next?  It was to go home to strip and relax.  Several hours later, I decided to get dressed in something new - the jumpsuit I purchased from Universal Standard.

Now, I won't wear this jumpsuit too often, as it  gets in the way when I need to take a bio break.  I have to plan to be able to remove this jumpsuit gracefully when I go to the ladies' room, and put it back on (along with a top I plan to wear with it) before reappearing in public.  Today, I wanted to look pretty and wear something different in my wardrobe.  So I wore this with a neutral linen shirt over it.

I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes before my friend, and we proceeded to have a nice dinner at the Himalayan restaurant in Yorktown Heights.  It was a yummy meal.  And the conversation was even better, as the two of us were able to talk about things AND assume the other could process things at the same level.  (Did I say that my friend has a doctorate and speaks several languages, including German which has mostly been forgotten?)  I don't mean to sound snobbish.  But when one is a lesser grade polymath, it's nice to be able to talk with another polymath - and this person is a polymath.

All too soon, the restaurant had to close.  My friend asked me to advise her on Alaska shore excursions she could take that would allow her to do some serious wildlife viewing while accommodating her handicap.  Hopefully, I can find some excursions for her, so that she might be able to plan a cruise soon.