Are you planning an Alaskan cruise? It is as amazing as people say it is.
Read this post - Packing For Our 12 Day Mediterranean Cruise - for some ideas of what to pack before you leave for your cruise.
We left for our 7 day Alaskan cruise from the Vancouver cruise port. We toasted to a fun and safe journey!
The views we enjoyed on this cruise were a lot different from the usual Caribbean cruises we are used to going on. We knew this cruise would be very special.
And we knew we were not going to be using this pool. Even the hot tub would not be hot enough to use this trip.
We arrived at our first cruise port, Juneau, on the third day of our 7 day cruise.
The first thing we had to find when we got off the ship was the shuttle to bring us downtown. All we had to do was follow the crowd. If you didn't book an excursion you were heading downtown.
My sister, Sandie, knew she wanted to see the Mendenhall Glacier when we were in Juneau. We found out that we could save a lot of money by taking "The Blue Bus" Glacier Express downtown rather than book an excursion. We booked a couple of months in advance.
Our tour guide pointed out the most picturesque view on the route to the glacier. He slowed down so that we could all snap a picture.
From the moment we got off the tour bus, we were mesmerized by the beauty of our first views of Alaska.
After a quick look around the Visitor's Center, we headed toward the trail that would bring us to Nugget Falls.
The trail was an easy low-grade 1 mile path that led to the falls.
We were very excited to see the first of many ice flows we would see this trip.
We could hear Nugget Falls crashing into Mendenhall Lake before we saw it. It was powerful and exciting.
After spending some time near the falls taking lots of pictures, we headed to Photo Point to take pictures of the Mendenhall Glacier.
I couldn't capture the stunning blue color of the glacier with my phone.
We posed with the small sign our daughter, Lisa, made us to commemorate our retirement goal of visiting all 50 states!
After our self-guided tour of the glacier and falls we found our shuttle. We were brought back to where we started at one end of downtown Juneau. We had time to walk around the town before we needed to get back to the ship.
The guys did a great job holding our packages while the girls tried to get into as many shops as we could before we ran out of time.
After our shopping spree, we headed back. It felt really good to take a warm shower and enjoy a hot coffee at the end of a long and fun but cold and wet first day in Alaska.
Stay tuned for:
Juneau Part 2 (Coming soon!)
(Me and Soko got back to Vancouver via a second Alaskan cruise and visited a few of our first cruise stops again.)
Read this post if your ship is leaving from Vancouver.
Have you been to Juneau on an Alaskan Cruise? What did you do there? We would love to hear all about your time there!