Oh boy, just received an email from Seabourn telling us that our ship’s stabilizers are broken. Yikes! Going through the Drake Passage without the stabilizers would not be fun…

They say they’ll time the Drake Passage crossing to “take advantage of the most optimal weather windows,” which means we may end up sitting near Ushuaia for a few days waiting for the sea to calm and/or leaving Antarctica early to avoid the storm.

I’m lowering my expectations quite a bit. As long as I can make at least one landing somewhere in Antarctica and see the penguins, I’ll consider it a success!

I’m back! And I’m still cruising!

After the COVID pause, we did do another cruise last summer. But it was another Alaska cruise, similar to the last cruise we did in 2019, except that we went to Hubbard Glacier instead of Glacier Bay. And the ship was Westerdam again. So I didn’t bother blogging.

Our next cruise will be totally different, and it’s an once-in-a-life-time type cruise, so I think I’ll try to blog it this time. However, due to the location, the Internet connection is expected to be spotty, so I may not be able to post every day.

Anyway, our next cruise is in January, 2023, and we’re going to…

ANTARCTICA!!

We’ll be aboard Searbourn’s brand new expedition ship, Venture! Woo!

12-day Antarctica Exploration aboard Seabourn Venture
1/3 – 1/16/2023

Final day of the cruise was a beautiful scenic cruising through the British Columbia Inside Passage. We went all the way to Alaska and had the best whale sighting here in British Columbia 😄 Sorry, no pictures, but it was a pod of whales in close range.

We had a full day, starting with Ask the Captain (the best question asked: Did we leave some people in Ketchikan? Yes, we did) followed by the Mariners Lunch. No, it’s not lunch for Seattle Mariner fans. It’s a lunch for returning Holland America passengers.

In the afternoon, I went to Meet the Performers of Lincoln Center Stage, followed by their performance.

In the evening, we had dinner at Pinnacle Grill. After the dinner, I saw one last performance of Lincoln Center Stage, then the variety show of comedian and magician, then it was time to pack 😦

Not a good day today. I woke up with fever, stuffy nose, sore throat, and headache. I ended up sleeping most of the day, never leaving the ship. We had to cancel our shore excursion to Mysty Fjords.

I did feel better later afternoon and managed to snap a few pictures from the ship.

Today is the main event of the cruise, Glacier Bay scenic cruising. It started out foggy, but soon cleared up and turned out to be a beautiful day.

This is our second time here, and I must say the Margerie Glacier isn’t as magnificent as we remember. There were less calving, and I thought Sawyer Glacier was prettier with its blue color. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our visit.

Tonight was the second Gala Night. It was the surf and turf night, but I had duck.

Today, we took the White Pass Railroad tour. Last time we went only as far as Fraser, but this time, we went all the way to Lake Bennett and Carcross, Yukon.

Lake Bennett was the starting point of Chilkoot Trail during the Gold Rush. It’s an abandoned town now, and only accessible via the White Pass Railroad.

After exploring the town of Lake Bennett, we went to Carcross, where we got on a tour bus back to Skagway.

Back in Skagway, we walked along the Broadway. Not much else to see in this small town.

Back on the ship, we had dinner in Tamarind, the Asian specialty restaurant only available in Holland America’s Signature and Pinnacle class ships. The food was great. Wish they had this in all of their ships.

This morning, I saw a lot of whales as we sailed toward Juneau. But before getting to Juneau, we got on a boat from the ship for a excursion to Tracy Arm.

It was cloudy, but thankfully no rain. And South Sawyer Glacier was beautiful.

Today was a good day for wildlife viewing. There were seals near the glacier. I couldn’t take any pictures, but we saw some mountain goats too. Then there were mother and child brown bears. (My husband got better pictures. I’ll try to get them later.)

When we finally arrived in Juneau, it was pouring rain, so we didn’t spend much time there.

 

Today was at sea day. We were in and out of fog all day, but when we were not in fog, it was a beautiful scenic cruising through the Inside Passage. I spent most of my morning looking at the ocean from our verandah.

In the afternoon, I went to a presentation on local whales and a briefing on the Glacier Bay day.

Then we walked through the ship again, exploring the places we didn’t go yesterday. I think we covered the entire ship now.

In the evening, we had our first Gala dinner. After the dinner, we went to a very entertaining magic show (supposedly famous magician, Leon Etienne), then after that, I went to listen to the live classical performance at my favorite entertainment venue on the Holland America cruises, Lincoln Center Stage.

Tommorow is our first port of call, Juneau. But before we get to Juneau, we’ll be boarding a boat from the ship to visit Tracy Arm Fjord. It looks like it’s going to rain tomorrow though. I hope we can see something…

We took Amtrak from Seattle to Vancouver and stayed  overnight at Pan Pacific Vancouver. We got Deluxe Harbour room on the 18th floor, and we were able to see our ship come in this morning.

We took the elevator down to the basement of our hotel/Canada Place to drop off our luggage a little after 10 am. There were already a lot of people there, but the line was not that long, and we went through check-in, security, and immigration fairly quickly. They made us wait in a room for all the disembarking passengers to clear the Canadian immigration. We probably waited about 30 minutes, but once we were allowed to leave the room, we just went right on to board the ship. I wouldn’t say it was painless, but it was fairly quick.

Once on board, we had lunch in the main dining room (forgot to take pictures of our food!), then explored the ship after that. Since Nieuw Amsterdam is very similar to Westerdam, our last ship, it didn’t take long to figure out the layout.

We sailed away shortly after the muster drill, pretty much on time. We watched the sail away from our aft-wrap verandah, and it was beautiful.

In the evening, after attending a reception in the Neptune Lounge, we went back to our room and ordered room service. I had a bento box from Tamarind, and my husband had filet mignon from Pinnacle Grill.

The ship is beautiful, sea is calm, and we are enjoying our cruise very much!

 

 

Yay, it’s almost time for our second HAL cruise!

On August 30, 2019, my husband and I will take Amtrak to Vancouver, BC. We’ll stay over night in Pan Pacific Vancouver and will board Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam the next day for a quick 7-day round-trip cruise to Alaska.

We’ll be visiting Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, and Ketchikan, and we’ll also be doing the small boat excursion to Tracy Arm.

I’ll try to post our experience daily on this blog, so please follow along!