Knowing that we’ll soon be off on our first cruise of 2025 seems to have spurred me into action so I’ve thundered through the remaining write-ups from our cruise to Alaska of a couple of years ago and am happy to say that this cruise travelogue series is now complete. And while I’ve been doing that I’ve also been recounting trips of the past on our Pixelfed social media account which suddenly highlighted that I’d missed out on a few write-ups from a short getaway we had in Wales back in 2011, so that omission has been rectified too.
So, here’s what you’ve missed on the site recently.
Our week-long Alaska cruise could be roughly broken down as one day for embarkation and disembarkation, one day sailing to Alaska, one day sailing back, and four days in the middle in Alaska itself. Of those four days, three were port visits and one was scenic cruising, and the scenic cruising did not disappoint. We cruised through Glacier Bay which is well-named because glaciers were in abundance and one calved for us as we were looking at it. An unforgettable experience.
The final port we visited in Alaska was Ketchikan and in a short arrival at Ketchikan post there’s a little bit of the scenery cruising in and the surprising aspect of sea planes flying past the ship.
We booked just a very short and relatively cheap tour while we were in Ketchikan, partly to try to offset how much we’d spent on other excursions. Alaska is not cheap, and Holland America is not cheap, and the combination can be eye-watering at times. Our tour took us to the totem poles carving centre in Saxman.
One of the things probably every visitor to Ketchikan takes a look at is the historic district of colourful former houses of ill-repute in Creek Street so we did too, and it was very nice there. We even saw a seal playing with food in the creek itself. And we had a streak of visiting breweries in Alaska to maintain so we also snuck in a visit to a local brewery which turned out to be our favourite.
That was the last of the Alaska ports but there have been two more posts to round off this cruise travelogue series. The first of those is the last sea day on Koningsdam which was largely spent just watching the world go by and relaxing but also featured speciality dining with two other cruise blogger couples. It wasn’t the best of experiences, sadly.
To eat up some time at the end of our cruise before our flight home we took a short debark tour in Vancouver to Stanley Park to look at the totem poles there and to see the Lions Gate Bridge from a few locations. Pretty standard for a debark tour and it allowed me to say I’d actually visited Canada as I’d not done that before and wouldn’t have counted it had I just flown in and out.
That’s the 2023 Alaska cruise complete, but as mentioned there have also been some other posts just to fill in some gaps about a short break we took to Wales in 2011. First up is a stop we made while driving to Wales. This was Birdland in Gloucestershire and there won’t be much in the way of explanations in that post but there are some nice birds to look at if you like that sort of thing.
And finally, a post that’s far more wordy and less visual than most others is one about the village in Wales we stayed at in 2011. The title probably gives away what that’s about: An Unwelcoming Stay In Tremadog.
That’s all the new content since the last of these blogs (or newsletters for subscribers).
Nothing much new to report otherwise, other than we’re now into the single digit days countdown to our next cruise, and the first for us this year. Seventeen days on Ambassador Ambience to the top of Norway should be truly excellent.
We still have a week of annual leave to plan for but early ideas for a UK trip to go see a friend have been curtailed as she’s just got herself a new job working as part of the entertainments team on a cruise ship. There is a possibility we could still go see her on the ship, but we’re interested in seeing whether the price drops first as it wouldn’t feature any places we’ve not been to before. We shall see.
The next of these blogs (or newsletters) should be published shortly after we get back from our Northern Lights cruise so expect gushing praise for being looked after so well by Ambassador and some details about what we get up to in all the new ports north of the Arctic Circle we will visit. We’ve only got a few excursions booked but we have some decent plans in place for all the destinations.