Alaska Cruise Vacation

For my high school graduation, my grandfather took me and my cousin (Gaven) on a cruise to Alaska in August 2014. We went on the Princess Cruise Line, and stopped at Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. We took a train from Salem to San Francisco, where we boarded our cruise ship.

At the time that I went on the cruise, (I didn't think that I was going to be doing much traveling) I didn't have a passport. I had to make sure to bring my birth certificate in order to board the cruise. Since my vacation to Alaska, however, I have been to two other countries. I would recommend getting a passport because it makes the trip much easier.

Princess Cruise Line Destination: Alaska

For the vacation I packed:

• Sweatshirts (3)
• Shirts (3)
• Sweats
• Jeans
• Fancy dresses (3)
• T-shirts
• Pajamas
• Leggings
• Camera
• Small purse
• Birth certificate or passport

Upon getting into our room in the cruise ship, my favorite movie was playing, The Proposal (I love me some Ryan Reynolds). It was nice to have the movie playing in the background while we all unpacked, as someone had already brought our luggage to our room. The cruise provided a pamphlet that had information on the different shows, restaurants, and shopping in the cruise ship. The cruise ship had a buffet that was open at all hours, and had multiple booths around the cruise that you can get food. The best thing, is that everything was already paid for, so you could eat your heart away (and that is exactly what my cousin did). If you do want to have any other types of drinks on the ship (i.e. soda, alcohol), you have to pay a fee and you get a sticker put on your room key. Whenever you want a drink, you have to show them your room key. Grandpa paid for my cousin and I to get the unlimited soda. When we went to restaurants and ordered soda, grandpa may have drank all of our soda up. This lead to the waiter bringing us an entire pitcher of Diet Pepsi, so that we could refill the drinks ourselves.

The food was absolutely DELICIOUS. We ate a lot of food. For example, when you go to breakfast and you ask the waiter for a side of bacon, apparently that means that you get an entire plate full of bacon. The buffet was food left over from the meals before that were provided by the restaurants on the cruise ship, and the food still tasted great. Since food is one of my favorite parts of vacation, I will start by introducing the food of the cruise!

Dessert: Pear, blue cheese, walnuts 

Dessert: Tasting tray, small desserts with a souffle 

Tomato Soup

Steak and baked potato

Steak dinner

Ketchikan: When we boarded our first location in Ketchikan. The main thing that we did in Ketchikan was go shopping. They had lots of stores that grandpa, grandma, Gaven and I went around and shopped at. One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to buy magnets for fridges. I purchased a magnet to start my travel magnet collection.

Juneau: Juneau, was our second location on this vacation. We went and looked at a glacier, and it was gorgeous! My favorite color is blue, and the glacier was a brilliant color of blue. They also had a giant piece of 200 year old ice, that you were able to touch!

Skagway: At this location, Gaven and I went zip lining. Gaven has been to Hawaii, so he had already been zip lining before. He told me that the one in Hawaii, though, was just one long zip line. This zip line was so much fun, they had multiple zip lines. I really enjoyed that it was like climbing around in the trees because they had bridges connecting to some of the trees that we walked across. I thought that was nice, because that was the first thing we did, and it was great to get a warm up. This specific zip line had multiple areas for zip lining which made for a long trip, but it was totally worth it.

This vacation was the first vacation that I got my thirst to start traveling. Since this vacation, I have traveled to many other locations, which will be discussed in my upcoming blogs!