Alaskan beauty in pampered fashion
Written: Jan 10 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great service, great food, lots to do on the ship, beautiful sights.
Cons: Once you've seen one glacier, you've seen them all.
The Bottom Line: The cruise ship itself was amazing with lots of things to do, however, the destination ports, were somewhat boring.
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| biscuitfarmer's Full Review: Holland America Ryndam |
There is really no wrong way for you to visit Alaska just as long as you find a way to make it there some time in your life. Alaska is one of the most amazing areas in the world, where wildlife and man mix together beautifully. Generally when I visit Alaska, I take a plane, and visit the inland portion of Alaska, however, my wife and I decided that we would try out a cruise to Alaska through a friend of ours, who was a travel agent.
So, we decided that we would take the cruise in May, the very first cruise of the season for Holland America aboard the Ryndam.
Our trip was an 8 day, 7 night trip from Vancouver, BC, to Seward, Alaska.
Cost
We made sure that we had a room that had an outside view, so we got a room on the deck, which was about $1300 per person retail and I think that we paid about $800 per person, or something like that through our friend.
That pretty much pays for everything on the boat, as we got an all inclusive package. I'm pretty sure that all packages are all inclusive, however, I didn't really check, as it didn't really matter, because my package was.
Itinerary
The trip starts in Vancouver, where we decided to arrive early so that we could do a little bit of sightseeing around the city. We visited some of the historic districts, such as Gastown, and took a trip through some of the citie's monuments. We got quite a few pictures while we were there, and I got thrown in a creek. I'm not exactly sure why my wife thought it would be funny, to push me into a creek that had to be able 20 degrees, but somehow she ended up in there shortly afterwards.
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The second day of the trip, we went down a little passageway, where we could see quite a few beautiful sights from the ship. I think the coolest thing was when we saw a couple of cascading waterfalls, which went into a river that followed into the ocean. I guess we would call that a tributary, wouldn't we... You could also see some pretty cool glaciers that were pretty much taking off some of the rock ledges along the way. We could see some seals that were hanging out on a rock ledge, and quite a few little puffin as well. The puffin were pretty hard to see without a little help, so we rented out some binoculars from the cruise line so that we could see them a little bit better.
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The Third day of the trip, I found myself trying to find a way out of bed, as my wife decided to tape me to it. I'm not sure where she got tape from, however, she found quite a bit of it, and it took me a very long time to chew through the tape by my face, so that I could slowly start to move more and more of my body, until eventually I was able to go up to and see my wife sitting in a chair drinking a fruit smoothie on the deck. Fortunately, I am fairly hairless, so I was left red, but with about the same amount of body hair as before.
Soon that day we arrived at Ketchikan and made port. In Ketchikan is the world's largest collection of totem poles, which really weren't all that exciting. However, the whole town is pretty much built on the water and into the mountains as there's not a whole lot of land out there that is flat. That was pretty cool to see. Quite a few of the homes had access only by water. I can't imagine how horrible it would be if there was a heavy rainstorm to be right on the water like that, but it's not my life, so whatever they want to do. There's quite a lot of local art in this area as well. You can tell that the city pretty much thrives on the tourist income alone as it doesn't appear like there's all that much else going on here.
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Day 4, we got to port in the capital of Juneau. Juneau can only be reached by plane or boat coming from Anchorage area, so you see an insane amount of airplanes here. We got to stay and hang out in Juneau for quite some time and found ourselves at a little indian shop, downtown, where we decided to purchase ourselves some rabbit fur socks. Don't worry, it wasn't real rabbit fur, just immitation, but they were really comfortable. Unfortunately, you can never wash or they will fall apart, so we just keep them for decoration, I suppose.
We decided to go to a glacier just outside of Juneau, which was pretty amazing. We got a lot of pictures while were there, and just got lucky enough to see some wildlife. There were quite a few bald eagles in the area that day, so we made sure to take advantage and got some great action shots.
As we walked off of the glacier, I fell, and injured my thumb. About two weeks later, we found out that I had fractured two bones in my thumb, which may have been why it was always swollen. Luckily, there was enough cold water around at all times to soothe the pain as it flared up.
On the way back into town, we were able to purchase these tiny wooden naked people statues, which have a man and a woman in we'll call it the "lover's pose" and there are two different styles and we got both of them. My wife thinks that they are supposed to be book ends, but I like them sitting on our shelf in our living room.
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Day 5, welcome to Skagway, home of pretty much nothing. This is a small little gold mining town, that has nothing to do except for learn about gold mining history and ride on a train. So, rather than over excite ourselves, we first went to the gold mine museum, read a little bit, looked around a bit, but decided that we had to go out and get some four wheelers and tour around the area in search of some moose or bear. Any sort of wildlife would have done. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any rental spot, so we settled for just spending the day learning how to build a canoe. That was actually really cool to do, but that canoe is probably going to sink now... hope no one actually was going to use it. If it does sink, my bad!
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Day 6 was pretty impressive. We got to see some massive glaciers. I don't just mean big, I mean big huge monster glaciers that stick straight up out of the ground. Glacier towers is what we called them. These things were extremely colorful too. They looked like rainbows almost, we you got up close. The cool thing was that you could see chunks falling off and the light would refract off of it and you would see what looked like a rainbow light show of sorts. Pretty cool sight.
And of course, we got to see a really large seal, with a really small seal, trying to make even smaller seals. That was quite the exciting sight. I just wish I would have been able to grab more film for the camera in time to see that nature in action moment. We got to see quite a few smaller seals here as well, swimming behind what we assume were their mothers.
I'm not sure, but I think this was when I was trying to do something by the edge of the boat, with our car keys, because they kept digging into my leg and some guy bumped into me pretty hard and oops, there went the keys. Thank god that we have another set. Not exactly the best of trips for me, my clumsiness was definitely highlighted on more than one occassion.
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Day 7, I wake up, step on soap, and fall in the shower. After that little accident, we move to the promenade deck, where we are told that there are a bunch of glaciers around us. Apparently there were like 10-15 different glaciers all over the place, all of which were named after different colleges. I can't remember why they named them after colleges, but they were.
The sight was pretty impressive, but after seeing the same thing the previous 6 days, it really wasn't all that exciting anymore.
We decided that we would hang out and dance late that night on the deck. They were playing a pretty wide variety of music and everyone was out dancing. It was quite the good time. It would have been even better though, if I hadn't hurt my side during the fall in the shower. Luckily it was a tiny shower, so I didn't take a tumble all of the way down to the floor.
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Day 8, we are finally done. We get some tickets to go and see the Alaska Sealife Center, which we did, it was awesome, and then we decided to go do some Halibut fishing, and got ourselves a couple of massive halibut. I think my wife caught a 128 pounder and mine was 82 or something like that. All that I remember is that we had so much fish that we couldn't take it all back with us, because the flight was overbooked and cargo space was tight. Luckily we got most of it.
Entertainment
I think pretty much every night, my wife and I would go outside and enjoy a dip in one of the hot tubs while we enjoyed the night. The night was somewhat cool still while we were there, so the pools were a little on the cool side, even though they were temperature controlled, so we decided the hot tubs, which are pretty big were the best bet.
Every morning when we awoke, we would go down to the fitness center and start our day off right with a little bit of good ol' exercise. Unfortunately, after injuring my thumb, this was somewhat limited.
The casino was pretty fun and we would play some video poker and blackjack there every so often. We never really wagered all that much, however, we did do enough to have a little bit of fun and ended up pretty much just breaking even, so that wasn't too bad.
There's a movie theater on board, that was really kinda cool. They play a lot of newer movies, unfortunately, they didn't really have anything beyond a PG-13 rating, so that was sort of sad, but the movies that they showed were still pretty good for a late night date. The movies, ran pretty much all day and night. I think they shut them off from like 2-5 or something like that, but it wasn't very long at all.
And the greatest thing was that we could send emails to our friends in the internet area without having to leave the boat. We would send them letters and digital pictures of the trip so far and they were so jealous. However, if they realized that we just did 8 days of the exact same thing, then they probably wouldn't have been so jealous. The boat was a whole lot of fun though, just everywhere else wasn't quite as good.
Restaurants
On board, I think I remember there being a grill that was by the pool and a regular restaurant. We would always eat at the grill, because they had the best food and you had to dress up a little more to go to the restaurant and since we always felt like pretty much just lounging around, that wasn't really an option for us.
The food was really good, I think I ate steak and seafood pretty much every single night. I figured I should take advantage while I have a meal card. I was trying to figure out ways to take some of the steak sauce home with us, as they had the best tasting steak sauce, but I don't know what it was. It didn't have a label or anything, so I'm unsure whether they made it themselves or if it was made by some company. I should try and find that out, because it was just delicious and I'd love to get my hands on a few bottles or a case maybe.
Room Features
In our room, we had our own tv, which pretty much had all the channels we would get at home. I really didn't expect that our room would have the tv. We had a phone of course, which was good since our cell phones didn't work at all during the cruise.
I do feel sorry for room service. Once we found out that the room service was 24 hours, I think we called them round the clock. I'm sure they were calling ahead to each port for supplies with the way we were eating.
Customer Service
The employees that worked on the ship were really cool about everything. Pretty much anything that you need, just ask, and they will get it for you. They all seemed to be extremely knowledgeable and could tell you anything that was going on at any time on the ship. They knew where we were at all times, and really had great control over the whole cruise.
The room service was pretty nice too, they didn't make us clean our room the entire time that we were there, which is just how we liked it. But they still gave us mints for our pillows every night. I made sure of that one!
Cleanliness
The ship was always totally spotless. Everywhere that we went was awesome. Even the public bathrooms were great with no sign of any trash or residue around the bathrooms at all. We were pretty much just treated like royalty everywhere that we went and they made sure that the cruise was as comfortable as humanly possible.
Overview
While the destination areas were pretty much the same thing over and over again, the cruise itself was a whole lot of fun. The ship had everything that we could ever need and want and the scenary was absolutely breathtaking.
While it doesn't sound like I had that much of a time in the itinerary, I was just bored with the area. If you see one glacier, you've pretty much seen them all, until you see the ones sticking out of the water anyway, that are all rainbow colored. That's a totally different experience right there. We loved the wildlife and got some amazing pictures at each stop, however, there wasn't much to do except for learn about the history of those cities, which pretty much revolved around gold mining.
I think the cruise was excellent though and I'd definitely go on another one, just probably not quite as long to the Alaska area. I think that we are going to try and go to the caribbean next and see how exciting that sort of cruise would be. This one made me and the wife feel like absolute royalty, which was a whole lot of fun for a change.
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Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
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