Alaskan Cruise – Trip of a Lifetime

I returned a few days ago from a trip I’ll remember forever – a cruise up the Inside Passage of Alaska. It was a gift to me from my son and his husband, who were also on the trip. My brother joined us, as well, checking off a lifelong dream of seeing Alaska. We shared a large suite on the Norwegian Encore cruise ship, in the Haven section of the ship. I’ll give the experience eight thumbs up, two from each of us!

I chose not to take my big Nikon camera as I wanted to live the experience rather than seeing it from behind a camera lens. I used my iPhone and took lots of pictures, though, as you might have expected. I’ll be sharing them in separate posts over the coming days.

We started by driving from home in Hutchinson, Kansas, about four hours to the airport in Kansas City, Missouri, then flying to Seattle, Washington, where we had an extra day before boarding the ship. We used that day by taking the ferry boat over to beautiful little Bainbridge Island, where we walked around and had lunch. We boarded the ship on Sunday late morning, September 25, and departed the dock later that evening. Our itinerary was: Monday – at sea, Tuesday – Juneau, Alaska, Wednesday – Icy Strait Point and Hoonah, Thursday – Glacier Bay, Friday – Ketchikan (bears!), Saturday evening – Victoria, Canada, Sunday morning – Seattle. As you might notice in a small way from the pictures, it was truly a dream trip, and I’m forever grateful to my son, Andreas, and his husband, for the gift. ~SueBee

This gallery includes pictures of Seattle and Bainbridge Island. When I was a kid, my family visited Seattle nearly every year, to stay with my dad’s sister and family in Bothel, Washington. My brother and I have great memories of the area when it had a very small population and was still quite rural. These days it’s all city buildings and housing developments, and I doubt we’d even find where we used to stay. Therefore, we were so excited to see a shop my dad took us to back in the late 1950s, on Seattle’s waterfront, called Ye Olde Curiousity Shop. It has survived!