Alaskan Cruise-Day 1

July 31, 2011, Day 1, started early. I was up at a little after 5am…Sharon a bit later. We got dressed, loaded the car and hit the road to the airport…remote parking actually. I had made reservations at a park-n-ride close to the airport that had covered parking…such a deal! What we didn’t know that the operation had changed owners within the past few weeks and the name of the place was something completely different that the one I has made reservations with.

It took a few minutes to realize this during which I was freaking out. To make matters worse the van picked up another couple on the next row over and left us standing, wondering what was going on. Sharon suggested we walk up to the office and see what was going on…which we did. The office was locked up tighter than a drum. Eventually, we got a signal so we could get on the Internet and find the phone number of the place. The driver answered and said he was on his way back.

Thank goodness we started early enough because we had to be taken to two American Airlines terminals before arriving at the correct one. There wasn’t much of a line at security so we breezed through and found out gate in plenty of time.

Our plane made its 9:15am takeoff at 9:25 but we arrived in Seattle two minutes early after an uneventful flight…if you don’t count the little kid sitting behind me kicking me all the way there…3 ½ hours.

We finally got to our stateroom around 2pm and were pleased to find a very nice room. It’s only about 350 square feet but there’s plenty of room for a queen sized bed and a sitting area…plus the balcony with chairs and a table. Of course, once the sun goes down it gets a little chilly. After the mandatory evacuation drill, we wandered around the ship, took a tour of the spa and fitness facility, checked out the shops in the Atrium and eventually made it to one of the dining rooms.

We opted to eat in the buffet dining room tonight…not bad…but tomorrow we’ll see if we can get reservations in one of the nicer places. Day 2 will all be on board the ship at sea…if you can call the “Inside Passage” sea. There’s a lot of water, even if you can see land on both sides of the ship, but we still think it’s the “sea”. We will probably take it easy during the day, check out some more of the ship and rest up for the next few days.

Day 3 will bring us to Ketchikan, AK where we’ll check out some of the shore excursions…more about that tomorrow.