Last month we vacationed back to the states for an entire month…an entire month! Yipes!! What were we going to do for an entire month?!

So I thought: how about an Alaskan Cruise? Great idea! My wife’s never been and its really breathtaking. So I hurriedly booked one. Little did I know just how busy we would be in America and how that little side-vacation really would be a welcome retreat.

But back to the cruise.

We booked on Holland America and their ship, the M.S. Westerdam. A ten year old ship with really classic interior and design. We got a stateroom with a balcony (not as high-end or spacious as our Caribbean Cruise suite the year before), but very nice. A seven day cruise in all.

I signed up for a “Just for Us” package, which was to provide the following:

• A dozen red roses and a bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge at embarkation
• Dutch Royal High Tea served in our stateroom one afternoon – reserved for the 6th (afternoon)
• Mini Desert Extravaganza with a bottle of domestic champagne – reserved for the 6th (evening)
• One complimentary 10×7 activity photo with enclosed voucher  (there was no voucher)
• Reservations for two at the elegant Pinnacle Grill – the 8th
• Massages for each of us at the Greenhouse spa

Day 1 – Sunday, May 4th – Out at Sea

First day out to sea on the way to Juneau, and we get up to take a shower but there’s no hot water! We call room service and they send a plumber to take a look. An hour later the plumber arrives, the water is tepid, at best. He explains that everyone is taking a shower and there’s no hot water left, and we need to wait for it to warm up later. OK, so I think ‘ how do you design and build a ship that can’t handle everyone taking a shower at the same time? You know that’ll happen’. That’s just not right. From that point on for the rest of the cruise, we take showers either really early or really late.

Day 2 – Monday, May 5th – Juneau

After two days at sea our first stop, Juneau. This was by far the highlight of the cruise. I reserved a helicopter ride with a glacier landing and it was worth every penny. Our pilot was excellent and narrated everything we saw flying to and from the Juneau Ice Field as well as while we were walking around on the glacier.

One of the warnings she repeated to us all was: Do not walk on the white snow on the glacier, only on the ice! Again and again, she repeated this to us all the way there. So, of course, as soon as we landed, one couple hobbled over the ice to walk on a white patch of snow – and vanished! (No, not really). But our pilot freaked out and started yelling at them to get off the white snow! The reason being is the ice is solid, its holding the helicopter up just fine. White snow could be a fake bridge over an ice gap, and you could just fall right in, never to be seen again. Darwinism, at its best.

The following video is an edited version of the flight back. I sat in the back seat on the way up, but was put in the front for the flight back. Hope you enjoy it.

Day 3 – Tuesday, May 6th – Glacier Bay

It took a while for the captain to get all the way into Glacier Bay because of all the ice chunks floating around. We didn’t want a Titanic repeat.

The water was like glass and numerous glaciers encroached on the bay.  Occasionally large chunks of ice would break off a glacier and crash into the water. That itself was pretty exciting…from a safe distance.

After witnessing all that incredible ice, drinking some hot cocoa and partaking in hot split pea soup, we head back to our cabin for the Dutch Royal High Tea.

But its not there.

We waited. It gets close to dinner time. I call room service. They don’t know what happened. I’m miffed. I tell them to forget it – its too late. I confirm they have my reservation for the Mini Desert Extravaganza to be delivered at 8pm sharp. They assure me it will be there.

So we go off to dinner and come back right at 7:45 and the Deserts are already there, but with tea not champagne! Argh!!! Come on, people, its not that hard!

I call room service again. I asked for this at 8pm, not before. And where’s the Champagne? They try to explain that the “Just for Us” only comes with one bottle of Champagne and we already got that on the first day. I read to them the “Just for Us” brochure they put in our cabin the first day which clearly states Roses and Champagne on the first day. Mini Desert Extravaganza and Champagne on your day of choosing. They say its a typo. After tens years, they still have typos?

It gets better (or worse depending on your perspective)

Day 4 – Wednesday, May 7 – Sitka

We get a call in the morning from room service asking when we’d like our Dutch Royal High Tea delivered today. I explain to them it was supposed to be delivered yesterday afternoon, but was not, and then it was combined with the Mini Desert Extravaganza last night. I don’t want it now. I ask them, again, to cancel it.

Our Sitka excursion was a glass blowing/craft shop where we were to make some glass thingys and play with hot molten glass. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We only got to pull glass rods out of an overhead crucible. The art shops in town were interesting, but expensive. One artist made wonderful bronze castings of all sorts of wildlife, but way out of our price range.

We return to our cabin to find a polite, but gruff note saying we have not surrendered my wife’s passport to the front desk as requested for our docking at Victoria, B.C. I’m sorry, but I read everything they gave us and they never said anything about her turning in her passport.

So we head down to the front desk. They explain that they need non-US, non-Canadian passports to pre-approve Canadian customs before anyone can disembark at Victoria as required by Canadian law. I protest as not being told this before, but we give them her passport and get a receipt and assurance it will be locked up until we get it back the day we arrive in Victoria. Then, he says, he needs her Green Card too! WTF! Ok, almost to the tipping point here, but not much I can do.

We head over to the photo gallery to get the free picture of us as part of our “Just for Us” package. The attendant explains that we need the ‘voucher’ for that free photo. So I head back to the room…no voucher. So I bring the whole package brochure back with me and show the attendant. He reads the brochure. It says there’s a voucher included, but no voucher. He’s kind enough to let us take our free photo anyway.

After dinner we return to our cabin to find a new note. This one says that they cannot provide us transport from the ship to the airport in Seattle, as promised, because our flight is too early (ship is to dock at 6:30am, our flight leaves at 10:15am). This is too much. I talked with their staff on the phone a week before the cruise and signed up for the transportation. They said at that time there would be no problem. It’s 3 hours and forty five minutes afterall!

I’m really pissed. Enough screws ups already. I march to the front desk and let into them. No yelling, no cursing, but I let them know our cruse experience has been little screw-ups every single day. And that our cabin must be jinxed: No hot water in the morning, no Dutch High Tea as scheduled, Mini Desert with no second bottle of Champagne and not delivered when asked. no photo voucher, nasty letter to surrender my wife’s passport and then her green card, and now no ship to airport transport as promised.  We are not happy. They’re very sorry and write it all down and say they’ll speak to their manager about it. I’m doubtful.

Day 5 – Thursday, May 8th – Ketchikan

We get a call in the morning from the front desk saying they’d like to deliver something to our cabin for all our troubles on this cruise. She brings up a bottle Champagne. I’m not impressed, I show her that we should have this second bottle anyway as per the “Just for Us” package brochure. My wife explains that since we didn’t pay for a suite like we did on our Royal Caribbean cruise so she understands that we shouldn’t expect the service here to be as good as theirs.  I think that got to them.

The Pinnacle Grill was wonderful. Crab legs and seafood. We brought one of our bottles of champagne and had it with our dinner. (I’m sorry, but Red Lobster, with all their oil and fat and frying and “butter”, is just gross. Seafood should never be treated like that).

We didn’t sign up for any shore excursions in Ketchikan. We just wanted to go shopping around town. There was whale watching an deep sea fishing, but we didn’t feeling like bobbing up and down in a small boat pointing and yelling at whale butts coming out of the water.

Ketchikan reminded me of the TV shows Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks. It also looked a lot like a model railroad set at 1:1 scale. We looked at furs, bought some Tanzanite jewelry and salt water taffy. It was a nice little day.

Day 6 – Friday, May 9th – Victoria

Once again, we get a call in the morning from the front desk. Again, they’d like to deliver something for all our problems on this cruise, Please, dear God, no more Champagne! This time is a lunch reservations for two at their Pinnacle Grill where we just had dinner the night before. Again, the food was wonderful and the service was excellent.

As we are sailing to Victoria, the captain keeps announcing our schedule as we are falling behind due to high waves,  but says a different city each time: Vancouver or Victoria. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.

That evening, after dinner, the dinning room manager asked us to his office and apologized all over himself for mix-up with the Dutch High Tea and Champagne and Mini Desserts. He wanted to try to make it up to us with another bottle of Champagne. Three bottles now, oh dear.

That evening we get a letter in our  cabin addressed to Mrs. Smith. Oh boy, here we go again. I march it down to the front desk, hand them the letter and say “I don’t know who Mrs. Smith is, but she’s not staying in our cabin and her charges better not appear on our bill”. And I leave.

We arrive in Victoria over an hour late. The captain explained that because the seas were rough, he didn’t want to bounce us around too much and had to slow down a bit to get to Victoria (or is it Vancouver). So as soon as we get the green light to disembark, we head to the front desk to get my wife’s passport and green card – successfully!

Victoria was kind of a bust. Since we were late, it got dark really fast. Again, we didn’t sign up for any shore excursions as they were just tours of the town. We took a bus into town for that on our own. Pretty little town. Very college-esk.

Day 7 – Saturday, May 10th, Seattle

As we were rejected for ship to airport transportation, we got ‘priority’ passes to be the first off the ship. So we grabbed all our luggage at 6am, jumped in a cab at 6:45am and sped off to the airport. Frankly, I didn’t know Prius’s (or Pri-i?) could drive that fast!! Then we sat around in the airport for 3 hours waiting for our flight. I really think there was more than enough time to get us there with their cruise buses.

All in all, it was a nice cruise. The glaciers were the best. The towns were picturesque. The crew tried very hard to make up for all the problems we had, but I doubt we’d cruise Holland America again. Royal Caribbean is, two-for-two, the best cruise line so far.