Monday, May 21, 2012

Alaska Cruise - A few things about the ship and our room


All of our rooms were on Deck 8. Randi & Jessica had rooms close together at the front of the ship, but Josh and I ended up clear down in the middle of the ship. I know the others complained of rough seas a few nights, but we never noticed it, so I guess it was a good thing we weren't close to the front.
1st view of our stateroom.
Our room was small, but we really only slept there, so that was fine. The one thing I didn't like was there was no clock in the room. You used the phone system if you needed a wake up call. I can see why there is no clocks on the ships, we crossed time lines 2 different times; can you imagine changing that many clocks?
We had decided a few weeks before that we wanted a welcome gift in our room, so we ordered a bowl of fruit and some red wine.

Everyday we stayed up late. When we'd get back to our room, we'd decide to that since it was so late, we'd open the wine the next day. We finally did on day 4 after getting back from Skagway.



While waiting for our room to be prepared the first day, we decided to take a tour of the spa. I was in LOVE. They had a big main room with a small pool with several different jet settings, a large hot tub, rain forest showers, heated Mosaic chairs and lounge chairs with a view out the very front of the ship. Then off to each side of this room, they had a room for the women and men. Each was identical with 2 jetted tubs, a sauna room, a steam room, a plunge pool, and more lounge chairs.
At the very end of the tour, they told us the price and that they were only going to sell 84 spaces. I couldn't make up my mind. It really was reasonably priced considering all you had available, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend that much. Two things finally convinced me. Jessica joked about how they had just spent half that much so Andrew could drink Pepsi every day. Then Josh told me he knew I would love it and I deserved it. So I decided it would be an early Happy Savannah's Day present.
The women's side. In the back corner is the jetted tubs, where I spent most of my time while using the spa.
I ended up going every day, but one, and spending 1-2 hours there. It was worth the money. The view out of the front of the ship was beautiful and the mood in the spa was so relaxing. Just about every day, Josh and I got up early, then would stay up late. Josh would explore the ship or nap in the room while I went to the spa, where I usually ended up taking a nap myself.
The main room looking at the pool. I didn't take a picture of the chairs because they were occupied. I didn't think I would like them (because I love soaking in a hot tub), but that is where I would go to dry off for a minute. Then 30 minutes later I would wake up from a nap I didn't know I was going to take.
Looking out the front of the ship as we sail into Glacier Bay.

I am relieved to report I only got seasick once, which seems like a big deal to me because we hit a lot of rough water several times through our travels. It was the very first morning, so I really hadn't developed my sea legs yet. A friend had suggested I get some Sea Bands for motion sickness. I had no idea if we would get sick sea, but I purchased them just in case. That first morning, Josh and I had gotten up early and went to the exercise room, and I was fine. Then when we got back to the room, I took my bands off to shower and I was sick within 2 minutes! Not fun. A few others in our group got sea sick too and by the end of the trip, everyone else had purchased their own sea bands.

Our very first time on the ship was of course, hectic. I'm not a patient person and didn't want to wait for the elevator. So instead, Josh and I decided to take the stairs. On our way up, we decided to commit to never riding the elevator while on the ship. Our room was on deck 8, but a lot of the stuff we did was on deck 12 or 13, so needless to say, we took a LOT of stairs, multiple times a day. Sometimes we would beat the group to the meeting spot and other times they would beat us, depending on how many levels and and how busy the elevators were. But I'm glad we decided to commit to that, at the end of the cruise it felt like a big accomplishment.

One of the things I looked forward to was the towel animals. Jessica had said on their last cruise, they had a towel animal in their room every night. This ship was different, we only had a towel animal every other night.
The 1st towel animal was a dog. I had left my sunglasses in the room; I love how they used them.
Our 2nd towel animal was an elephant.
Our last towel animal was a monkey hanging from the ceiling.

When I bought a few professional pictures on the ship (those will be in a later post), they also included this picture of our journey.

1 comment:

KT said...

The monkey is very cute!