Alaskan Adventure: Day 1

I'm writing this post from the library of the cruise ship Norwegian Pearl. In front of me is water as far as the eye can see, with light cloud cover and the silhouette of mountains in the distance. I haven't got the foggiest idea where I am, or what land may be in front of me. And I'm totally cool with that. I do know that tomorrow we arrive in Juneau, Alaska. But, today is just a relaxing day at sea.

Our Alaskan Adventure all began Sunday morning, when we kicked around Seattle for a few hours. What a lovely downtown, filled with great places to explore (including the Olympic Sculpture Garden, Pike Place Market and the tiny-but-cute waterfall garden). Then, off it was to the port where we checked our luggage and made our way onto the ship. Given the volume of people boarding, it was done in a relatively orderly fashion.

A few years back, Shira and I cruised on Norwegian and loved it, so it was the natural choice for our second cruise. What's surprised us this trip is just how similar this ship is to the one cruised on in the Western Mediterranean. Everything is in the same spots, the services offered are essentially the same (but now we've got bowling alley, whoo!) - heck many of the venues have the exact same names. Even the flow of activities seem about the same. This has all made for a wonderfully familiar feeling. While it's exciting to be cruising, it doesn't have some of the stress we had the first time trying to get oriented.

So far, the accommodations have been great. Our stateroom is totally adequate, and the food--with the exception of some truly unimpressive soft serve ice cream--has been quite good. I've taken about a bazillion photos, but there really hasn't been much to see yet. Just lots of open water.

All in all, things are going great. The goal of this day at sea was to kick back and relax, and that's what we're managing to do. Tomorrow, when we get off the boat, I can go into find-a-way-to-overdo-it mode. But for now, my biggest dilemma is figuring out which few photos I'm going to post to the blog (considering the slow Internet connectivity).