On Friday we boarded the ship and discovered that our room had been upgraded to a balcony room. For what reason, I’m still not sure. We originally booked a standard room with a window on the 4th floor. But when we checked in they handed us keys to a 7th floor room. They didn’t charge us extra, and nobody explained why the room changed, so rather than being excited I was actually a little worried at first that someone else would open up our door at any moment. But after a while we realized that it really was our room and decided to make the best of it. The ship was very nice and had a relaxing and elegant feel. It was cold and windy in Alaska most of the time, so we really didn’t even use the balcony very much.

Overall I really enjoyed the cruise part, but there were some good and bad things about it. There were plenty of activities and entertainment the entire week on and off the ship which was great. But the customer service was overkill to the point where it did get a little annoying. Our room attendant had a podium right outside of our room and wanted to go in to clean every single time we opened the door. The food was great, but in the formal dining room there were 3 waiters for every table (not an exaggeration) and they wanted to do everything for you from putting silverware in your hands, napkins in your lap, even cut food for you. The old people tended to like that, but I wanted to be left alone.

They had 2 formal nights on the cruise where everyone was supposed to dress up. I packed a suit and tie, but realized when we got there that the one thing I forgot to pack was dress shoes. I didn’t think I was cool enough to pull off a suit-and-sneakers combination, so we skipped out on the formal nights, which turned out to be a great thing. Apparently EVERYONE dresses up for formal night – which meant that NO ONE was in the pool or hot tubs during that time. So rather than suits and ties, Erin and I put on our nylon and spandex to relax in the awesome pool and hot tub for over an hour by ourselves. At any other time the pool area was filled with kids and tons of people so we didn’t feel like we were missing out on much by skipping formal night.

One thing I really enjoyed about the cruise was waking up every morning not caring what time it was, but seeing light through the curtains and being really excited to get up and go look outside. It was like Christmas every day, with a different landscape through the window that never failed to amaze me. The weather was cloudy, cold, and windy most of the time except for a couple days where it got clearer. We didn’t see much rain, but there was hardly anyone ever out on the top deck of the ship. I ended up spending a lot of time up there with a handful of other photographers who were like me and couldn’t pass up the chance to catch some wildlife or amazing scenery – despite the fact that we had 40mph winds in our face a lot of the time.

There are so many other things about the cruise that were great, but overall it was cool, and definitely something I would do again.