So. Alaska.
We went in 2013. I’m behind – deal.
If you’ve never been on a cruise, well first of all, you NEED TO GO ON A CRUISE. It’s awesome. It’s our preferred vacation for sooo many reasons. I’ll have to write a blog post sometime: “tips from a veteran cruiser.”
Anyway. Whenever you go on a cruise, you have to do a safety drill. It’s mandatory. You HAVE to participate. If you do not, they will hunt you down and MAKE you participate. Everyone hates to do it, but it is nice to know what to do and where to go in case of an emergency. This picture is me at our lifeboat station. Only, we went to the wrong lifeboat station and we were the last ones to get in line and it was embarrassing because they don’t dismiss you until everyone has gotten into line and been checked off the list.
We got a lot of dirty looks from fellow cruisers that cruise.
Kevin and I still laugh about our stupidity to this day.
We sailed on Holland America’s Statendam. It was an older boat with even older people. I think we were the youngest on that cruise.
One of the first things we do whenever we go on a cruise is put our luggage away in our rooms (once they’re ready – a lot of times, they are loading up the boat and cleaning your rooms whenever you first go on board so you end up hauling your carry-on luggage everywhere with you until your room is ready. Annoying, but it is what it is), and then explore the boat. We like to walk from bow to … whatever the back of the boat is called (you’d think I would know that by now). This gives us a chance to get our bearings though we usually end up getting lost or turned around every single day. We usually get the hang of the boat by the end of the cruise.
One thing I consistently forget to do is take pictures of the inside of the boat. We’ve been on some TACKY boats, but the Statendam wasn’t that bad, really.
This was the library. We spend a lot of time in the library on the boats. Mainly because that’s where you can hop onto a computer and access the internet, which, I might add, is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. But we have to access it because Kevin needs to be able to check into work and make sure Blake has things under control.
Which, I might add, he does a pretty fantastic job of keeping things running. We did have a bit of a scare though on this cruise. Kevin couldn’t reach Blake online and his phone was getting spotty service so he couldn’t call him. Kevin saw that our brother-in-law was on Facebook, messaged him and asked him if he could call Blake and make sure he was okay. Blake was supposed to have delivered some paychecks to a client and the client contacted Kevin and said that Blake hadn’t made it in yet. That didn’t exactly sound like Blake so we began to worry. Our worry was compounded whenever we couldn’t reach him. Our brother-in-law connected with Blake, asked him to sign on and everything was fine – he had overslept. He got a little bit of a butt chewing for that one but it all ended on a positive note.
(And in case I haven’t mentioned it before – Blake is Kevin’s bookkeeper at his office).
The food is always pretty good on cruises.
In fact, that’s always one of our favorite parts. You can always get something to eat and you don’t have to even think about where your next meal is coming from. That’s always a pain whenever we go on vacation.
Come to think of it, I hate thinking about food, period. It’s a good thing Kevin likes to cook or I would have starved my family a long time ago.
Write From Karen 