May 27 - June 3 Cruise on the Statendam from Seward to Vancouver Canada.

We were actually part of a Holland America CruiseTour (16) going from Fairbanks to Anchorage that then connected with this cruise. I plan to review the Tour portion in the near future on the message boards and this review will be strictly about getting to the ship and the cruise itself although I mention my night in Anchorage since some of you may fly into that city and stay there before heading down to Seward.

Arrived in Anchorage the night before and stayed with the rest of our tour group at the Hilton. Regretfully when we arrived they had somehow put my Mother and I into a room with 1 bed, and the hotel was completely booked solid. Since I'd brought my memory foam mattress topper with me from home, due to a medical condition, I accepted their offer of a rollaway cot and settled in. With the 2 inches of memory foam the cot was barely acceptable, without it I think I'd have been better off on the floor. We woke up in time to get our bags out to be taken to the ship which we would meet later that day, and headed down for a quick breakfast before looking around Anchorage. While the coffee bar at the Hilton was nice, the breakfast restaurant was even by Alaska standards, expensive. I'm not a morning person so I only ordered a single English muffin, which came with butter and jam and cost $5.00. Anytime your English muffin costs more then your Grande latte, something is seriously wrong. To the hotel's credit it was toasted nicely and steaming hot when it arrived. We then spent a little time exploring Anchorage before we met up with our optional Alaskan Railroad train ride upgrade from Anchorage to Seward. If you're there on the weekend check out the Farmer's market that's right by the Hilton, they have a wonderful food court, beautiful crafts and lots of nice Alaskan made products. I had a huge box full of locally made jams and jellies, and birch syrup products shipped home for me - it even arrived home before I did! The train ride was gorgeous, without a doubt some of the prettiest scenery we'd seen on the train, despite having already ridden it for about 12 hours total during the previous week. The car was comfortable, we had beverage service, food service (quite tasty), and good narration about the sights and local culture. We saw a few animals as well - moose, caribou, eagle, beaver - I didn't see the bear but supposedly there were some. Read more