This cruise was the brainchild of my parents who are celebrating their 50th anniversary and my mother's 70th birthday this year. There were to be eight of us travelling -- three adult couples and two kids aged 15 and 16. My brother and I (and our respective partners) were very resistant to the idea of cruising. We're outdoors and independent type people, and somehow a cruise always seemed "weird" to me -- too Disney to be the real experience of anything. But my mother was determined that we all go on an Alaskan cruise together, and she determined that NCL's "freestyle cruising" was the way for us to go. (When Mom is determined, she's going to get her way.) So we ended up on a week long cruise in Alaska on the Norwegian Star, leaving Seattle on June 28.
Mom made a great choice. All of the skeptics amongst us had a much much better time than we ever hoped to have on the cruise. I should say at the outset that the weather could not have been more spectacular for the important days of the cruise. In fact, there was brilliant sunny weather for the first 5 days. This certainly helped us to enjoy ourselves and the absolutely jaw-dropping scenery along the route. Will I cruise again? I can easily see myself going back to Alaska on NCL, and that's a huge change of heart on cruising for me!
Embarkation