BACKGROUND INFORMATION: I would say we are seasoned vacation travelers, having traveled extensively in the continental United States and Hawaii (also in the Caribbean). But, we have never cruised and have never been to Alaska, so this was a good opportunity for both. We decided to use Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) because their "freestyle" description seemed appealing. We booked the cruise (on the Norwegian Pearl) and shore excursions ourselves via the NCL website. We bought cruise insurance from Insure My Trip (online), choosing Travel Guard as the insurance provider.

TRAVEL TO PORT OF EMBARKATION: We booked our own air travel from upstate New York via Expedia. This is how we normally book air travel for any vacation. Our cruise ship departure was on a Sunday, so we flew to Seattle Saturday morning and enjoyed a few hours of sightseeing (our second visit to Seattle). We traveled from the airport to downtown via the Downtown Airporter shuttle, which we had previously reserved (and paid for) online. We checked into a downtown hotel for the evening (also booked via Expedia).

HOTEL INFO: We needed to stay over Saturday night, so we wanted an inexpensive (but nice) hotel to just catch some sleep. We reserved a room at the Executive Pacific Hotel, an older, restored hotel with relatively small rooms. On Sunday morning, we took a cab to the cruise ship terminal at Pier 66 (a mile away, but too far to walk towing heavy luggage on the steep Seattle streets). Read more