We started planning this trip over a year ago, and decided to stick with Norwegian for our trip to Alaska on the Pearl. I have read on several occasions that the Pearl was old, dated and needed an upgrade. I thought it was marvelous. simply amazing ! We flew into Seattle on the Friday, two days before we sailed out. For the next 2 days we hit Pike Place, the Seattle Wheel, and had some magnificent seafood. We both really liked Seattle, and being from the east coast it was more special for us to go somewhere new.
The morning of embarkation, we went with an open mind, after being on 4 cruises before and all of them from Manhattan, we based our experience on those past trips. Needless to say New York needs to take some lessons from Seattle on how to talk to people and how to treat people. Don't get me wrong I love New York, I like less than 2 hours from Manhattan, but the cruise terminal needs to learn how to speak to people. I found the workers in the Seattle terminal, nice to talk to, polite, friendly and offering us water just in case we had a long wait. We were given a 10:00 - 10:30 time to arrive, as we did. We breezed through the terminal, and by 11:00 am were on the ship at the buffet, which was splendid.
Our cabin was better then imagined, we had cabin 10168 mini suite aft balcony. It had a lounge chair and 2 regular chairs. The balcony is much bigger then the Breakaway. We spent a lot of time out there admiring the scenery from Seattle to Alaska, then to Victoria. Pictures don't do the scenrey in Alaska enough justice. absolutley stunning. Our cabin was clean, spotless. We seldom saw our steward, which was fine but he kept our cabin, clean, delivered us clean towels, made towel animals. No complaints there. We never had to go look for him for anything.
The cabin was perfect, absolutley loved that larger balcony. It had a lounge chairs as well as 2 deck chairs and a table. We spent so much time in the balcony, I managed to take well over 1000 pictures. This is a perfect balcony for Alaska, the scenery is constanlty changing. You only have 2 floors to The Great Outdoors, which was very convenient. I loved getting up in the morning and taking a cup of coffee out on the balcony, it was so peacefull.
We did the train ride, which was a really great way to soak in the scenery on land.
We loved seeing Glacier, the glaciers were stunning, and got to see some calving
We had somewhat of a restful day in Ketchikan, just walked around town, did some shipping and went to Creek Street
We hopped in a taxi and went to The Bard and Banker, a nice Scottish pub with great food and drink. Then walked around Victoria, do some shopping, and then took the taxi back to the ship