Pre-Cruise Stay We arrived in Vancouver a couple of days early and booked a great hotel (Westin Bayshore) on Priceline for a fantastic rate. We loved the city of Vancouver and wish we would have had more then two days there. The Hotel itself was great, wonderful views (especially Stanley Park), nice staff, and a great shuttle that would take you to the mall downtown. It is a shame they don't have an airport shuttle though. We had to take cabs from the airport and again to the cruise ship terminal.

Embarkation We arrived at port at around 11:30am and found it to be a bit confusing, even our cab driver was unsure what lane to go in and how to drop off. We made it in and the process itself went very quickly. Lines weren't too bad, the staff was friendly and efficient and shortly after noon we were on board deciding where to eat lunch.

Ship The Pearl is a pretty ship but I can't say I care for the layout much. It took a bit longer to get a hang of navigating the decks then it usually does. I miss the grand atriums that I am used to on other ships, they give you a nice central location to base everything off of, plus they are impressive. Otherwise the dEcor was not as flashy as some and our favorite was the Summer Palace dinning room, it was just beautiful with the floor to ceiling windows looking out. One other complaint was that certain areas simply got too crowded b/c there was nowhere for people to funnel to. One in particular was the buffet which was always a nightmare to find seating and navigate the lines. The captain of the Pearl was great! He was a little long winded on his announcements but you could tell how excited he was to be in Alaska. He was always on the look out for a bear and provided a lot of commentary while we were sailing toward the glacier. I was a little annoyed at all of the up selling Norwegian did, constantly trying to get a few more bucks out of you. Oddly they don't have room in their gift shops for all of their stuff so only bring it out 1 day of the cruise, if you miss that day (say it was the amber jewelry) then you couldn't buy it at all. This I have never experienced before and found very disappointing as I was interested in the less then $10 items and the amber jewelry but wasn't available at the specific times on the 1 day they had those items out. Read more