My husband and I (73-72), from Central Oregon just arrived home from a cruise on HAL Eurodam to Alaska 08/27-09/03/22. We have been on 3 Alaska cruises on HAL. We cruise to relax, so no partying here!! I am a retired RN and we have a Locksmith Business from our home, which keeps us extremely busy! We attended the naturalist talks and enjoyed them very much since we love whale watching. Our goal was to see marine animals from our balcony and we accomplished that. We saw orcas twice, Pacific white Dolphins in huge pods, lots of otters floating by on their backs and Humpbacks. We saw 2 breaches of the humpbacks, our first! We took two pair of binoculars to help with our quest and they helped since all the the humpbacks we saw were close to shore before we entered Glacier Bay. Glacier Bay was clear skies, yippee!
We love the staff on Holland America and this trip was no exception. We ate in MDR, Lido, Dive In and Pizza, no specialty restaurants. The food was very good to excellent. The first couple days on cruise were very foggy and rainy. Juneau and Icy Straight ports stops were cold, foggy and pouring down rain. Sitka and Ketchikan were beautiful with clear skies, no rain and mid 60’s. We did not do any tours this trip. I was glad because the two tours I considered were in Juneau and Icy Straight and we would have gotten soaked!
I appreciate that HAL is the only cruise line that has $100 OBC for Nurses! This was a budget cruise for us, we booked about a month before the cruise and got a wonderful rate for a balcony. We normally book 6-9 months before and have sailed on HAL, Princess, NCL, Premier (1988) and USS Independence (1958).