My husband and I just returned from a 7 day Alaskan Cruise out of Seattle. We celebrated my birthday and it was our first cruise. Driving up to the port I was in awe of the size and beauty of the ship. Getting on the ship was a breeze! We are frequent flyers and the quick security and the ease of getting onto the ship was a dream come true. We even got to keep our shoes on! The Oosterdam allows wine and beer to be brought on board..so of course we had our carry ons packed with wine. I had envisioned myself sitting on the balcony of our suite sipping wine and ordering the free room service. The wine packages are a good deal as well. These can be served at your table (as the other wine your bring on must remain in the room unless you want to pay the corking fee of 13-18$)

WINE TIP: unless you are very familiar with the wine that you are ordering in the packages its not easy to tell if its such a good deal or not. It's certainly convenient but once we drank up the 3 bottles we paid for (we will get the larger packages next time for sure).. you are tempted to buy the single bottles of a wine you really liked. A single bottle cost us 54$ (same one we had paid 30$ for in the package)..but we got home and looked up the wine, we found that it was only sold for $9.95 on line! so I MAY take on board the wines I know I like.. say a 10$ wine, and pay the corking fee and still get it for less than the packages. Just a thought.

PORTS OF CALL: The balcony was usually too cold and windy to enjoy for more than a few minutes.. so bundle up! Watching the glaciers calve from our own balcony was well worth the price.. and a good reason to open up one of these boxes of wine we hauled on board. The views are amazing and especially the morning we pulled into Juneau.. waking up and seeing the town fogged wrapped was so beautiful..Ketchikan was gorgeous as was Sitka but Sitka was more of a cultural exploration and I was very disappointed to find NO Russian cuisine ( especially after it had been touted as having so much Russian influence). If you get a chance to see Sitka Tango the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Dog and his humans go over and buy their books..pat the dog meet, the kid.. We did a photography Land and Sea tour in Juneau and it was wonderful.. Jennifer was our guide and she taught me how to use my camera! That was well worth the cost of the Safari.. we saw whales and the Mendenhall Glacier and met some wonderful people along the way. TIP: you may want to save your excursions for Sitka as there's so much to do in Juneau and I feel I missed half the town because I had a 2:00 excursion. Sitka had less to offer me than the other towns did.. so that would have been a good port to go out and about. BUT you definitely want to see the Mendanhall Glacier in Juneau... and there's a GREAT bead shop in town if you're into crafts. Read more