Alaskan Cruise Excursions

We have decided upon our excursions for our upcoming cruise to Alaska on board the Celebrity Mercury – or at least most of them.  The cruise is an eight day round trip cruise from Vancouver, so a bit shorter than we normally do, but Alaska is an expensive cruise and we will be cruising with a bunch of my relatives in a sort of family reunion cruise.  We last cruised Alaska on our honeymoon, 14 years ago.

We wont be doing too many excursion on this trip, instead opting for walking type tours in port.  In Skagway, we will take the train tour through the mountains and forests.  It is supposed to be a don’t miss excursion.  At $110 a person, it had better be.  That said, I imagine the sights will be spectacular.

The other excursion we will most likely do is the lumberjack show in Ketchikan.  The kids are really excited about this one.  My brother-in-law wants me to go salmon fishing with him in this port, and that sounds like fun, but I probably will opt to do the lumberjack show with the family instead.  I need to make up my mind by this weekend.

We will visit a glacier in Juneau but it wont be an excursion.  Last cruise to Alaska, we took a helicopter to the glacier there so it’s not a must do for us.  However, the kids haven’t seen any glaciers, so we will probably take a bus to the point in Juneau where you can walk out to the glacier.  I think the rest of my relatives are planning on doing a whale watching tour, but we are going to pass on that one.  We have seen several whales on board ship and just don’t want to spend the money.  I am sure they will have fun though.  I don’t believe that any of my relatives have been to Alaska before.

We will fly into Vancouver a day early.  However, we won’t get in until fairly late, so there wont be much site seeing.  We are trying to decide if we want to stay near the airport since we get in late or spend the 30 minutes driving into town near the pier and staying at a hotel there.  Most likely, we will pick a hotel near the pier so we can stroll around Vancouver in the morning before we board the Mercury.  The gaslight quarter is a nice place to walk around a get a bite to eat before the cruise. For the return, we will also stay overnight in Vancouver before flying out the next day.  Again, most likely near the pier so we can do some city site seeing before flying out in the morning.

I still haven’t made our airfare reservations but should do so in the next day or two.  The research is done and we know what we will do.  Luckily, we will be able to get two tickets on frequent flier mileage and only have to purchase two. At $500 a ticket, that is very helpful.

Everyone is looking forward to the cruise this June.