14 Days on the NCL Sun to Alaska...May 2017

The menu for Le Bistro is probably available elsewhere online, but I will post it just because I have it!

Here are also the links for the two videos I made from our day in Sitka. (Be sure and check out the raven around 4 minutes into the first one!!)

And the 2nd video picks up where the first one left off...

(My apologies for the shaky video. It is hard to hold a camera steady on a bobbing boat!!)

Sitka was our last stop in Alaska...but not our last port. Stay tuned for our day in Prince Rupert, BC!

So excited to see another trip report from you! Earlier Alaskan reviews by both you and WalleyeLJ were instrumental in our accelerating our plans for our (hopefully first) Alaskan trip into 2016 rather than 2017 as originally planned. The 14d itinerary out of SF looks fantastic. As we live in San Jose (an hour south of SF) the concept of a LONGER trip visiting MORE ports and MORE glaciers leaving so close to home makes me green with jealousy. Keep this review up and you'll likely be responsible for us venturing outside our comfort zone of Royal Caribbean! <g>

Thanks so much. I agree with you about WalleyeLJ's review being fantastic...and being put in his league is a huge compliment!!

The 14-day itinerary we did on the NCL Sun was a great one, but I don't think it is usually offered. Our cruise on the NCL Pride of America to Hawaii was going to be our only NCL cruise, but the huge credit they offered us was burning a hole in our pocket so we went looking for another NCL cruise and discovered this one.

I honestly thought that Princess did a better job of "doing Alaska" since they had a naturalist onboard for the whole cruise. Princess also brought in Iditarod musher, Libby Riddles, and her sled dogs and had other Alaska themed events that NCL was lacking.

Unless we find another great itinerary, I hope to stick to Princess and maybe Holland America in the future. It would be nice to build up a little brand loyalty with one cruiseline and we also have the Carnival stock that gives us an incentive to book those brands.

Now "if" I were going to look for a future Alaskan cruise I think I would be considering the 14-day itinerary on Holland America that visits even more remote ports...just sayin'! ;)

Our arrival at Prince Rupert wasn't scheduled until 1 pm so that gave us the morning to sleep in a bit and relax. I mentioned it before, but I loved having the breaks in between ports whether it be a sea day, a glacier viewing day, or just a late arrival.

After breakfast in the buffet, we went to the "Battle of the Cake Masters" at 10 am. Sort of a cooking demonstration/comedy routine. Samples were shared afterwards.

Prince Rupert, BC was the one port where we had absolutely nothing planned. Not many excursions were offered through the ship and most were the expensive type (sea planes, jetboat tours, kayaking, etc.) I had read about a carving shed nearby where you could watch totem poles being carved so that is where we headed when we got off the ship. (Free shuttle busses were available but waiting for them to fill up probably took as much time as just walking to town!)

A good idea...but it was closed.

Across the street from the carving shed was the Sunken Gardens. This "hole" was to have been the site of the community court house, but plans changed. The tunnels leading into the gardens were used for storing munitions during the world wars.

From signs we saw around town, volunteers would be planting all of the summmer flowers the next day. Even without the flowers, the gardens were beautiful!

Without a plan, our little group was struggling to figure out what to do for the day. I hate being in the situation where everyone says "what do you want to do?" "I don't care, what do you want to do?" and so on and so on...

The guys were talking about trying to find some totem poles and I was not in the mood to wander aimlessly AND I was pretty "totem-poled out" from yesterday. So I decided to head back to the ship by myself.

On the way I walked through this little area on a hill overlooking the ship. There was a wall with engraved bricks in memory of those who had "live by and loved the sea." Pretty!

As I was walking down the hill to return to the ship, I noticed some shops (off to the right in this photo) and remembered reading about the Cow Bay area of Prince Rupert. It looked very picturesque so I headed that way.

I walked around a bit and then stopped into a visitor's center (next photo). There was free (and fast) wifi and a great view of the marina. So...I sat down and enjoyed both! (One of the perks we got when booking this cruise was 250 minutes of free internet on the ship, but it was pretty slow. At the end of the cruise I still had over 2 hours of time left!!)

After catching up on Facebook, I continued my walk down the street enjoying the beautiful sunshine and stopping to look at the gift shops. I was surprised when I ran into my friend in one of them!! She had ditched the guys as well!!

The two of us roamed around the Cow Bay area together and then headed back to the ship. It was quite a long time before the guys returned. They had found a map with a walking tour to see the totem poles. My DH swears the map wasn't correct and they had walked several miles before finding all of the totem poles. He enjoyed the exercise and I'm sure saw parts of Prince Rupert that the average tourist never sees!!

Sailaway was at 10 pm and sunset was just about the same time.

From our port side balcony, we had a great view of a shipping facility as we were leaving Prince Rupert. So colorful! The longest train I have ever seen was coming into this place to either load or unload.

Next...our last sea day.

(No video from our day in Prince Rupert.)

Our last sea day. The Sun was sailing between Vancouver Island and the mainland, so at times we were pretty close to land. During the morning I went to a sushi making demonstration and the end of the napkin folding demonstration while my DH was playing in another shuffleboard tournament.

Since I had my camera, I snapped a few photos around the ship. For the first time in our 2 week cruise, it was warm enough that people were enjoying the pool area.

I liked the Great Outdoors...an area at the back of the ship off the buffet. It wasn't until almost the last day that we discovered that there was self-serve ice cream back there!!

We DID know about the ice cream station in the Garden Cafe that served hard ice cream. I also learned early in the cruise that there was always a pan of some type of warm dessert sitting on this counter that went very well with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. My favorite? Warm bread pudding. Mmmmmm.

I also know that I spent part of the day doing the dreaded job of packing. I sent DH out to the balcony to get out of my way, but he kept yelling, "come look at this" so progress was slow.

We kept seeing porpoises jumping in the water and I was getting frustrated trying to photograph or video them because you never knew when or where they were going to pop up! THEN...I looked straight down off the balcony and there was a porpoise swimming right alongside the ship. It was amazing to see how fast he could go! I am going to try and post the video I took. If it doesn't work then here is the link where you can see it on YouTube:

We passed by one small town and while we were looking through our binoculars, these people were looking at us through their binoculars!!

It looked like quite an interesting place with all of the buildings along the edge of the water. Several buildings had large Native American murals on the side and there were totem poles scattered about through the whole town.

Can you imagine having these mountains in your back yard? Not me. We live on the prairie where everything is FLAT.

And...just a few more photos to finish off our sea day.

Good night moon.

Coming up...our last port AND a very special day at Nanaimo, BC.

Nanaimo, BC...our last port...AND...our 40th wedding anniversary!! What better way to celebrate than by spending the day enjoying the beauty of God's creation with the love of my life!!

Our friends that we were traveling with were meeting some old friends of theirs who lived in Nanaimo so it was just the two of us for the day. I had reserved a rental car from Budget for the day and gave them a call when we got off the ship. We had a short wait, but eventually someone showed up at the port to give us a ride to the rental office.

Our first destination...Cathedral Groves to see the giant Douglas Fir trees.

Finding the place wasn't hard, but finding parking was. There really wasn't a parking lot so people just parked on both sides of the highway.

The trail through the giant trees was beautiful. Many trees had come down during a wind storm years ago and other than clearing the trail, they were just left to decompose.

There were trails on both sides of the highway, but we took the one on the left that goes past "the big tree". This tree is over 20 meters TALLER than the Leaning Tower of Pisa and was already over 300 years old when Christopher Columbus discovered America.

This was not the biggest tree, but it gives you a little perspective on the size of all of the trees in the forest!!

We had brought along a little picnic lunch which we ate sitting by Cameron Lake.

The next stop was at Little Qualicum Falls Park where we hiked to the Upper Falls.

On the way back to Nanaimo, we stopped at Coombs Old Country Market. The store sold just about everything (groceries and other stuff too) and their claim to fame are the goats who graze on the sod roof!

You could even buy honey in bulk!

Arymay - I may have missed it, what kind of camera did you use?

Thank you for the lovely pictures and memories you are sharing it's great.

charlie

Arymay - I may have missed it, what kind of camera did you use?

 

Thank you for the lovely pictures and memories you are sharing it's great.

 

charlie

Charlie...

The majority of the photos were taken with a Canon SX50...a bridge camera. I purchased this camera in 2014 before our first Alaska cruise and love the long zoom, but it does not do well in low light. My friend that we were traveling with also has a bridge camera...a Panasonic FZ200...and I know her pictures are always so much sharper than mine. But...her zoom is not near as long so it is a trade off.

Some of the photos were also taken with an older Canon D10...and underwater camera that I bought for snorkeling. I used it mostly when we were in rainy weather...or when my DH also wanted to take photos. When we did the flight over Glacier Bay, he used it to take photos out of his side of the plane and I used the SX50 on my side.

Thanks for reading along! I have gotten so much information from these boards that I want to pay it forward by doing my review!

Nanaimo, BC - continued

On the way back to Nanaimo, we made one stop at the Qualicum Trading Post. A very interesting shop if you are looking for native art. I purchased a small piece of abalone shell that I plan to turn into a necklace.

We were back in Nanaimo earlier than I had expected. I had several other stops that we could have made, but we were happy with our day and ready to "go home" to the Sun.

We dropped off the car at Budget and they shuttled us back to the port. I think this photo of the terminal is interesting with the reflection of the Sun in the windows!

With a couple of free hours before sail away, I tried to finish up the packing. Our bags needed to go out in the hallway before we went to bed and I was still quite a ways from being ready.

It was such a beautiful day that I kept the balcony door open and checked periodically to see if I could see our friends returning. As soon as I would step outside, I would get distracted and forget what I was supposed to be doing!

I had the best time watching a couple of seals (sea lions?) playing right next to the ship.

I was starting to get worried that our friends had lost track of time (which they did) and weren't going to get back to the ship on time. All aboard was at 5:30 pm and at EXACTLY 5:30 pm they walked up the gangway.

Some photos from our sail away from Nanaimo...

"World Beat" was the name of the evening show that the production cast presented in the Stardust Theater...and it was excellent. Great music, great singing, great costumes. I think there were four different production shows during our cruise and all of them were being performed for the first time with the new cast.

I was very confused about the travel logistics of our last night. The distance from Nanaimo to Vancouver is about 50 miles, yet we were leaving at 6 pm and weren't due to dock in Vancouver until 7 am the next morning.

Following the show, we went back to the cabin to enjoy the sunset and then it made sense...we were going in a giant circle! I'm sure they wanted to be "at sea" so the casino could be open, but yet even sailing as slow as possible it wasn't going to take all night to go 50 miles. With binoculars we could SEE Vancouver from where we were!!

I tried to video the sunset, but when you are spinning in circles, the sun keeps disappearing!! I did get some photos however...

And one last photo before darkness sets in. You can see by the curved wake that we were slowly turning.

And because the last moon photo I posted was a little blurry, I will end with one more!

Thank you Arymay, I'm traveling to Alaska on the 23rd and I also have a bridge camera, a Nikon with great zoom, so i'm hoping my pictures come out as beautiful as yours.

Another great trip report!! Thx for taking the time to provide such a detailed photo journal. Please add a link to the Trip Report List.

I particularly enjoyed your stops in and around Nanaimo. Very familiar sights.

For many yrs i've taken the ferry from N Vanc to Nanaimo to spend a week on the Island. Vanc Island is one of my favorite places. It has everything ....sandy beaches, wild beaches, whale watching, bears, and incredible scenery in every direction. Glad you were able to see a small part of it.

Time to finish up this review...

I love lighthouses and my one regret from our first cruise was that I didn't get a decent photo of the Point Atkinson Lighthouse as we sailed out of Vancouver. I didn't really expect to see it on this cruise either because I assumed we would sail by it so early in the morning that I would miss it.

When I woke up and saw daylight was peaking through the curtains I got up and peeked outside. And there it was...the lighthouse!! I grabbed my camera and stood on my balcony in my pajamas and snapped about a million photos hoping I would get at least one that was decent! I will spare you and only post a couple...

The sun was just coming up above the mountains as we were sailing into Vancouver.

The Disney Wonder was close behind...

Sailing under the Lion's Gate Bridge...

Our flight was scheduled to leave out of YVR at 1:05 and I was nervous about getting to the airport, but everything went very smoothly. We chose luggage tags with the earliest time possible for debarkation following those who did self-assist. (I think it was 9:00). We had a bit of a wait for a taxi, but the process was orderly and controlled and we were at the airport in plenty of time. We grabbed a couple of sandwiches from Tim Horton's near our gate and took them onboard for lunch. The in-flight movie was "Hidden Figures" which I had been wanting to see so our time in the air went by quickly.

Having a direct non-stop flight takes away a little bit of the pain of ending a vacation and we were back in Minneapolis shortly before 7 pm local time. Our friends were on the same flight, but were continuing on to their final destination of St. Louis so we said our good-bye's at the gate. It is a little over a three hour drive from Minneapolis to where we live, but our bodies were still on west coast time which made it seem not quite as late as it really was.

I am convinced that Alaska is one of the most beautiful places on earth, but as we enjoyed the sunset on the drive home, I had to admit that our prairie has a beauty all its own!!

And that my folks...is the end. I have been neglecting getting my own blog caught up so now it is time to work on it. Having this review will give me a place to start, but (as always) I will end up adding a bunch more photos and details that I didn't take time to add here.

Thanks to all of you who have commented. It is so nice to know that someone has been reading! I have all of the Freestyle Daily newsletters, but won't take time to scan them since this was a one-time itinerary for the Sun. Please let me know if you have any questions...I would be happy to "try" and answer. (My DH has a much better memory than I do so he might be able to help as well.)

Thank you so much for awesome review!!

I too was wondering about the ship going around in circles and I believe you are right that it might be casino related.

Usually the ship will spend some time circling among the Gulf and San Juan Islands but as soon as they enter US waters on this cruise they would have had to close the casino.

I noticed that they very carefully didn't go down as far as the ferry terminal as the waters just to the south of there are US.

What a lot of people aren't aware of is that when you take the ferry to Victoria you briefly cross into US waters.

I have enjoyed reading your review of this great cruise.

Cheers!

Dennis

Oh...I almost forgot. Here is a link to the video of our last day in port:

I think I posted the links for all of the other videos, but if not, here is the link to the playlist with all of the videos from this cruise. I had fun doing these so am going to make more of an effort to get better video on our next trip and see if I can't improve the quality a bit!!

Just wanted to let folks know that I finally finished all of the posts from our 14-night Alaska cruise on the NCL Sun. Much of it will be the same as this review, but I have added quite a few more photos and a little extra narrative. Here is a link to the beginning of the review and you can link to the other posts from there.

And...yes...I realize that it has taken me over 2 months to get this done! I can't even imagine how far behind I would get if we did a really long cruise. In my dreams I would like to do live blogs like my cruising hero, Pescado Amarillo, but in reality it ain't gonna happen. :rolleyes:

I have been slow about getting this finished up because once I got home, my focus shifted towards where we will be going next! Stay tuned...our next cruise isn't too far into the future!! :D

I loved reading your review and looking at your wonderful pictures. Having just finished my Alaska 3-week review with pictures I know how much time it takes to pull it all together so thanks for taking the time to do that.

Quick question for you, what has been your favorite cruise line to Alaska? After cruising on many myself I find that I like them all with very small differences between them How about you?