arctickitty

Hello everyone, I have been waiting for a rainy day to write this report. While there have been plenty of rainy days, there hasn't been one when I wasn't working or doing chores or somesuch. I traveled with my husband (we are in our thirties) and his parents (post-retirement age). We traveled this way because I have a medical condition that makes life logistically complicated but otherwise doesn't slow me down, and also because we were tired of visiting our relatives in their boring civilized suburbs. This was the third cruise for each of us, but our first time traveling together. I promise readers an odd assortment of details and a different perspective on many things.

The cruise started on Friday, April 22nd, but my trip several days earlier due to the complicated transportation logistics involved in departing from my island. Our island only has flights on Sundays and Thursdays. As it is impossible to get from our island to Florida on commercial flights from a Thursday to a Friday, Sunday was our day.

Sunday April 17th

Our island is the western most municipality in the United States and the southernmost in Alaska. We are the smallest community served by AlaskaAir and the smallest in Alaska to have a TSA checkpoint. Our day started like many other Sundays, as a workday for both of us, with the added layers of details related to leaving on this trip. We both work at the airport and were both scheduled to work prior to hopping on the jet. We had shifts that were normal for our two different positions, except that we had to have co-workers do some tasks for us related to our tickets as we cannot check ourselves in or screen our own luggage (for example). Right before boarding, a friend stopped by the airport to pick up my uniform and we went through security, at which point the xray machine went down. And didn't come back up. And our island, being such a small community, only has one such xray machine. So a different procedure had to be utilized and every tiniest thing in my carryon so neatly packed full of tiny things was absolutely dissected. My husband boarded in his uniform, which he left with a co-worker in Anchorage, our first stop, which we reached about 3 hours later. I usually love flying AlaskaAir but I was discombobulated from my carryon bits being a mess. I was also under a lot of pressure to complete so horrendously boring paperwork for one of my other jobs, and continued to procrastinate about it. Upon arrival in Anchorage, we picked up our luggage and a very fast shuttle to our hotel, Home2 Suites, in midtown Anchorage. We chose this hotel because they offered a points & dollars promotion that used up some stray Hilton points and brought the price down to what we would pay if we'd stayed in a hostel. Instead we had maid service, a king sized bed, a private bathroom, and a kitchen.

Monday, April 18th

After hotel breakfast we walked to the eye doctor. What an exciting start to a vacation! Yippee! Remember, we live in Alaska. So when we go to Anchorage, we do lots of boring, normal things that many people take for granted, that we cannot do at home. Anyway, we were trying a new eye doctor, and they got our thumbs up. They have a paperless office! You fill out your forms on a laminated card they scan into your file. Then they wipe it clean for the next person. They also had some device that mapped our eyeballs so that we didn't have to have to get our pupils dilated. Afterwards, we walked to the midtown Fred Meyer to pick up some fresh food for our short stay in Anchorage. This is when things got really exciting...really...because they were having a special promotion called "A Taste of Spain." Prior to this moment, we had never seen Spanish food advertised in Alaska. We got a paella kit, fresh veggies, and mix for Crema Catalana, that we later cooked in our hotel room. The room has a sink, dishwasher, microwave, and 5/6 size fridge, and the front desk loans out convection cook tops and pots and pans. We bought the #1 vegetable we cannot get on our island: eggplant. It was scrumptious.

Throughout the afternoon, I had some teleconferences for one of my jobs and possibly started on my paperwork, while we worked on our "trip to do list" and "internet to do list." When you live on an island with very expensive, very limited internet, you maintain an "internet to do list" of all the things you want to do online when you get to the mainland. We enjoyed the saline swimming pool and very nice gym at our hotel.

Tuesday, April 19th

Tuesday was a blur of working on our to-do lists, packing up, and camping out. We negotiated for a slightly late check out, put our luggage in hotel storage, and spent most of the afternoon parked in their lobby/work space area. This is when I finally started doing my paperwork, having finally found my concentration for it. Meanwhile my loving husband did laundry. I have a medical condition that creates a lot of laundry so we have learned to do it whenever we get the chance. (To recap, our vacation so far we have: gone to the doctor, gone grocery shopping, done work, and done laundry). My husband wasn't the happiest husband, but we had the possibly nutty idea to go back to Fred Meyer (grocery store) and buy a lot of Spanish food, and buy a big plastic storage tote, and then walk it to the post office and mail it home. We kept thinking, nah, that is too much work, or nah, that is too nutty. But at 4pm we found ourselves heading into Fred Meyer, with a strategy to buy and fill a tub and haul it to the PO prior to closing at 5pm. Shopping went very quick, and we even remembered to buy packing tape to seal up the tub, but my husband picked a very slow cashier. I had a premonition that he'd picked a very slow cashier and I didn't want my husband to say I was being picky if I suggested a different line, so we just had to wait in line and find out that I can spot a very slow cashier when I see one. Anyway, I thought we should take the shopping cart all the way to the Post Office, and then bring it back, but husband said absolutely not, so we carried the tote, taking turns, sometimes together, either way with frequent stops, about 1 mile to the Post Office. I had work paperwork to mail, too, and we realized we didn't have a marker to write our address on the tote. Fortunately the clerk let us borrow one from her. So at this point if you are wondering about "can they really mail groceries in a plastic tote?" the answer is

"yes you can!" In Alaska we call plastic totes "bush luggage." We called a friend to arrange for her to pick it up when it got to the Post Office on our island, to keep it safe from rats. In return, we told her she could take an item out of said tote.

We still had many hours until our red-eye flight (whose genius idea was that?) and decided that the best use of our time was to stop in Lowe's on the way back to our hotel. While there, we looked a lots and lots of boring things (my opinion of 95% of Lowes' stock) but came to some major design "ahas" namely that I like the idea of a castle door but its crazy expensive and my husband's idea to tile a living room is actually a good one. We meandered back to our hotel, got our luggage, including our damp laundry (lots of things cannot go in the dryer) and rode the shuttle to the airport.

Spoiled brats that we are, we wheeled up to the MVP Gold desk to check in and had a first time occurrence "I'm sorry, you're too early to check in." So we stood to the side and waited 30 minutes and then tried again, just a few minutes after the appropriate amount of time had passed. We went through security, with my husband enjoying his first time through PreCheck, and me having some sort of adventure, because I always have an adventure going through TSA, but because I have so many of said adventures, I can't remember which one I had on Tuesday, April 19th.

Next, we headed to the AlaskaAir Board Room, which is further proof to my parents (and perhaps others) that I am hopelessly irresponsible with my money, because I have a membership. This was why we wanted to come to the airport early--so we could have "free" dinner. They always have such lovely salad with spinach (spinach is the #2 vegetable that is the hardest to get on our island) with grape tomatoes. I fly so much that not only is the salad in the AlaskaAir Board room one of my most dependable sources of vegetables, but that the price per visit in my first year of membership averaged well below $5. I tuned out & plugged in and became amazingly productive while we waited for midnight.

To be continued...

As mentioned, there are some walking trails right near the dock in ISP. I enjoyed the walk to town: nice paved walkway with locally carved benches. I picked up a town walking map. There is a scattering of interpetaive signs.

thanks for posting your review

thanks for sharing your perspective

I love the Anchorage museum downtown.

Thanks for the answers

Questions...looked on Princess website and searched CC but still have questions. Thanks for your post...

-Are cabanas just for 2? Or could 4 adults traveling together share one?

-The $3 per person per delivery charge... does that mean a charge for each item? Or if you order 3 apps at once, one charge?

-Do you book it upon boarding or the morning of? I've seen different posts on here

-Is there a fee for afternoon tea?

Thanks everyone!

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Sitting on my chair, I was unable to see the water because my view consisted of endless blue clam shells.

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Thanks to the OP for posting the picture of the clamshells. Being an Alaskan, I'be had no idea what they were when mentioned on these boards. The set up on the beach looks hideous.

I personally would rather get on as soon as possible whether or not cabins were ready.

thanks for posting this update

thanks for responding

Thanks everyone for all your tips! Keep the little details coming...

thanks for sharing

Croozen, thank you for posting your reviews. It is a different topic than I typically read here on CC and it was neat the read about the inside world of the kids clubs.

The area everyone mentioned just south of Anchorage to see Beluga whales is...drumroll please...Beluga Point. That's what came to mind for me regarding where to see them. I have seen them in Anchorage (in a home in a development in South Anchorage that had a view of Cook Inlet) but they are closer-up at Beluga Point. Other place I've seen them is in various arctic villages during spring beluga hunting. Very important food source to some, but that's probably not what your daughter is looking for.

I would think it is more of a question of how outside your norm are the activities you plan to do? If the pregnant lady in question is a couch potato then maybe strenuous hiking is not a good idea. But if she's a marathon runner then no sweat.

Here is an article about an 8 month old Alaskan woman who bagged herself a moose:

http://www.adn.com/article/20140920/homer-woman-more-8-months-pregnant-bags-moose

I also vote for DIY in Kodiak...the downtown area is small and walkable and overall you want to be flexible for weather.

As other posters said, check with the car company and the hotel but my personal experience flying into Fairbanks is that when there are major flights, car rentals are open. However, the last few times I've stayed at the SpringHill if you wanted a shuttle BACK to the airport, it was only on the hour, with a reservation. So if you wanted to go at 7:30 no can do.

Hello,

I am looking for information on options for visiting Els Calderers on Mallorca, from the port in Palma. Our port is on Friday, May 6th 8am to 4:30pm and I am wondering if anyone knows about tour companies that might go there or the feasibility for DIY. At first glance it looks fairly rural with very general directions on their website and several google searches did not pull up any group options. We are waitlisted on a Princess tour to this site. Anyone have any experience visiting Els Calderers from Palma?

thanks,

Carrie

I too was confused by these emails...was looking for the brunch menu and found only Mexican Riviera info.

thanks so much for your very detailed review!

really enjoying reading this--thanks for posting.

thanks for posting

keep it coming!

thanks so much for posting your review

Thanks so much for posting your review.