Alaska: Juneau

This May I went on my first cruise with my family! We did the 7-day interior passage through Alaska on Holland America and our cruise ship was the Nieuw Amsterdam.

My family and I explored the ship. Actually, we boarded early at noon to take advantage of the unlimited food before we departed. That was on the 9th floor at the Lido market – buffet style.

We paid for the 7-day private thermal suite pass in the spa, which comes with a heated Jacuzzi and massage pool and thermal heat chairs. Only 120 passengers are allowed to use the thermal suite, so it’s nice and private and you don’t have to share a giant pool with 4,000 other passengers.

On the cruise, the main dining hall and the Lido market are unlimited food, but there are 3 restaurants where you still have to pay.
We had dinner at one of the restaurants on the ship, the Tamarind. The Tamarind is asian-style food but it’s on the very top floor so it had a lovely bar with lounge chairs. The course meal came to around $30-40 USD per person and came with an appetizer, main and dessert.

We had breakfast next day in the dining hall on the second floor, which was fancier than the Lido Market with red and white flowers and tablecloths. There were servers assigned to each table and you are assigned to a table per room number.

We arrived at Juneau after 1.5 full days at sea. There was no snow in Juneau but it was cold – you’ll do fine with a fleece leggings, a thick sweater and a winter jacket (no need for ski jackets).

We took a bus to see the Mendenhall Glacier, a 13-mile-long glacier that has slowly been melting over the years.

If you take a short 20 minute trail closer to the glacier, you’ll also come face to face with Nugget Falls, which is probably one of the best names for a waterfall in this world.

For dinner, we went to Tracy’s King Crab Shack and ordered their buckets of king crab – simply boiled with butter. They came with coleslaw and some bread, and we ordered some crab chowder too. The crab was so sweet and the gerth was huge. We became savages with our little plastic tools and finished 2 whole buckets between the 7 of us.

We stayed in Juneau for around 9 hours until we boarded back onto the Nieuw Amsterdam in the evening to head off to our next stop. I think the best part of Juneau, aside from the delicious king crab, was that I finally had wifi.

Sincerely, Loewe