Cruise Day 13 - Nanaimo

Well, visiting Naniamo was pretty much a bust.  Mary searched for attractions and the Harbourfront looked interesting, but after docking we found it was 1 1/2 miles away.  We got off the ship and headed to the visitor center on the dock, only to find it was a 1 mile walk into the city, but we could ride a shuttle for $15/person round trip.  Since we really had no reason to head into town except to walk around a bit, we passed and headed back to the ship, but not before getting this picture taken. 

So today was packing day.  After lunch we got out the suitcases and are 95% packed, with only a few things to add after visiting the dining room tonight.

Dinner was good, featuring Baked Alaska as the dessert. We had a coconut shrimp appetizer, shrimp for Mary's entree and pork tenderloin for me.  

Tomorrow we have a mid-afternoon flight which gets us home after 10pm. So it will be a long travel day as we have to kill about 4 hours at the Seattle airport. 

Since this is a shorter entry, and possibly my last one for this trip, I've added my reflections, below.

Cruise Reflections

In general we found this cruise to be very enjoyable.  It was well paced, with few back-to-back port days and we saw a lot of new places. We had not been to Kodiak since 2010 (could it really be 16 years ago??), and visiting Anchorage from the sea rather than via plane or train was unique. Those factors plus three new ports and sailing the Inside Passage, made this cruise a lot different from our 5 prior Alaska cruises.

It was also our second time on Holland-America.  We learned that HAL is not Princess, and that can be a good thing.  We enjoyed the entertainment, the smaller ship, a super unique itinerary that no other cruise line offers, the ease of moving around on the ship (after the first few days, of course!), and the food was good.  Of course the small-ish cabin and unusual storage space was an issue, but we adapted.  The crew was very friendly and engaging and we had excellent cabin stewards.  We did laugh about their deck naming convention: Lower Promenade Deck, Promenade Desk and Upper Promenade desk, followed by three similarly named Veranda decks but whatever floats your boat!  LOL  So nothing that would keep us from booking HAL in the future. 

Early on the shore excursion process was a bit rough, but it got better as the cruise progressed. The two tender ports proved challenging.  But our excursions ran pretty much on time and only 1 time did we have to wait due to a late returning shore excursion. It was great seeing the glaciers, whales, and bears once again.