Seas2mountains

Here is the intended post. We loved the water taxi to Granville Island as suggested by @YVRteacher. After walking around the market area which had so many yummy food options, we were hungry but wanted a sit down restaurant and seafood. We walked over to The Sandbar restaurant. I highly recommend it for the excellent food, view and service. I got the Brussel sprouts as an appetizer followed by Arctic Char with broccolini and peppers and they were all delicious. My husband got a cup of clam chowder followed by a salmon burger with a Caesar salad. He really liked his food, too. Mine was supposed to come with coconut rice or mashed potatoes but I asked for extra veggies instead. I thought the fruit stacked like that in the market was really neat. The market reminded me of Pikes Place market in Seattle but the market on Granville Island seemed cleaner and well organized.

We loved the water taxi to Granville Island as suggested by @YVRteacher. After walking around the market area which reminded us of being a week-by week , he can comer

We saw the Lee’s doughnuts and were so tempted. This time of year is when we both go for our annual physicals with our doctors. Our goal is to avoid being pre-diabetic or diabetic. I am happy to report my A1Cs are lower than last year despite all the recent cruises and the pre diabetic results are lower than last year. They look and smell sooooooo good!

Thank you so much for these wonderful suggestions! We did use the water taxi to go to Granville Island and were super impressed by the experience. The donuts looked amazing! I really love Vancouver and am excited to return in the future. We did not make it to the restaurants you suggested but will put those on the list for future visits.

Yes, I agree and I do feel bad it is heavy. But I also think the people who handle heavy bags for a job/career know what they are getting into much like I did when I was in the Army and had to carry very heavy rucksacks and equipment. It’s likely I won’t use all clothing items I used but I’m not yet regretting it but was also surprised at how much it weighed compared to a cruise a few weeks ago from Miami. Maybe it was the hiking boots, jeans, sweaters, fleece jackets and full size toiletries. Thank you for your past and current suggestions about the Spirit. It is appreciated!

We are in Vancouver! Our flight arrived almost 30 minutes early and there were very short lines to clear customs. Vancouver airport is nice and I consider it to be one of the easier airports to navigate. There can be a lot of walking in our home airport and here. We are at over 6,000 steps today just getting through both airports. it was a short walk to find a taxi for C$34 before tip which was about the same price quoted for Uber. It was no problem to pay by credit card. If you use Uber or Lyft, the pick-up area was close to the taxi line. When we got to the taxi, we warned the driver that my bag was heavy and my sweet husband always offers to put our bags in the taxi or Uber. The taxi driver said he prefers to put the bags in himself and has learned good lifting techniques to use his upper body and save his back. Our driver was very friendly and pointed out some neat looking buildings and suggested places to visit today. We were able to check in early to our hotel room when we arrived about 10:20am. I’ll post photos tomorrow. Time to explore the city!

Bags are checked and we are at the gate waiting to board. Thankfully, we can check up to 70 lbs with no additional fees. Yikes! I tend to have bags under 50 lbs when on warm weather cruises.

@YVRteacher Do you have any recommendations for Vancouver? We will stay at a hotel near Cooper’s Park.

I’m excited to read about your experience and the opportunity to “stay” in Alaska through your live review! I hope you have a wonderful cruise!!!

Thank you for doing a live review! We will sail away on the Spirit to Alaska in a few days. As we have cruised with our granddaughter and used Splash Academy, has it filled at any time when Fox tried to drop off the cub? When we were on the Escape and tried to drop her off at 9pm one night, it was full. They asked us to send a message on the app and they would let us know when there was availability. We got a message at about 9:10pm to let us know there was availability. Has the fox had any issues with the cub when trying to drop off at Splash Academy?

Thank you! We have been hoping/praying/wishing for a B2B of 14 days or more and everything aligned just right for us to take advantage of this opportunity.

Thank you! I am excited to read your review when I get off the Spirit! I’ll be sure to provide updates. I hope you have a wonderful vacation!

Sounds great. I think you will love the Kenai Fjords tour. I also have not been to Whittier. The train ride is always so scenic. If you have trouble posting photos and would like to, let me know and I may be able to find you on the ship as I can show you how I post photos to CC from my iPhone.

Thank you so much! You are so kind! I love your reviews and hope you and your husband will choose to cruise again soon just so I can read your entertaining and funny reviews. You have an amazing way of pointing out such funny things that happen on a cruise.

@bluesea777 Thank you so much for your additional comments and recommendations to add to @YVRteacher recommendations! These are greatly appreciated! We do have the whale watching and marine mammals excursion booked now for our first stop at ISP. I will go to the shore excursion desk to see if the one you mentioned is available for us to make a change or to book for our second stop. Since ISP was recently added as a stop for the second cruise, there currently are not any excursions available to book online as of today. We also had a great experience with Major Marine but did the 6 hour tour. Seward is my favorite cruise port in North America - so far.

Thank you! Yes, I hope to get to “stay” on the ship through your review. We arrive in Vancouver tomorrow around 10am and hope to be at our downtown hotel by 11:30am.

If anyone is on either sailing and wants to post their own experience or photos to this live review - please feel free to do so. I know @quack2 has posted that they are on the June 21st sailing.

I do plan to post photos of the dailies and the pdf download as was requested when I did a live on the Escape but I could not figure out where my phone saved the download. I have now figured that out and will plan to add those as technology and wifi speeds allow.

We are booked in a balcony cabin but did not book this until mid-May. The prices on the Spirit have been stable but did come down enough where we are able to do the back-to-back on two cruises for the amount we have sometimes paid for one week in a Club Balcony Suite. The only bummer is that this great deal meant we got a guaranteed balcony but were not able to pick the cabin. For us, this means we do have to change balcony cabins between cruises but both are on deck 10. We did try calling more than once to ask nicely if we could keep the same cabin but were reminded that the great rate we got meant they picked the cabin and would not change it. We do get that and have accepted it but may ask at guest services when we board if there are any cabins available for both sailings - just in case anyone has canceled. We do have a BB category for both sailings. I will post photos after we embark. It looks like both of our cabins accommodate 2 passengers so we are bit bummed that it only has a chair for one person and not a sofa with sofa bed like they apparently have in the cabins that accommodate 3 passengers. Oh well. We do appreciate the rate that we paid. These cabins do seem smaller than the Club Balcony Suites.

Our cruise like all others on the Spirit starting with the cruise on 06/14/23 is impacted by the cancelation of the Valdez port stop which was new to NCL this year and was a part of why we selected this cruise as we had not ever had a stop at this port. Here is info on how we found out about this cancelation. It did unfortunately take NCL a bit of time to notify us of this change. It is now fixed in the app and we were able to book an excursion for Sitka and already had one booked for the first cruise in Icy Strait Point. I'm a bit embarrassed but grateful that @YVRteacher kindly pointed out that I kept spelling Icy Strait Point incorrectly throughout the post. I must say that her comment made me realize that I didn't even think of the geographic term of "Strait" referring to it connecting two bodies of water until she wrote that comment.

Here are some Hubbard Glacier photos from last summer along with a waterfall near the glacier. On this cruise, we are lucky and we do get to go there twice on this cruise. The clear blue skies were such a nice bonus and the photos do not capture how beautiful it is to be in the area. We do like Glacier Bay National Park with the rangers and the itineraries that include Endicott Arm but found they tend to have to stop and turn around a bit early compared to the other glaciers. We do like all the calving action that seems to occur at Hubbard and the sounds of the calving are quite spectacular, too.

During the summer, I tend to keep a tab in the web browser for the live bridge cameras for the Jewel and now the Spirit on my phone and computer to see where they are located and notice how light it is in Alaska when it is night time at home. You can see where we are live from this live view which updates about every few minutes or so. I wish it could update more often. https://www.cruisingearth.com/ship-webcams/norwegian-cruise-line/norwegian-spirit/

Here are the itineraries for each cruise.

My husband and I were very fortunate to be able to take this additional time off this month after spending a week on the NCL Escape at the end of May/beginning of June with our now 8 year old granddaughter and our oldest son and his fiancée (Granddaughter's uncle and soon-to-be aunt). We all had a wonderful time! My husband and I are so excited to get to the cooler weather and the beautiful scenery of Alaska. We hear the Spirit is a great ship and a favorite for those who have had a chance to experience it. For this cruise, we will be back to cruising as a couple with no other family members and we are excited to get to follow our own schedule which includes trivia. Somehow, we did not make it to a single trivia event on the Escape and we love trivia even though we don't win very often. Our first ever NCL cruise was from Seward to Vancouver in June 2015 on NCL Sun and this will now be our sixth and seventh NCL Alaska cruise as we went back in 2017, 2019, 2021 (the second NCL restart on the Encore) and again last year in 2022. We've done Seattle round trips, Seward to Vancouver and Vancouver to Seward. I did go on a HAL Alaska cruise in 2007. I'll post some itineraries but want to add some photos from the cruise in 2022 where we went on a Major Marine tour in Seward before embarking on the Jewel. I highly recommend this tour. It was the 6 Hour Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise. My husband got better camera shots of the whales breaching and I can't seem to find those at the moment.

I'm really sorry to hear that. We embark on June 21st. How is the cruise so far?