Review: Volendam to Alaska! 8/14/13

Here is a wrap-up of my recent cruise on the Volendam, leaving Vancouver on August 14, visiting Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, and Ketchikan. This was our first trip to Alaska, and first time on Holland America. We flew through Seattle because we wanted to spend a little time there after the cruise.

My photos are posted on Flickr:

Getting There: As expected, the worst part of the trip was the loooong day getting to Vancouver. We flew from Charlotte to Chicago to Seattle, then took QuickShuttle to Vancouver. We landed in Seattle, got our luggage, and the QuickShuttle bus arrived a few minutes later. With all the stops, it made for a long ride. And going through Canadian customs was a hassle and a half. Plus the A/C didn't seem to working, and the smell from the onboard restroom was really noticeable. Next time I would probably just fly directly to Vancouver and save Seattle for a separate trip! By the time we got to our hotel, it was about 7:30PM (felt like 10:30 to us), and we were hot, hungry, and tired. We stayed at the Quality Inn (formerly known as/still sort of known as The Inn at False Creek). It was fine, nothing special, but we had a package that included free breakfast and a voucher for a cab ride to Canada Place. There were several places to get dinner in walking distance, but by that time I was past the point of wanting to eat much, so all I got was a bagel & cream cheese from Tim Horton's.

Day One/Embarkation Day: When we checked out, the hotel called us a cab and it was there within seconds, it seemed like. We got to Canada Place a little early, so we were among the first to check in. There was no line, and we sat down in the waiting area until it was time to board. Boarding was quick and easy. By the time we got on the ship it was about 11:30, so this gave us a little time before lunch to check out the ship and for Frank to visit the Eames chairs in the Explorations Cafe.

At noon we went to the Mariners lunch. Even though this was our first time on HAL, we were granted one-star status due to previous cruises on Carnival. It was a nice alternative to the lines/crowds on the Lido.

After lunch, we went to our room, which we loved. I don't remember if anyone remembers my thread before I left about our upsell (which we got, then it was taken back, then we got again), but we were in a Verandah room, and it was awesome, probably the nicest room I've ever had on a cruise. Our luggage was there, so we unpacked and relaxed a little. Spent the rest of the day doing typical stuff like walking around the ship and doing safety drill.

For dinner, we did the poolside salmon bake at sailaway. I think we intended to go to the MDR later, but never got around to it.

That night we played some trivia in the Crow's Nest and attended the Welcome Show.

Great start.

Looking forward to the rest.

Day 2/Inside Passage: We ate all 3 meals in the Rotterdam (MDR) because the Lido was still on Code Orange procedure; it just seemed so crowded up there with long lines for everything. But we really enjoyed the dining room on this cruise. We were always willing to share a table with others, and met so many interesting people. This was one of the friendliest group of passengers I've ever encountered on a cruise! I don't know if that's a HAL thing, or just luck of the draw, but so many great people from all over the world, all ages.

For activities, we attended a "short story club" where we received (not to keep, but to read on the cruise) a book of Alaskan native culture myths and legends. The librarian, Will, read a few out loud and we talked about them, and we were then supposed to read more of them on our own and we'd meet again later on the cruise.

We also attended a presentation by Kelly, the Location Guide, called Fins, Feathers & Fur (or something like that!) about the wildlife of Alaska with tons of awesome photography.

That night was the first formal night.

We went to the Northern Lights Show. All the singers and dancers are talented, of course, but the whole time I couldn't help but thinking I was watching a bad episode of Glee. :p

Looking forward to the rest! What time did you get to the port?

Great to see that you got a good room on the ship. That always adds to the appreciation and enjoyment of any cruise.

Day 3/Juneau

We started our day with breakfast at the Rotterdam. Service was super slow. Later we heard it was because they were expediting all the folks who were getting off the ship to do the Tracy Arm excursion. But eventually we did get to eat, and luckily, since we didn't dock at Juneau until 1, we weren't in a hurry. And we were back at the Rotterdam again soon for lunch, which was being served as we sailed into Juneau, so we had some cool views as we ate.

Our main activity in Juneau was whale watching with Harv & Marv's. We had a great group of 6 on our boat, 4 of us from the ship and another couple we picked up on our way to the marina. Our captain, Russell, seemed to not want to get our hopes up that we would see a lot of whales, but once we got out there, we saw so many whales- orcas and humpbacks. And they came up so close to our boat! It was awesome. (lots of pics on my Flickr page if you're interested). We also saw sea lions, porpoises, and bald eagles. The weather was beautiful. When the van first picked us up, it was gray, and it was even raining when we first got on the boat. But that cleared up quickly and the sun came out. For awhile, I was down to just a t-shirt on the boat!

On the way back, we stopped at Mendenhall Glacier. Some people in our group saw a bear, but I did not.

We got back to the ship a little after 6, and we still wanted to do Mt Roberts Tram (since the weather had cleared and we would get a great view), so we went in for a quick dinner at Lido before heading back out.

We rode up the tram around 7, and it was still light out but not as sunny as it had been earlier. It was pretty quiet up there at this point, which was nice. We saw the movie ("Seeing Daylight", about the Tlingit culture) and went to the gift shop. We walked around on some of trails, but it was starting to get late, so we didn't go all the way up. We missed the eagle that is displayed up there, because he "goes to bed" around 6:30. The views up there were awesome, so it was worth the trip.

We went back down the mountain at around 9. Even though we didn't have to be back on board until 10, most of the shops had already closed and the streets were nearly deserted. We went back to the ship and I waited for us to leave so I could stand out on the balcony and watch us sail away.

Day 4/Skagway:

We ordered room service for breakfast- juice, coffee, pastries, etc.

We docked at Skagway around 9AM. We had booked an excursion through the ship (Ghosts and Goodtime Girls walking tours), but since we were the only 2 who booked the morning time slot, it was cancelled. They tried to move us to the afternoon tour, but that didn't work for us. So instead we spent the morning on out own. We walked into town, spent a lot of time at the National Park Service Visitor Center.

At 11, we did the Red Onion Saloon brothel tour (to make up for what we missed on our cancelled tour), which was really fun, then we stayed and ate lunch there. After lunch, we had to walk back to the dock area to meet our driver from Chilkoot Charters for our White Pass Summit trip. It turned out we were the only 2 who booked this itinerary, as well! But thankfully, Chilkoot Charters did not cancel us- instead we had our own private tour. We did the "bus up, train down" option. We took lots of pictures on the ride up and at the places where the bus stopped. The train ride was really cool, too. There were only about 10 passengers on our train car, so not crowded at all. We were the only ship in Skagway that day.

When we got back to town, we still had some time, so we returned to the NPS visitor center for a movie about the history of the Gold Rush and stopped at the stream where we saw lots of salmon, and some locals were fishing- one guy had just caught a huge King Salmon.

We walked around some more, but most of the shops had already closed. Like in Juneau, I guess for some reason I was expecting the shops' hours would follow a little more closely to the ship schedules, but it's okay...I saved a little money by waiting until the end of the day to do my souvenir shopping. :)

We returned to the ship, ate dinner, and then didn't feel like doing much else. We borrowed a DVD to watch and went to sleep.

Day 2/Inside Passage: SNIP

 

We also attended a presentation by Kelly, the Location Guide, called Fins, Feathers & Fur (or something like that!) about the wildlife of Alaska with tons of awesome photography.. :p

We also attended this presentation on Amsterdam by our location guide Kainoa. I thought that this was something he put together but it appears not. We also enjoyed it.

Day 5/Glacier Bay and my Birthday!

Woke up around 7AM and went to breakfast at Lido. After that, went down to Deck 3 (Promenade) to walk around and see the views. When we started to get cold we went up the Crows' Nest. We also went back to our own balcony to see Margerie Glacier. We could hear the sounds of the glacier breaking up- popping, sounded like gunshots or fireworks, and saw some large chunks break off into the water. Again, lots of photos are on the Flickr page.

For lunch we ate at the poolside salmon bake. After lunch, we attended the park ranger presentation in the Franz Hal lounge. To be honest, he was a little dry, and I saw several people dozing off in the seats around me, and I was having trouble staying awake, myself. After him was William, a Huna Tlingit cultural interpreter, who was a lot more interesting and very cool.

After the talks, we went back to our room. From our balcony, I watched the boat come pick up our park rangers. I still watched to see the scenery, but I was so tired. I got on the lounger under a blanket, and next thing I knew I was taking a nap in Glacier Bay! I woke up a little while later and had gotten cold, so I went back inside to finish napping.

After our nap, we got up and got dressed for second formal night. The waiters sang to me and brought me one of the little birthday cake things. This is the first time I'd had a birthday on a cruise. There were about 4 other birthdays in the MDR that night! Popular day to be born, I guess.

That night we went to see Darcy Oake, a Canadian magician. I don't usually like magicians, but he was pretty entertaining. I'm still trying to figure out how he did the credit card trick! :confused:

Day 6/Ketchikan

We ate breakfast in the Lido, and then went to Part 2 of the Short Stories class. Only one other person from the first class returned, plus 2 new people who were kind of lost, since they hadn't gotten to read the stories.

We got off the ship around 10:30. We had a Duck Tour at 11. It was pretty much what I expected. I enjoyed seeing fishing boats and learning more about Ketchikan. We saw some harbor seals- a mother and 5 or 6 babies.

For lunch, we at at a local place, Annabelle's, right near the dock. It was pricey, but good. I had a crab cake sandwich and clam chowder, which were both delicious.

Next we walked over to Married Man's Trail/Creek Street area. We loved the Coho Soho shop and the Ray Troll art. Frank bought a t-shirt ("If you must smoke, smoke salmon") and we got a bunch of magnets. We toured Dolly's House. It was okay. I preferred the Red Onion in Skagway because it had a live tour guide, whereas Dolly's uses video monitors in each room telling you about it. I would probably only recommend Dolly's if you wanted to see a brothel, but didn't get a chance to do the Red Onion.

From Creek Street, we walked to the SE Alaska Discovery Center, but I was disappointed to find it was closing in 15 minutes (at 3PM). I really wanted to see it, and had no idea it closed that early. Had I known, we would have gone there directly after lunch, and done Creek Street last. By this time it was raining pretty hard and we didn't really have a back-up plan, so we hit some more shops and headed back to the ship early (we didn't have to be back until 5).

We went to the Lido for a snack (bread pudding....yum!) and then to the Crow's Nest for trivia. Then we enjoyed the view as we sailed away from Ketchikan.

That night at dinner we got to the MDR later than our usual time (we had anytime dining), and this was the only night there was enough of a wait that we were given a beeper, but even then, the wait wasn't too bad.

We bought our photos that night. We took lots, but only bought our embarkation photo and our get-off-the-ship photos from Juneau and Skagway. They were really hard-selling the private portrait sessions, but we declined.

We went to the show that night, Rockin' Roadhouse, which I liked better than Northern Lights.

Interesting Aside: In Ketchikan, we were docked next to the ill-fated Celebrity Millennium, which was stuck due to mechanical problems. It was their second day there, and we had a few of their passengers on our Duck Tour. At that point, they were still optimistic that the problems would be fixed and they'd be leaving sometime that day. Of course, they were still there when we left, and once I got back to Internet access, one of the first things I did was come to Cruise Critic to find out what happened to them, and got the rest of the story. I felt so bad for everyone on that ship!

Day 7/Inside Passage:

Our On Location Guide, Kelly, gave a presentation, Exploring Alaska, which talked about the history of Western exploration of Alaska, and settling of the state.

The Mariner's Brunch was very nice. The Captain and Cruise Director were there, and several people received 100 and 200 day medallions, including someone we'd met at lunch on Glacier Bay day. We received our souvenir tiles. There were about 450 Mariners on this sailing.

After that we played trivia. We'd played trivia 3 times before in this cruise, but never won, until today. Which was good because since it was the last day, we won mugs instead of just pins!

Then went to another talk from Kelly, this one about the Gold Rush. It put a lot of information into a short and interesting presentation, although a lot of it we'd already learned in Skagway. I feel like we are very knowledgeable about the Gold Rush after this trip!

We went to the Lido for a mid-day snack (last chance for bread pudding!) and then back to the room to start packing. :( I also sat on the balcony for a bit- it was very sunny out there and even a little hot!

Dinner was the International Gala. Also, some orcas swam up behind the ship during dinner, and almost everyone in the dining room got up and ran to the windows! After dinner we did about 4 laps around the Promenade Deck, which we should have done every night.

Then went back to the Lido for another snack (I just had some fruit- Frank had more, because he hadn't been that happy with his dinner in the MDR and was still hungry). Then we went out to the back of the ship to watch the sunset, went to the hot tub and had one last drink at the Crow's Nest.

great review, we're going in 2 weeks and we booked the early ghosts and good time girls tour. I hope it doesn't get cancelled......

Disembark/Post-Cruise:

Disembarkation was fast and easy, one of the easiest I've ever had. Our QuickShuttle bus arrived around 9AM. The ride was about the same length, but we did not have the same bathroom & A/C issues on this trip, so it wasn't as bad as the trip up. And customs was a lot easier, too.

We arrived in Seattle and had a friend who lives there pick us up at the bus stop. We drove to the Pike's Place Market for lunch. We also got to see the famous fish throwers. Then she dropped us off at our hotel. We stayed at the Renaissance, which is a very nice hotel, but about 6 blocks uphill (very uphill) from the waterfront, and no free wifi, so I probably wouldn't stay there again (we got it on Priceline). We walked down to the Waterfront and did an Argosy Harbor tour, ate dinner at Ivar's Clam Bar (the outside walk-up counter of Ivar's, not the indoor restaurant), and rode the Giant Wheel (big ferris wheel at the waterfront), and made the climb back to the hotel.

Last Day!

We had a flight out at 8:41 that night, so we had a day to spend in Seattle. I think we originally planned to go back to the Market, the original Starbucks, and take the monorail to the Space Needle. But due to where our hotel was located, we ended up doing none of that! We checked out, stored our luggage there and headed the other way, towards Pioneer Square. We stopped at a Starbucks for breakfast- over 100 Starbucks in Seattle and we picked the one where 2 employees called in sick that morning and everyone's orders took forever...LOL.

We did Bill Spiedel's Underground Tour, which was very cool! We got done in time for lunch, and ate at a local sandwich place in the Pioneer Square area called Delicatus. Awesome food and I had a locally made honey cream soda to drink. After lunch we visited Smith Tower, to which it turns out I had historical connections (the original financier, LC Smith, also donated lots of money to Syracuse University, where I went to college), and then did another tour, Subseattle Tour. This was a bus tour around the city, which was good, because by this time I was getting tired and wasn't sure I could handle much more walking. After that tour, back to Starbucks for a quick drink, and then one last trek to our hotel to claim our luggage and get a taxi to Sea-Tac!

We did a red-eye flight that took us to Portland, then Cleveland, and then finally home to Charlotte. We got here around 9AM Friday morning, stopped at the kennel to pick up our dog and come home to take a nap!

It was an awesome trip, and I can't wait to go back to Alaska again someday! If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them if I can.

Thank you for the review.

Very Nice Review. Thanks for taking the time.

Thanks for taking the time to write and post a review of your cruise on the Volendam.

Thanks for the review. It got me excited about our trip to Alaska in 4 weeks. So happy that you had your verandah and were able to enjoy the views from your own cabin.

Nice review......sounds like you had a fun trip.....right up until the red eye....they would have had to roll me off the plane....!!!!

Thank you for your review.

On embarkation day,what time did you arrive at Canada Place to check in ?

I am sure glad your cabin worked out OK after going thru the upgrade that got pulled out from underneath you. You have a great attitude that did not look like it hindered your cruise. Enjoyed your pictures since we are going back to Alaska out of Seattle next year.

Thank you for the review! I'm excited to hear about the Salmon Bakes on board! How did you like HAL compared to your other cruises? I'm really interested in that Ghosts and Goodtime Girls tour. LOL It sounds like a riot! Too bad we aren't going to Skagway on our cruise next year :( Oh well, I suppose you could twist my arm to go to Alaska again. . .

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your review. Delighted to hear you enjoyed your cruise.

welcome home!

Looking forward to the rest! What time did you get to the port?

On embarkation day, what time did you arrive at Canada Place to check in ?

I think we got there around 10:30AM. I knew we were getting there early, but as long as there’s a place to sit, I don’t mind waiting. They also had dispensers of juice and water in the waiting area.

great review, we're going in 2 weeks and we booked the early ghosts and good time girls tour. I hope it doesn't get cancelled......

I hope so too! Even though we got to do the Red Onion on our own, I’m sure the walking tour would have been fun. I guess the more common scenario is to do the bus/train trip in the morning (if you’re doing the 3-4 hour version), and then other things in the afternoon. We did it the other way around.

How did you like HAL compared to your other cruises?

We liked it a lot, but I think when it comes to cruises we are pretty easy to please! We would definitely take HAL again to Alaska, or to one of their more “special” destinations, such as Antarctica. For just the Caribbean or something like that, probably would do Royal Caribbean or Carnival.

I think we got there around 10:30AM. I knew we were getting there early, but as long as there’s a place to sit, I don’t mind waiting. They also had dispensers of juice and water in the waiting area.

Thank you for your reply.