My New Blog

Thank you for visiting my brand new blog. I just returned from an 8-night cruise to Alaska aboard the Celebrity Mercury and thought this would be a good place to start. I will be writing about all the different ports over the next few days so keep checking back.

I lived in Southeast Alaska in the mid 90's and didn't know how much I would experience that would be new to me. First of all, a lot changes in eleven years! The towns we visited had grown.

I left Denver on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning to get to Vancouver via Seattle. During the flight to Seattle, the sky was clear and I got an awesome view of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier (yes, that is a picture I took above) from the plane. It was almost as if the pilot was doing a fly-by of Mt Rainier, we were so close. When we were transferring to our little Air Canada Jazz jet, there was not a cloud in the sky.

Upon arriving in Vancouver, going through customs was a challenge. We snaked through a line like we were at DisneyWorld for an hour and didn't even get to go on the Dumbo Ride! Once through customs, we found a taxi and were off to the ship.

The Mercury is an older ship, having it's maiden voyage in 1996. Even so, she is in great condition. Once we got to the pier, we went right to the counter, checked in and walked on the ship. We were greeted with champagne and escorted to our Concierge Class cabin. We had champagne and chocolates awaiting us in our cabin.

As late afternoon approached, we had our mandatory lifeboat drill and then began to sail North. I stayed out on our veranda for a long time watching the coast float by. People were on a bridge that we passed under waving to us as we left.

That night, we had a "White Night" cocktail party in the Navigator lounge that had an amazing array of goodies. There was everything from sushi to chocolate. What a way to set off on this adventure.