Another Adventure Starts

On August 16 we board the Crystal Serenity for a 32 day cruise around the north coast of Canada! There are a lot of sea days since there are few communities in that part of the world, so I will have a lot of time to blog. After the cruise we are doing a road trip to visit with friends and family, even attending a wedding. Packing is interesting. It will be cold in Canada, possibly warm back east. We will need to be prepared for anything. Crystal is providing a warm parka so we don't need to use precious space for jackets. We will be doing wet landings so water proof boots are a must. We are renting them so we don't have to lug those around. But there is also long underwear, hand and foot warmers, scarves, gloves, etc. It is a lot to take. We leave in a week, on August 13. We will spend 2 nights in Anchorage before boarding the ship in Seward. We have been planning this for a year. Nice that it is finally happening.

Sailing on Crystal will definitely be a new experience. We loved the itinerary so decided to do this even though it is the most expensive cruise we have ever been on....by far. But since it is all inclusive, we can each get 2 bottles of wine per day, so maybe it's worth it....NOT! It should be very nice though. From reading the thread on Cruise Critic it appears that there will be a lot of first time Crystal cruisers. It will be strange boarding a ship on which we know no one. On Holland America we can't go anywhere without knowing someone, passenger or crew! And of course we will miss our free laundry on HAL a LOT.

There are 3 ports in Canada and 3 in Greenland. We have been to Greenland before but 2 different ports so this worked out well. We also visit Dutch Harbor where I'd wanted to go when we did Alaska a few years back. It was just too long of a ferry ride. We also visit Nome. Back to the USA we will see Bar Harbor, Boston, Newport and New York City. Back to packing.