What a fabulous experience! Here, massive glaciers stretch from the ice-draped St. Elias and Fairweather mountain ranges to sit at the end of majestic fjords. Tidewater glaciers are rare in the world. With a perfect recipe of ocean, mountain height and precipitation, Glacier Bay is graced with dozens of them.
It was September of 2009, onboard the Island Princess we arrived at Glacier Bay around 6:00 AM. Not that we were awake at that time, but that was what we were told. By our breakfast time, the scenery around us was already starting to change. Out on deck, we were surrounded by massive snow topped mountain peaks. The Horizon Court where the buffet breakfast was every morning was probably one of the best places to see the view as it was all the way forward on the ship and had big picture windows all around it.
Balcony Stateroom is the Way to Go in Alaska
After breakfast our group met at one of our staterooms to enjoy the view along with some champagne and orange juice. As another couple had balcony staterooms on opposite sides of the ship, we spent most of the morning going back and forth between the two rooms depending on where the best view was at the time.
The captain stopped the ship at Margerie Glacier and then slowly rotated the ship so that everyone on the ship got a really good view of this spectacular glacier. To give you an idea of the size of this glacier, here is a picture of the Carnival Spirit sailing up to this glacier as we sailed away from it.
The Weather
After spending about an hour at Margerie Glacier, the captain then headed the ship towards the John Hopkins Glacier. The weather got progressively warmer as the day went by and, by mid-afternoon, some of us were in shorts and t-shirts while sitting out watching the scenery go by. It was suggested that we should have t-shirts made up that said ‘I got a sunburn at Glacier Bay!’ as a couple of us were definitely a bit ‘red-faced’ by dinner that night.
The rest of the afternoon we spent at a nice little viewing spot we found on Deck 10 all the way forward right below the Bridge. It was a small deck that not many people knew about and we had a clear view of what was ahead!
Formal Night Dinner
Speaking of dinner, that night was our second formal night, the one my husband looked forward to most because it meant they were serving lobster! As expected, the dinner was fabulous. I ordered the lobster and jumbo prawns and so did my husband and then I traded him my lobster for his prawns (I am not a huge fan of lobster!). Dessert for me was warm passion fruit soufflé!
Dinner, the show and then it was time to call it a night again. All that fresh air that day did us in!
Heather Clifton Cruise and Insurance Specialist t: 1-800-565-2784 e: HeatherC@CruiseExpertsTravel.com
