Hullo friends,
I am a first-time cruiser and earnestly request some advice from you
experienced folks. I have spent the last few hours/days browsing the
net learning abt cruising options for alaska -- and realized I needed
some help .
Introductions first! My name is Ashish - located in san franscisco and
I'm planning to visit Alaska for a 14-day vacation between 25th June - 9th July
flexible +/- one week - with my parents (senior citizens).
Here is what I am planning roughly - to fly into seattle and take a 6-7
day cruise aboard one of the smaller ships that takes me through the
inside passage. We are huge on sights and less on adventure/confirt-frills.
The comforts of cruise - dining, wining , roulette are complete non-issues for us -- we dont care abt that -- my only two concerns are : enjoying NATURAL BEAUTY and
COST.
The idea is to use the remaining week to rent a car/RV and view inland Alaska
by road. Denali/Fairbanks.. maybe use the train.
Here is the information I request your help with :
1. Instead of the 7-day cruise from seattle - juneau (or thereabouts) would you
recommend using the "Alaska Marine Highway" ? Does it offer similar sights ?
Would you suggest flying into mainland alaska and using local operators for
2-3 day cruises from ports in alaska that take us out to the glaciers and whale-watching ?
Frankly those are the two things we are REALLY interested in for the cruise!
2. If the one-way cruise is the thing to do - could you point me to URL's /
resources / maybe your recommendation for travel-agent / cruise-lines.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have been wanting to go to alaska for a long time and I am sure I'll
have a great time regardless of the choices I make. I just want to showcase
the beauty of the state to my parents ( who are flying in from Asia!!) and at
the same time not be easy meat to tour-operators who take multiple
thousands from me for frills that we are not interested in.
Eagerly hoping for a response.
Thanks,
Ashish
