Day two of our Holland America Koningsdam cruise to Alaska was spent at sea. We’d sailed out of Vancouver the day before and we’d gone to bed early so we were awake stupidly early the following morning. It wasn’t our fault. Go back and read about our flight to Vancouver and just how long we’d been travelling to get to Canada. Did I mention we’re old? I do that occasionally but I forget how often on account of the oldness factor.

We headed towards the buffet to get breakfast but then diverted on the way as we’d heard about the New York Deli overlooking the pool area and figured that a new ship with new features would give us a chance to do something new. This was a nice, quiet spot and we ended up having breakfast here every morning to avoid the search for seats in the main buffet. On this morning we ordered some breakfast bagels but during the week we favoured Eggs Benedict more often than not.

Time then for us to get our bearings on Koningsdam and also give our room steward plenty of time to clean our cabin. We started with the top deck space which featured a running track, a few typical activity areas including the ubiquitous shuffleboard area, and views out to sea. It was quiet because it was overcast and cool – we were on our way towards Alaska, after all – but there wasn’t a great sense that the top deck offered much space for the typical sun bather in better conditions.

At the aft was the swimming pool and seating around which we’d sat and enjoyed a little of the sail away from Vancouver with fellow passengers the day before. This gave us another chance to ponder about that green colour of the pool tiling and the overall effect it made. We’re used to blue pools. Blue pools feel normal. Green pools feel like blue pools have had some yellow added to them. That conjures up unpleasant imagery. Green pools feel wrong.

The staircase leading down to the aft pool featured a little glass floor panel in it. Not as large as the SeaWalk you might find on Royal-class Princess ships, but always a nice thing to see or to watch other passengers panic over.

Cruise fans love an aft view.

Some ships have lovely promenade deck spaces. Koningsdam did not, unless your idea of lovely is views of the sea blocked by lifeboats. Perhaps it looks more spectacular during an emergency when everyone is abandoning ship.

After exploring the outside spaces we then headed inside. It was either that or swim out to sea and cruise lines don’t like it when you do that. After a quick peek at the World Stage theatre spot we took advantage of there being nobody around to grab some photos of the dining room. We’d eaten there the evening before but hadn’t really been in any fit state to take it all in. The two-tier layout was very nice and we particularly liked the curved beams that felt like they could have been the skeletal structure of some great leviathan.

We popped into the Pinnacle Grill to get a feel for the space. We’d actually be dining there this evening as we’d booked this cruise with a deal that included a speciality dining for free and had pre-booked the meal.

All that really left was a quick look at the music area and some of the artwork around this deck space. With very few other people around at this time of day none of it really popped with life and none of it really wowed. In fact, we’d discovered that the general layout of Koningsdam wasn’t built around any central element that you see on other ships; no big atrium area; no main lounge in which to gather. What we’d come to realise very quickly on this week with them, though, was that Holland America put more effort into providing good service and good quality entertainment and food, and didn’t worry themselves too much with glitzy, showy, Instagram-worthy spots. A good, distinguishing point for a cruise line to make.

We got a message from friends aboard to ask if we wanted to meet up with them for lunch in the dining room and that sounded like a lovely idea so we did just that. With Paul and Carole, who we knew already and had cruised with before a few times, were Jill and Jerry (the Cruising Canucks), and we’d all hang out a lot during this week, particularly in the evenings. We chatted about our journeys to get to the ship as we’d all come different ways and we had a very nice lunch.

After lunch we took part in some trivia and won. Holland America Line cruise pins – not actually related to the cruise we were on – were prizes throughout the week and we’d end up with a few of these things over the course of our time on Koningsdam.

When we returned to our cabin in the afternoon we discovered a Holland America Line tote bag, chocolates, and a towel animal; all very welcome sights to walk in on.

We did a bit of reading and relaxing on our balcony, enjoying the gentle sea and landscape views we were passing. With Koningsdam’s arguably poor outside spaces both on the top deck and promenade deck this reinforced the importance of a balcony for us, especially on an Alaskan cruise with its high priority on nature.

As already mentioned, we’d a reservation at the Pinnacle Grill on this first sea day, and below you can see photos of the food we ordered at Koningsdam’s steakhouse. I also already mentioned that Holland America prided itself on the quality of their food and their superior service, and that’s… not quite true in this case. The food was very good, that’s true, but we had issues with the service. Upon finishing our starter the plates were removed and immediately replaced with the next course. Upon finishing our mains the plates were removed and immediately replaced with the next course. The courses could only have been delivered quicker if they’d been fired at us by cannon from the kitchen. Speciality dining should be about savouring the dishes at a pace not set by Usain Bolt.

We would visit another speciality dining venue at the end of the week with Paul, Carole, Jill, and Jerry, and we’d also not be thoroughly impressed with the overall service, but these would be the only glitches to report.

The evening was spent enjoying some of the live music aboard, having some drinks, then watching as the ship got very quiet very quickly with everyone heading off to bed for early nights so as not to miss any of the sights of Alaska they would be treated to. We were feeling more our normal night-people self and would have been happy enough to enjoy some late night disco somewhere if there’d been one. There wasn’t, though, so we got an early night for us too.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive in our first Alaskan port of call, Juneau.

We were invited to Paul and Carole‘s suite – yes, suite; they’re big-spenders on occasion – to have a nose at it and admire the views from the large balcony on two sides, and we were offered the chance to stay there for the full sail into port but declined so that we could set up on our own balcony instead.

Two other ships were already docked alongside. One was another in the Holland America Line fleet, Eurodam, and the other was a ship we’d cruised on many years before, Royal Princess. HAL tend to get the best berth spots in Alaska, though, and that was the case here as our ship cruised past the Princess vessel and drew up nearer the city centre.

Juneau is the capital of Alaska, becoming so in 1906, and takes its name from that of a French-Canadian gold prospector. With the terrain around the city being so mountainous, Juneau is effectively an island city in terms of road connections to the surrounding land. What we mostly noticed on our final approach to the dock was the eclectic range of buildings in terms of size and colour, and there was a clear frontier look to most of them reminiscent of movies of westerns genre. We couldn’t really tell if these were authentic, original looks or the sort of thing you’d find in theme park recreations, though. Still, if you’re visiting Alaska then you’re likely there to see what nature has to show rather than what town builders have thrown up.

There was no point rushing to disembark until clearance had been given so we waited until we started to see a steady stream of passengers from our cruise ship heading ashore.

We’d booked an excursion for our day in Juneau – well, we’d booked one for every port on this cruise – but we had time to have a short look around the city before that started. Heading ashore the first thing we did was hunt down where we’d need to meet for our planned trip.

There were a number of places where it was possible to book trips near to where the ships dock but if I were in an advice-giving mood – and I am – then I would strongly consider booking whatever the cruise line offers if there’s a particular type of excursion you’re keen to do. The reason for this isn’t value for money, because let me assure you that these excursions were not cheap through the cruise line (and I don’t know how much of a saving you’d get direct on land), but because they sell out quickly, especially if you’ve got a few cruise ships in at once. And you almost always will do.

We’d pre-booked a trip, and our friends Paul and Carole had done so as well (and an almost identical trip, as it happens), but the other cruise bloggers we’d met on Koningsdam had decided to see what they could get at the port, and were ultimately left disappointed that all the whale-watching options while our ship was in port were sold out.

Things you can expect to see on a cruise to Alaska include fabulous landscapes like that above, and totems like those below carved by the indigenous people, the Tlingit, and there will be more about those totems and the tribes in a later post in this cruise travelogue series when we see more of them close-up on another excursion.

While we’d stopped to take a photo of one of the totems a local man who was sat at a bench nearby called out for my attention, then pointed at the metal bridge structure mounted between the two Holland America cruise ships in port. It was something else that you can likely expect to see in Alaska, but which, being a wild animal, you can’t necessarily guarantee spotting: a bald eagle. A symbol of America, of course, alongside a rapid descent into fascism, and Alaska’s largest bird of prey, and we were incredibly pleased to see one within minutes of being on land.

As it would turn out, by the end of the day we’d see dozens more bald eagles, and over the course of the cruise perhaps over fifty. We still absolutely loved spotting them gliding through the air no matter how many times we caught sight of them.

We had time for a little more wandering past the shops – Do you want something in tanzanite? No? How about some gold? What about gold and tanzanite together? Well, sorry we couldn’t tempt you, but don’t worry if you change your mind because we’re absolutely everywhere in Alaska – and past the famous Red Dog Saloon too. This establishment is the oldest of its kind in Juneau although the building itself was only moved to its present location in the 1980s. We considered visiting even though it looked a little bit of a tourist trap and rammed, but we’d spotted something more to our taste anyway so gave it a miss.

Where we ended up ahead of our excursion, instead, was at the Alaskan Brewing Public House. Anyone who knows us knows that we like craft ales and ciders, and that we always try to seek out locally-brewed drinks when we travel, preferring to experience them than simply the same old stuff you can get anywhere else. We treated ourselves to a pint each, and my wife bought a t-shirt too because that’s something she likes to do at breweries in addition to drinking. We didn’t actually realise until we were back on the ship in the evening that some of the beers were available aboard, but we’d still have visited the brewery’s pub regardless because that’s just something we do.

It was time to head to our meeting point for the excursion now so we made our way there and spotted a couple of pieces of public artwork on the way. Both showed symbolism associated with the Tlingit. The raven and the eagle are the two moeities into one of which indigenous people are born and are expected to marry those from the other.

In the next post in this Alaskan cruise series we’ll head off on the first part of our excursion in Juneau when we hike through the woods to the Mendenhall Glacier.

Cruise ships typically take on park rangers to provide commentary and answer questions when they visit Glacier Bay, and Koningsdam was no exception, but we mostly kept to our balcony for the hours of cruising and admiring the landscape so missed out on most of that. A viewing deck at the fore of the ship was also opened up and we did head down there for a little while but it was very exposed, occasional drizzle would fall, and even if the speed of the ship was very low and the wind was not strong either, what wind there was carried with it the chilled temperature of all that ice in the area. At least on our balcony we could pop back into the room every so often to warm up.

By far the highlight of all the sights was getting to witness part of Margerie Glacier calving. Amidst near silence to suddenly hear what sounds like a gun shot echoing all around and to then see blue-white ice slide and crash into the flat, frigid water of the bay took our breaths away.

Anyway, you didn’t come here for the words, you came for the photographs of Glacier Bay, and without any more distraction, here they are.

Glacier Bay was stunningly beautiful.

In the next post in this Alaska cruise travelogues series we’ll reach the final port of call as we visit the city of Ketchikan.

Ketchikan is Alaska’s sixth largest city by population size, but when it comes to population sizes in Alaska that doesn’t mean a whole lot. It, like most of the other places we’d visited, would struggle to qualify as a city at all in Europe. The remoteness of everywhere in Alaska and its resources sought after elsewhere also meant that the slow approach to Ketchikan in the morning was one of contrasts between the wonderful landscape views of rolling hills covered in trees and distant mountain tops with peaks of snow on the one hand but also frequent signs of industrialisation on the other. The need to cope with ways to get goods to and from locations such as this in high enough capacity to wait out any travel disruptions because of that general isolation is an understandable one, though, and something our guide was keen to point out later in the day on the excursion we’d take.

It was a strangely noisy slow sail into Ketchikan too with a constant droning that grew as we got nearer to the city. Sea planes were big business and were constantly not just flying in the distance but occasionally passing by our cruise ship too. An unusual experience the first time it happened. There had been excursions for sea plane trips but they were understandably pricey and we’d already spent a small fortune on trips on this Holland America cruise.

The reason why Koningsdam couldn’t dock at Ketchikan in the morning was because three ships had got in before us. Another HAL ship was there as well as two Princess ships in the form of Majestic (which we’ve yet to cruise on) and Royal (which we were familiar with).

While we were waiting for the tender boats to get permission to start heading ashore we could see that some were engaging in what looked like dancing off the starboard side of the ship. It was probably a bit of training, to be fair.

Ketchikan has the world’s largest collection of standing totem poles and in the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll head off to one of the locations in the city on a short excursion to see where totems are carved in Saxman.

Travel bloggers do like to post photos and videos of their rooms in hotels and on cruise ships and since I consider myself a travel blogger I suppose I should too. The balcony cabin we had was spacious, laid out well, brightly decorated, and came with a daily towel animal too after our steward had been in to freshen it up.

With a meal arranged for later in the day we had a light lunch, and one of the reasons for booking a balcony cabin on a cruise ship, especially on bright and warm enough days, is that it makes for the perfect location to read, chat, eat, drink, and just watch the world go by with the accompanying sound of water in motion.

When we’d booked this cruise with Holland America Line there had been a special promotion on that included the drinks package, some money towards excursions, and a speciality dining meal. We’d already had that meal earlier in the cruise and it had been nice enough in terms of quality, but was so rushed that we couldn’t truly consider it a good speciality dining experience. Our old friends on this cruise, Paul and Carole, had a suite which meant that they could dine in all the speciality venues if they wanted. Another couple of cruise bloggers, Jill and Jerry, had the same deal as us and understood that they still had their free meal to take on account of being invited to another meal earlier in the cruise by the line. We knew we’d have to pay if we wanted to dine in a speciality venue on Koningsdam again, but when our fellow cruisers asked if we fancied a meal all together on the last night we were happy to accept anyway.

The restaurant booked was Tamarind, an Asian eatery which you could probably surmise from that name, and our first impression on approaching it was that the abstract sculptural artwork was gorgeous.

That artwork, unfortunately, was about as good as it got in Tamarind. Now, before I outline the issues, I will say that the food was very nice. Just as with our first meal in a speciality restaurant on the ship we had no complaints with what we ate, but everything around it detracted from the overall enjoyment.

Tamarind was busy when we arrived and everyone was chatting and laughing, and had this been a spacious venue then that wouldn’t have been a problem but the ambience in a location with not a massive amount of room between tables wasn’t the best. Then there was the fact that our table was near the bar area. Now, we like bars because bars are where you get drinks from, but bars on ships can also be where they put blenders for some of the iced and fruity drinks and there was one almost in touching distance of us. The noise was deafening when it was being used which turned out to be most of the time.

The main problem, however, was when it came to working out who would have their meals included as part of packages and who would be charged. We knew we’d be charged. Paul and Carole knew their meals were included. There was confusion for Jill and Jerry, though, and that would have been okay if it could have been sorted out with a quick explanation and a smile but an adamant (a generous term to describe the attitude) maître d’ and several minutes of back-and-forth heated conversations ended up casting a shadow over the proceedings. Over the incredibly noisy proceedings.

So, for the second time on Koningsdam we’d been a little let down with the speciality meal experiences, but the food on the ship as a whole was very good, and the important thing for this occasion was that we got to spend it in the good company of friends.

We only had a couple of plans for the rest of the day. The first was to meet up for trivia again with Paul and Carole – we’d done that earlier in the day and come second – but we were distracted on the way there when we heard people remarking that there had been sightings of whales. We headed onto the promenade deck and admired the landscape of mountainous islands passing by but didn’t manage to see any whales. We couldn’t complain, though, given the ones we’d seen earlier in the cruise. We finished second in the trivia again.

Our final plan, if you can call it that, was to get front row seats at the Rolling Stone Rock Room to enjoy the house band for one last night. It’s hard to put into words just how good they were, playing three 45-minute sets on all but one night of the trip, with hardly any repeated tracks and no use of song sheets or tablets for the music or words. On this night they were also joined with the show team singers and dancers for a few songs.

And that was that. Some excellent music, some drinking, some final chats with our cruise friends, and this all-too-brief cruise to Alaska on Koningsdam had come to an end. A good ship, a great itinerary, and a lot of good memories and experiences.

In the final post from this cruise travelogue series it’s disembarkation day, and with a late flight we’re able to take advantage of a short debark tour of Vancouver before heading home.