This post was reprinted from a WeChat public account run by a reader from a WeChat group, Lazy 33's Food, Drink, and Fun. Original link.

The first half of the cruise trip was posted, and friends on my social feed said it was a discouraging read. My bad, my bad — the wording really was a bit negative. But the second half includes the highlight of this trip, plus a little side story, so it should be a lot more interesting than the first half.

Day 5 - Dog sledding, the highlight of this trip

This day we arrived in Juneau, the capital of Alaska. After being cooped up on the ship and in the village for several days, it suddenly felt like a country bumpkin coming to the city. As soon as we got off the ship, we saw layer upon layer of mountains — it really is a city surrounded by mountains and sea.

While looking at tours at this stop, we suddenly came across dog sledding. Of course the kid would love that. Then we looked at the price, and amazingly, adults and kids were all charged the same, five or six hundred dollars per person. Turns out you had to take a helicopter up to a glacier first and then do the dog sledding. Usually, for helicopter tours, children age 2 and up are charged the same as adults, similar to buying an airplane seat, since kids 2 and up need their own seat anyway.

Alaska tours are generally on the pricey side, and local prices are high too, probably because it's so vast, sparsely populated, and hard to get around.

We had only seen seaplanes in Vancouver before; the kid was probably too young then, so he had long forgotten. Seeing them this time, he was especially excited and kept saying he wanted to ride one, and we could only keep telling him next time.

Two Carnival cruise ships were docked together again; I wonder if it was the same one we saw yesterday.

We sat on the pier watching seaplanes and birds for a while, then walked to the tour meeting point. This tour was booked on TripAdvisor by ourselves, not through the ship.

Another cable car — how much do people in Alaska love cable cars?

From the meeting point, we took a shuttle to the heliport. There was a little cabin where we signed a waiver. The tour company provided anti-slip boots, and they even had a size for little kids — nice. For adults, the boots go over your shoes, but the kid had to take off his shoes and wear the boots they provided directly.

This was the kid's second helicopter ride, so it wasn't as novel as the first, but he was still pretty excited.

This time, my partner and the kid were seated in front, with the kid next to the pilot — just thinking about it made him happy~

Wearing headphones and sitting upright.

Another perfectly clear day.

The scenery outside the window was like a painting~

My seat wasn't great, so a lot of the scenery was blocked by my partner's big head.

The flight was about 15 minutes, and we landed in a snowy mountain area. The anti-slip boots were bulky but very effective.

This place has more than a hundred dogs in all. In winter, they go train near Yellowstone, and in summer they live here the whole time. The tour guides also live in these tents all summer, with supplies delivered to them by helicopter. I imagined myself in that situation, and I definitely wouldn't be able to handle it.

We forgot to wear sunglasses, which was really necessary because the snow reflected a lot of light. The tour guide handed out simple snow goggles for us.

The barking of dogs rose and fell in waves, echoing nonstop, and the kid was super curious and wanted to go see the dogs.

Each sled can carry four passengers; one person has to stand at the back to help control the sled, and the rest can choose their own seats. The three of us were assigned a sled of our own.

The dogs were all ridiculously cute. One sled is pulled by 13 to 14 dogs, and none of them are purebred; they're pretty strong.

The kid just stayed glued to the front seat and refused to budge.

So my partner naturally ended up as the one standing at the back.

At the guide’s command, the dogs started running. This batch of dogs was running for the first time today, and they were full of energy; every time we stopped, they barked in protest.

We stopped every so often after only a short while. The dogs absolutely hated stopping; one of them would keep rolling around as soon as we stopped. So cute.

Whenever we stopped, the kid could get off the sled and play in the snow. This sled didn’t even have seat belts or anything like that—once it stopped, you could just step right off. The kid was interested in the dogs, but too scared to get close.

We learned the dog-sled commands from the tour guide: left turn is "Ji" and right turn is "Ho"—though I might have remembered them backwards...

The whole loop was probably only about one or two miles, and then it was over. The kid immediately said, “Mom, I want to ride the dog sled again.” I told her, “Grow up and earn your own money first.”

Luckily, after it ended, we could pet and hug the dogs, so the kid was happy again.

I kept petting the one that had been rolling around nonstop. Too adorable.

The lead dog has to be strong-willed enough to lead the team, and the dogs in the back have to be strong enough to hold the line. There’s a lot to it.

After petting the dogs that pulled our sled, we could also hold some puppies that were only a few months old.

The kid was still too timid to hold one.

We played with the dogs for quite a while longer, and then the helicopter came to pick us up. We headed back reluctantly.

My partner was in the front row, so the view was better, and I also picked a few of the photos they took.

We took the shuttle back to the dock and, as usual, browsed the gift shop. So many of Alaska’s handicrafts are really interesting.

Small-town street scenes.

Because it was getting close to departure time, the line to board the ship took quite a while.

The weather was really nice that day, so after boarding we went to play on the water slides. This ship had two water slides. The yellow one had all sorts of twists and turns and was very long; it was already super fun, and there was no line either. Wonderful~ The green one was a bit more exciting. Its starting point looked like a spaceship capsule: you step inside, the lid closes, and you stand on a transparent plastic panel under your feet. When the staff presses the button to start it, the panel opens instantly and you drop straight down... there’s a brief free fall. I’m afraid of big drops, so I didn’t dare try it... I only went down the yellow one seven or eight times, and even climbing the stairs wore me out.

The kid played in the pool below with a Chinese child who was sharing our table, and she was so happy she didn’t want to leave. My partner doesn’t like water parks, so he stayed under the umbrella nearby and kept us company. This really was the highlight of the trip.

By dinner time, the temperature had dropped. On the way to the water slides, the sea breeze made me shiver. After the last run, we went back to the room to shower and change before dinner.

Dinner was still pretty unremarkable... I took photos out of a sense of professional duty, at least because it was still edible.

This was crocodile meat, and it was pretty ordinary... The last time I had it was years ago in Florida, I think.

I still don’t get how mussels can be made to taste so bland?

Day 6 - The day our canceled snorkel tour turned into a Dungeness crab buffet

We had originally booked snorkeling for this day. As someone who is half a snorkeling fan but really hates the cold, I had never snorkeled in such cold water before. When I booked it, I asked a ton of questions before finally deciding to go for it. This was also the tour I was most looking forward to on this trip—I really wanted to see marine life in cold waters. But because the weather had been pretty cold for the past few days, my travel companion kept telling me he didn’t want to go snorkeling. I was so annoyed that after a huge fight with him, I canceled the tour. The tour guide even laughed at us and said that day was a heat wave...

So instead, we booked this boat tour with crab catching + a crab buffet through the cruise line. Sure enough, the weather was excellent that day, with a high of 26°C. For snorkeling, you had to wear a 7 mm wetsuit with a hood and socks, so it definitely wouldn’t have been cold. I kept teasing my travel companion about that for ages afterward. In fact, I feel like I can bring this up for the rest of my life, until the next time I snorkel in cold water!!

Oh right, the snorkeling tour was called Snorkel Alaska. It’s the only one of its kind in all of Alaska right now. Even though we ended up canceling, the booking and cancellation process was very smooth, so I’d still recommend it.

We docked early that day, and after breakfast at 7 a.m. we got off the ship bright and early. First we took a bus to a pier, then got on a boat.

There was a guy on the boat who kept giving commentary without stopping.

We passed an eagle nest, and he said this nest had been there for decades. He also did an eagle-feeding demonstration, tossing some fish they had prepared into the water, and the eagle swooped down instantly and grabbed it.

There was another waterfall in the distance.

Then came the crab-catching part. A brave passenger volunteered to help the guy haul up the crab pot. The rule here was that the bait had to be fish caught in these waters; no using smelly chicken legs or anything like that. We only caught one crab, but the guy said that was pretty decent—sometimes they don’t catch any at all.

Next, he gave us a quick introduction to Dungeness crab anatomy, how to tell males from females, and so on. Then each passenger could hold the crab for a photo. The kid still didn’t dare to touch it. I had never held a Dungeness crab before, and I thought its claws would be really powerful—but it turned out we could even just pinch the claws to hold it.

On the way back, the motion-sickness medicine kicked in again and I got sleepy. During these few days in Alaska, I basically made up for all the sleep I had lost from staying up late before.

Back at the pier, there was a restaurant that had already been set up for the group, and we sat at a table for three. Tableware and salad were already laid out. Drinks were also unlimited—you could choose beer, red wine, or white wine.

At least we were basically full by the end. We took the bus back to the little town of Ketchikan. According to the guide, this is Alaska’s most populous city, but many people—especially those in the tourism industry—only live here in the summer and move elsewhere for the winter.

I spotted a sugar truck in a gift shop.

Back on the ship, our room had already been cleaned. That day’s towel animal was impossible to identify...

I had originally wanted to go try the water slide in the afternoon, but after a nap I woke up and realized the ship had already sailed to a place where it was only 17°C outside, so I gave up on that. We went to see a show instead, and surprisingly, the kid loved it so much (especially the dancers’ sparkly dresses) that he spent the whole next day saying he wanted to see the show again... If I had known he liked it that much, I would have brought him from the start.

We wandered around a bit and then went to dinner.

I remember this shrimp being pretty good?

One thing I found annoying was that a few days earlier, the people at our table had ordered steak, but the servers didn’t even bring steak knives. The diners could only struggle through cutting it with ordinary dull knives, and it looked exhausting... That night I also ordered steak, and I quickly asked for a steak knife before the server walked off.

This noodle dish was really good—it tasted almost like chow mein!

All drinks at the ship’s bar were charged separately. They offered an unlimited drink plan, and we bought it for the kid for about six or seven dollars a day. I thought it was a terrible value. You could already drink beverages during meals, and other than that, we hardly ever drank anything else. Ordering a soda by itself was only $2 a glass, and there was no way he could drink two a day.

We brought the kid to the bar to order drinks and watch violin playing. We ordered a cocktail too, and it was pretty good. I never expected the kid would also love watching violin music?? That really caught me off guard.

Day 7 - Another fake port day

It’s kind of funny—I had always thought we would dock in Victoria from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. that day, so I even booked a rental car and planned a Victoria day trip, complete with a car seat. But at check-in before boarding, my travel companion said, “Doesn’t Victoria not dock until 8 p.m.?” I was absolutely certain the time must have been typed wrong... But after checking again and again, it really was 8 p.m.... So the rental car definitely had to be canceled, and we scored a last-minute horse carriage tour instead, thinking the kid would probably like it.

Since it was basically a half sea day, we went back to the main dining room for breakfast again. Another omelet from the dining room~

We ordered steak & eggs; the steak was like the kind you’d get at a Western-style restaurant in China, and it actually seemed seasoned better than the steak at dinner.

We also ordered a burger, and my soft-boiled egg ended up on the floor because the kid knocked it down...

The last towel animal of the trip.

I started wandering around looking for activities again. Not sure why, but the activities on the last day all seemed pretty underwhelming, and there wasn’t even a show to watch. The kid kept talking about it.

So we headed up to the top deck for some mini golf. There were more than a dozen holes, and it was really well designed. The kid liked it quite a bit. The only problem was that the weather was just too cold, and I was shivering.

Halfway through, we went to join a family scavenger hunt. Looking at the questions, I thought they were so boring; I guess the kid will only be able to really get them when he’s a little older.

We wandered around and there really wasn’t much fun to do, so when the kid said he wanted to go to the kids club, that was perfect. My partner and I could relax again.

In the evening, we picked the kid up and went for our last dinner. That night there was crawfish, but it was very fresh—actually, not fresh at all, it smelled bad, so that was a miss.

This noodles dish was pretty good.

This one was frog legs, which counts as one of those weird Western ingredients. It can’t compare with the Chinese way of cooking it, but it was still okay.

This chicken noodle dish was tasty, with a Thai-style sweet-and-spicy flavor.

This was called Alaska cake, but it was really just ice cream covered in whipped cream.

Because of the heavy fog outside, we didn’t dock until much later than expected. Everyone lined up on the stairs waiting to get off the ship, and when we finally could disembark, we were packed in shoulder to shoulder. It was so crowded. It looked like quite a few passengers just took their luggage off the ship right there.

So cold, so cold. We lined up waiting for our carriage.

To satisfy the kid’s wish of sitting in the front row, we didn’t take the previous carriage and waited for the next one instead. The girl in the cape on the left was the carriage driver and guide.

The horses for our carriage didn’t look as nice as the ones on the previous carriage; they were all dark-colored.

This carriage tour lasted an hour, and mainly just went around the pier and the Victoria downtown area.

Most of the time was spent looking at the houses along the road. The driver seemed to know the history of every house nearby.

This is Victoria Downtown. It looks very, very small.

The lights at night were still really pretty. Interestingly, the commands for training horses are the same as for training dogs: "JI" and "HO" mean left and right, respectively.

Not long after the tour started, the kid fell asleep, so he basically missed the whole thing...

After getting off, you could still go over and pet the horses. One horse peed a huge puddle in full view, and the kid laughed nonstop. The cruise at night was even prettier than during the day.

A quick snapshot of the Victoria sign.

It was really, really cold that day. Even with our coats on, we were shivering. We hurried back to the ship for a hot shower, packed all our luggage, and got ready to disembark the next day.

Day 8 - Home at Last

Suite guests also get priority when disembarking. If you don’t need the crew to help with your luggage, you can get off as early as 7:30 a.m. If you do need to check in your bags, you have to leave them outside your door the night before, and you’ll disembark about an hour later the next day. Even though we had a lot of luggage, we thought it would be too much trouble and decided to carry it ourselves.

After eating our last breakfast at the buffet in the morning, we could get off the ship. When we disembarked, the elevators were constantly full, and my partner had to manhandle the big suitcases down the stairs, getting completely out of breath. Later I thought we probably should have ridden the elevator up first and held our spot inside, so we wouldn’t have run into the problem of full elevators. It had been so long since we last took a cruise that we had forgotten how we used to handle this. I need to remember this next time.

Aside from the elevator issue, the disembarkation process went very smoothly, and we were out in just a few minutes. Since we were among the first passengers off the ship, there weren’t many travelers outside yet. There were lots of cars waiting to take passengers away from the ship, and the prices didn’t seem too high. If we don’t already have a ride arranged next time, we could try that.

This was the kid’s first cruise, and for someone who loves boats, it left him with some really unforgettable memories. When we got home, he strongly insisted that we go on another cruise soon, and luckily I had already planned that for him~

That said, this itinerary was a bit more boring than I expected. Although there were quite a few port days, the stops were all relatively short. Aside from the first day, the other ports were only a few hours each. Also, the ports we stopped at felt like they had fairly limited entertainment options, and tourism there still doesn’t seem very developed. Most importantly, it was just too cold, which makes this kind of laid-back cruise vacation not very suitable.

If you want to experience an Alaska cruise, you can also choose a one-way itinerary departing from Vancouver. That way you won’t have to retrace your steps, and you can go farther and continue exploring once you reach northwestern Alaska. That should be better.

About seasickness — Since I get motion sick on every form of transportation except trains, I always keep seasickness medicine in my bag, and my travel companion gets seasick too. This trip was relatively smooth overall, though it got a bit rough on Day 6, and the white mom sitting at our table still got seasick even while wearing a motion-sickness wristband. But according to the guy who did my nails, this season is already relatively calm; when this route first opened in May and June, the ship rocked very badly. Although the ship has a medical center, it isn't open at night, so I’d recommend bringing some seasickness medicine, whether or not you have a history of seasickness. The nail tech said all crew members go through a period of miserable seasickness before they get used to it.

About working on a cruise ship — The crew come from all over the world, and Carnival crew business cards list their home country. The staff hold special maritime work visas, which do not allow them to work on land. Generally, a crew member signs a contract for several months, and can take a break for a while after the contract ends before renewing it. Crew members have a day off each week, usually on port day, when passengers are all off the ship. These basics are still pretty much the same as before the pandemic. The difference is that all crew members are currently required to wear KN95/N95 masks. Of course, some people still take them off from time to time, especially someone like the Cruise Director, who has to speak a lot.

Speaking of the Cruise Director, there are announcements on the ship, which mostly play only in the cabin corridors. When something more important or urgent comes up, they are also broadcast in the rooms.

That's all for now, wherever my thoughts take me. Until next trip～

About the Author

This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a WeChat group reader, Lazy 33’s Food, Drink, and Fun. They are all original good articles; if you’re interested, please follow along.