{"id":480,"date":"2016-09-25T16:10:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T16:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/?p=480"},"modified":"2016-11-16T04:22:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T04:22:53","slug":"alaskan-cruise-day-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/alaskan-cruise-day-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaskan Cruise | Day Two, At Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we went to bed last night it was pitch black. There were no stars or moon to be seen. Being from the east coast we are accustomed to getting up at 6:30 am, my body&#8217;s clock awoke me at 3:30 am to daylight coming through the doors to the balcony. Crazy isn&#8217;t it. It was hard but I forced myself to stay in bed until a more descent hour. The theme for this cruise must be healthy fun,<\/p>\n<p>even the bathroom doors have a sign requesting you use a tissue or paper towel to open the door. There are signs all around with instructions on how to wash your hands.<\/p>\n<p>We were surprised to find so many people at breakfast when we arrived at 7:30 am. As expected there was a lot to choose from and the food was good. After breakfast we decided to check out the presentations they had to offer on the different ports of call, shopping, wildlife we will be encountering.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We were surprised to hear from the shopping lecture that diamonds are such a big commodity in Alaska.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course there were raffles all over the ship to try to get you to listen to their seminars on art, different jewelry designers, a used Rolex kiosk, and more shopping.<br \/>\nAbout this ship &#8230;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dining : We selected open seating for our dining option\u00a0and this I love because we have had the pleasure of eating with many different people and it has been fun. They do have assigned seated dinning as well as speciality dinning. Speciality dinning is an extra cost but good for a change. Assigned seating is a part of our package; therefore we can make reservations to dine at these restaurants.<\/li>\n<li>Pools &#8211; they have both an outdoor and indoor pool. The indoor is heated and because we are going to Alaska, the one with the most people. Both pools are surrounded by plenty of different kinds of comfortable seating and of course the staff is plentiful. You never have to leave your seat if you don&#8217;t want to. There are about 4-6 hot tubs between the two pools.<\/li>\n<li>There is a karaoke bar, main theater for live performance and presentations, a gym, a track for walking or jogging on the upper deck, and an indoor and outdoor observation deck to list a few things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-548 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1464-1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"img_1464-1\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1464-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1464-1-520x390.jpg 520w, https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1464-1.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>The rest of the day was spent resting around the pool, meeting new people, and finding out new things about the ship. That night we went to a show featuring singers and an aerialist. The show was pretty good but the shocker of the day came at the end of the show when the cruise director told everyone that we needed to move our clocks back by one hour before tomorrow morning. This news surprised everyone. Oh well, tomorrow we have our first tour so off to bed we go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Make new friends :<\/strong> Try to sit with different people for meals everyday. You will be surprised how many different parts of the country and world the other people on the ship came from.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you like flexibility, choose open seating : <\/strong>With open seating we could eat when and with whomever we wanted.\u00a0Our travel agent, L&#8217;Anda, encouraged us to do open seating for our dining. If you like flexibility, let her know so that you can also have open seating.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Make\u00a0specialty\u00a0dining reservations early\u00a0: <\/strong>Before our trip, L&#8217;Anda let us know about the\u00a0different specialty dining option that\u00a0would\u00a0be on our ship.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>This way we knew all of the different restaurants that are included in your package and which ones we might need reservations. Make reservations as soon as you can. They will take you on a first come, first serve basis meaning you may have to wait for a small amount of time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Participate in the activities\u00a0:\u00a0<\/strong>Rather you are really interested or not, sign up for the different raffles and attend the seminars. You will learn a lot about the places you will be seeing, and it is a lot of fun to anticipate if your number is going to be called.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we went to bed last night it was pitch black. There were no stars or moon to be seen&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,42],"tags":[122,125,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":585,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askviptravelista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}