Newbie Cruiser

"Why don't you go on a cruise? Have you ever been on one?". People ask me this all the time. Given my reputation for being "always on vacation", most of my friends were surprised that I haven't set sail on a cruise ship yet.

Well, finally I'm going on one! In contrast to my normal style of doing tons of research on vacation destinations, a week-long cruising vacation to Alaska was dumped right on my lap. My Mom and my brother's family were visiting Canada on an extended vacation which included a cruise onboard the Celebrity Mercury (pictured), thus I decided to join them for the ride to Alaska from Vancouver. Along with some days onboard the Mercury cruising the Inside Passage and admiring glaciers, stops would be made at the ports of Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.

More than any other state in the US, I had always wanted to visit Alaska to admire the scenery, and despite my apprehensions about cruising (more on this later), at least it would be a new experience, and it involved zero planning on my part since they had already selected the departure dates, cruise line and vessel. Besides, over 900,000 people (the number of cruisers to Alaska in 2006) couldn't be wrong, right? So, I'm taking the plunge!