The Avid Cruiser

The first cruise ships sail to Alaska in May and the last ones depart in September. And though the weather can be unpredictable during the months that mark the bookends of the Alaska cruise season, shoulder season is a good time to visit for a variety of reasons, according Tania Hancock, tourism sales manager with the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“I particularly enjoy the shoulder seasons,” Hancock says. “May and September are my favorite months, and of the two, September in particular, because I love the fall foliage. It’s a short season, but it’s an absolutely beautiful season. The tundra is red and orange and gold in Denali, and that backdrop to the wildlife is pretty spectacular. We also see a lot more wildlife in our shoulder seasons than in the middle of high season. The wildlife tends to come out more on cloudy days, when it’s a little bit cooler, maybe a little bit misty. We see a lot more of the bears, and a lot more of our moose and caribou. And certainly the same thing rings true in spring. Of course, the foliage is very different. It’s that beautiful bright spring green, and once again, it’s an amazing backdrop to all of the wildlife that you see in Anchorage and South Central Alaska and in the interior as well.”

The shorter daylight hours during May and September (as opposed to the nearly 16 to 18 hours of daylight in mid-summer) also means that you’re more likely to see animals. Midsummer, moose bed down underneath trees, out of sight of visitors. But in cooler weather, “we see them at 5 o’clock in the evening,” Hancock says, “as opposed to having to wait until 10 o’clock at night in the middle of June.”

And don’t think you have to run off to Denali to see moose and other wildlife. “The biggest misconception about Anchorage,” Hancock says, “is that it’s just like any other city in the lower 48, like a mini-Seattle, for example. What a lot of visitors don’t realize until they get to Alaska, is that Anchorage actually has a lot of wilderness and wildlife right in the city, and it is uniquely Alaskan. Without realizing how uniquely Alaskan the city, a lot of visitors will just breeze right through. They think they need to continue on to get to the real Alaska, but Anchorage is the real Alaska.”

Anchorage boasts a few thousand moose. And they can be just as spectacular as bear, Hancock says, plus moose are vegetarians, meaning that, unlike bear, they don’t consider cruise passengers part of the food chain. “When it comes to watchable wildlife,” Hancock says, “moose are definitely at the top of my list.”

Anchorage is situated more than 200 miles south of Denali National Park. On the clear days during shoulder season, you can see Mt. McKinley from Alaska’s largest city. “Riding a bicycle or just walking along our Coastal Trail, which starts on 2nd avenue in downtown Anchorage, is a wonderful way to spend a few hours in my city,” Hancock says. “Once again, you’ve got views of gorgeous mountain ranges like Mt. McKinley, you’ve got a lot of wildlife opportunities and you’re right on the edge of the water.”

In a Finnish shipyard, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is building the world’s largest cruise ship. Capable of carrying more than 6,000 passengers, Oasis of the Seas will be 40 percent larger than the company’s Freedom-class vessels, which currently reign as world’s largest cruise ships. 

Royal Caribbean has repeatedly expressed confidence in its ability to build and operate ever larger ships — thanks in no small part to one man: Harri Kulovaara, the company’s executive vice president, maritime. 

“Yes,” Kulovaara chuckles, “maybe we do like building big ships. The purpose, however, is not just to build the biggest ships. The purpose is to build outstanding vessels that provide great facilities for our guests. And we need a lot of real estate for that. That’s the reason we’ve constantly been growing the size of our ships. We have a lot of good ideas that we want to incorporate in the ships.”

If you think Oasis may be too big, consider Royal Caribbean’s history.

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Perhaps the biggest surprise for passengers on Peter Deilmann Cruises’ Mozart is that they will get to put their swimsuits to good use. Indeed, many of the passengers I spoke with on a September sailing along the Danube were astonished to learn that the five-star river cruiser offered a warm and welcoming watery respite, situated indoors on deck two at the front of the ship.

The fact that Mozart features an indoor pool (the only such ship in Europe to do so) may not necessarily be a key factor in choosing this ship over its competitors on the Danube, but the fact that Mozart is wide enough to accommodate a pool is worthy of consideration. Continue Reading »

You’ll feel like you’ve paddled into paradise when cruising the Hawaiian islands.

Cruise ships weren’t the first vessels to bring ocean-going passengers to Hawaii. Outrigger canoes were. Polynesian settlers paddled to the islands more than 1,000 years ago. Their first glimpses of Hawaii revealed much of what cruise passengers today see: verdant volcanic peaks forming a backdrop to fertile valleys of sugar cane, thick groves of coconut palms and ocean as blue as Windex.

Today, cruise ships ply the Hawaiian islands en masse. Many begin or end their sea journeys to Hawaii from Los Angeles and San Diego, popular jumping-off ports more than 2,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean. Others visit the islands when repositioning between the Caribbean and Alaska.

Among the key players offering 12- to 17-night itineraries featuring Hawaii on repositioning cruises and from Southern California: Carnival Cruise Lines, Celebrity Cruises, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises and Royal Caribbean International.

Thirty years ago, a 21-year-old boy from North Carolina ventured all the way to Los Angeles and hopped a flight to Tahiti. What possessed him to pursue such a notion? Coconuts. I know, because that boy was me. Months before my journey, I had seen a photograph of one of the Tahitian isles — a island characterized by verdant volcanic peaks shrouded in wispy clouds, ocean as blue as Windex and thick groves of coconut palms. I wanted to be there, among the coconut groves, and so I charted a course for this picture-perfect paradise. Continue Reading »

Is Norway’s dramatic coast more beautiful than Alaska’s?

From the top deck of Norwegian Coastal Voyage’s 464-passenger Nordkapp, the city of Bergen beckons. The picturesque waterfront is only a short distance away, and I am aching to explore. But poor planning on my part put me here too late. Our voyage to the north is about to begin, and for the next half hour, I can only watch as one of the world’s loveliest towns recedes into the distance.

Bergen is the departure port for the Nordkapp’s 12-day roundtrip cruises (one-way cruises also are available) to Kirkenes, near Norway’s border with Russia. The journey ahead will be unlike any I have ever experienced. Nordkapp will show me and my traveling companions some of the world’s most beautiful scenery; we will sail into breathtaking fjords, cross the Arctic Circle (twice), witness the Midnight Sun and call on the world’s northernmost town during our journey along Norway’s spectacular 1,250-mile west coast. Continue Reading »