May 27th, 2025
Hey Marjy, Because of a great travel agent we had a great trip. Everything went so smooth, not even a small hitch. The trip was great!!! J&C S

July 17th, 2025
6/17/25: Thanks for this email Marjy! I don’t have much time to respond and will later but just know we had a trip of a lifetime!!!! Every part of it was amazing thanks to you! Crafting an incredibly wonderful experience in each city/town was spot on so just know we did not have weather like that which was wild, but we did have a lot of rain but somehow when we went into a couple of ports, it seemed to stop and we could walk around and even get a little heated because we were overdressed. I will say more when I have more time and send some pictures which I wanted to do but the pace we kept was pretty wild. Thanks again for making this an amazing trip we won’t forget! ************then she got back to me 7/17/25 with this: Hi Marjy! I am so sorry to leave you hanging, I believe, in giving you feedback from the epic trip of a lifetime you wonderfully crafted for us! We truly loved meeting you in Wrangell and when we told people on the cruise we met our travel agent in one of our ports, they were so impressed! I have already forwarded your info and our cruise to a friend and her name is Allyson Phillips. I hope she contacts you soon as I encouraged her to start looking into it sooner than we did to have more options available. Looking back on the trip, we realize the weather in the Inside Passage was definitely colder and rainier than the land portion of the trip and I’m sure it’s because it’s so lush and a temperate rain forest so what would you expect! Just spectacular and we truly loved the Hurtigruten cruise line. Very luxurious and spacious, well organized, eco friendly, and the staff treated us well. We LOVED being on an expedition cruise with 25 scientists and naturalists that we could learn so much from and the level of curiosity and intelligence from the international crowd was stimulating. Thank God for no casinos and shows to have to watch. The breathtaking scenery, lectures with slide shows on what we saw or will see and the zodiac boats was such a highlight! Thank you for steering in this direction! Rooms were much more spacious than Viking and we loved the amenities of hot tubs, sauna and pool. And 3 choices of restaurants, however, we didn’t get to the higher end one we had to pay for but that’s OK. Loved that the passengers were equally from Europe and Australia/New Zealand and the US. And we were right in there with the relatively same age group who were all active to some degree which made us feel at home. I’m also glad we went for 13 days so we could experience lots of different weather in case it was bad the whole time. Once we docked in Seward, the weather was much warmer and dryer so it was easier to not be so bundled up. Would you believe that the 2nd day we were in Seward, we took a whale watching cruise because we hardly saw any whales on our cruise? I pretty much put my foot down on that because I was not going to go home having not seen any orcas!!! It turned out to be a wonderful day for it and we saw very many, including some humpbacks and puffins in the beautiful spires area. We stayed in Resurrection Bay doing the 4 hour trip with Major Marine and they were wonderful and patient looking for the sightings so highly recommended them. The cabins in Seward were adorable and the grounds pristine. We enjoyed sitting out by the fire although we usually do it in the dark! Hard to get used to that very late time it gets dark! If we had to do it all over again, we wouldn’t stay in Soldotna. It was a bigger and more typical city with the same chain fast food and other businesses we commonly see so that was so-so. The hotel was nice but we wish we would have had another day in Homer since it was a sweet community to explore. We thoroughly enjoyed the cabins on the bluff where we saw lots of bald eagles soaring overhead and having happy hour overlooking the bluff. Very glad we spent more money on both cabin lodgings! So cool seeing the layer of fog over the inlet so if you’d just gotten there, you wouldn’t even know it was a body of water. Eating at Captain Patties on the spit was a highlight in the best seafood of our trip. The cruise’s fish wasn’t any good and definitely not fresh as opposed to our friends on the Lindblad who are foodies and raved about theirs. We know Lindblad offers better food and I’d say for the size of our ship they offered many different foods, even themed in one of the restaurants, however, all the other positives outweighed that for sure! So, I have 2 other friends that want more info so I’ll send them your contact info as well as the cruise line info. You were so good about staying on top of the details and holding our hands along the way to get all the info and money taken care of so thank you so much for that! So many details that we were so challenged to deal with, especially the 4 of us with us who travel so much and the Sams who are in the middle of a big remodel! At first I wasn’t too happy with the app you put all the info into because I was used to a printed travel itinerary we’ve gotten from other travel agents, however, once I started really poking around on it and found all the info no matter where we were, I realized that was the way to go! I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks! I’ll try to send some great photos to send you although it will be hard to choose a few. One off the scientists on board was also the ship photographer who gave us a slide show the last night with 156 pictures and then he sent them to us shortly after the cruise! We were thrilled since his pictures are outstanding. Also, they gave us a beautiful itinerary complete with pictures and a Science and Education folder with everything we learned and saw. We were so impressed with that follow-thru. Thanks again Marjy! Oh, I forgot to mention that our friends on Lindblad got Covid on their cruise! Glad we didn’t as they made us wash our hands all the time. We just got home from a trip to north of Seattle on the Puget Sound and most of us got Covid so I sit here not feeling badly but a little weak. Bummer, right? T&T