Introduction to Ben and Janet's Travel Blog

Welcome Family, Friends and Travel Voyeurs.

Since we will be doing a lot of traveling, and our email postings can be erratic during our travels, we are experimenting with using the Google Blogger platform to post a blog of our travels.  Please bear with us as we explore and learn our way round the Blogger platform.  We begin another adventure tomorrow, Sunday September 24, 2017.  We will be boarding the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship in Seattle for a 6 day Alaska cruise with ports of call at Icy Strait Point and Juneau, Alaska, and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

This will actually be a return to the beginning of our cruise history because our very first cruise vacation experience was in July 2013 on the Norwegian Pearl.  That was a 7 day cruise to Alaska with ports of call in Ketchikan, Sitka, Juneau Alaska, and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.  We were joining my brother Carl with wife, 2 daughters ages 15 and 16 at the time, mother-in-law, my brother Franklin and my mother Betty who was 79 at the time.  We brought our 3 children ages 19, 21 and 22 at the time.  We had booked an inside cabin and were cruise virgins at the time.  We had so much fun on that cruise, that we have become cruise fans.

Since that first cruise on the Norwegian Pearl, we have cruised to Aruba, Grand Cay, Cartegena Columbia, the Panama Canal, and Limon, Costa Rica from Fort Lauderdale on the Coral Princess (January 2015), Budapest to Nuremberg on the Viking River Cruiser Atla (May 2015), the British Isles on the Caribbean Princess (June 2016), Melbourne Australia to Auckland New Zealand on the Golden Princess (January 2017), and most recently London to Bergen, Norway on the Crown Princess (July 2017).

My mother, who is now 83 years old and dealing with moderately advanced Parkinsonism, decided she had at least one more cruise in her, so we decided to join her and my brother Franklin, on another Alaska cruise.  Franklin and my brother George had taken Betty on a quick 3 day California Coastal cruise out of Los Angeles last year, but the air travel and transfers really took a toll on her. Fortunately for us, these Seattle based cruises avoid any airline flights and transfers.

Now that we are seasoned cruise passengers, we have booked a balcony room on the Norwegian Pearl and look forward to returning to our cruise roots to see how our experience measures up to our more recent travels.