Alaska Cruise - Day 1: Hello Ruby Princess!

Time for the next installment of our travel adventures. Alaska has been on my bucket list for quite some time now, so an Alaskan cruise -- especially one that left from San Francisco -- seemed like a no-brainer. No hotels, no flights, no weight limits, so freeing! Well...except that we ended up with gargantuan suitcases that each weighed a ton. When there are no restrictions in place, I apparently pack a LOT. 😆 

Because I'm all about optimizing schedules, I actually had a choir performance this morning still, so we didn't make it Pier 27 until a little before 2pm. Downside: four very hungry people. Upside: no lines for anything! 

This is our first time cruising with Princess, so a few immediate impressions compared to Disney -- more bars, more older folks, food variety very strong, but as for food quality...not overly impressive thus far. I'm kind of regretting the upgrade to the Princess Plus package because there really isn't that much for the twins to enjoy (soft serve is free, there are no smoothies, it's not like they drink coffee), but I guess Ian appreciates the freedom of being able to drink 15 cocktails a day for free. I think he's taking it as a personal challenge. He needed to drown his sorrows after he found out that the poker table on the Ruby Princess was literally taken out on the previous cruise right before ours. He JUST missed it. 

Balcony size is much larger than Disney staterooms -- wait staff much less entertaining, but still very friendly and competent. Ship overall feels more blah in terms of theming (ie, there really isn't any), but a lot more going on -- including all day mahjong, daily taichi, lots of performers of all sorts -- and even a cruise passenger choir that we can join! 

But since it was our first day, we took it fairly easy, basically just unpacked, had dinner, and walked around a little to get our bearings (signed kids up for kids club, picked up some bingo tickets at the casino, took a spin through the library to see what games they had). 

Did NOT take enough photos this first day, but here's one of the wind surfers under the Golden Gate Bridge as we were passing through. These guys were super impressive -- wind surfing seems like an extremely difficult and potentially painful sport.

It was very cold out on deck all day -- but I braved the elements to catch us passing under the Golden Gate bridge!

I went to bed early (twins stayed up late than I did -- the aging milestone has been crossed!). Still working these next couple sea days so limited on having TOO much fun for now -- will try to take more photos though!