We're going to Alaska

Honestly, this will be the last Blip of a ship for some time... I promise.
Today's photo does have some significance.

You've maybe gathered we like travelling. Life's too short to stay at home.  We've decided we wanted to do some travelling when in Canada.

We planned to go to Toronto. The thing about Canada is, it's MASSIVE. Toronto is about half way between Vancouver and London. And there's no easy way of getting there.   And for some reason I can't quite grasp, it's cheaper to fly to London from Vancouver than it is to fly to Toronto.

There is a bus and train option, but they too can be pricey and who wants to spend 4 days on a bus?

And then our new Irish friends who have been to Toronto told us they didn't think it was worth the cost and hassle of getting there. They said the best bit was going to see Niagara Falls, and we've already seen that (all be it from the American side).

So we thought, lets not head east, lets head north.  Long before we'd arrived in Canada I had seen pictures of an area called the Inside Passage, a coastal route with narrow straights between hundreds of islands. I desperately wanted to do it.  

There's a couple of ways of gong.

There's ferries. And there's cruise ships that pass through the Inside Passage on their way up to Alaska.

After doing some pricing, the cruise ships seemed like a better deal.  Yes, they are more expensive. But you get your meals and soft drinks included. You get your accommodation included. And, you get to go to Alaska. 

So we've put down a deposit to go to Alaska next spring.  I can't wait!  It's one of the cheaper cruises, and it's one of the cheapest cabins on board, but it does the Inside Passage, the Hubbard Glacier, Ketchikan and Juneau.

We've got till March to cancel without penalty, time to decide if we can actually afford it, although I'd happily eat nothing but rice for the rest of the year if it meant going.