Hawaii & Alaska

Hawaii

After our month traveling through the West Coast of the US we originally wanted to continue traveling in South America before visiting Canada, but because of the Zika virus and the fact they still aren't sure in what stage of the pregnancy it's most dangerous, we decided not to take the risk. In the last moment we decided on Hawaii and Alaska instead and when we send this first picture in the blog to our families to tell them, we were very sad, that we were on a plane to Hawaii, you understand we got some great responses. To be honest, I am afraid that after this world trip in general we wouldn't

have a lot of friends left ;-P Well, I quest that there is a limit of beach pictures friends can handle while working and living in a cold country before ending our friendship ;-P Hahaha.....no, don't worry, I am just joking ;-D

Hawaii is a combination of 8 different islands, but we spend 2 weeks in O?ahu, the big island that has the famous city of Honolulu. We debated to maybe spend time on several islands, but I am happy we didn't, because even though the island is fairly small (you drive from North to South in around an hour) there are lots of things to do and see and secretly we really enjoyed to stay in one place and to do all our day trips from there. Normally we stay in cheap motels or

hostels, but in Hawaii we found a really nice and relatively cheap Airbnb. It was a tiny studio in the back garden of a lovely woman and even though the hot water would finish before finishing our shower and the electricity would stop working every time we tried to use the bread toaster, microwave or hot plate at the same time. We loved this place and it felt like a real holiday of not having to move around every 2 days :-)
When you think about Hawaii, you think of course about beaches and they definitely didn't disappoint us. We went every day to a different part of the island to try out another beach and they were all great. The most famous ones are probably the Waikiki beach in Honolulu, of course full of tourists, but still very enjoyable. The world-famous Sunset and Waimea beaches that are one of the most famous places to surf in the world. The Kailua beach with its beautiful white sand. Or the day that we went to Haleiwa beach, were we suddenly saw a seal sunbathing between the people on the beach and the Turtle

beach where we indeed saw like 10 big sea turtles swimming in the waves. Crazy to stand on the sand and to be able to see the turtles from so close by.

Something completely different, but also world famous was the visit of Pearl Harbor. We saw there a few different things: The USS Arizona memorial, the resting place of the 1200 sailors that died during the day of the Pearl Harbor attack. The submarine you can completely enter and made me very claustrophobic. Crazy how so many sailors can live in such a small place and the museum about all the history before, during and after the attack. A sad, but interesting place to visit.

Besides Pearl Harbor we also found a great hike up to Diamond Head State Monument, not an easy walk up the mountain with lots of stairs, but even though we arrived all sweaty and with red faces, the view over Honolulu was worth it. Besides this one, we also did two other hikes, one short to the Moana waterfall, with a muddy walk through the forest and a second one at the Koo Crater trail. A difficult hike up the mountain while walking on the old train rail where Yohan went all the way up the mountain and I made it halfway. Very proud of him that he succeeded with the whole trail as it was really difficult and a steep climb. Not really a hike, but still a 45 min climbing up was the walk to the Makapu'u Point Lighthouse, a nice walk, but because of a bad weather the pictures didn't came out so nicely.

One of the other days when the weather wasn't too good, we made a stop at the Hulihe's Palace, by the name you would imagine a palace, but it's more of a fancy house that was the house of the Hawaiian royal family. Nicest of visiting the place was the tour, because we came at the end of the day and had a private tour and the guide told us everything about the whole Hawaii royal history, that we had no

idea of. It's funny, when you think about Hawaii, you think about sun, but we found out that in the spring the weather is very changeable. In the morning, it could be raining cats and dogs and in the afternoon, we would suddenly have amazing weather and real beach weather. But it didn't really matter, because in that way we could combine sightseeing, without having the feeling of missing out of not laying on the beach. Hahaha... and "poor" Yohan was happy, because I can stay all day on the beach while he gets all restless after 2 hours ;-p
During one of the sightseeing days we visited something we didn't know that came from Hawaii, the Dole Plantation. It's the place where all the Dole pineapples are coming from, I am sure you have seen them in the supermarket. And they made this nice park, where you take a train through all the pineapple plantages, get lost is a huge maze that is not only fun for children, but also a challenge for adults ;-) and buy literally everything from pineapples. We didn't really like

all the plastic pineapple magnets/earrings/towels/cookies, but the ice cream was delicious! (And we couldn't resist buying a baby Hawaii shirt.... what can you do? You can't come back from Hawaii without a Hawaii shirt, right? And Yohan refused to buy one for himself (Don't understand why ;-P), so poor baby will have to wear it now ? )

The day before we left, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, because the entrance was quite expensive we debated to go or not, but I am so happy we went in the end! It was great! It's a park that shows the culture of all the different kind of Polynesian island cultures through performances, dances and examples from how for example the houses would look like or rituals would be performed. And they did it in such a way that it felt really authentic. In the end of the day, you have the option of seeing the final performance and it

was also really nice. We came home late at night, much wiser about the Polynesian culture and with a real smile on our face :-D

Hawaii is a beautiful island and if it wouldn't be literally on the other end of the world, we could definitely move there. I really hope we will go back one day!

Alaska

We really wanted to explore Alaska and we decided the best way would be by cruise. Yohan did a lot of research what would be the best cruise to take and decided on the Norwegian Pearl. OMG, I had no idea how much fun is it to take a cruise! I thought it's more of a thing for older people and not nice to travel with so many people on such a small boat, but I was completely wrong. It was really amazing and the thing that most surprised me was the food! My cousin Emily

already warned us, but we only fully understood it after the first day on the boat. The food is really great and soooooo much!!! There are like 5 different restaurants and buffets that open as early as 6.00 AM and they continue serving food all day until 11.00 PM when the last buffet closes. There are options of going to for example to a sushi restaurant that you do need to pay for, but most of the food options are included into the price and what most surprised me was how the kitchens managed to have every day different options available. As both of us LOVE food, it was hard not to go completely crazy and I was proud of Yohan to enjoy all the food, but not to go crazy. I am on the other hand took for the first time the term "eating for two" literally. Well... what can you do, you only live oncs ;-P

The cruise started in the end of the afternoon from Seattle and after taking off we passed the beautiful snowy Mount Rainier. The following day we spend all day on the cruise enjoying all the food, the

nice seating areas next to the pool and activities that they organize on the boat. The next day was our first stop where we had all day on land in Juneau- Alaska. You can decide to stay on the boat if you want, but we went off the boat to explore Juneau and surroundings. We ended up taking a nice bus tour through the city with a really funny bus driver, a short visit to the Nugget Falls (also known as the Mendenhall Glacier Falls) and after we continued to do a whale watching trip where we ended up seeing unfortunately more seals than whales, but still it was a nice boat trip, with stunning views of Juneau.

All night we continued cruising to the next destination and early in the morning we arrived in Skagway. Skagway is the famous place where in the past lots of people came to, in order to try their luck in finding gold. It's a sweet little city with beautiful gold-rush-era buildings and from here you have the option to take the train up to

the White Pass Route Railroad or to take a mini bus all the way through the White Pass up to Yukon just over the border in Canada. After debating a lot, we ended up taking the mini bus, so we would be able to make it all the way up to the Yukon. Because, when will we ever have the chance again to visit the Yukon and it was such a good decision! We drove like 3 hours through absolutely breath taking nature and stopped in several places like a farm, where they had sledge dogs and lots of other animals, but we also past after seeing hours of snow suddenly out of the blue a little dessert. So weird. Besides the fact that it's kind of cool to be able to say that we crossed the border with Canada to Yukon, views of the nature where so amazing! I will never forget how impressive the big lakes and mountains were. We visited already so many impressive place on this world trip, but I think we both thought that the nature in Alaska was the most amazing one of all, even more impressive than New Zealand and Iceland that says a lot I think ;-D

Next day we visited Glacier Bay National Park, not by walking or driving around, but the cruise boat sailed all day through it. It was really nice, because all day there was a park ranger on the boat and describing all the history and facts about the amazing glaciers and mountains we were surrounded with. On the pictures, you can see pretty good how impressive Glacier Bay was, but in the video's we took it's even more clear. It was absolutely AMAZING! The landscape that surrounded us while standing in the sun on a cruise boat was really magical!

After a long nice night of sleep, we arrived in Ketchikan, a small town where we only stopped a few hours and unfortunately it started raining, so after walking around a bit we called it a day. But even though it rained that day, we can't complain, because that was the only day with bad weather and that it really lucky, because we took the first cruise of the season and the chance we would have had bad weather all cruise was much higher.

Last day of the cruise we stopped in Victoria, a pretty city in Canada that has lots of beautiful old buildings and the boat arrived quite late in the day, so our plan to visit the Butchart Gardens didn't work out, but in the tourist visitor center they suggested to do an evening walking tour instead. As we love doing walking tours and practically do one every big city we visit, we signed up quickly and found out already too late that it was a Ghost Tour. We had no idea, but apparently, Victoria is known for his many ghost stories. Hahaha... poor Yohan, he suffered through the entire tour, but even though I didn't believe anything he said, it was funny to experience the city though a different kind of eyes, I guess ;-P

Next day we arrived back in Seattle. Even though traveling by

ourselves is still our preference. Taking this cruise boat to discover Alaska was the best decision ever! I can recommend anyone to visit Alaska ones in your life and I promises you wouldn't regret it, just get ready for gaining a bit ;-) Did you know that an average person gains between 2 to 4.5 kilo for a 7-day cruise? Hahaha.... Mister Google knows the answer about everything ;-D

(Travel plan: Seattle, Juneau, Skagway, Yukon, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Ketchikan, Victoria and Seattle)