Have fun! Been on lots of cruises, but none lately :o( I have a mini duffle bag, (best word I can come up with) has many miles on it. Can throw it over my shoulder or just put it around my wrist. For me, it is light weight, and has a zipper at the bottom for small water bottle, and made of nylon with drawstrings.

A visit to Bermuda by air with hotel reservations and restaurant dining can be a budget buster. Great if you know before you get there. Food costs are similar to eatting in a large city. I always say once you have dined in New York city, nothing scares you. A cruise is mostly all inclusive. I can recomend Celebrity highly, for what they offer. Their ship is smaller, 2,100 people vs 4,100 on Norweigen. If you are beach people, be sure to check the air and water temps for the dates you plan to visit. I love flowers and always plan to travel when plantings are at their best.

Don't go too late in the year. We took HA on a small ship on the last day cruises were offered. HUGE mistake. Because HA has to go around the outside of Vancouver Island, rather than starting within the Strait @ Vancouver as the other cruise lines do, bad weather can be a real problem. It was the end of September, and we ran into a storm. Very impressive seeing 20-ft waves hit the ship, LOL. They had to turn the boat around so we ended up losing 2.5 days, having to backtrack around Vancouver Island and start all over again heading north through the Straits. The ship never made its final 2 stops, they had to cut it short before reaching Sitka :(( Note it can be rainy in summer, so check the weather forecasts regularly. There was absolutely NO insistence on formal dress even in the main dining room. Although many folks did dress up on the final evening dinner, a sizable number did not bother at all, coming in tee shirts and tennies at every meal. We personally thought the food was okay but not great. Lots of quantity but the quality was more on level with a chain steakhouse. The upscale extra-cost restaurant wasn't much better - we actually preferred the food in the main dining room. The service is always impeccable, everywhere. We found the cruise people push a lot of jewelry on the ship and the stores nearest the port seem to be 2/3 jewelry stores. A friend of ours picked up the most delightful pendant ever, a beautifully carved pendant of a tiny polar bear on a swing! Remember that peak season for whale-watching is May - October. We obviously had a bad-luck fairy on our Alaskan cruise, as the whale watching excursion was pretty much a waste of money. We did see an orca calf - did you know they are a pinkish-orange color? - but that and a few far-off spouts were about it. Ironically, there are a number of companies on Vancouver Island that offer whale-watching tours. Our friends flew in to meet us after we got off the cruise ship, and a week later we all drove to Victoria BC. This was their first visit ever to the Pacific NW so we wanted to show them around. I had reserved the half-day tour from a local company, as I knew they would enjoy the scenery and sea air even if we didn't see many whales. Wouldn't you know it - we saw whales every few minutes! They swam so near the boat we could count individual barnacles. They splashed out of the water and spyhopped as if they were posing for photos! More orcas, and some dolphins leaped by as well. We've been on 3 whale watching tours, but this was by far the luckiest. You can just never really tell if they're going to be around the surface when your boat is nearby. But it's thrilling when you're in the right place at the right time. Good luck on your cruise!

I took a 26-27” hard-sided Bric suitcase and a 20 liter Tucano backpack that opens like a suitcase. I wore one pair of shoes (On Cloud) and carried 2 pairs of sandals, one pair were for walking (Munro Pisces) and the other were to wear to dinner (Jack Rogers Lauren). I wore the ON Cloud shoes almost exclusively during the day because I injured my foot about 4-6 weeks before my trip. The orthopedist told me to get a shoe with good support and wear it. I was able to wear the sandals to dinner because we did not walk far. I took too much jewelry. I wore less than half of it. I traveled with a friend who was the first light-packer I ever encountered. She carried a set of silver jewelry and a set of gold jewelry. I need to stick with that plan. I found that for sightseeing, I preferred dark (but lightweight) pants to the lighter colors. To me, dark colors do not show wrinkles the way lighter colors do, nor do they show dirt. I did not wear my white linen pants or the light blue linen pants. I did wear my white EF washable crepe pants to dinner on the ship several times. Same with my black EF washable crepe pants. I brought back unworn my blue chambray shirt, pink linen shell, hot pink linen dress, and a couple of cotton knit shirts, and the 2 pair of linen pants. The one article that I got the most use out of was the Chico’s no-iron linen shirt in a natural/oatmeal color. I wore it as a shirt and as a light jacket. The cream merino sweater never saw the light of day, but I’d take it again anyway. Never hurts to have a ”just in case” sweater. I carried too many scarves. One that would go with navy, 1 that would go with black, and maybe a colorful one would have been enough. I carried my iPad Pro, but I left the case that contains a keyboard behind. I have a case that is light but protects my iPad when I travel. I wish there were some way for you to convince your DH to leave his hardback book behind.