This itinerary is a bucket list at its best and ticks many boxes. Relax and explore the Canadian Rockies with their stunning blue lakes and wide open spaces. After a few days in Banff National Park, you will then take a two-day rail journey onboard the award–winning Rocky Mountaineer. Travelling west, your journey takes you through a spectacular array of scenery before arriving in the vibrant Pacific coastal city of Vancouver, with its stunning backdrop of coastal mountains, beaches and parks there is so much to see and do.
Your bucket list just gets better cruising the Inside Passage to Alaska onboard Holland America's luxurious Koningsdam. The highlight of this itinerary has to be cruising Glacier Bay. With the serene majesty of snow-flecked and forested mountains defining its shores, Glacier Bay National Park offers some of the most dramatic scenery in the world. Keep your binoculars and camera on hand as you cruise Glacier Bay to the mile-wide Margerie Glacier, where you may have a chance to witness ice calving. Wildlife abounds in Glacier Bay, so stay ready—you never know when you will see the fluke of a humpback rise out of the water or spot a lone brown bear wandering a wind-swept beach.
Today, make your own way to Vancouver's Canada Place cruise terminal in time for your 7-night Alaskan Cruise on board Holland America's Koningsdam.
The fabled Inside Passage is one of the most scenic sea-lanes in the world, and one of the few where deep-draft vessels can sail close to steep mountain walls, The scenery is unbelievable, with forests in a hundred shades of green, tumbling turquoise glaciers, and evocative towns loaded with history, culture and adventure. With most of Southeast Alaska accessible only by boat or plane, the Inside Passage is a lifeline to the outside world. All day long it hums with activity
Steep cliffs and glacier-covered mountains flank this fjord, fringed by the largest intact coastal temperate rain forest in the United States. Old-growth trees colonized Tracy Arm's mouth long ago as the Ice Age retreated. But further up the sinuous 48-kilometer (30-mile) waterway, its icy grip lingers a little. There, the twin Sawyer Glaciers flow from the peaks down to the sea, sloughing off stories-high chunks of water frozen decades or even centuries before. Even more glorious than nearby Glacier Bay, Tracy Arm is part of the 5.7 million acres (or around 23,000 square kilometers) of pure wilderness sheltered by the Tongass National Forest (America's biggest). Visitors often see bears, whales and mountain goats roaming across various corners of this pristine area—not to mention chubby baby seals resting on the ice floes.
Cruise to Juneau, Alaska and visit the most remote, most beautiful and strangest state capital in the United States. Surrounded by water, forest and mountain sights, visitors seeking things to do in Juneau indoors and outdoors can hike a glacier, eat fresh-caught fish on a seaside patio and tour a grand capitol building all in one day.
Juneau is known for its outdoor recreation, fresh seafood and fine dining. The city itself is pleasant, but the real highlight of a visit to Juneau is tracking down some wildlife. You can hike up Mount Roberts to chance upon wild deer and bald eagles. Most sightseeing and whale-watching tours head north to Auke Bay—bring a good pair of binoculars to get the best view of these majestic and surprisingly graceful creatures. If you prefer land mammals, catch a floatplane to a nearby wildlife reserve such as Chichagof or Admiralty Island to spy some bears lolling around on Alaska cruise excursion.
The sleepy, misty city of around 32,000—mostly fishermen and small-business owners—has a frontier town vibe, but welcomes more than a million visitors each summer to its natural attractions, cementing Juneau as Alaska’s number-one tourist destination. Experience this breath-taking city on an Alaska cruise.
Some of the aspiring Klondike gold rushers who made it to Skagway took a look at the 500-mile journey that still lay ahead of them and decided a change of profession was in order. So many of them set up shop as provisioners that Skagway was the largest city in Alaska by the end of the 19th Century. Booms fade and dreams move on, but the glory days still reverberate through the town. Ride the antique White Pass & Yukon narrow-gauge railway, step into the Red Onion Saloon or peruse the restored buildings and wooden boardwalks of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.
If you didn't know any better, you'd think Glacier Bay ostentatious for the way it flaunts its ice. The glaciers practically terminate in your lap. A cruise to Glacier Bay National Park with Holland America Line will show you a UNESCO World Heritage Site that protects a unique ecosystem of plants and animals living in concert with an ever-changing glacial landscape. When a monumental chunk of ice splits off a glacier and thunders into the sea the impact shoots water hundreds of feet into the air. You hold your breath as you catch the moment on film. Then you wait for it all to happen again. and it does: Glacier Bay has more actively calving tidewater glaciers than anyplace else in the world.
Ketchikan clutches the shores of the Tongrass Narrows, with many shops and houses built right out over the water. The stairways are weathered and the vibe is cheerful in the town that calls itself the Salmon Capital of the World. Besides the main attractions - Creek Street, the Tongrass Historical Museum, Totem Bight State Park and Saxman Village. These deep-water fjords were gouged out by retreating glaciers, leaving granite cliffs towering thousands of feet above the sea and countless waterfalls plunging into placid waters.
The fabled Inside Passage is one of the most scenic sea-lanes in the world, and one of the few where deep-draft vessels can sail close to steep mountain walls, The scenery is unbelievable, with forests in a hundred shades of green, tumbling turquoise glaciers, and evocative towns loaded with history, culture and adventure. With most of Southeast Alaska accessible only by boat or plane, the Inside Passage is a lifeline to the outside world. All day long it hums with activity
Disembark your cruise ship after breakfast and make your way to Vancouver Airport for your return flight back to the UK.