Alaska
A Travel Journal
May 8 – 16, 2026
Norwegian Cruise Line • Norwegian Bliss • Seattle to Alaska and Back
Friday, May 8 • The Journey Begins
Six weeks of preparation — the right layers, the right waterproof everything, enough gear to outfit a small expedition — and suddenly it was Friday. Monica pulled up right at noon, same as always. New Tesla this time, different shade of the same red-and-white color scheme she always drives.
Monica is constitutionally incapable of being late. It's almost unsettling.
We loaded up and headed to John Wayne Airport. Checked in at the Alaska Airlines first-class counter and claimed our seats. Alaska first class on the SNA–SEA route is a civilized way to start a trip — wider seats, a proper meal, wine that shows up without a negotiation. Three hours later Seattle appeared below us and the flight was over before we were ready for it to be.
📍 Alaska Airlines has been headquartered in Seattle since 1932, making it the hometown carrier for the Pacific Northwest. The SNA–SEA route covers roughly 1,050 miles in about 2.5–3 hours. Alaska's first class cabin on this route runs a 2-2 seat configuration with Pacific Northwest-inspired meals and complimentary wine and spirits. Sea-Tac is one of only two airports in the US where Alaska controls the majority of gates.
Baggage, transport, and one case of mistaken hotel identity later — two suspiciously similar hotels near the airport, wrong one first, right one second — we were checked in and horizontal. We overpaid for the room. Airport hotels always win that game.
Saturday, May 9 • Seattle & All Aboard
Pier 66 — Bell Street Cruise Terminal
📍 Pier 66, also called the Bell Street Cruise Terminal, anchors the northern end of Seattle's downtown waterfront. Seattle became Alaska's dominant cruise homeport in the 1990s and now handles over one million cruise passengers a year — making it one of the busiest embarkation points on the West Coast.
Morning shuttle to Pier 66 — a Sprinter van that looked empty from outside and was absolutely not empty inside. Three seats left, all the way in the back. We folded ourselves in and made it work.
At the pier things moved quickly until they didn't. Bags handed off, passports surrendered, ship card received, and then: the line. The boarding line that snaked through what felt like every corridor the Norwegian Bliss had to offer.
It was probably an hour. It felt longer. At one point Jeanne looked at me and said nothing, which said everything.
📍 The Norwegian Bliss launched in 2018, purpose-built for Alaska and Caribbean service. At 168,028 gross tons and 1,082 feet long, she carries roughly 4,000 passengers and 1,700+ crew. Onboard: 20+ dining venues including Cagney's Steakhouse, Food Republic, Le Bistro, and Palomar; the Observation Lounge with panoramic bow views; the Bliss Speedway go-kart track on the top deck; and The Cavern Club, a Beatles tribute venue. Cabin 14850 on deck 14 put the bow elevators exactly a three-minute walk forward — you follow the fish in the carpet.
We made it aboard, found the upper decks, and waited out the two hours until our cabin was ready. When we walked in, Ranna was already there.
Ranna
Ranna was our cabin attendant for the whole trip. He greeted us at the door the moment we arrived, asking what we needed. Jeanne suggested a bucket of ice — I'd twisted my ankle the week before and was planning to wrap it every night before bed. Ranna was on it instantly.
We dropped our bags and went back out to explore the ship. When we came back, the ice bucket was waiting on the table, full.
That set the pattern for the rest of the week. Every single time we left the cabin and came back — every single time — there was a fresh ice bucket. I never had to ask twice. I never had to wait. The ice helped my ankle more than I expected, and I slept better for it.
Ranna also checked in throughout the day to make sure the room was right, the bed was right, everything was right. The cabin was perfect every time we walked in. He was simply great at his job, and at the human part of it too. Add him to the heroes list.
Dinner at Cagney's — and the Wine Sommelier
That first night we went straight to Cagney's Steakhouse. Dinner was excellent. The exception was the wine situation.
Jeanne ordered two glasses — one for each of us. The server came back with a sermon about the superior value of the bottle. Two glasses: $25. Full bottle: $30.
"You see, it's simply better economics," he explained.
Jeanne explained that we understood the math, we just didn't want the bottle. He explained it again. She explained it again. He switched to me, apparently deciding I might be more reasonable. I was not.
We bought the bottle anyway. Just to make him stop.
For the record: every other restaurant on the ship sold us two glasses without blinking or delivering a lecture. That server was his own phenomenon.
Sunday, May 10 • Day at Sea, Northbound
The Observation Lounge
We figured out our rhythm fast on this first sea day. The Observation Lounge — the entire bow of the ship, two-story glass, panoramic views — became our home base.
Great seats. They had food laid out until about five o'clock — really nice little snacks, scones, small bites, nothing trying too hard. We'd head out on deck for a walk in the cold air, then come back inside and sit with hot tea and something sweet.
It was genuinely delightful just to sit there. I liked watching the people come by — seeing who was on the ship, what they were up to, who was with who. A whole quiet stage show of fellow passengers, with the Pacific scrolling by behind them.
The Deck 8 Boardwalk
Out on deck, we found our other favorite spot: the boardwalk on deck 8. It ran about three-quarters of the way around the ship to the stern, and it was almost never crowded.
It was notably wide, and the engineering touch we appreciated most was the line of glass or acrylic wind panels installed at intervals along the length. They broke the headwind so it didn't come blasting down the deck. You could actually walk in comfort.
The stern was the best part. Standing at the back of the ship, looking down at the ocean churning and spreading in a long white wake behind us — that view was hard to leave. We walked the boardwalk several times a day.
One thing we learned quickly: the boardwalk was a tale of two sides. One side of the ship would be sunny, warm, almost no wind. The other side would be cold and blowing hard. Same boat, same minute, completely different experience. We started reading the conditions and picking our side.
The reward for getting it right was the row of outdoor couches tucked outside some of the restaurants on the sunny side. Sheltered, warm, almost empty. Sitting in the sun with the ocean going by and nobody around — those couches turned into our favorite spot to read.
Somewhere along the way we crossed from US waters into Canada and back again. A border that exists entirely on charts. Nobody stamped anything.
Monday, May 11 • Sitka, Alaska
About Sitka
📍 Sitka sits on the western edge of Baranof Island, facing the open Pacific — which gives it a rougher, more elemental feeling than most Southeast Alaska ports. It was the capital of Russian America, established by Alexander Baranov in 1799 and called New Archangel. On October 18, 1867, in a ceremony on Castle Hill above the harbor, Russia formally transferred Alaska to the United States — a transaction still celebrated annually as Alaska Day. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Michael, completed in 1848, remains the most striking landmark on the main street.
A Geological Aside
Jeanne wondered out loud about the geology — whether the islands we were visiting were all volcanic. The answer turned out to be more interesting than a simple yes or no.
The Alexander Archipelago is a chain of about 1,100 islands that aren't a separate volcanic chain at all. They're actually the submerged tops of the Coast Mountains — the same range that runs along the British Columbia and Alaska mainland — with their peaks sticking up out of the water.
Volcanic activity is part of the story, though. The bedrock under places like Sitka and Hoonah formed from ancient oceanic volcanic arcs hundreds of millions of years ago, then got crushed, accreted, and bolted onto North America by plate tectonics. Mount Edgecumbe, the cone-shaped peak you can see from Sitka, is in fact a dormant volcano.
Here's the strangest twist: geologists working on Baranof Island figured out that the bedrock under Sitka doesn't match anything else in Southeast Alaska. The closest match is about 1,000 miles south, in western British Columbia. Sitka, in other words, started somewhere else and drifted north over millions of years. It is, geologically speaking, an immigrant.
The shallow soil our Ketchikan guide pointed out — six inches in a lot of places — is the other piece of the puzzle. The last glaciers retreated only about 13,000 years ago and scraped this entire region down to bedrock. Everything green you see now has grown up since then on a thin layer of organic matter built from decomposing trees. That's why the soil is so thin. That's why the trees fall over so often — their roots can't go deep, so a big windstorm takes them sideways.
Out on the Water with Spencer
We docked in Sitka on a gray, rain-flecked morning — which, we would learn, is most mornings in Sitka. Our booking was for the larger, enclosed tour boat. Somehow we ended up on the smaller open skiff with seven other passengers. We found this out after we were already in line.
We kept going anyway. It turned out to be the best accidental decision of the whole trip.
Our crew was two: Spencer, the captain, and Liam, the biologist. Spencer grew up in Southern California — same stretch of coast we call home — then moved to Hawaii for school, got his captain's license, and was offered a job in Sitka. He lives there half the year now. You could see why. He clearly loves it.
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| Jeanne on the dock at Sitka — suited up, life jacket on, ready for whatever the open skiff had in store. |
We were in full weather gear with life jackets over everything. The rain came and went. The boat was small enough that every eagle sighting felt personal — not a distant dot through binoculars but a real bird, close, doing real things.
We counted more bald eagles than we stopped counting. Sea otters floated on their backs watching us with the bored confidence of animals that have never been threatened by anything. Liam identified lichen species and explained the coastal ecosystem with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely cannot believe he gets paid for this.
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| Spencer explaining the coastal geography while Jeanne listens with appropriate skepticism about the weather. |
Spencer Finds the Eagle Nests
Early in the morning, Jeanne asked Spencer where the eagle nests were. She wanted to see them. Spencer said honestly that he didn't know exactly — the nests move year to year, and he hadn't pinned them down yet that season.
We went on to lunch at Finn Island. Prime rib, Dungeness crab, salmon, clam chowder, salads — a spread that had no business being served on a small island reachable only by boat. We ate everything.
What we didn't know was that during lunch, Spencer had quietly tracked down guides from the other tour boats and asked around. He found out where the eagle nests were that week.
When we got back on the boat in the afternoon, he took us straight to them. Jeanne got her eagle nests. That kind of follow-through — taking on a question that wasn't even a complaint and just solving it on his own time — is the difference between someone doing a job and someone who cares about it. Spencer made the list.
Tuesday, May 12 • Juneau, Alaska
About Juneau
📍 Juneau is the only US state capital you cannot reach by road. Every person and every piece of freight arrives by plane or boat, which gives the city an island mentality despite technically being on the mainland. It became Alaska's capital in 1906 during a gold rush era when the Alaska-Juneau mine — one of the largest low-grade ore operations in the world — was in full swing. The Mendenhall Glacier, 12 miles north of downtown, is fed by the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Icefield. The glacier has retreated over a mile since 1958 and continues to recede.
The Mendenhall Glacier tour was not quite what we'd imagined. We pictured crampons, ice underfoot, maybe a guide with a rope. What we got was a school field trip — three buses of about 50 people each, a 20-minute ride north, and then a viewpoint across a lake from the glacier.
Beautiful? Yes. Walk-on-it close? No. That's a different, longer, much more expensive tour. We made the best of it: photos, the gift shop, a solid hour of genuine appreciation from the correct side of the lake.
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| Mendenhall Glacier reflected in the lake on the only blue-sky day of the week. The glacier tongue is visible center-frame — beautiful, and exactly as far away as it looks. |
The salmon bake afterward delivered. Glazed salmon, clam chowder, all the fixings. Everyone in Alaska does clam chowder and everyone in Alaska does it well — this was no exception.
Why the Ice Is Blue
One of the things we weren't prepared for was the color. Glacier faces in the distance, chunks of calved ice floating in the bays — almost everything ice-related had a deep, glowing blue you don't see in regular ice.
It's not a sky reflection. It's a property of the ice itself.
Snow that falls on a glacier gets compressed under hundreds of years of more snow piling on top. That compression forces out almost all the trapped air bubbles. Fresh snow and young ice look white because all those tiny pockets scatter every wavelength of light — same reason clouds are white. Ancient, compressed, air-free glacier ice doesn't scatter light. It absorbs the red and yellow wavelengths and lets the blue ones through.
The deeper and older the ice, the more intense the blue. The most vivid color shows up on freshly calved icebergs, where you're looking at a cross-section of ice that may be hundreds or thousands of years old. The blue we kept seeing floating past the ship was compressed time — snowfall from centuries ago, finally exposed to daylight.
The smaller chunks are called bergy bits and growlers. The bigger ones graduate up to proper icebergs. In the protected Inside Passage they don't travel far after calving, which means we were seeing them at peak color.
Dawes Glacier in the Sun
The real gift that day came from the captain. Clear skies — the only truly sunny stretch of the entire week — as we headed south from Juneau and turned up the Endicott Arm toward Dawes Glacier.
He brought the ship in close and spun us a full 360 degrees at the face of the glacier while chunks of ice calved off and floated past. Every one of them lit up that impossible blue we'd just been learning about.
We sat in the Observation Lounge with hot tea, watching it all happen in actual sunshine. You don't put that on a tour brochure because you can't guarantee it. We got lucky.
Wednesday, May 13 • Icy Strait Point, Hoonah
About Hoonah & Icy Strait Point
📍 Icy Strait Point sits near Hoonah on Chichagof Island — the largest Tlingit community in the world. The Huna Tlingit people lived here for thousands of years before being displaced by glacial advance around 1700 AD. They returned generations later to rebuild. The old salmon cannery at Icy Strait Point, built in 1912 and operating until 1953, has been converted into a cruise destination owned and operated by the Huna Totem Corporation — one of the rare cases in American tourism where an Indigenous community controls its own economic destiny. The ZipRider at the summit is one of the longest zip lines in North America.
We opened the curtains to trees, mist, a gondola line climbing the hill, and a light dusting of snow on the peaks above. It was 37°F. After breakfast we layered up, followed the fish in the carpet to the forward elevators, walked the green ramp off the ship, and got our bearings.
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| Jeanne in gondola #59 — heading up to 3,000 feet with the Norwegian Bliss growing smaller behind her. |
We started with the paid gondola — $117 for two, gondola #59, seven minutes up. The trees fell away below us, then the ship, then the whole bay opened up with snowy peaks across the water.
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| Looking straight down the gondola line from the summit — the Norwegian Bliss docked far below, the islands of Icy Strait beyond, snowy peaks on the horizon. |
At the top: a small camp with container-shops, a restroom, and a forest trail that descended through snow into a meadow. We went far enough to confirm it was a trail and turned around. Sometimes that's enough.
The free tram to the adventure center was next. A long wait, a wrong turn thanks to creative directions from a staff member — "go down to the cannery, turn left, loop back around" — that sent us on a half-mile detour, only to discover that "door number two" had been ten feet from where we started.
We arrived slightly out of breath and mildly annoyed, which is the correct emotional state for a cooking class.
Alaska Cooking School
The class was three parts. First, halibut clam chowder — red potatoes, a rich base, the kind of thing you'd eat every day if you lived here. Second, a salmon spread made with canned Icy Strait coho, cream cheese, capers, and a few other ingredients our instructor rattled off with the confidence of someone who makes it in her sleep.
Third — and best — the live demonstration.
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| Our instructor holds up the whole halibut before the filleting demonstration. That fish is roughly 2.5 feet across. |
The instructor carried out a whole halibut that was bigger than most of the people in the room. She laid it on the table and filleted it right there, explaining exactly where to cut, how deep, which direction — the kind of knowledge you only get by doing it a thousand times.
Watching it happen was like a magic trick run in reverse. One moment: enormous fish. Next moment: clean fillets ready for the grill.
We took the plates outside, seasoned the halibut with salt and pepper and the salmon with lemon pepper, and put them on industrial-length grills running at serious heat. The salmon came off first — smoky, perfect, gone in about 90 seconds of eating. The halibut needed another minute. Worth every one.
With the ship leaving in 45 minutes we power-walked back to the tram, which moved mercifully fast this time, and were on board with time to spare.
That evening: tea and scones in the Observation Lounge, a running battle with a bus boy who treated every plate as his personal property (at one point Jeanne literally sat on a dish to keep it from disappearing mid-meal), and dinner at Food Republic — six shared plates plus two desserts. The wine arrived around the fourth course. We've stopped being surprised by this.
Thursday, May 14 • Ketchikan, Alaska
About Ketchikan
📍 Ketchikan is Alaska's southernmost city and most travelers' first port of call heading north. It calls itself the "Salmon Capital of the World" and receives over 160 inches of rain a year — one of the wettest places in the United States. The surrounding Tongass National Forest covers 17 million acres, making it the largest national forest in the country. The area was home to Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples for millennia before European contact. Creek Street — a boardwalk built on pilings over Ketchikan Creek — served as the town's red-light district from 1903 until 1954 and is now its most photographed attraction.
Up at six. Eggs, potatoes, yogurt with granola, coffee. Down to the dock by 8:30 into what appeared to be a Walmart that had somehow merged with a souvenir shop. The dock facility was enormous and selling everything: jewelry, clothing, smoked salmon, rain gear, watches, you name it.
Our bus to the tour was nearly empty — eight people on a yellow school bus. Our driver was a young woman from Arizona, originally from a small town with no stoplights. She'd moved to Alaska with her new husband looking for adventure. She had found it.
Eagles, Cedar, and Carson
Our guide for the day was Carson — from Utah, now guiding in Ketchikan, the kind of person who has clearly found the job he was supposed to have. He loaded us onto a flat touring vessel and headed out to the eagles.
The method was simple and completely effective: Carson stood at the stern and threw fish into the water. Eagles dove. There were about ten of them working the area — the young ones fastest and most precise, dropping out of the sky at an angle that made you want to applaud. Jeanne got video. Good video.
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| Carson next to what he called the largest cedar tree in Alaska. The scale only registers when you notice the people. |
We pulled up to a waterfront lodge where Sitka blacktail deer were grazing calmly at the dock like they owned the place. Carson led us up into the forest — shallow soil, six inches deep in places, but the trees growing out of it are enormous. Old growth, moss-covered, completely quiet.
At one point Carson stopped the group in front of a Sitka cedar that was simply staggering in size. He said it was the largest in Alaska. Standing next to it, nobody argued.
Back at the lodge: the feast. A massive pot of everything — clams, mussels, shrimp, crab, corn, potatoes, sausage, more crab — steamed together and dumped directly onto newspaper spread across the table. No plates, no ceremony, just steam rising off a pile of shellfish big enough to feed twice as many people as were sitting there.
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| The moment the pot lands on the table — crab, corn, clams, mussels, potatoes, sausage, steam and all. Our Shanghai tablemates were perfectly positioned to make the most of it. |
Our tablemates were three people from Shanghai — an aunt and uncle who spoke no English — and their niece, a Chinese-American living in the US who was translating both directions and clearly having the best time doing it. The uncle dove into the crab with the focused intensity of a professional. The aunt was more methodical.
Between the six of us we made a serious dent. Cookie for dessert. Carson announced seven minutes for the restroom and everyone ran.
On the way back, Carson swung by a quiet cove where the US Navy runs underwater acoustics testing — measuring and masking submarine sound signatures in the unusually calm, deep water. We spent ten minutes learning about something we had no idea existed in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. That's what good guides do.
Back at the dock, change made, tips distributed, Jeanne and I were heading toward the ship when a golf cart flagged us over. It was the mobility assistance shuttle — fully loaded, one last run, one seat left, maybe two if we squeezed. The driver waved us on. We got on. We passed every single person walking the 300 yards back to the ship, including a few people with canes. We said nothing. We smiled.
Palomar and the Salt-Crusted Branzino
That night: Palomar restaurant. We ordered the wine immediately this time. It appeared in under two minutes. (We have since concluded the wine lives under a different restaurant.) We ordered two appetizers and the whole roasted Branzino for two, which our server warned would take 45 minutes. He was not wrong.
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| The Palomar server with the salt-crusted Branzino on the cart, about to spend the next 15 minutes filleting it tableside. No one was in a hurry. |
The fish arrived on a cart, completely encased in a thick layer of hard-baked salt with fresh herbs sealed inside the crust. Our server presented it, then took a small mallet and cracked the salt crust cleanly in half, exposing one side of the fish.
Steam came up. The smell of the herbs hit the table at the same moment. He worked the fillet free with the unhurried precision of someone who has done this a thousand times and still takes it seriously. Fifteen minutes of tableside work.
The fish was worth every minute of the wait — all 45 of them, plus the 15 for the filleting. We declined the second serving we were entitled to. There was simply no more room.
Friday, May 15 • At Sea & Victoria, British Columbia
Another Day in the Observation Lounge
A time change pushed us forward an hour. We slept in anyway, then settled back into the rhythm we'd found on the first sea day: Observation Lounge, hot tea, scones, watching the parade go by.
We walked the deck 8 boardwalk several more times. Same routine, same rotating sun-and-wind sides, same outdoor couches on the sheltered side. By this point in the trip, between the boardwalk laps and the long internal walks from the cabin to wherever we were going next, our iPhones were reporting daily step counts more than double what we usually do at home.
Maybe half of that was the ship itself — the three-minute hike from cabin 14850 to the bow elevators, multiplied by the number of times a day we did it. The rest was shore excursions. Either way, we were walking a lot, and most of it was happening without us thinking about it.
Breakfast was with a well-traveled Canadian couple from China who knew the country better than most people born there. The exercise room came later. Some of the machines on board were designed by someone with a very different philosophy about how knees work.
About Victoria
📍 Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and perches at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, looking south toward Washington State across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was founded in 1843 as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post — Fort Camosun first, then renamed Fort Victoria in honor of Queen Victoria — and became the capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The city has cultivated its British colonial identity more deliberately than almost anywhere in North America: afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel has run continuously since 1908, double-decker buses circulate the old town, and the inner harbor is ringed with Victorian-era architecture maintained with unusual care.
📍 Victoria's demographics have shifted considerably over the past 30 years. The city was historically Anglo-Canadian, but today roughly 20% of greater Victoria's population identifies as visible minority, with Chinese, South Asian, and Filipino communities representing the largest groups. Victoria's Chinatown — established in 1858 — is the oldest in Canada and the second oldest in North America after San Francisco's. The population of greater Victoria is around 400,000, and the city consistently ranks as one of the most expensive real estate markets in Canada. Waterfront homes along the inner harbor and Oak Bay have sold for $3–8 million in recent years, and even modest homes in central Victoria regularly exceed $900,000 CAD. The influx of retirees, remote workers, and Vancouver overflow buyers has driven prices up sharply since 2015.
That evening the ship pulled into Victoria at 8 PM. Tour started at 8:30. We had to be back aboard by midnight. Four hours in one of the most beautiful small cities in North America. Make of that what you will.
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| Emile leading the group out from the pier into the Victoria evening — still light out, weather cooperative, nobody yet aware of what was coming. |
Our guide was Emile — from Dawson City in the Yukon, which is about as far from Victoria as you can get while still being in Canada. He'd moved here four years ago and had clearly made his peace with the transition from -40° winters to mild Pacific drizzle. He knew the city inside out.
The walking tour was described as 1.5 miles over 2.5 hours. It was brisk from the start. Within half a mile we stopped at a small restaurant where someone handed us blueberry scones still warm from the oven. We ate them while walking, which is a skill.
At the waterfront we found Victoria's floating neighborhood — actual homes on actual barges, moored side by side along the inner harbor like a residential street that decided to go amphibious. Tied up nearby: small rental hot tubs, open-air, that you can take out into the channel with a pilot.
Victoria is full of things you didn't know you needed until you saw them.
A yellow water taxi took us across to Chinatown. On the way Emile talked about the history — the Gold Rush miners who arrived in 1858, the early Chinese workers who built the community around Fan Tan Alley, the discrimination laws that came and went, and what the neighborhood looks like now: smaller than it once was, quieter, but still alive.
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| Victoria's inner harbor at dusk — sailboats, working vessels, and float homes tucked side by side. The city that built all of this is just out of frame to the right, glowing. |
The population conversation continued as we walked. Victoria has been changing for two decades. The British colonial veneer is real and preserved, but underneath it the city is increasingly diverse, increasingly expensive, and increasingly pulled between the charm that makes everyone want to live there and the prices that are making that harder for the people who grew up there.
That's when the rain found us. It had been threatening all evening. Emile was mid-sentence about the Hudson's Bay Company fort site when the skies opened. Real rain, the Sitka kind, not the polite Victoria kind. We had gear. We used it. We kept walking.
The bus queue back to the ship wrapped around three sides of a city block. Double-deckers kept arriving and kept loading. We moved faster than expected — maybe 15 minutes in the cold and wet — and climbed aboard.
Behind us in line were two young women from Buffalo in sweatshirts. No rain gear. They were stoic about it in a way that made sense given where they were from. They were also the two people immediately behind us when the last bus hit capacity. The door closed. We were on. They were not.
Back on the ship by 11. In bed by 11:15. Fast, cold, completely worth it — though four hours is not enough time for Victoria. It's a city that deserves at least two days, ideally in dry weather, ideally in a harbor-view hotel that costs more than it should and is worth it anyway.
Saturday, May 16 • Seattle & Home
The alarm went off in the middle of a dream. Seattle. The ship was surrounded by the sounds of a port getting ready to repeat itself — forklifts, fuel lines, the low industrial hum of logistics.
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| Seattle from the deck of the Norwegian Bliss on the last morning — the city waking up, the ship getting ready to do it all again for the next group of passengers. |
We went up to the buffet, had breakfast with a few hundred other people trying to summon enthusiasm for the day, came back to the room, and waited for the gray group call.
The gray group disembarkation took maybe 20 minutes. Bags located, shuttle found, last two people on the bus — of course — and a 35-minute ride to Sea-Tac with a driver who narrated the entire way. We were in the back. We heard about 40% of it. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
At the airport: a three-stop odyssey to check one bag that involved two different counters, a 15-minute walk, and a return trip to confirm what we thought we knew. We walked more inside Sea-Tac that morning than we had on any single shore excursion. Eventually the bag was tagged, we cleared security, and the airport became our problem to solve for the next six hours.
We walked Terminal C, found halibut fish and chips (good), and then went to explore Terminal N for the quiet area we'd read about. Getting there required a mini-train and two stops. At the end of a corridor: the Alaska Airlines Lounge. Entry: $35 per person. We looked at it, walked away, found no satisfactory alternative, and came back.
The lounge was the right call. Comfortable chairs, good food, windows, peace. The only mistake was spending $100 on lunch before we got there. The lounge had food. It was included. We did not know this until we were sitting with full stomachs watching other people eat for free.
We worked our way to the best window seats when they opened up and held them for the afternoon.
Near the end, a young man a few rows down was having a confusing interaction with the person in his seat — someone's grandmother had apparently needed it, he'd given it up, and now a different young man was sitting there without any grandmother in sight. We talked to him after things settled. He was a medevac helicopter pilot, just flown in from one of the islands we'd sailed past, running on two days with no sleep.
He'd given away his seat and couldn't figure out where it had gone. When we left for the gate we tapped him on the shoulder and gave him ours. He looked like he might cry, which was the correct response.
The Alaska Airlines first-class flight home was 2.5 hours and felt like less. Monica was at the curb exactly where she always is, exactly when she always is. We were home by 10:30.
At the baggage carousel, someone's bag had cracked open somewhere on the journey. A can of Alaskan salmon had escaped and was riding the belt alone, making its slow loops with the dignity of a passenger who had already accepted the situation. Somebody's cruise souvenir, going around and around.
We stood there and watched it for a minute before grabbing our bags and heading home to the cats.
Trip Summary
Itinerary at a Glance
Depart: John Wayne Airport (SNA) → Seattle–Tacoma (SEA) via Alaska Airlines First Class — Friday, May 8
Day at Sea (Northbound) — Sunday, May 10
Observation Lounge mornings, deck 8 boardwalk, sunny-side couches
Sitka, AK — Monday, May 11
Arrive 10:00 AM • Depart 6:00 PM
Open-boat wildlife excursion with Spencer & Liam; Finn Island salmon bake; eagle nests in the afternoon
Juneau, AK — Tuesday, May 12
Arrive 6:30 AM • Depart 1:30 PM
Mendenhall Glacier; salmon bake; Dawes Glacier 360° viewing in full sun
Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), AK — Wednesday, May 13
Arrive 6:00 AM • Depart 3:00 PM
Gondola to summit; Alaska cooking school; halibut & salmon on the grill
Ketchikan, AK — Thursday, May 14
Arrive 6:00 AM • Depart 1:15 PM
Bald eagle feeding; old-growth cedar forest with Carson; waterfront seafood feast; salt-crusted Branzino at Palomar
Day at Sea (Southbound) + Victoria, BC — Friday, May 15
Arrive Victoria 8:00 PM • Depart 11:59 PM
Walking food tour with Emile; Chinatown; inner harbor by water taxi
Return: Seattle, WA — Saturday, May 16
Arrive 7:00 AM
Disembark; Alaska Airlines First Class home to SNA
By the Numbers
Trip duration: 9 days — May 8 through 16, 2026
Days at sea: 2 (Sunday May 10 + Friday May 15)
Alaska ports: 4 — Sitka, Juneau, Icy Strait Point, Ketchikan
Canadian port: 1 — Victoria, British Columbia
Sea miles: ~2,400 nautical miles roundtrip
Air miles: ~1,050 miles each way, SNA–SEA (Alaska Airlines First Class)
Ship: Norwegian Bliss — Norwegian Cruise Line — 168,028 GRT
Daily steps: Roughly double our normal home routine — half on the ship, half ashore
Weather luck: Exceptional — one full sunny day in Juneau; rain only hit in Victoria, late
The People Who Made It
Ranna — cabin attendant. The ice bucket was waiting from day one and never stopped being there. Every time we came back to the room there was fresh ice for my ankle. He kept the cabin perfect, checked in constantly, and made the whole week run smoother than it had any right to.
Spencer — captain, Sitka small-boat excursion. Southern California kid turned Alaskan sea captain, splits his year between Sitka and Hawaii. When Jeanne asked where the eagle nests were and he didn't know, he went and found out during lunch. That kind of guide.
Liam — biologist, Sitka excursion. Could identify everything in the water, on the rocks, and in the trees. Made the rain feel like a feature, not a bug.
Carson — guide, Ketchikan. From Utah, now leading eagle tours and forest walks in Southeast Alaska. Stood next to the largest cedar in the state like it was his backyard. Probably is at this point.
Emile — tour guide, Victoria. Dawson City Yukon to Victoria, a journey of about 1,500 miles and many climates. Walked fast, talked fast, knew everything, and got us back to the bus on time despite the rain.
The Cagney's wine sommelier — unnamed but unforgettable. We salute his commitment to the upsell.
The bus boy at the Observation Lounge — also unnamed. We miss nothing about him, including our plates.
Monica — driver. Red Tesla. Never late. Always there. The perfect bookend to any trip.
We danced between the raindrops the whole way north. One truly sunny day. A few wet hours. Everything else was overcast, manageable, and absolutely worth it.
