After years of talking about visiting Alaska, we finally found the opportunity to make this trip happen thanks to a cruise offer from Princess. We are grateful to check off this bucket list trip with an 11-day Alaskan cruise with mom. We intentionally chose to begin our Alaskan cruise in San Francisco (instead of Seattle or Vancouver) as this was a good opportunity for hubby to spend time with his buddy before embarking on the cruise.
11-Day Alaska Cruise (Inside Passage with Glacier Bay National Park)
13 Sep 2025: San Francisco
14-15 Sep 2025: Sea Days
16 Sep 2025: Ketchikan, Alaska
17 Sep 2025: Sea Day
18 Sep 2025: Skagway, Alaska
19 Sep 2025: Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
20 Sep 2025: Sea Day
21 Sep 2025: Victoria, Canada
22-23 Sep 2025: Sea Days
24 Sep 2025: San Francisco
16 Sep 2025 (Tues): Ketchikan, Alaska
After cruising for 2.5 days, we finally arrived at our first port in Alaska - Ketchikan. Our ship arrived Ketchikan early in the morning and guests were allowed to go ashore at 6.40am. There were 3 other ships docking in Ketchikan on the same day.
Since we were not taking any excursions and didn't have much planned, we took our own sweet time to enjoy breakfast and got off the ship at 8.40am. We had until 3.30pm to get back onboard.
Ketchikan is famous for its rainfall, earning it the nickname the "Rain Capital of Alaska". The city receives an average of 140-160 inches of rain annually so we were very lucky with the good weather.
Ketchikan is known as the 'Salmon Capital of the World'. It is also known as the 'First City' of Alaska due to its location at the southern entrance to the Inside Passage, accessible only by air or sea.
We walked from the pier to Creek Street, the historic red-light district turned into shops and art galleries, built on stilts over a salmon stream. We spotted a seal and salmon in the stream.
We then continued walking to the Salmon Ladder Observation Platform to spot salmons swimming (jumping) against the strong currents.
Salmons swim against strong currents to make their way upstream to spawn, returning to the freshwater rivers where they wree born to lay and fertilize eggs in shallow gravel beds, ensuring the survival of their offspring. Why lah make their lives so difficult.
Everything related to salmon in Ketchikan
These Alaskan ports are really just for cruise ship tourists these days. According to Google, the population in Ketchikan is only 8,033 people vs. over a million tourists annually.
Spotted a random deer while waiting for mom to shop at the thrift store.
After spending about 3 hours strolling around Ketchikan, we headed back to the ship at 11.40am for lunch and chill. Since we didn't get wifi on the ship, port days were internet days for us.
View of Ketchikan from the cruise ship.
We were supposed to depart Ketchikan at 4pm but was informed that our ship will be spending the night in Ketchikan because the weather was bad heading to our next port, Juneau, so we didn't get to visit Juneau and had an extra sea day. Luckily we didn't have anything planned for Juneau so we were fine with this change. On the bright side, we got a refund of $13.23 per person for the port fees.
Next stop...Skagway.
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