A typical sailing out of Seattle includes similar ports to the Inside Passage cruises from Vancouver, with the addition of the requisite foreign port which in this case is usually the romantically English capital of Victoria, British Columbia (p. 79 ), though some cruise lines are now calling in Nanaimo, British Columbia, instead (to avoid the summer crowds in Victoria).
The Gulf of Alaska Vancouver to Anchorage
The other major cruising area is the Southcentral region’s Gulf of Alaska, usually referred to by the cruise lines as the Glacier Discovery Route or the \byage of the Glaciers. Gulf of Alaska, after all, sounds pretty bland, and on this itinerary you see twice as many glaciers as you do on Inside Passage routes.
Gulf cruises still visit the Inside Passage ports (see above), but then they continue along the coastline of the Gulf, that arc of land from just north of Glacier Bay to the Kenai Peninsula, ending in Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city. Or rather, close to Anchorage: To save a day’s travel, most ships choose the turnaround ports of Seward or Whittier instead, carrying passengers from Seward or Whittier on to Anchorage by bus or train.
