Loved Juneau! We did an excursion that included a tour of the city, a drive to Mendenhall Glacier, a sanctuary on the coast, and the marina. We booked this when we got off the ship with a tour guide that was advertising right there on the port. Our guide was super friendly, and even told us about a trail that the locals hike (that not many tourists know about). When we finished his tour, we immediately set off for that trail, and were glad we did! What an awesome hike! So green with pretty views! 
Two things I would recommend with Juneau: 
One is that if you are going to see Mendenhall Glacier, try to go to the side with the waterfall where the visitor center is. You get a better view of the glacier, and there is a river nearby that has a lot of black bears when the salmon are spawning. The rangers do a good job of keeping the tourists back from the bears, so you don't have anything to worry about. 
Two is that if you want to see whales up close, I highly recommend a whale tour that goes to Auke Bay. We went to the sanctuary on the coast of Auke Bay, and while we saw whales, they were pretty far out, so we could only watch them with binoculars. But we noticed the tour boats right up where the whales were. In fact, I noticed that another reviewer on this web site from our same cruise was on one of those boats, and got amazing close-up pictures of the whales! I wish we would have done that excursion rather than just seeing whales from the cruise ship or from the coast. 


Juneau

We did two excursions this port. One was the White Pass Railway, that I HIGHLY recommend. It goes up into the Yukon in Canada and has the most amazing views of the countryside! You can even go outside the cars to get pictures. We even saw a bear! 
The other excursion was a fishing trip with a guide. I caught a huge King Salmon that we had shipped back. Our guide was awesome! Very friendly. He even knew about the local wildlife, at one point throwing bait in the water and using a whistle to call in a Bald Eagle that all the locals call "Fred". Made for neat pictures watching him swoop in after that bait fish! :) 
The shops in Skagway have a very 'Small Town' feel, and it was fun just walking downtown. 


Skagway

My husband and I kick ourselves for not fishing in this port at well. It's the Salmon capital, and they're not kidding! The salmon were spawning, and we saw people renting poles and catching them right off the dock, or even from the river in town. We saw tons of them going up the rivers! 
What a cute town! So many things to see! The Totem Poles are awesome, and Creek Street was definitely our favorite place to visit. I think the shopping is the best here out of all the ports. A lot of the merchandise isn't the greatest quality in the various ports. These shops cater to the cruise ships, and have stores in ports all over. They make it sound like it's local to Alaska, but this isn't true. What you find in Alaska, you can find in the Caribbean too. You definitely get what you pay for. But Ketchikan had a lot of quality items, along with neat local art and jewelry that we really liked! 
We did a snorkeling excursion here! Most people would shy away from that thinking it was too cold. But it was AWESOME! The water was just 5-10 degrees colder than water you would swim or ski in at a reservoir. And you're wearing wet suits, so you don't even feel it except at your ankles and wrists. The water was clearer than I expected, but that could have been due to the incredibly nice weather (no clouds, upper 70's). There were jellyfish everywhere! Only the brown ones could sting you, and it was easy to avoid them. Not to mention, due to the wet suits, they could only sting you on the one exposed part of your body (your face) so you would literally have to swim head-on into one to get stung, lol. Honestly, if it wasn't for those brown jellyfish, my husband and I could have probably gone without the wet suits completely. The water really isn't that bad. It was fun holding the harmless ones, and other sea life as well (like the urchin, starfish, sea cucumber, etc.) 


Ketchikan

B317. For an inside room, it's everything we expected. Tiny bathroom, but not really something we were concerned about. Loved the bigger closet for our clothes. The bed wasn't very comfortable. They were literally twin cots pushed together, so the springs would leave my husband and I sore in the morning. Good location though. Not too close to the elevators and all the traffic. Didn't feel a lot of rocking from the ship either due to the location (I've heard it's best to be in the middle of a ship as far as rocking is concerned)

And because the shuttle leaves to go to the port at 11am, we were one of the first on the cruise ship.The ship is so big, it was just a pain to keep having to go back to the room to get that stuff.

Golden Princess Review

July 31st through Aug 7th 2010 Alaskan Cruise!

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