Alaska Hubbard Glacier on the Celebrity Solstice
6/13/2026 to 6/21/2026

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Page 1 – Embarkation, Ship
Page 2 – Ship (Continued),
Page 3 – Cabin, Entertainment, Activies, Ports of Call: Icy Strait Point, AK; Juneau, AK
Page 4 – Ports of Call: Ketchikan, AK; Inside Passage; Disembarkation, Vancouver, BC

Ports of Call (Continued)

Ketchikan, AK (1:30 PM to 8:00 PM)

In the morning, we had some nice scenic cruising, especially since we would have sunshine all day.

With this being the prettiest and warmest day of the cruise, we decided to finally check out the Retreat on deck 16 at the front of the ship. We found a covered lounge bed at the front of the retreat and camped there. We thoroughly enjoyed the uncrowded relaxing experience. Eventually the rest of our group also came up and we had lunch while watching the beautiful scenery.

As we got closer to Ketchikan, we saw two cruise ships docked pretty far out of town. We were glad we weren’t docking there.

Twenty minutes later, we saw three more cruise ships at the main dock in Ketchikan. We would be the sixth ship in port that day.

I took some photos of the town and noticed that once again we would have a steep ramp to climb up to street level when we disembarked the ship.

Almost every Alaska cruise stops at Juneau and Ketchikan. They are two of the “Big Three” Alaska ports. The other being Skagway, which was not on this cruise. So, we have been to Ketchikan on every prior cruise. The first two times, in addition to walking around town, we did float plane excursions that were wonderful. This time we would just walk around town again. There are many things to see and do around Ketchikan, but with the late arrival, we enjoyed the leisurely stroll.

The first photo op we came to was a bald eagle statue.

As with Juneau, there were lots of souvenir shops and jewelry stores.

The most popular photo opp in Ketchikan is the “Welcome to Ketchikan” sign. You might be wondering why if it is so popular that there is no one on the street. I love the image processing technology available now that eliminates people from photos. This allowed me to get rid of all the other pesky tourists from the photo.

The main place we wanted to revisit was Creek Street. It is a popular tourist attraction. In 1903, brothels were banned in the town of Ketchikan. So, they moved to the “Indian Town” area along the creek. Rather than being a real street, it is actually a boardwalk mounted on stilts. It was the town’s red-light district until prostitution was banned there in 1954. It is now a very pretty area with lots of shops.

Further up the creek on the boardwalk are rapids and eventually a salmon ladder. I have seen the ladder before but didn’t go that far this time.

I came back to the main area getting different views and walking behind the main buildings where there were other shops.

Probably the most photographed building on Creek Street is Dolly’s House. It was a house of prostitution that is now a museum.

As we were leaving Creek Street at the other end, I took some photos looking the other way.

In addition to Ketchikan being known as the “Salmon Capital of the World,” it is also known as the “Totem Pole Capital of the World.” There are several places near town where there are very nice collections to visit. There are also 80 totem poles scattered around downtown.

On the way back to the Solstice, I was able to get a photo of the Retreat area at the front of the ship we enjoyed that morning.

Once back on the ship, I took a few photos from the upper deck.

Inside Passage

Once again, the proclaimed inside passage listed on the itinerary was more of an outside passage most of the day since we were so far from land. Fortunately, I had a telephoto lens to take some photos.

With the temperature being cooler with a strong wind, we passed on going back to the Retreat. The main attraction during the day was the pilot boat joining the ship around 2:30 PM before we entered the inside passage later in the afternoon.

That evening we all went to dinner at Murano. The previous evening the Retreat hostesses told us that we could go to any of the specialty restaurants for no charge. We couldn’t pass up that offer. It was a very good dinner, and we were most appreciative for it.

Finally, after dinner, the scenery got better. But we had little time to enjoy it, since we had to go back to our cabin to put out our luggage before going to the final production show.

Disembarkation

A benefit of being in a suite on Celebrity is that you can leave the ship whenever you want. We didn’t have to wait for a number to be called. Cathy and I had a private tour booked at 9:30 AM. The others had a van at 9:00 AM taking them back to Bob’s house where Jim would pick up his car and drive home. So, after breakfast, we all went back to the Retreat Lounge for a last visit. It’s always sad to have to say goodbye, but we did have a great visit. They left just before 9:00 AM, so I checked with our guide to see if he was arriving earlier. He was, so we headed off. It couldn’t have been easier to get off the ship, get our luggage and go through customs and immigration.

Vancouver, British Columbia

We have both been to Vancouver before but never had enough time to do much touring. This time, we had a full day, since our flight home didn’t leave until 10:00 PM. I arranged a tour through Tours by Locals (https://www.toursbylocals.com) that would show us around all day and drop us off at the airport at 6:00 PM. We have found that Tours by Locals does have some great guides, and we use them when we can. Our driver/guide for the day was Stephen Exler with Compass Tours. He can also be booked directly at steve.compasstours@gmail.com.

We were very pleased with Steve. We learned so much about Vancouver throughout the tour. We were most impressed with the number of interesting and beautiful places he took us to. We first went through Chinatown, as he told us the history of it. We then went through Gastown. This was Vancouver’s first settlement that became the core of the city. It was named after Gassy Jack Deighton, a Yorkshire seaman that opened the area’s first saloon. He was known for talking a lot or gassing. So, the area was first known as “Gassy’s town,” which was shortened to Gastown. Gastown’s most famous landmark is the steam clock. Although the clock appears to be quite old, it was only installed in 1977 to prevent street people from sleeping on the grate to the underground steam heating system in cold weather. A steam whistle is used instead of chimes. Steve said that it doesn’t go off on the hour as it is supposed to do.

We drove by the Olympic cauldron from the 2010 games.

He then pointed out the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. It is a historic landmark known as the “Castle in the City.”

We next drove to Stanley Park. It is the city’s first and largest park. It is 20% larger than New York City’s Central Park. I loved seeing the large trees as we drove through it.

We pulled into the mounted police area where we saw some of their horses.

We next drove to an area where we could park the car and walk around some. It is such a pretty place. We were lucky we had a warm sunny day to enjoy it.

Across the water, Steve told us about the Vancouver Convention Center West. It is the first convention center in the world to receive awards for its sustainability features. It is a strange looking building with a grass roof. Steve told us that the developers originally intended to put goats on the roof to mow it. They eventually realized that it would be a hazard to the goats to be on the roof and came up with a different solution.

We also had a panoramic view of the city.

We walked further into the park through a gateway titled People Amongst the People. It serves as a welcome to the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people. We liked the carvings on each side of the gateway.

Inside the grounds were lots of totem poles.

As we were leaving that section of the park, we passed by a statue of Canadian Olympic track and field runner, Harry Jerome. He held several world records in the 1960’s.

We drove around the park some more enjoying its beauty. We could see the Lion’s Gate Bridge we passed under to begin and end the cruise. We could also see the huge piles of Sulphur on the other bank.

As we crossed over the Lion’s Gate Bridge to our next destination, I was able to snap a photo of one of the lions on sides of the bridge.

We were driving north of town and passed the exit to a major tourist attraction, the Capilano Suspension Bridge. I thought that it would be one of the places we would stop to see. But we didn’t. Steve told us that he was taking us to a different place to see the Capilano River for free rather than paying $78 Canadian ($55 US) to walk across the popular bridge. He also said that it would be very crowded and we would probably have to wait in a long line to go across it. We were glad he didn’t stop there. We pulled into the parking area for Cleveland Park, the site of the Cleveland Dam that forms the Capilano Lake reservoir. It was opened in 1954. While walking to the dam, Steve pointed out the Lions, two mountain peaks that are supposed to look like sleeping lions. The area’s native people called them the sisters. They look more like sisters to me than lions.

The view of the lake was quite nice.

We walked out to the top of the dam to see the river and gorge. I was fascinated looking down at the spillway. There was a spray of water coming out of one side of it, but we couldn’t see why.

The view of the gorge and river was quite nice too.

We saw people looking up at the dam from the side. It looked like a paved area, but Steve said we couldn’t drive there. Instead, we walked over to some stairs. It didn’t look that far down to paved area, so we went down. When we got there, we had a view of the dam, but not the spillway.

There were more stairs heading down to the paved area we saw from above. My curiosity about the spillway spray diminished, so we went back up the stairs to where Cathy was smartly waiting for us.

We got back in the car to head to our next adventure. We were visiting Lynn Canyon Park, the site of the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. The park itself was quite nice with lots of tall trees.

It was a short walk to the suspension bridge. This bridge is about a third as long as the Capilano, but it looked plenty long to me, plus it was free. As I crossed, I could see a waterfall on one side of it.

When I got to the other side, Steve asked if I wanted to explore that side of the park. I took a quick look around and went back the other way. There were less people going back.

It was already 12:30 PM, lunchtime. Steve was going to take us to a restaurant on Granville Island. I had been there before and was looking forward to returning. Cathy had not been there. Granville Island was very crowded due to it being a beautiful Sunday, plus there were more tourists in town due to the World Cup games happening in Vancouver. We drove around for quite a while trying to find a parking place, but there were none. We saw a lot of the island from the car, but we had to leave to find a restaurant. Steve did find a real winner, Maria’s Taverna. They had outstanding Greek food. We had a great meal.

After lunch, we continued the tour. Steve took us to Jericho Beach Park. As we were walking to the beach, I had to take a photo of a pretty wildflower.

We were very impressed the size and beauty of this beach. We aren’t used to seeing beaches with mountain views in Florida. We were surprised it wasn’t more crowded.

Steve told us to walk out onto the boardwalk and look right. In front of us was an amazing view of the Vancouver skyline.

We loved this place! Steve took our photo for us.

We next headed to Queen Elizabeth Park. When we parked, we could see the Bloedel Conservatory on the other side of the lot. It is a conservatory and aviary containing 500 species of plants and 200 birds. We weren’t there to visit it. We walked over to a viewpoint, passing by some pretty plants.

When we arrived, we had a different view of Vancouver, as well as other beautiful plants.

The main reason we were there to see the sunken gardens that were developed from a quarry in the 1930’s. We walked around looking at it from different angles. It is a lovely place.

As we were leaving, I took a photo of an abstract bronze sculpture called “Knife Edge Two Piece.” It was inspired by a piece of bone. I don’t know where the name came from.

When we left the park, we headed to some other areas to checkout closer to the airport. When we were finished, Steve dropped us off at the airport. He had given us an outstanding tour showing us places we never would have found on our own. I wasn’t originally pleased that we had a late-night redeye flight home, but after the great full day tour, we couldn’t be happier that we were able to see so much of Vancouver.

We didn’t have a long layover in Charlotte for our flight home. So, I was concerned. We were very pleased that we would be able to clear US customs and immigration at the Vancouver airport where we had plenty of time. It meant that we could go straight to gate when we arrived at Charlotte. It was a good thing, since our flight was delayed due to us having to wait for someone to sign off on some paperwork for a minor maintenance issue. When we arrived at the Charlotte airport, we had to hussle to the gate. We arrived as our group was boarding. The cruise was over and we were looking forward to getting home.

Recap

I was disappointed we hadn’t seen more of Alaska’s beautiful scenery on this cruise. It is such a gorgeous state. My favorite Alaska cruise was in 2014 when we did a cruise with a land tour that ended in Fairbanks. We got to see so much of amazing Alaska including Denali National Park. I always tell people to try to do a land tour with an Alaska cruise. But we didn’t take this cruise for the scenery, we took it to spend time with good friends.

We enjoyed the benefits of being in a suite on this cruise. With the full ship and lots of kids, it made a big difference. We were also very pleased with the improvements made to the Solstice in the recent refurbishment. Celebrity made it a better cruising experience. A main highlight of this cruise was the wonderful crew. Everyone was so friendly, helpful and always smiling. It made for a most enjoyable cruise.

Alaska Hubbard Glacier on the Celebrity Solstice 6/13/2026 to 6/21/2026