Fly to the The Emerald City of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle where you’ll board Holland America Line's Westerdam. Your first Port of Call is Juneau, located at the foot of grand mountain peaks on the Gastineau Channel. The massive Mendenhall Glacier and the immense Juneau Icefields are at its back door. Explore the lush Tongass National Forest. Visit the rustic shops in town. You’ll visit Glacier Bay National Park with more actively calving tidewater glaciers than anyplace else in the world. How does it feel when a monumental chunk of ice splits off a glacier and crashes into the sea? The sound is like thunder. The impact shoots water hundreds of feet into the air. You hold your breath as you catch the moment on film. Then you wait for it all to happen again. And it does. The onion domes of St. Michael's Cathedral are your first clue that Sitka was once a Russian settlement. Discover the echoes of its heyday at a performance by the New Archangel Dancers. Be greeted by Tlingit native people, then stand on the spot where the United States took possession of Alaska in 1867 for $7.2 million, less than two cents per acre. Take a stroll through old growth forest in Sitka National Historical Park, shop the downtown district, and poke around the Sheldon Jackson Museum for a close-up look at some of the city's most prized arts, crafts and Russian relics. Built out over the water and climbing weathered stairways, Ketchikan offers - Creek Street, the Tongass Historical Museum, Totem Bight State Park and Saxman Village, try a flightseeing trip to breathtaking Misty Fjords National Monument. These deep water fjords left by retreating glaciers left granite cliffs towering thousands of feet above the sea and countless waterfalls cascading into placid waters. The souvenir photos you'll take from the pontoons of the plane are worth the trip alone. In Victoria a touch of England awaits: afternoon tea, double-decker buses, the famed Butchart Gardens - a brilliant tapestry of color spread across 50 blooming acres.