Crystal Serenity: 20-Night Yokohama To Vancouver

Yokohama is Japan's primary ocean cruise hub and the second-largest city in the country, about 30 kilometers south of central Tokyo. Although Tokyo is far more famous, its central harbor has no suitable cruise terminal for large ships.

Seward is the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park and serves primarily as a turnaround port for one-way Alaska cruises between Anchorage/Whittier and the Inside Passage. The small town of about 2,800 residents sits at the head of Resurrection Bay on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, surrounded by mountains, glaciers, and the cold waters of the northern Gulf of Alaska.

Hubbard Glacier is not a port where passengers go ashore. It is a scenic cruising destination in Yakutat Bay at the northern end of the Gulf of Alaska, where ships slow to a crawl and spend several hours in front of North America's largest tidewater glacier.

Skagway cruise port is the northernmost major stop on most Alaska Inside Passage cruises and one of the best-preserved gold rush towns in the world. The town sits at the head of the Lynn Canal fjord, wedged between the Coast Mountains and the Taiya Inlet, with a population of about 1,000 permanent residents that balloons with each cruise ship arrival.

Icy Strait Point is a privately developed cruise destination adjacent to Hoonah, a Tlingit village of about 800 people on the northern shore of Chichagof Island. Unlike most Alaska ports, this is a purpose-built cruise facility operated by Huna Totem Corporation, the local Tlingit Alaska Native corporation, meaning tourism revenue stays in the indigenous community.

Sitka sits on the outer coast of Baranof Island, facing the open Pacific rather than the protected Inside Passage. This gives it a different character from other Alaska cruise ports: more exposed, more wild, with ocean swells and offshore islands visible from town.

Vancouver cruise port is the main gateway to Alaska, and nearly every Alaska cruise that runs the full Inside Passage route starts or ends here. The terminal is at Canada Place, a distinctive sail-shaped building right on the downtown waterfront.