Seattle

Pier 91 (Smith Cove Cruise Terminal, 2001 W Garfield Street) handles Royal Caribbean, Princess, Celebrity, Holland America, Carnival, MSC, and Virgin Voyages. Pier 66 (Bell Street Cruise Terminal, 2225 Alaskan Way) handles Norwegian and Oceania. Pier 91 is about three miles north of downtown — not walkable from Pike Place. Pier 66 is downtown, a few blocks from Pike Place Market itself. Check your booking documents and your hotel's location against your actual pier; it's the single most expensive thing to get wrong.

If you're a U.S. citizen on a closed-loop cruise (round-trip from the same U.S. port), you can technically board with a birth certificate plus government photo ID under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Bring the passport anyway. If you miss the ship in Ketchikan or Juneau and need to fly home from Canada, or if your itinerary diverts to Victoria BC and disembarks there for a medical reason, the birth certificate becomes a problem. Non-U.S. citizens need a passport and may need a U.S. visa or ESTA depending on nationality.

The tourist core (Pike Place, the waterfront, Belltown, lower Queen Anne) is fine in daylight and well-trafficked. There are documented street-level problems with open drug use and unhoused encampments along parts of 3rd Avenue and around Pioneer Square — visible, occasionally uncomfortable, rarely violent toward tourists. Travel advisories from the U.S. State Department and most consulates do not flag Seattle as a high-risk destination, but local guidance is consistent: avoid 3rd Avenue between Pike and Yesler after dark, keep valuables out of sight in parked cars (vehicle prowls are the dominant property crime), and use rideshare at night rather than walking long blocks alone.

Pike Place Market for an hour (skip the fish-throwing crowd, walk the lower levels). The Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass next door are a combined 90 minutes and genuinely worth it — Chihuly is the better of the two if you only do one. Pioneer Square for the bookstore (Elliott Bay) and the Underground Tour if it's raining. The Museum of Pop Culture if you have a music nerd in your group. Skip the Aquarium unless you have kids; Alaska is about to give you better wildlife for free.

About $15–20 and 10 minutes in normal traffic — Pier 91 to Pike Place is roughly three miles. Uber and Lyft both operate; surge pricing kicks in hard on disembarkation mornings (8–10 AM) when 3,000 passengers all leave at once, so a $15 ride can briefly become $40. The cruise terminal has a taxi queue but it can run dry during peak debark. If you have time flexibility, walk 10 minutes east out of the terminal toward Magnolia and request a rideshare from there — pickups are faster and cheaper away from the crush.

Cards everywhere. Seattle is one of the most card-and-contactless-friendly cities in the U.S. — the light rail accepts tap-to-pay with a credit card or phone wallet directly at the station fare gates, restaurants and the market itself take cards universally, and tipping is added on the screen. Carry $20–40 in small bills only for the rare street vendor and busker tips at Pike Place. ATMs are everywhere; avoid the standalone ones in convenience stores ($3–5 fees) and use a bank-branded machine instead.