Sunday, October 13, 2013

Coastal Cruise 2013



Coastal Cruise 2013
Our Daughter in Law called and asked what cruise we were taking this year. My wife answered and said that we were taking one up the coast, Los Angeles to Vancouver.
"Isn't that the one you took last year?"
"Yes."
"Does it go to different ports?"
"No, same ports as last year," the wife replied.
"Is it a different ship at least?" The Daughter in Law was sounding confused at this point.
"Yes, but it is the sister ship of the on last year so it is very familiar."
"Oh, Um, okay."
So I booked an inexpensive cruise up the coast, but 'familiar' would be a word we would use at every port and to describe the ship. We both agree that we will be doing something else next year.
The cruise started early, with the alarm clock going off at 1:30 am. Of course I was awake anyway being the owl that I am, but the wife had a hard time dragging herself out of bed. The cab was supposed to meet us at two in the morning so we decide to make it easy for him and wait at the end of the drive way. We live on a Cul de Sac so we sat there watching the road. When we spot the taxi he drives past our street, then a few minutes later he drives past in the other direction, then we watch him drive past again.
It was at this point I decided to track him down so I walk to the end of the Cul de Sac to flag him down, but he does not come back so I have to go after him. He is pulling into driveways and flashing on his brights to see the addresses. After a block and a half of chasing him I finally catch up. I then get in the cab and direct him back to the house. The first thing I notice is a GPS system on his dashboard. I just shake my head, you can have all the technology in the world but if you do not know how to use it, it is worthless.
When we arrive at the airporter shuttle station, it is closed. So we have to sit on the steps and wait till someone opens the door. When they finally do, it is such a nice night that we stay out on the steps. We are doing it again; the weather turns good so we are leaving town. The weather in Seattle is better this week than Los Angeles.
When the bus arrives we give them our suitcases and climb aboard for a nap to the airport. The first thing I notice is a loud squeak right above my head. Last year the bus was old and the whole bus squeaked so everyone had to put up with it, but this bus is newer and only squeaks in the one spot. I am feeling that it is cosmically unfair that we have the seat with the only squeak, but since the bus is nearly full, there is no option to move. So for the next two hours I listen to the squeak, the wife is so tired that she goes to sleep despite the noise.
We arrive at the airplane counter and the lady behind the desk does something I have not seen in a long time, she smiles. I was taken aback at that and the no baggage fee for the first bag, but then she asks, "How would you like to be more comfortable?"
I know we are on an airplane and need to be packed in like cattle so the airline execs can make more money on their bonuses, so I am confused at the question, but the wife answers, "Yes," before I can comment.
The lady puts me on a window seat, leaves the seat between us open and then puts the wife on the aisle. The next pleasant surprise we have is that the seats have legroom. Enough that I can get my 6'4" frame in there and have inches left over between the seat in front and me.
This is the first time we have flown Jet Blue, but it won't be the last because the wife looks up at me and says, "We have a new airline."

Long Beach

When we arrive at Long Beach, we see that the airport terminal is finally complete. Gone are the noisy portables packed with passengers. You still have to climb off the plane and walk across the tarmac into the building, but it isn't a mile long walk. The advantage to this is that they deplane from the front and the back, and since we were all the way to the back, we got off very fast.
After getting our luggage we caught a cab. Last year I paid what was on the meter, this year I asked the cab driver how much it would be, $30.00 flat rate to the hotel, he said. When we arrived at the Queen Mary, the meter was higher than that, so I was glad I asked.
After rescuing our luggage from the trunk of the cab, we walked up to the SS Queen Mary Hotel and then up the elevator to the front desk. When we got up to the receptionist the first thing she said was, "You will need to leave the ship."
 Waiting for the 'all clear.'
 Firemen come to save the day.

It was a strange way to greet us, but seconds before that the fire alarm started. The staff was among the first to leave.
As the wife and I were standing there we saw the Captain leaving. She turns to me and asked, "Isn't he supposed to go down with the ship?"
Some random pirate, oh and the wife too!

I'm thinking, 'What is a ship that has not sailed in nearly fifty years doing with a Captain?' Later on I saw the same man and he was leading a tour group.
The fire department checked out everything soon after that and the all clear was sounded. We came back on the ship and back to the front desk. We were in line behind these two twenty something girls. In their rush to get out of the building they had left their key cards in the room. One glance and you can tell that the key card was not they only thing that was forgotten. The one girl had a thin white mini skirt on and you could tell that there was no underwear beneath it.
She was looking real nervous and asked her friend if she could see anything, her friend walked behind her and reported, "Yep your bottom is exposed to the whole world. Why didn't you put on a long jacket like I told you to?"
I decided to be the perfect gentleman and I was looking up and out so as not to further embarrass the poor girl. When she looked behind her, which was frequent, I was neither staring nor drooling.
After they left I said to the wife, "Did you see that girl?"
"You mean the one in the inside out gauze mini skirt?"
I was going to say "No the other one, wasn't that a nice leather jacket?" but she would not have believed me anyway so I said, "Yes that one."
Her response was, "She seemed to have forgotten something."
The nice thing about staying at the Queen Mary is that there is a free shuttle into town that is run by the local bus company. So after we got checked in we headed down to the shuttle and took it to the other side of the bay. There is a line of restaurants there and after an hour harbor cruise we went over and ate at Famous Dave's BBQ. Deb really enjoys the food there. 
We did a harbor tour also. It was something we had wanted to do last time but ran out of time. We got on the tour boat and had fun.

 Ships we saw on the harbor tour
 I am really enjoying the tour a lot more than it looks like.
 Sea Lion basking in the sun

When we got back to the ship I noticed that the stateroom bathroom floor seemed to have a bit of a wave to it and the toilet leaned towards to the bathtub. The old ship was showing her age, but was built a lot better than some of the cruise ships we had been on.

 Notice the wave in the floor. The toilet leans towards the tub. You won't get this great affect at a Motel 6
 Stateroom

That night we settled down and went to sleep early. This did not last long as the walls are somewhat thin and two hours later our next door neighbors came home, slamming doors and talking to each other really loud in a foreign language. When they finally stopped, we were able to get back to sleep.
In the morning I was playing with one of the port holes and to my amazement one of the eighty year old things still opened. The wife was delighted to have some fresh air in the cabin as it had been so stuffy all night.

 Eighty years old and it still works!

We had forgotten some things off the packing list so we had to go to Wal-Mart to get them. Upon tracking down all the items I went to pay for them only to be told that I would have to buy the paper sack since plastic was not allowed. So I spent an extra ten cents and purchased my bag. The wife, meanwhile, had found a McDonald's and bought us some breakfast. I was surprised when she handed me a plastic bag full of food. "Where did you get the bag?" I asked.
She looked at me confused, "They just handed it to me."
I guess the law only applies to those companies that want to make a little extra money charging for paper bags.

 I tried to get them to move the Russian sub out of the way so I could get a good bow on shot
 Pavilion at Long Beach with the ship in the background
 On the deck of the Queen Mary
`
 Light house across from the Queen Mary


Big ugly guy in front of the light house

To the Ship

We were told not to arrive on the cruise ship before one pm. We didn't listen and left the Queen Mary right at eleven am. The line was short and by the time we had gotten through security and on the ship they were already boarding. We were eating lunch by eleven thirty. We did notice another wave of passengers arriving at around one pm. Those were the obedient ones. Some times it pays to be bad.

We had a bit of a scare when our stateroom toilet didn't flush. I went up to deck 13 and used that bathroom and it didn't flush either. I could just see us, like that Carnival ship, three days out with no toilets having raw sewage running down the hallway.  Was there something they were not telling us? Luckily we called it in and then explored the ship. When we got back to the stateroom everything was working.


Almost there!


 Breakfast lunch and dinner for the next seven days. Just waiting to be cooked.
Cutie standing next to the ship
Yes that is a battleship in front of us 

 Passing the Iowa on our way out
 Fire boat at the ready
 Out from the breakwater on into the open ocean

A ship I have not been on, sigh, perhaps someday


San Francisco 
 
The Captain told us that the last time he went under the Golden Gate Bridge, you could not see it for all of the fog. This was a disappointment because we would be going under early afternoon of the second day of the cruise and the wife wanted to see it. To our joy, when we got closer we could see the bridge from a distance. There was no fog. The upper deck was mobbed though and so you could only see the bridge above the heads of the crowd. As soon as the wife turned on her cell phone she got a message from the granddaughter's school saying that the granddaughter had been hurt and that we needed to come and pick her up. Mom and Dad work nights and had taken the opportunity to take a nap. When the school couldn't reach them right away they called grandmother who is the alternate contact person. This didn't work because grandmother was in San Francisco at the time. A quick phone call to the daughter and help was on the way.
The ship docked right next to Fisherman's Warf at pier 35 so we had easy access to the more interesting parts of the city. This time we bought an all day cable car pass and rode it all over town. We got out in China Town. I didn't know how big China Town really was, but after walking my way through most of it, I decided that it was fairly large. Of course getting a picture of the gate was the main object of us being there. It became a quest after a while. A quest in our terminology is something you spend too much energy on trying to find that in the end wasn't really worth it. We have done this with Caribou buttons in Alaska, Nanaimo Bars in Victoria and Now the gate to China Town. After walking fifteen blocks, through tunnels and around, we arrived there. Only then was I told it was a childhood memory of the wife's.
My reaction, "What do you mean you've been here before?" I guess it had not changed much in the four some odd decades since she had seen it last.


  Under the Golden Gate Bridge

Not a whole lot of headroom here

After trying to get on the wrong cable car, the wife nearly did a header in the street when she jumped back off. Luckily she caught her balance in the nick of time. When they made a stop on one of the hills they mentioned the cable car museum. This is a must see because it also houses the cable power plant in the same building. It was free and it was fascinating. I only wish that they had a nicer model of a cable car instead of the cheap plastic ones they had because I would have been an owner.
One of the cables stopped and sure enough, when we left the museum, there stuck on a hill was a cable car. The cable must have started back up because it was soon on its way. We took the car to the end of the line. Of course the end of the line is the most downhill part of the system, and of course, on the scariest part of the ride, you get the wild and crazy cable car driver who made is seem like the whole car is going to crash at the bottom of the hill when he starts yelling louder than the upset passengers. He made it fun and we did get down the hill very fast.


 Pirates? No just the Pilot Boat
 Approaching the Golden Gate
It was not a unique idea. Nobody's at the buffet today

We arrived back at the ship to eat at Moderno's, Norwegian Cruise Line's version of a Brazilian steak house. We went to make reservations at the restaurant and the man asked us when we would like to eat, since there was no one in the place we said, "How about now?" I guess he thought that we wanted to make reservation 'now,' because he asked again. We told him that we wanted to eat, 'now,' so he finally got it. We had eaten at one before, and I have to say that this time, the food was not as good as the last time. It was still tasty, but a little dried out. I do have to say that the food on the NCL Jewel was not as good as the NCL Pearl, and neither was the service. 

 Alcatraz
 Using our cable car tickets
 Chinatown gate, the end of the fifteen block quest
This was not my idea

Sea Days

We had two sea days which allowed us to have our meet and mingle. It was a simple affair and not the same as we had had in the past. We signed up for dinner with an officer and sat around and talked. It was great getting to know the people that we had seen on the message boards all those months.
We made it to the Latitudes party also. I do have to note that there was not a lot to do on this ship. I have always said that it you are bored on a cruise it was your own fault. If you took away all of the pay activities and the activities that were actually sales pitches and then all the kid activities you were left with on two or three things to do during the day. I think that they did this on purpose to get you Bingo or the other pay activates or the sales pitch ones. I always bring a book on a cruise but have never even cracked the binding before, this time I not only cracked the binding, but I finished the entire book.

 Moderno's Brazilian Steakhouse
The Theater

The next morning for breakfast we went to the main dinning room. We ordered hot chocolate and it was amazing. We had ordered it our first morning of the cruise in the Blue Lagoon and it was watery. We commented on it and the waitress told us it was her special recipe. Of course we ordered more.
We like to play trivia and were pleased that the ship gives out prizes instead of giving you activity point cards that you have to collect the entire cruise. We did well coming in second a time or two and first once.
There was a demonstration of the Japanese restaurant in the main lobby. One of the cooks could not catch an egg to save his life. He broke so many eggs that he ran out and had to get some from the other two cooks. I don't know who cleaned up the mess but I hope it was him.

 Astoria

When we crossed the bar going into Astoria I heard that they delivered the pilot by helicopter along with two pizzas. On the way back out though the used the normal pilot boat. The Columbia River has one of the worst bars in the world to cross. The water from the river hits the water from the stormy coast and not only deposits a lot of sand but has treacherous seas on top of it.
In Astoria we went to Church. That was not what we talked about, but when I was up on the deck watching us crossed the bar, I met a couple and asked them what their plans were for Astoria. They said that they were going to church and I asked them which church. They said they were Mormons.  When they said that they were going to walk, I remembered the last time I went to church in Astoria, the church is on top of a steep hill.


I went down and talked to Deb and she said, "You go back up there and offer to split a taxi cab with them."
So I did and we arranged to go to church together.
At church this Sister in the row ahead of us at Sacrament Meeting offered to drive us back to the ship. Deb told her that she couldn't do that because she would miss Sunday School.
The Sister responded, "I was released as Primary President two years ago. Since then I have only attended Relief Society twice, they keep asking me to substitute in Primary."
So we took her up on her offer.
When we arrived back at the ship we took the Astoria Trolley, celebrating its one hundredth year, up and down the boardwalk. It was so crowded that we were put up front with the conductor. She rang the bell at every intersection, whenever there were people crossing the tracks, and a few times in between. So I asked to ring the bell because I was standing right next to it. She said okay. I got to ring a 100 year old bell. That was kinda awesome.

 The bar of the Columbia River. Notice the rough water in the background. The buoy is stationary, it is the water that is rushing past.
 Astoria Trolly, I rang the bell!
 Going to China
 Coast Guard at Astoria

Nanaimo BC

I was starting to get sick when I woke up the next day. I was not happy at all about that. It's like paying a lot of money to be miserable. I tried to make the best of it and got up. We had docked in Nanaimo at this point. My energy level was near zero but Deb dragged me into town anyway. They have a new dock and it is further from town than when they used to tender into the city. I always thought that the city of Nanaimo was small, but when I saw a population indication, it is about ten times the size of Mount Vernon where we live now.
It's not like I have never been to Nanaimo before, four times and counting, so I could have skipped it and been just fine, but we went to the waterfront and watched the cannons fire. We walked around town for a few minutes. Deb went shopping while I took a nap on one of the park benches. Tried to take a nap anyway, there were people all around so it did not go so well.
When I dragged myself back to the ship, Deb reminded me that it was our turn to have dinner with an officer. At this point I was getting sicker and the last thing I wanted to do was eat.
We had to get all dressed up and wait in the art gallery for our turn to be ushered into the dining room. We did not have to wait in line but were taken right to the table.
Our officer was in charge of the front desk and guest services. He was thin, but had a nice smile. His name was Gary. We talked back and forth. The Captain was eating at the table behind us. The service was perfect, not that it wasn't good the other times, but it was flawless this time with an officer at the table.
There were three other couples at the table. One couple was from France and she did not speak good English, so she smiled and nodded her head a lot. Another couple was from England and the other from Canada.  
I did the best I could with dinner, ordering something small and chasing it around the plate with my fork. Officer Gary was not fooled however and asked, "do you not like the pork? Should I get you something else?"
I did not want any more food. I did not want the food I had, so I said something about eating too much since I got on the ship and it catching up to me. He accepted that. You never tell anyone that you are sick on the ship or they stick you in your cabin the rest of the trip and a trip to the Doctor is $75.00.

New Dock at Nanaimo BC


Dinner with an officer
Vancouver BC

 The next port was Vancouver and I woke up sicker than a dog. I mean a really sick dog. All I wanted to do was lie in bed and moan and groan. Deb didn't want to go into town alone, so she dragged me out of my near death bed and took me into town. That did not work well as I was really worn down. I did the best I could and we got to the Parliament and toured it. They have some beautiful stained glass windows depicting the history of British Columbia.

 Random Dragon in Victoria BC
 Chinatown Victoria BC. Now that's a proper gate
Stain glass
 Rotunda at Parliament Victoria BC
 Parliament
 Rotunda looking up

 Parliament Building from the outside

Walking up to the Parliament Building

Sunset
Then we made it back to the ship where I took a long nap. It was funny because Deb dragged me all over three cities while I was sick, but when she got the same thing she stayed in bed for three days and did not move. It seemed totally unfair.
The Cruise was over too soon and we arrived into Vancouver on time. Friends of ours were taking the next cruise so they were getting on our ship as we were getting off.  They had driven up from Mount Vernon so we were supposed to take their car back. There were two problems with this plan. The first one was that we were having a hard time making connections and it took a couple of hours for us to find each other. We called back and forth and when I got the cell bill there were international roaming charges on it (sigh).
The second problem is when Deb and I got into the car, it would not start. My friend came back, luckily, and we got it started and went on our way. The issue there was, we did not want to turn it off, just in case it would not start again. Some of the places that we were planning on visiting on the way home were skipped. Just as well, did I mention that I was not feeling well anyway?
We did stop at a gas station for a few minutes and the car did start afterwards, so we started trusting it after that. The wait to cross the border wasn't too bad and soon we had the car delivered to our friend's house. Another cruise, sadly, comes to an end.

 
Cruise Books by Deb Graham
 
 Cruise Addict's Wife