So I got an email from a travel agency telling me, among
other things, that a one day cruise out of Vancouver was only $29. I looked
at the date and saw that it was a Friday Saturday thing, so I could do it
without taking time off work. I looked it up and it was $49, but since it
was still a good price, I decided to try and make it work.
Deb’s mom was up visiting and they were out shopping. That’s
pretty much all they do when she visits. They go to the store, look at
everything in the store, go to the next store, look at everything in that
store. Then repeat the process again and again. So I had to wait until they got
home. When I asked Deb about it, her only hesitation was how to do we get back
home.
Since the cruise starts in Vancouver BC and ends in Seattle
WA, you have to arrange transportation between the two cities. In the past we
have driven down to Seattle, left the car at the pier. Taken the Amtrak train to
Vancouver BC, get on the cruise there and then it sails to Seattle. When the
ship docks at Seattle we have a car waiting for us. The only problem with that
plan is that the Amtrak was sold out.
So I am making phone calls and wracking my brain to try and
figure out how to do the transportation. I finally come up with a solution. It
was a bit convoluted but it worked.
I then go on the Princess Cruise Line’s web page and book
the cruise. When I log, in the price of the cruise goes from $49 back down to
$29 because we have a past passenger discount. That’s even better. Of course
now you have to add the fees and port charges in so it came a lot more than
$29 per person but it was worth every penny.
This was on Tuesday and the ship leaves on Friday. We booked
two cruises last year for the fall of this year and the waiting seems to be
taking forever so to book and go, all in four days, was so much fun for us.
I got home from work on Friday at 6:30 AM. The longest sleep
I got that whole day was the forty minutes in the vanpool ride on the way home.
It was not for lack of trying, either. We head out to my son’s place. He lives
just south of the border. He then takes our car and drives us across the
Canadian border. Vancouver has a wonderful public transportation system called
the Sky Train. My son dropped us off at the southernmost station of the Sky
Train and we rode that all the way to the pier. He then drove back home and went
to bed, because he works nights, too.
We got to the ship way early and had to wait for an hour and
a half until the security line opened up. We considered ourselves lucky because
Vancouver is notorious for its horrible lines or ‘queues,’ as they call them.
Our record is three and a half hours in line just to get to security.
Then we were able to get through Customs relatively quickly.
It’s strange that you go through American customs in Canada to get on the ship.
It is weird how they do that. Then the third line was to get your sea pass to
get on the ship. Only they were not ready to let us on the ship because the
other passengers who had just come up the coast were not in any hurry to get
off the ship. This time, however they gave us chairs to sit on. There was one
section of chairs for the Platinum and Elite passengers and another section for
everybody else. Yes, we are Platinum on Princess since this was our sixth cruise
with them and you get to Platinum after five cruises. The funny thing is,
Princess counts the reward levels by number of cruises. Everyone else does it
by cruise days. So on another line, you would have to get thirty five cruise
days to get to the next rewards level. We have only taken one day cruises on
Princess so we have been on there, counting this cruise, six days total, but we are
Platinum, go figure.
So we managed to get priority boarding and were the seventh
and eighth people on the ship. The rooms were ready when we got on; usually
you have to wait two hours for the rooms but we did the waiting in the terminal
instead.
The room was a little on the small side. Don’t get me wrong,
we have had much smaller rooms on longer cruises, we were just surprised. It
was our third time on the Golden Princes and our smallest room on her yet. But
what do you expect for $29?
We went down to the dining room instead of the buffet for
lunch. We had talked to another couple in the terminal and they said that was
what they were doing, so we followed suit. When we arrived at the dining room,
they seated us with that same couple that we met in the terminal.
They were from Surrey, which is just outside of Vancouver.
The lady told us that Canadians just are not into buffets and most of the
buffets that open in Canada don’t make it there long. It was interesting to say
the least. I grew up eating at buffets
and for the most part like them.
Deb ordered the salmon fillet and I got a hamburger. I know,
I know, you are supposed to order the fancy cruise food while on a ship, but in
my defense, it was on the menu and since I like a good hamburger, I ordered it. Everyone else at the table was a
little dubious towards me after that. Obviously I didn’t have the proper cruise
credentials. Deb even looked a little bit embarrassed to be seen with me.
After lunch we went and explored the ship a little. It was
the same, but there had been some changes since the last time we were on her.
The miniature golf was now croquet, and other small changes. We played croquet. It was fun, just a little different. Deb pointed out that it would not work as
well as the mini golf because people can be playing in front of you and in back
of you in golf, but in croquet they are going to have to wait until you finish
your game.
The life boat drill took longer than expected. They are
starting to kick people off of ships for not participating in life boat drills,
so you have to go even though we done them many times before. It took most of an hour. After the drill
we went to the sail away party and listened to the music while we watched the
ship pull away from the dock at Canada Place.
It was at this time we discovered that we had forgotten to
bring a camera. We had Deb’s tablet but no camera. We tried to use the camera
feature on her tablet but it only has a forward facing camera that you can use
for Skype. To take a picture with it, you can hold it up and point it, but you
can only guess what you are actually taking the picture of because the screen
is facing away from you. Or you can hold it out to the side so you can see the
screen, but you have to hold it way out there so you don’t take a picture of your
arm instead of what you are trying to take a picture of.
We took a few pictures this way, but gave up and since the
tablet is bulky and does not fit in a pocket we took it back to the stateroom
and left it.
At this point we had a special invitation to go to a cocktail party, since we are
Platinum level cruisers. It was in the very
back of the ship on deck seventeen and area called the Skywalker’s Lounge. If
you ever see a picture of the Golden Princess, you see what looks like a
shopping cart handle at the very back of the ship. That is where the lounge is.
They had chips and salsa and slices of cheese and some olives and guacamole.
Basically a whole bunch of snack food that didn’t really go together. They
bragged about the guacamole on the way in. I will eat the stuff if it is on my
plate, but I do not normally go out of my way to put it on my plate. I must
admit, theirs was pretty good. We heard someone later on complain that they
could not get into the Skywalker when they tried because it was closed for some
elitist party.
The Holland America ship was following us out of Vancouver.
We are watching it behind us. Then an amazing thing happened. It had rained a
little, and suddenly a rainbow appeared. So I have the Holland America ship with a
full spectrum rainbow above it forming a perfect arc and a light house to the
right of it. In the background is the Lion’s Gate Bridge the ships had just
sailed under. The sea was a deep blue and pine trees went down to the water on
either side of the bridge. As a backdrop you have the city of Vancouver in the
distance. It was all perfectly framed. It would have made a photograph of a
lifetime, BUT I HAVE NO CAMERA!
Oh, well, I would probably have run out of wall space for all
of the awards and commendations that I would have won with that picture anyway.
Sigh. Note to Self, never forget a camera again, never ever. It was so sad that,
on our next cruise, in the fall, the one we booked a year and a half ago, we are
going to have two cameras, one for me and one for Deb.
Our ship suddenly stopped. Did you know that the only way to
test a magnetic compass is to spin the ships 360 degrees and make sure the compass
tracks correctly? It has to be tested once a year. So when we got out of the
port of Vancouver and under the Lion’s Gate Bridge, the ship stopped and then
spun a ‘Brodie,’ as my sons would call it. Then we were on our way.
It was right after the Platinum and Elite party that we
decided to go down to dinner. After all we had not eaten in the last five
minutes, so we must be hungry. We are on a cruise after all. For dinner I order
the Texas chili. I know, I know, you are supposed to order the fancy cruise food
while on a ship, but in my defense, it was on the menu and since I like chili,
I ordered it.
One woman had this horrified look on her face when they put
the chili in front of me. Yes, that woman was Deb.
It was a little strange as it had a scoop of plain rice
right in the middle of the chili. Never seen that before, but I ate it. The
Chef must have been looking at the dish and saying, “it isn’t enough, we need
something more on the plate.” One of the assistant chefs says, “we have some
left over rice.” The rest is history.
After dinner we headed to the deck to watch the movie
Gravity. Deb had been wanting to see the movie but her neglectful husband would
not take her to see it even though he had free movie tickets on the side of the
refrigerator just sitting there.
Princess Cruise lines has installed on most of their ships
what they call MUTS. ‘Movies under the stars.’ It’s a huge movie screen built
above the upper deck so people can lounge around the swimming pool area and
watch the show. This works great in the Caribbean where the weather is warm,
but a cool day in May in Vancouver it just does not work as well. To compensate
for this, they have warm blankets to hand out.
I decided that since the weather is iffy, we should stay
under the awning instead of out in the open.
Deb thinks I’m crazy and she has me move since the awning is off to the
side and she wants to see the screen straight on. So we move. This is not
unusual for her and she has been known to move up to four times in a movie
theater looking for that, nonexistent, ‘perfect seat’.
So I clamber up and change seats. I have noticed over the
years that clambering up is not as easy as it once was and the further up I
have to clamber, the more difficult it is and these lounge chairs are only a few
inches off the ground. I am now sitting in the second seat. This one is not
perfect either so she has me clamber up again and change seats. Now the screen
is dead on and it is perfect. Well, almost perfect as now it begins to sprinkle
and we wind up in the seat that I had picked out first. The seat under the
awning where the rain will not get us.
The good news is that she loved the movie. Even with four
blankets on her she is so cold that she is thinking of giving up with only a
few minutes left. Since it was the good part, she stuck it out and finished.
The best part for me is that I still have those movie tickets that we did not
use for Gravity and now I can see something I want to see.
Next we went down to the theater to watch the comedian. I
laughed all of the way through it. Deb laughed, but not as much as I did. It
was more ‘guy humor.’ Not dirty jokes but the humor men like and the women
mostly roll their eyes.
I was so tired by the time we got to bed, having been up
most of thirty six hours by this point, that I slept for a full eight hours. It
has been so long ago that I have slept a full eight hours that I cannot even
remember that far back. I was still tired though.
This time we ate breakfast at the buffet. I was a little
disappointed. The food was not hot, and some of it that should have been at
least warm, was not. We left the ship soon afterwards. We went to Pike Place Market.
We took a taxi. I must say that all of the taxi drivers were Somali. I have no
problem with that, the only problem I had was they were horrible at customer
service. We took two cabs and one driver spoke on the phone the whole time in a
language I didn’t understand. The other one listened to the radio, in a
language I didn’t understand. He would turn the volume down when you tried to
talk to him, but he would leave his hand on the dial so you just knew that you
were bothering him and the volume was going to go right back up as soon as you
stopped bothering him.
At Pike Place Market Deb bought a huge bouquet of flowers
then had to carry them in her lap the rest of the trip.
We then took the second cab to the train station to catch a
bus. Funny thing to do, catch a bus at the train station, but it was an Amtrak
bus. So it worked. Our son, bless his heart, had volunteered to pick us up after
the cruise but it is a 98 mile trip, one way, for him so we declined and
took the bus instead.
The daughter and grandson picked us up at the train station. The grandson didn't realize he had helped mommy pick us up at the train station because he was asleep in the back seat.
It was just a simple matter of going to the son's house and pick up the car after that.
All in all it was a wonderful trip and helped us both
de-stress from a lot of life’s problems. I am glad we went.
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