And then we boarded…
The day started in our hotel in Richmond (near Vancouver Airport). We had spent the last few days in Beaverton with the Hunts and yesterday we drove to Seattle where we picked up Billie and Steve at Andy and Nicole’s house (and had a nice chat with 3 year old Aggie) and the four of us drove on to Richmond.
We left the car at the hotel there (We’ll be back at the same hotel next week at the other end of the adventure.) and this morning we took a cab to Canada Place – the shining example of how to quickly and efficiently move passengers for 3 cruise ships thru luggage drop-off, check-in, passport control (every cruise ship sailing from Vancouver makes it’s first port of call in the US), and onto the right ship.
Once on board we were given a glass of bubbly and directed to our muster station for the life vest demonstration.
Thus educated we set off on a short tour of the ship.
Next it was up to the cafeteria for a bit of lunch. Entering the cafeteria the first crew member we saw was Jennifer Farah – one of our favorites from the world cruise. It was fun to be greeted by her smile and a hug. Family. We filled our plates, grabbed a table out on the terrace and lingered a bit before continuing the tour. Passing the pool grill we were greeted by Eduardo – another World Cruise staffer. These people see upwards of 1,000 new passengers each week. It’s incredible that they remember anyone from 3 months ago.
We made our way down to our staterooms. It being only 12:30 and they not being ‘ready’ until 2:00 we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get in, but our key cards worked and the rooms were obviously ‘done up’ and some of our luggage had been delivered so we let ourselves in and started unpacking. Along the way the rest of our luggage arrived and our room steward Made and his assistant Jerico dropped by to say ‘hi’, swap out our pillows, and bring us extra hangers.
We finished moving in and retired to our veranda for a bit of reading and snoozing. A bit later we were feeling a bit peckish (never a good thing on a cruise ship)
While there we ran into Raze – another of our favorite waitstaff. Homeweek.
We did a bit more exploring of the ship and hung out until sail-away time.
We opted to enjoy sail-away from the Explorer’s Lounge on Deck 7.
It turned into a ‘reading exercise’. As far as I can tell, they weren’t done bunkering fuel (getting gas) and that process had to finish before we could leave. So it was about 5:40 before we actually sailed away. On the other hand, Canadian customs regulations are strange so they weren’t able to open the lounge bar until we were well underway. It was pretty much a non-event.
We left the non-party to head to the first lecture of the cruise.
The lecturer Frank T. Buzzard is a 30 year veteran of NASA. He was a space shuttle chief engineer and an ISS Program director. He has a wealth of knowledge about the history of space exploration and astronomy. In just a few slides he made really clear the issues confronting the earliest astronomers as they sought to figure out planetary movement and the structure of the solar system.
Then it was off to dinner (where we ran into Calton – Homeweek),
While we were at dinner we finally started to move. For some reason after we left port we sat in the middle of the harbor for the better part of two hours.
The ‘laundry room rumor mill’ reported that we were waiting for a couple who were delayed in arriving. My guess is that we were held up by scheduling issues.
After dinner we were a bit tuckered so it was back to the stateroom to write this up and prepare for a busy sea day tomorrow.
Till then, TTFN