Vancouver to Vancouver 2014

 

Thursday, September 25, 2014

We left home last Sunday, late morning for the drive to Vancouver and the cruise ship.  We stayed overnight in a hotel that allows us to park the car for up to 14 days for no additional charge.  A great deal for our ten day cruise.  The trip up was very easy, the border crossing wait was less than ten minutes.  After checking into our hotel we asked for directions to one of our favorite areas of Vancouver, Granville Island.  We have been there many times before, but we sure got lost, numerous times.  Vancouver has really grown and changed since we last drove there.  There are lots of homes for sale trying to entice developers to buy up whole blocks and build high rise buildings

On Monday we took a shuttle from the hotel to the cruise ship terminal and the traffic was terrible, especially as we neared the cruise ship terminal.  The cruise starts and ends in Vancouver, so there were many locals being dropped off at the terminal.  It is our guestimate that there are about 80% Canadians on this cruise.

On board were 27 of Colleen's Princess co-workers and their significant others, taking an end of the work year vacation.  Lots of fun catching up with everyone.  Some took the one night cruise from Seattle to Vancouver, some the ten day cruise which is round trip Vancouver Pacific Coast cruise that we are taking, and some the later 15 day cruise to Hawaii.  Some are taking all three.

The ship left Vancouver on Monday and on Tuesday morning we were in Victoria where we had planned to take a trip to Butchart Gardens.  It was raining so hard that we decided to just go into town by city bus and walked around for a short while.  When we were off the ship we were told that the city bus drivers were on strike, so we bought ship shuttle tickets.  We normally walk to town, 20-30 minutes, but it was raining so hard we chose not to get so wet.

There were high seas Tuesday night and all day Wednesday so instead of arriving into San Francisco at 8am on Thursday, we are now going to arrive around noon, since we had to go so much slower.  Some of Co's friends had relatives or friends meeting them, so they will need to change their meet times.  We have not had much internet connection today due to the high seas not being able to connect with the satellites not being able to align correctly with all the bouncing.

Even before we embarked on Monday, a security officer welcomed John back.  John can't go through the metal screener on the ships, so always needs a hand pat.  He has made many friends over the years.  Our room steward, Michael remembered us from our Mexico Cruise last March, in fact, he remembered which cabin number we were in.  A cocktail waitress, Merlin, remembered us by name, she is an all time favorite of ours.  At lunch today, our waiter, Shawn, remembered us from our Mediterranean cruise last fall.  We are starting to recognize more workers. It's fun.

Colleen and John