Wednesday, September 2
Today we said goodbye to Vancouver for 12 days while we head north to Alaska on the Coral Princess as we cruise north along the inside passage. It was sad to leave our nice apartment, but today also meant we had to pack our bags again! Fortunately Noelle is an expert packer and we left Australia underweight so we knew everything would fit in easily.
We got a taxi to Canada Place where our ship was berthed and then joined the "cattle yards" to go up and down the lines to check in with Princess, then up and down some more lines to go through security, and then we joined the big muster of people to go up and down more lines to go through US Customs and Immigration. There was another ship leaving for an Alaskan cruise today and it was the Volendam, the ship we'll be cruising home on in 3 weeks time, so this increased the number of people being processed today with our ship.
On board at last
After about 1.5 hours we finally boarded the Coral Princess and headed for our cabin where we met our steward for the next week. We then went for a late lunch at the Horizon buffet (aka the Horror Zone), did a quick explore of some of the upper decks and then returned to our cabin to get our life jackets for the emergency drill. By the time this finished it was nearly time for us to set sail so we headed upstairs for the sail away party and a well deserved drink! We sailed out of Vancouver harbour under dark grey skies but there was an occasional glimpse of sun and eventually a rainbow to give us hope of better weather as we travel north. Even the sea planes were flying today, with a lot of activity happening right in front of us as we departed!
Party time as we sail away from Vancouver
About to sail under the Lionsgate bridge
Underway at last with the blessing of a rainbow
We caught up with long time friends, Jenny and Brian, for pre dinner drinks and to swap travel stories as they started their Canadian touring 2 weeks before us and got all the hot sunny weather. Between us we have photos of Vancouver and Whistler in sun and rain! Then it was on to dinner where we scored a great table for 4 with the best waitress ever, Fostina from Macedonia, who really made our night.
Everyone was fading a bit but we went to the show and saw a comedian/ventriloquist who wasn't bad, but then we called it a night to enjoy the lovely sleep you get on a cruise ship - it was actually so smooth it was hard to believe we were on a ship so we slept very well!
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