Month: August 2009

Our day at sea.  Slept in some for a change today, and woke up to find that the weather is definitely different.  I’ve been wearing shorts so far today, but I’m probably one of the few.  I was sitting out on the promenade deck for a while in a somewhat sheltered location, and they were barely adequate.  However, by spending some time there, I was able to see a few whales and some dolphins.  Didn’t have the camera with me though.

Right now we’re sailing along and the fog has really moved in.  Can’t see real far off the ship, so trying to spot whales and dolphins is probably all but hopeless, and the ship’s horn is sounding every couple of minutes.

Finally it’s time to board the ship.  One of the nice things about staying at the Pan Pacific Vancouver, is it’s right at the cruise terminal (at least if your ship is leaving from Canada Place).  So in the morning, all you do is call the desk and have the hotel bellmen pick up your luggage, and they arrange to take it to the ship.  Talk about easy.  Then, after checking out, all you have to do is hop in the elevator down to the cruise port level.  We did that around 11:30, and basically walked through the entire process with no lines, and got right on the ship.

Later that evening, watched as we left the city of Vancouver.  Have found it kinda interesting, we’ve run into a couple of cruise staff that we had during out last cruise, which was on the sister to the Island, the Coral Princess.  Lauren’s one of the assistant cruise directors (don’t know if she was listed as assistant or junior last time aruond), and Bryan was the shore excursion manager, I’m guessing he’s doing the same thing here since his name is at least listed as part of the shore excursion staff.

Real early morning today to catch the train from Seattle to Vancouver.  Train leaves at 7:40 in the morning, they started doing seat assignments at about 7:20 (although people were lined up before that).  Ideally if you’re in the line early, you might be able to get a seat on the left side of the train for the better views.  Of course, you could also be told you’re getting a seat on the left, and when you get to your seat discover that it’s on the right.  We were able to get reseated after the train left though.  Nice easy ride, especially after a few days of a lot of driving.  After getting into Vancouver, took the Sky Train to the waterfront station right near our hotel (the Pan Pacific Vancouver).  This was pretty easy, even with a couple of rolling suitcases.  Was made a little tougher because of a parade in town that day, but without that it’d probably be even better.

After checking in, headed out down the waterfront area and ended up in Harbor Green Park, where there was a children’s water play fountain area.  This was about as far as we made it, because even though the extreme heat had broken, it was still awfully hot out.  Wandered back to the hotel to relax for a while before dinner.

For dinner we met up with another of Cathy’s cousins, Angie, and headed towards Gastown.  First place she tried to take us apparently had closed down, so we ended up finding somewhere else to eat.  Thankfully, in the evening the temperatures had really come down to a more reasonable level.

This morning we were picking one of Cathy’s cousins up and heading to the Boeing plant for their tour.  No cameras, no cell phone, no bags, basically nothing allowed on the tour.  (Yet back at the hotel there was a several page photo spread of the inside of the plant in the Seattle book.)  Still, not a bad tour, you end up in the world’s largest building by volume.  Saw the 747, the 777, and the 787 assembly lines.  On the 747 line the first of the 747-8 models was being built.  The 787 line I think had the 4th one, plus one of the earlier ones back in for some work.  Did find a couple of amusing things in the gift shop.  One was a model of the Airbus A380.  Only Airbus item I saw.  Second was a model of the 787 done up in Northwest colors.  That was almost tempting to buy, because it’s something of a novelty item.  There will never be a 787 done in NWA colors.

Headed down to Seattle again, and once again walked around the market, this time with stuff actually open.  Busy place, and quite frankly, most of the stuff seemed to be overpriced for the tourist market.  After that, we drove along the waterfront for a while.  This weekend was Seafair, and supposedly there were supposed to be a couple naval ships along the waterfront, including I had heard an aircraft carrier.  We did see Fat Albert and some of the jets from the Blue Angels flying overhead a couple times while they were doing their show over the lake.  But no luck after driving around the waterfront finding anything that looked like a Navy ship.  So we dropped Wes off, and then went and dropped our rental car off.  After that walked down to the waterfront area to catch the ferry to Bremerton and back.  Did see what looked like an aircraft carrier being decommissioned in Bremerton.  Relaxing ride, nice view of the city coming back, and off in the distance Mt Ranier was peeking through the haze.