Recovering In (From) Vancouver

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We had stashed our larger suitcases in the Storage and Meat Packing enterprise located between baggage carousels 13 and 14. For $20 a day we didn’t need to drag our two big suitcases to Las Vegas and back (or for about $20 net cost to us for the six days they were in storage because we didn’t need to pay the $25 per bag charge on Alaskan Airlines.) Storage prices range from $8 to $11 per day depending on the bag size. All in all, not a bad deal. If you’re wondering what storage and meat packing have in common, Seattle is after all where salmon fishing is popular. Even the sea lions in Puget Sound have become a nuisance, coming here to feast on the salmon, that legislation is being considered to “deplete their numbers”.

We’re very impressed with both Las Vegas and Seattle airports for how they do their car rentals and shuttles. Okay, in Seattle you do need to pay attention to the signs to use the overhead walkway to get to the garage where you can board all of the shuttles. Both airports run one airport run rental car shuttle to the remote rental facility. The major agencies are there, for some of the smaller ones you need to board a second shuttle at that facility to get to your car.

Signs clearly show the way to Baggage Claim 1 where cruisers assemble. We checked in and got our pass for Bus Group 1. We had to wait in the atrium about thirty minutes before they were ready to board our group, scheduled for 9:00AM; but, they would board earlier if it filled up before then. In addition to Trivia Crack, I’ve sort of become addicted to Word Crack, and I’m afraid Sharon may be planning and intervention for me when we get back to Ohio. But then again, many of the games that I play are against Sharon. She’s very fast, so if we tie in the challenges, she has always won on time. In Word Crack I hold the edge because she spends too much time looking for the big words. Nice apps on the phone, and you can play anytime, not just with friends but with total strangers. And of course, they’re both tied in with Facebook.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous at the start, with spectacular views of Mount Rainier and Mount Everett. Our bus driver was quite the card, or at least he thought he was, and maybe that’s what made him funny. At least he laughed at all of his jokes, and sometimes before the punch line. He talked about how Canada got its name. As he tells it, there were these three fur traders sitting around a camp fire trying to decide what to call this vast land. They decided to put all of the letters of the alphabet into a hat and in turn they began to pull letters from the hat. The first pulled his letter, looked at it and said “C” and confirmed the selection saying “aye”. The second trapper pulled his letter, noting “N, aye” and the last man took his turn, announcing “D, aye”. They then agreed that that was enough letters. Five minutes later the man behind us excitedly whispers to his wife, “Oh I get it.” We learned that Puget Sound is called the Georgia Straights by the Canadians, and the native Indians refer to it as the Samish Sea which is what the cartographers are starting to use on maps.

The local snowpack is down 80% from normal on Mt. Everett, and there is 30% less water flowing into the Puget Sound this year. Even here in Washington they are experiencing a drought of sorts. A look into the distance reveals many bare rock mountain ranges. Only Mount Everett was the exception which was still solid white to the summit. With regards to the economy, the driver noted that Boeing was the third largest employer in Washington. The government was number one, and that tech company that begins with an “M” was number two. (You have two to choose from, which do, you think it is: Microsoft or McDonald’s.)

Before reaching Canada, our bus made a stop at Haggen Market, a regional upscale grocer with deli and bakery and delicatessen and I got a peppercorn pasta salad and a spicy Thai noodle salad. Sharon bought some deli sliced turkey breast and potato wedges, and this was our light lunch. We had mis-guided ideas about getting to the ship in time for lunch… it was after all by bus… “Just a four hour tour”! And we know how that worked out. It is a bit quicker crossing the border by bus than in the parallel lines of cars winding to the check point. Sharon had to use her phone to take a picture of a Smart car in the lane with the round green lights prominently spelling out “Open” and underneath also in green lights “Oversized Vehicles”. Either that driver had quite a sense of humor or the same complex that sometimes affects small dogs who go around behaving like they’re bigger than they are. We got on our way again and even though the port didn’t seem to be that far away, the driver assured us that we’d see why the ETA worked out to quite a slow travel time. We travelled by bridge from one island to another (on our “four hour tour”). Our driver noted how densely populated Vancouver is, with a large Asian community and half of that is Chinese.

Our bus was also taking cruisers to a Princess cruise ship berthed on the other side of us in Vancouver. We were very happy that we didn’t need to handle our big bags, they’d been checked in with Holland America back where we signed in in Seattle. But we weren’t happy with the line that we needed to pass through. I took us about fifteen minutes to wind through half of the line on one side of the building. A vendor was trying to sell binoculars from $49 to $750 dollars at a both located in the center of the winding lines. Sharon estimated that it should take us only ten more minutes to get up to the front, after we were half-way there. And she’d have been close to being right if they hadn’t stopped the line two people in front of us. And it stayed stopped for almost half an hour, with us just standing there. This was just so we could clear security. Then we had to clear customs and integration to enter the US for the cruise we were on. There was an assembly area with seating in rows (many rows, and most of them full of people). We sat here for an eternity before again getting in another line, where we neared the front, just one couple ahead of us. And they started routing other people from the side putting them in front of us. Just as the next passport terminal would open up, one or two more people would be directed to short-cut us. We thought, okay, maybe some of these people are about to miss their embarkation time. That’s when I noticed that the two that they’d just ushered past us had a ms Noordam tag on their carry-on, so no, they were on the same cruise ship as us. I pointed that out to Sharon and I could see another Istanbul airport moment coming on; but, she didn’t melt down. And I think the gatekeeper who was directing people ahead of us sensed something might be about to give, so he asked the next two who were about to put to the front of the line to stand aside and white while the couple ahead of us used one of the passport terminals, and we got to use the next one. The machine reads your passport, takes your picture, and gives you a receipt that is then checked by an officer before allowing you to move on the cruise ship line. Once we got to the cruise line, we used the 4-star expedited boarding line, filled out the health questionnaire, got our welcome on board picture taken, and soon found our cabin.



We were disappointed that the Noordam elevators don’t show what day it is by their typical custom floor mats, they seem sort of naked without those. Our bags hadn’t arrived yet. We checked the time and daily schedule and saw that it was almost 3:30 PM and that was when The Dive-In closes because the life-boat drill was at 3:45. Sharon had her heart set on that burger and fries. She was not a happy camper, and I don’t think she was in cruise-mode yet. Our luggage came just as we were leaving for the drill. Sharon chilled out on our balcony after the drill while I unpacked and then it was her turn. We had very scenic viewing from our balcony, took some pictures, and sailed under Jolly Green Suspension Bridge (barely). They had moved up our departure time by half an hour so there would be no danger in colliding with this bridge when we did.



We were seated with Steve and Katie from Louisiana and enjoyed a very nice dinner. We’d just purchased our $50 “Soda Card” from the bar for $25 to charge sodas on this cruise, and used it to charge Sharon’s Sprite. It’s cheaper this way than charging the sodas to the room. Service was a little on the slow side. Katie asked if we’d just flown in from Ohio, and I said no, explaining our trip had started two weeks earlier. I then started to say how our first stop was Portland, but Sharon decided to correct me and say we’d flown into Seattle, and proceeded to give the long version of the previous two weeks, and I realized that this was one of those “girl-talk” times where Steve and I weren’t going to get a word in edge-wise. I had the seafood chowder with halibut, shrimp and clams in a sour dough bowl which was very good. Sharon had the French Onion Soup which I ate for her because as we both recollect the Pinnacle no longer offers that. It was quite good too; but, nothing like what the Pinnacle had served on some of our earlier cruises. I also had the bay shrimp cocktail. Steve was expecting the big shrimp with the spicy red sauce, so I don’t think this was quite to his liking. I’d had the same feeling the first time I’d gotten this traditional first-day offering; but, it is what it is. Sharon enjoyed her perfectly cooked Prime Rib (barely a hint of any red), a good baked potato, carrots and green beans. I had the grilled salmon with cilantro pesto and balsamic rice. Sharon had the Baked Alaska with Vanilla ice cream, a much bigger serving than her mother Shirley had had when we cruised Alaska with our mothers two years ago. She still thinks the infamous pillow fight between our mothers was due to my mother having more meringue on her Baked Alaska than Shirley had had. Really, we believe they just didn’t know what to do with the second pillow each of them had, so one wound up on the TV and one on the lamp but it’s more fun to tease them about a pillow fight. I decided that the special cordial of Amaretto and Kahlua sounded like it would go pretty well with my banana crisp and vanilla ice cream. This seems to be the “first day” crisp on our last few cruises. Steve was concerned that dinner was taking so long that they might need to leave to get to the computer class at 7:30 PM. But they finally did bring our dessert menus and then the piece de resistance. I think Sharon is finally in “cruise mode”.

After dinner we went to the casino, and I opened the blackjack table. I was happy to see that it is a $5 table. I wasn’t sure it would be on the larger Noordam (larger than the recent Holland America ships that we’d sailed). I started to play and it was apparent early that it wasn’t going to be easy. I lost the first five hands, which normally means it’s time to quit; but, I still had 2 hours to kill before the show. Sharon didn’t have much better luck at the slots and soon returned to see me going back and forth, never able to win more than two hands in a row. A woman from British Colombia was playing next to me, and opposite were an older Chinese couple who were talking back and forth discussing each hand as if they had some intuitive insight. The dealer commented that she wished she could understand Chinese. One thing is for sure, every time the woman took insurance, on some “never insure these lousy hand type hands”, the dealer turned out to have blackjack. When all was done I had gotten three blackjacks to the dealer’s nine perfect hands. And every time I doubled down with eleven I wound up with fourteen or fifteen. I did win one or two of these, but lost many (many) more. I had one small winning streak before the end, and should have quit when it was over, because I didn’t win another hand after that. Oh well. I made it to the Showroom Vista Lounge in plenty of time.

We saw the Holland America performers put on a short show featuring their singing dancing and juggling abilities. The cruise director Jeremy, obviously from Australia, put did his warm up getting cheers first from the Americans, then the Canadians, then the British. He promised that he’d only do the next bit once, and shouted “Ausie! Ausie! Ausie!” to which his compatriots responded gleefully “Oi! Oi! Oi!” What’s that all about anyway? The juggler was the highlight engaging two from the audience to catch and toss him a juggling pins. Once he juggled a bowling ball, apple and hoe, at one time announcing that he would attempt to eat one of these. He chose the apple. As he juggled two juggling pins and one knife he said he would toss one of these to his audience participant. He started his routine with the audience participant by giving him a juggling pin. He stood on the stage and the cruiser stood in front of his front row seat. The juggler began saying, “Now toss me the pin…” and the pin was tossed to him hitting him in the chest. Continuing the juggler explained “…after I count to three. Maybe I need someone else who can follow instructions.” The highlight came when he juggled two pins and one knife, while each of the two participants held a pin. On three, the man in the audience tossed his pin to the juggler, the juggler tossed one of his items to the woman (not the knife) and the woman tossed her pin to the man. And they did this without dropping anything.

I was disappointed to find that there was no ice in the bucket when we returned to the room to go with the glass full of San Pellegrino that I had left over from dinner. And I was equally confused by the mysterious invitation left in our mail slot. I went out searching for the Front Desk on Deck 2 to return the invitation which might have been welcomed; except for it being entirely in Chinese with no name on the envelope or room number, and it was pretty hard to figure out what exactly the mistake was that had been made. I don’t think the staff at the front desk could figure it out either because apparently none of the ones on duty could read Chinese either. Sharon suggested that I call someone to get some ice because she didn’t want a “grumpy boy”. By then I was feeling dead on my feet and the unwelcomed annoyances were building up. And now Sharon kept asking “What’s wrong.” And I’m trying to explain “Nothing.” But she’s not buying it, so she asks again “What’s wrong.” I imagine this must be what it’s like on a long trip when your kids ask “Are we there yet?” over and over and over again. I finally called the number given us for service by our cabin boy, but after a few minutes I was still listening to that ho-hum “All of our representatives are helping other cruisers” message. I tried calling information, and it began with the same stall; but, eventually I did get a human and I asked for ice. Someone showed up within a few minutes, got our ice bucket, and quickly returned with ice. I finished my bottle of San Pellegrino and we shortly went to bed. I think we both had our moments during the day when the thought of never again embarking from Vancouver.



And it was of course Microsoft was the M-company that our bus driver was referring to, or at least I assume that was what he meant because he never did spell it out like C-A-N-A-D-A, aye.

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