JillMelancon Travel

4 July 2023

Spending the United States’ Independence Day in Canada! Got up at a reasonable time and walked to Starbucks for breakfast.  I really like Vancouver—it is a bit expensive, but would be a great retirement option.  Very clean, safe, and friendly.  Large homeless population, sadly, which is odd with such a backdrop.

Headed to port on the metro—zoomed through check in and customs in about 10-15 minutes.  However, they were still disembarking the previous cruise’s passengers, so they put us in a holding area with chairs and bathrooms—very nice employees kept us updated every few minutes and promised we would get on in the order we arrived.

Crown Princess is the only ship in port today which is probably why things are moving so quickly.  All the employees here at Canada Place are so friendly!  I had read horror stories about embarkation here, but I had no problems at all.  People smile.

Such diversity in Vancouver as well.  Lots of Asians, indigenous folks, Sikhs—lots of turbans.  I guess I always sort of thought of Canada as the “great white north” in more ways than one…but Vancouver is definitely not like that.

We finally boarded at 1130 (one hour later than scheduled) and I was the first person to get to Sanctuary—an adult area on one of the top decks that you can pay for.  I booked for a full day tomorrow, our first sea day.  Then I hit my muster station to check in, and by noon me and a few other people opened up Botticelli for lunch.

The ship definitely is a bit more “old school” than the NCL ships I’ve been on. Lots of brass and wood.  Employees seem much happier to be here, though, and very friendly.  The folks I ate lunch with were also very nice.  There was hardly anyone there, so apparently people who cruise with Princess aren’t aware that there is always a restaurant open on embarkation day so you can avoid the crowds in the buffet, which is the only other food place that is open.

After lunch, I headed to my room with was nice with a huge window.  Suitcase hadn’t arrived yet, so I went to the “welcome to Princess” meeting with our cruise director Kristoff.  Afterward, I headed to a top deck for sailaway.  I found a spot to sit near the railing facing forward.  A guy was eating pizza and a large seabird started stalking it.  I took a group photo for some drunk people.  I met a couple of women from Vancouver Island who were great –one of them even said “eh” at the end of all her sentences like the stereotype.

The mom had not cruised in about 20 years or so, and she and her husband (now deceased) had always talked about Alaska, and she was finally doing it.  She gave me info about the stuff we were seeing as we left—so very beautiful—we even sailed right under a bridge (literally just a few feet below!

Went to explore the ship a bit and found the mini golf, then headed to dinner at Botticelli…pretty average, but the employees, again, were lovely and super helpful.  The one bad thing about Princess—the signage!  There aren’t many to begin with, and the ones they have are small and hard to spot.  Very easy to get lost.  To get to one of the restaurants, you have to go up some stairs and back down again.  Weird.

Headed back to cabin  where my bag had finally arrived, so I unpacked and watched Love Boat (they have ALL episodes on their in room tvs—which have SO much better content than the ones on NCL).

Wednesday, July 5:

Got up and went to find the “hidden” spots to have good views…but discovered that one isn’t really hidden, and the other is blocked off now…so I need to find a good spot for Glacier Bay day (when we just do scenic cruising).

Went to Sanctuary and it was cold and foggy and the horn was going off every few minutes right over our head because of the fog…I was the only one there…so I talked to the attendant and he said if I wanted to cancel I could…so I did.  He said they would be pretty available for the whole cruise since it wasn’t a normally warm temp so it wasn’t going to be as crowded as it would be on a Carribean cruise.

I headed to the buffet for an okay, pretty standard bf …more hard biscuits.  Why do people outside the south think biscuits are hard?  Sat for a bit and did some sodoku.   Then went to the Wheelhouse Bar to sit for a bit…then to the welcome meeting in Club Fusion—not very exciting and I didn’t win any prizes, lol.  Headed back to my room and ordered room service for lunch.  Fog finally cleared, but still quite windy and cloudy.  While they have a promenade deck you can walk all the way around, there are no places to sit and relax or bars outside like NCL has with the Waterfront.  There were a few hard wooden chairs and benches…but nothing nice—not even pillows on the chairs to make them more comfy.

Ate my room service (just ok) and napped a couple of hours. Woke up and watched more Love Boat, then went for a snack in the buffet but they didn’t have much on offer.  Did puzzles in my room until dinner and went to DaVinci for an okay meal.  The Asian couple next to me were hilarious taking pictures of everything and the woman was wearing the red spangled dress and sparkly cowboy hat.  She wound up talking to me—her name was Daisy and she was 63!  I never would have guessed.  The man, 74, was her partner and she talked a lot about not getting married (she had before and has 2 kids in Houston and LA).  She was a trip.

Back in my room to wait for a show tonight—Magic to Do—a collection of Stephen Schwartz songs from his various shows (Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, Wicked, etc).  Turns out to be a really poor job of stringing together the songs…no real through line.  Only an hour long, so no worries.