Alaskan Cruise Day 1 More

We had an early breakfast at the William Tell Bistro connected to the hotel. The plan for the morning was to head to Stanley Park. We took a cab to the seawall near a restaurant called Caderos. We walked along the trail on the seawall into the park, to the Indian totems, pass the rugby pitch, by the aquarium and through the rose garden and back on to Georgian Avenue. From there, we caught a cab back to the hotel. In total, we covered almost 3.5 miles in about an hour and a half.

We cleaned up, checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the cruise ship dock. We got to the dock a little after 1:00 p.m. In spite of warnings to show up later to avoid lines, the boarding process was fairly painless. We went through a security screening, United States Customs, filled out a questionnaire asking whether or not anyone had been sick in the last two days, and got our room keys and a map of the ship. The security and custom lines were less than 5 or 10 minutes.

We boarded the ship and checked out our room. We have a mini-suite with a balcony. The room is actually a little bigger than I expected.

From there, we had a late lunch and spent some time exploring the ship. It is going to take a day or two to get the ship’s layout mapped. Jack and I signed up to play some cybergolf on Sunday and checked out the sports court. We followed Sharon through a long tour of the spa and the gym.

The Diamond Princess finally pulled away from the dock about 5:45 p.m. We spent the late afternoon on the aft deck while the ship left Vancouver and sailed out under the Loin’s Gate Bridge. Jack and I played chess on a giant chess set and some shuffle board.

We have the late seating for dinner at 8:00 p.m. While you are usually seated with a group of people, It turns out that we are going to have a small table off to one side to ourselves for dinner for the week. Sharon had prime rib, I had a Cajun crockpot and Jack had a hamburger.

By the time, we got back to the room it was after 10 p.m. We spent some time on the balcony and then called it a night.