Up at 5. Uber picks us up and off we go on another grand adventure.
Great flight, easy getting through the airport. As we looked for our seats we realized our first mistake, we upgraded our seats for extra leg room. Right over the wing, a wonderful 4 feet of room, but no place to put your bags under the seat in front because there isn’t a freaking seat in front. There also isn’t a window – I love windows, but we are close to the washroom. Awesome I love being near the washroom, but guess what all that extra space is a great place for people to wait for the washroom. It is also a great place to stretch your legs, this lovely older Asian lady did a full yoga class in front of us, also a good place to bring a bouncy baby and oh yeah all the coffee and food carts. And to think we paid extra for all this entertainment. Lol
Off the plane, pass our bags off to the Princess Hostess and onto a bus for a 40 minute drive through Smokey Vancouver before we arrive at our boat or should I say ship. Vancouver is surrounded by mountains and you can’t see even one of them. You can actually smell the wood burning. Everything is shrouded in smoke. Went right through town including Granville Ave, some amazing houses on this street.
When we get to the ship, there are little line ups for everything, line up to check in, line up for security, line up for getting on the ship. Thankfully most of them moved pretty quickly, so probably only took us another hour.
Our ship is called the Island Princess and is one of the Princess Cruise lines. It holds 2200 passengers and 900 crew, just a nice size. We are on the Emerald Deck, room 305, close enough to the water that you could jump in LOL. Time to wander around and get acclimatized. It is amazing how quickly you can get turned around in a boat. After a day we figured out that the pictures of the ship that are all around saying you are here also point the same way the boat is going!!!!! Voila that helped with everything.
Unfortunately the few pictures I took of our departure are pretty Smokey, Vancouver looks like a beautiful city which means we will have to come back.
Everyone on the boat is doing the same thing we are, just wandering around, trying to find out where all the restaurants are, where you can get a drink and staring intently at the water. We did catch a glimpse of a pod of dolphins off the port bow around 5 pm. WOOHOO.
At dinner we met Sue and Rob, a nurse and fireman from California, and Joanne and Steve from Albany, New York. Not one American that we talked to had any idea that British Columbia was covered in forest fires. We just don’t make CNN LOL.
The cruise goes up the inter coastal waterway, 11 years ago we did the drive with the kids up to Campbells River. There was a place, called Ripple Rock just north of there that was quite narrow and had 2 rocks in it that destroyed a number of boats so Canada decided to blow them apart to make it safer for sea travel. The kids laughed at me for taking a picture of a channel because of the rocks that weren’t there anymore. I am very glad they blew them up because I couldn’t believe a cruise ship could get by here it was so narrow. Sometimes they might have 4 or 5 ships going through at a time. Must be quite the sight.
The smoke finally disappeared, no stars yet, but a lovely night. Good night moon!!!
Carlynne Chatter 
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