North to Alaska, on total recall......

Decided to do a "recall" blog....will probably be very short.  We can't remember what day it is...how can we remember two weeks ago???  Pictures will help.

Wednesday, August 27:  Up at 2 A.M.  Ummmm....had a 6 a.m. flight to Dallas; then to Phoenix; then to Vancouver.  The further west we went, the earlier it got.  We'd been flying for hours (well, it seemed like it) and when we landed in Phoenix, they said, "welcome to Phoenix.  The local time is 8:35 a.m."    But the flights were smooth, on time (if not early) and we proceeded through customs in Vancouver.  There begins the tale of lines.  long lines.  Little did we know, our lives would be in a line for the next two weeks.

But it went smoothly and just as we walked up to baggage carousal, there were our two over-stuffed bags...no waiting.  Walked out through immigration and there were two Princess reps who grabbed our two over-stuffed bags and we never saw them again until we got to our room on the ship.  Efficient.  Got on a motorcoach (little did we know then!) and took the route right through the middle of Vancouver.  I guess they wanted us to "visit" Vancouver, but I can't believe there wasn't a shorter, less traveled route.  But we did see Vancouver downtown.  Could not believe all the highrise apartments.  There is a huge influx of immigrates to that city.  They are making 200 sf apartments and selling them for $800,000.

Eventually, we got to the terminal and went quickly through the check-in.  We were the last of the passengers to board (it was now around 4 p.m. and the ship sailed at 4:30) so it was easy and quick.   We sailed on the Island Princess--a beautiful ship.  Loved the ship.  It held about 1900+ passengers and we never felt crowded.  We could just about always find an elevator that wasn't packed when we needed one.  Easily found our cabin and had just enough time to get settled and then muster call.  Got that done and found our cabin again to get ready for dinner.  We had chosen traditional dining at 5:15--didn't know if that would work or not, but it was better than the 8:00 p.m. traditional dining.  The Anytime Dining on our last cruise did not work out at all, so we were not going to do that again.  This 5:15 time did work on most nights.  We really got to eat around 6 which is what we do at home.


After dinner, we walked around a bit to acclimate ourselves to the ship.  Found the expediate route to the dining room and the Horizon Court buffet.  The important things. We walked around the ship a bit....beautiful ship.  Went to the Wheelhouse Bar for some fairly good dancing....who knew you could zydeco to a band like that....lol.  But Ronnie rubbed a blister on his foot so that ended the dancing.

The three hour time difference was also there the next morning, so we were up early.
After a great breakfast in the Horizon Court, we sat out on a deck and read a bit...just relaxed and enjoyed not having anything to do.   It was formal night, so we doodied up a bit that night for dinner and that was about all that day.

Keeping in mind that we were up at 2 a.m. and had lost two hours in timezones (another hour was lost during the night), we realized we'd been up and going for almost 18 hours.  So we went to bed--at 8:30 and went right to sleep.