Alaska!!!

The trip started perfectly—an on-time flight, clear skies and an empty seat next to us! We had awesome views of Mt. Hood and the Sisters as we came through Oregon, Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake in Nevada and the Columbia River. We landed in Seattle about ½ hour early and Nancy was waiting to meet us. Nancy and Sam are dear friends from New Hampshire who moved to Seattle a while back. Actually, Nancy was Michal’s first real piano teacher!) We have kept in touch since they moved to Seattle and we moved to California, but haven’t seen them very often. The weather in Seattle was heavenly—in the 70’s and perfect blue skies. We spent the afternoon and evening catching up on each others’ lives on their quiet porch with lush green trees surrounding us, had a delicious dinner at a Croatian restaurant and went for a walk along the greenbelt. We spent a quiet night, had bagels for breakfast and Nancy took us to the place where we were to meet the bus for the trip to Vancouver. Nancy and Sam were incredible hosts, it was so, so good to spend some time with them and to hear about their amazing kids. I so hope that they’ll come see us when they come to our neck of the woods to visit their daughter who goes to Pomona College.

The trip to Vancouver was painless—got to talk to Shiri and Michal one last time, and we crossed the border in no time at all. We did discover, however, when we got on the bus, that the average age of our fellow cruisers was probably somewhere between 68 and 70. Not knowing what the cruise would be like, we wondered if it would be a problem having an older crowd with us. Once we arrived in Vancouver, we stood in the customs line to board the ship. We did have a moment of panic when they asked us to get our boarding passes ready and we realized that we didn’t have said boarding passes!! When we registered on line we probably thought that we’d just print the boarding passes a little closer to the actual departure, but never did! No problem—they had all our info and was fine. It only cost us a few minutes and an almost-heart attack!!! It gave everyone else quite a laugh at the young novices who did such a silly thing!

We finally got into our cabin—it’s so cool! A big picture window with a beautiful view of Vancouver Harbor. I guess we’re in the cheap cabin, because we’re on the lowest level, but I actually like it better that we’re closer to the water level. We wandered around the ship for a bit—this is such a novelty for us! I felt like a kid in a candy store and we visited the various decks, restaurants, lounges and saw the incredible views from every side. We had lunch in the buffet-style restaurant (it’s going to be SOOOOO hard) not to eat too much—the food is so good!), wandered the ship some more and went for the mandatory safety drill. Then we decided to go for a run. It’s kind of annoying—the “Promenade Deck” has a path that’s ¼ mile, but that’s only for walking—no running allowed! So we tried to top deck, which is beautiful, but only about 1/10 of a mile, or a little more if you go up the stairs to the top deck and then back down. So, we started the 35 or so laps necessary to make the 3-4 mile run we usually like to do. Which would have been fine, but we were just setting out from the port, so it got gradually more and more crowded until we were snaking our way through people and ducking so as to be out of camera shots! But gradually the crowd started to dissipate as the ship got farther from the port, and the running was so cool, with the ship moving beneath us and the scenery changing as we sailed on.

We had 2 surprises waiting for us at the dinner seating we were scheduled for: the negative one was that “Smart Casual” does not include shorts for men, even nice khaki ones, so poor Yoram had to change, even thought I was fine in my shorts, and the positive one was that our table for the next week is right by the window at the absolute back of the boat with the most amazing views to both sides! How we got that choice spot we’ll never know.. .Our table companions are literally old enough to be our parents, but very nice and friendly, and the food was, again, delicious. As I write this, we’re listening to a string quartet play Mozart, the sun has set, and I am completely content, and looking forward to the day on the boat tomorrow.