It’s Sunday – time to get out of town! Up and on the way to Cleveland-Hopkins Airport at 4:00 a.m. for our flight leaving at 6:30 a.m. In Rochester, I probably wouldn’t give up quite that much time in bed but we arrived by 4:30 and needed almost every minute of those two hours. Between young people with cellos causing really lengthy delays at the bag drop counter and a surprisingly large number of people in general, we didn’t have more than 10 minutes to wait until we started boarding. Small Delta jet, no surprise there but I would not have guessed that the flight time between Cleveland and Detroit is 24 minutes!! Nora was disappointed that she had only a partial window to look out of but there wasn’t much to see nor much time to see it!!
Detroit is a big one as far as airports and, of course, we landed at Gate C21 and needed to be at Gate A76 for the flight to Vancouver. Thankfully we had enough layover time and by traversing about 8 moving walkways and four different escalators, we arrived at the gate with about an hour to spare. Grabbed a little breakfast and some coffee (Hallelujah!) and then suddenly, mine and Nora’s names were called to the gate desk!!! The look on Devon’s face was priceless – like – What’s wrong and why is something happening to my daughter??!! Happily, Westjet had, by some algorithm, determined that the current seating for the four Wileys could be improved so they reseated Nora and I to be all in one row with Mom and Dad. We still had seats almost in the last row but we sat “together”. Phew!
All smiles still!!
Everyone did their “thing” on the flight – the head flight attendant was a real comedian and brought a lovely sense of humor and fun to her narration of the things we hear on every plane we’ve ever flown. Nora was watching downloaded movies on her IPad, Devon was playing something on Nintendo Switch, Lia was watching the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders show and I was reading The 6th Extinction by James Rollins. I also had the opportunity to talk with my neighbors – lovely couple, Tanner and Amina, also going to Alaska but on Royal Caribbean – I think we may run into them on some of our excursions! The flight was without incident and we landed in Vancouver about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Canadian Passport Control went smoothly and we found our Holland America people who flawlessly herded us to our bus. As we drove through Vancouver to get to the cruise terminal, our driver, Terry, gave us a bit of interesting information. Vancouver is a true melting pot – over 170 languages are spoken within its borders. On the way to the terminal we passed through East Indian town as well as their version of Chinatown.
As soon as we saw Pandas and golden dragons on every light pole at every intersection, we sort of guessed we’d hit Chinatown!!
Off loaded from the bus and onto the Westerdam. Managed to find our staterooms and lo and behold – what is happening in Devon and Lia’s place? Awwww – it’s a birthday package from Holland America via Devon – Lia was quite surprised and happy!!
Surprise!!!
Waiting for our luggage to be delivered to our rooms, we decided we were actually hungry and went down to the Lido Market restaurant. It is the one that offers multiple stations from pizza to salad to salmon to sandwiches and a scrumptious macaroni and cheese. Upon our return, my luggage and Devon’s main suitcase had arrived so I started unpacking. Eventually everyone’s luggage arrived and we settled in. At 4 pm (actually 7 pm as far as our bodies were concerned) there was a send-off gathering on one of the decks – champagne and song and dance to celebrate the beginning of the cruise. It was pretty hot in the sun on the deck and we stayed an appropriate amount of time and then returned to the shelter of the ship. We decided to get some fancy drinks (non-alcoholic) before returning to our staterooms but had to visit three different bars on two decks before we got our virgin strawberry daiquiris (Nora and I), a virgin pina colada (Lia), and sugar free Red Bull for Devon!
We were all petering out so returned to our rooms, spent a little while on the verandahs where it was pretty breezy but beautiful and then about 7:00 went down for a small bite of dinner (Lia was wise and took a nap!). Grandma was the only brave soul that decided to go to the World Stage to see the “Welcome to the Cruise” live show. Unfortunately, I can’t say it was a thrill but ….. things did get better later in the cruise.
Back here now and finishing up before bed. It’s only 9:45 (which is really early for me) but since it’s actually 12:45, I don’t think it will be a problem. We sail all day tomorrow on our way to Ketchikan so we’ll have to find some trouble to get into on the boat!! We’ll be back in America and have lost another hour too! Good night!
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