Northwest Cruise #1 (9/24/2005)

This week we took a 5 day cruise from Seattle to Vancouver, then on to Prince Rupert, and then back to Seattle. These five days include 2 at-sea (lazy) days and 2 in-port active days: 1 in Vancouver and 1 in Prince Rupert. We had very nice weather the entire trip. On the first day while we were touring the ship we saw people in the casino standing around waiting for the casino to open, holding their money. (They just couldn’t wait to give it to the casino.) Rich did some gambling on this trip and actually walked away a winner.
As usual the food on board the ship was wonderful. I’ve been watching the food network so on this trip I decided to try some new foods. I had fish at dinner every night; some I had never heard of before seeing them on the menu. And all of them delish. I also had some kind of cold fruit soup at most dinners, awesome good. And of course there were desserts, especially chocolate desserts. And a wonderful formal tea with scones and clotted cream, yum.
On our in-port days we walked around. In Vancouver the ship docked next to the Pan Pacific Hotel and we walked around Gastown. We managed to be next to the steam clock just as it went off both going and coming. The local people were very helpful. Every time we got out our map, someone would stop to ask if they could help us find something. In Prince Rupert we docked next to a park with a great view of the area. It also had people out around town with yellow vests on announcing that they were there to help visitors.
Saturday we were back in Seattle. Since the second cruise was on the same ship we were able to just have our luggage moved from one stateroom to the new stateroom. We needed to do laundry so we took our dirty clothes off the ship to find a Laundromat. As we were driving we suddenly realized that we were close to Chris and Louise’s home (Nephew and wife) so we called and got permission to use their laundry. After finishing the laundry we went back to the ship and got ready for the second cruise.