Prince Rupert to Seattle

Good Day everyone!

Thanks Nikki for all your comments! I love to read them!

How's everyone doing? I'm still very well. I moved my cabin yesterday, the new cabin is all the way forward on the ship, on the tween deck (which is below zero deck - so below sea level), when you are so far forward you can feel the movement of the ship more - so I feel a little sea sick this morning as it's a bit of a rough day. I definitely need to make an acupuncture appointment to get rid of this for the remainder of the cruise, if I have to stay in this cabin, I will feel sick much too frequently for my taste. Otherwise the cabin is alright, it's a bit bigger, more space, there's a desk that I can keep my computer on, I'm still undecided on the shower, it's smaller, but has a better shower head and curtain (meaning it doesn't stick to my ass), so we shall see maybe tomorrow after another shower! The toilet wouldn't flush this morning, but my roommate tells me that this is normal for a rough sea day well, I don't like that so much either.

So, since we last spoke, we've been to Prince Rupert, Vancouver & Seattle...

I didn't think I'd get to go out in Prince Rupert as we didn't arrive until 2pm, and I had to work at 4pm (and we can't go out until most of the guests have gone out), but I ended up having to stay and help the guest account purser with some stuff, so I didn't finish work until 2:30, this meant that I didn't have to come back to work until 6:30 so I had a couple of hours to go out. It was a good thing too, as both pairs of jeans that I had with me were kaput, so I had only one pair of pants and one pair of capri's with me - and you can't do capri's in Alaska yet! So, I decided to go look for some pants, I was told there was a mall within a ten minute walk from the ship so I headed up - it was a crappy little mall, but they had a rietmans - so I headed in there, found 5 pairs of pants to try on, and ended up buying 4 of them! So I am all set for pants now, next I need to find a few more t-shirts I think, but that shouldn't be too hard, there is apparently a fred meyer and a costco not far away in Juneau, and I get to go out there next time by.

After the shopping trip, I went down to Cow Bay, which is just next to the dock (what a tiny little dock by the way!). Apparently it's called Cow Bay because when delivering some cows to the area, they had some problems with docking the boat, so they just pushed all the cows off the boat, and made them swim to shore! So all of the trash cans, etc are painted black and white like a cow. It's a small little area with some port shopping, and a couple little restaurants, I had a drink at the coffee shop, and wandered back to the ship.

After Prince Rupert we had a sea day traveling through the Inside passage between Vancouver Island and the main land, due to the hours I was working, I was able to go upstairs to take a look at about 8:00 that night, but it was the perfect time, it was just as we were getting to the thinest area between the island and mainland, and the sun was starting to go down...mmmm perfect. We could see the coast mountains off the Port side (left) and behind us (aft) the sun was setting. I took about 50 photos it was so perfect. The mountains were beautiful, and the sunset over the water was amazing, it was just like you imagine it to be really. One of the guests was upstairs when I was taking photos and asked if my pictures would be for sale later as it had to be a perfect shot. I was flattered, but of course, my photos are for me (and you - eventually) only!

We arrived in Vancouver a little before 7am yesterday morning, I missed going under the Lion's gate bridge by about 3 minutes, but I knew we'd be leaving the same way so I'd have another chance. Due to us repositioning, we were only off loading the guests in Vancouver yesterday, and not picking up anymore there. No one was allowed off the ship due to the short turn around time, we had to leave as soon as all the guests were off and any deliveries were received. Well, that's not quite true, because we also had a short turn around last night in Seattle, about 10 people got off in Vancouver to rent a car and drive to the port in Seattle in order to be there for guests arriving before the ship arrived. So this means that we had about 8 hours of sailing WITHOUT GUESTS!!! Woooohooooo!!! When we left Vancouver a number of staff had come up to deck 11 to watch and take pictures going under the Lion's gate bridge and Vancouver, and Stanley Park - BTW, you really get a great view of where all the damage from the wind storm last winter - it's still SO evident...quite incredible actually, the sea wall is looking good though!

Due to our sailing without guests, we had some special things going happening for crew on the ship, they did a special crew sale in the gift shops - and you didn't have to be in Uniform!!! And, the opened the Cova Cafe (the onboard coffee shop) so that we could go up and enjoy a coffee in the cafe - this isn't all that special for me (we still had to pay for them), but it is really special for those crew that can't be in those areas when guests are on board. It was really good of those crew that worked those areas to work hours that they didn't necessarily have to work so that other crew could have the privledge of being in those areas. I had a coffee with the manager of the specialty restaurant, Christian, he's a really sweet guy and I think we will be very good friends on the ship.

I took a lot more pictures on the way to Seattle, but I wasn't as impressed as I was with the Inside Passage pictures, it was really sunny so the pictures were a bit washed out. Maybe ACDSee can fix them! I'll have to give it a try. And of course I had to take care of moving my stuff to my new cabin.

Once we reached Seattle I had to go out to the pier (again no one else could go out cause we had a short turn around to leave). As the Apprentice Purser, we take turns assisting the Documenation Officer with Embarkation duties, looking at passports for Visa's etc and it was my turn. Lucky for me, most of the guests had already checked in so there wasn't a heck of a lot to do. It was such a strange turn around, we arrived at 7pm, and departed around Midnight, so late, and I think the guests were probably pretty upset by the time we arrived, as the place that they were being held before getting on the ship looked like a cattle barn... and some of them were waiting all day!

After finishing my embarkation duty, I came back on the ship and our new guest account purser had called the other 2 Apprentice pursers to help her and the documentation purser get a few things done, so I also stayed to help. The poor lady is so stressed right now, she's had a few things go wrong with the last cruise and she hasn't been able to balance. So, I think she felt better that we all jumped in to help...I hope that this cruise goes better for her, especially since we are now doing 7 day cruises, which means less time to get things done.

Anyways, that's it for me, bit of a long post today! I'll talk to you all soon, and I'll talk to you soon!

Tabs