Day 1-Travel

Saturday August 26,2006

The cab came at about 5:25 am. We left O'Hare on time at 8:00 am.

Our flight was 4 hours and although we had seats way back in row 23, all went smoothly. The movie was Inside Man with Denzel Washington. A good one!

Vancouver was beautiful from the air, a nice sunny day. We went through customs quickly and eventually boarded a bus for downtown Vancouver. Our bags went separately. More about that later.

It is about 45 minutes to downtown Vancouver from the airport. There was construction along the way. They are building a mass transit system with above and below ground sections. It is targeted to support the winter Olympics here in 2010. (I think.)

We boarded the ship at the port in Vancouver quite early. Our Princess ship was there along with one from Holland America and one other. They are getting very large. Quite a sight.
Once on board we got to our cabins at about 11:30 am, well before our luggage arrived. Sally's Mom, Maggie and Aunt, Elsie have the cabin next to us. Then we proceeded to look around and find a restaurant to have some lunch. We decided to purchase the unlimited coke ticket for $3.95 a day each(times seven days, what a racket!)

At 4:00 we had an emergency drill and had to go to Muster Station D to hear a review of the procedures in the event of an iceberg or something. We learned how to put on our life jackets and where to go to get on a life boat. This was serious stuff.

We are back in our cabins now and toasting our planned 6:00 or so bon voyage. We plan dinner at one of the informal restuarants. After our delayed departure around 6:45, we went down to get early seats for the preview show in the Princess Theatre. The show started about 8:00 and lasted about an hour, including a short dance number, a comic/magician and the introductions of many of the ship's different areas. The program was hosted by the ship's Cruise Director. What a hoot he was!

Dinner followed at one of the restaurants, but nobody was very hungry and we were all very tired. After getting up a 4:45 am Chicago time, we finally hit the sack at about 11:00, or 2:00 am Chicago time.

Stay tuned for day 2.