We had a lovely visit with my Handsfield cousins on Saturday. The photo shows me and my first cousins. Of course the one on the far right is, appropriately enough, my first cousin once removed...from the left we are Jim, me, Hunter and Matthew with Jim's wife, Marcy, taking the photo. We are on Hunter and Patricia's deck with the sun setting over Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula in the background.
Sunday we were up sort of early to get back to the airport to find the Holland America folks and their bus up to Vancouver. As with most travel, it was "hurry up and wait." We finally took off on the bus about 11:30 a.m. Our driver was a real character and chatted almost non-stop with those of us in the front few rows. We got to see the Blue Angels on the tarmac as we drove past Boeing Field. They were prepping for an air show at 1:00 p.m.
We got to the Canadian border crossing at 2:00 p.m. All 28 of us passengers sat there on the bus holding our filled-out entry cards and passports while our driver went inside to find out whether we all had to get off and present ourselves and/or luggage in person. Three minutes later the driver came back, started the bus and we drove away! He said he had never had that simple a border crossing before! They asked him 2 or 3 questions, looked at his own driving license and passport card, and waved him on. They probably figured that it wasn't worth the time to go through us all with a fine-tooth comb when we were obviously not going to spend any money in their country. Or maybe they had already met their quota of hassling travelers for that day.
We did finally arrive, starving, at Canada Place in Vancouver which is the cruise termInal. We got to our cabin a little after 3:00 p.m. Our luggage arrived just before the compulsory emergency drill at 4:15 p.m. Nowadays that drill is truly compulsory, and anyone who refuses to participate is summarily put off the ship before it sails. Our captain announced that both the lifeboat stations and the gangway were on deck three and anyone could take their pick (this was evidently after someone in one of the fancy suites complained about having to turn up for the drill). This announcement was met by general huzzahs by those of us already standing at our muster stations.
Since we hadn't eaten since early morning, we opted for dinner as soon as the dining room opened. As we ate, we watched the gorgeous scenery of islands nearby and snowy mountains in the distance as the sun began to sink in the west. In some ways it was very like the Norwegian fjord scenery i saw in June, but the mountains are rather newer , bigger and sharper. We were back in the cabin around 7:00 p.m., and unpacked and fully settled in by mid-evening.
(By the way, on this trip, "we" with no qualifier will almost always mean Connie and me. I'll let you know when " we" includes Jim, Marcy, and/or Matthew Handsfield.)
No comments:
Post a Comment