After a decent night’s sleep, we organized ourselves to be on time for the 10:00 AM shuttle to the airport. After repacking, we headed down to breakfast about 8:00 AM. At $86 (tip included, thank God!), this was, by far, the most expensive breakfast either of had ever had! Back to the room, we had most of an hour to relax before catching the shuttle.
Today was in stark contrast to our August 2015 visit. That was a sunny summer morning with a pleasant high 70s temp. This was a rainy spring morning at least twenty degrees cooler.
On the way to the port, Jack noticed that Vancouver had undergone a building boom since 2015. Everywhere we looked, we saw brand new apartment buildings of every of every size. The driver commented that Vancouver now has the third highest cost of living after Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia. Jack didn’t doubt it for a second.
The other thing that changed drastically was the embarkation process, not so much a process as an ordeal. We started with the health assessment that required opening the VeriFLY app, which meant connecting to Wi-Fi as we had no cell service. However, we also had to show our printed test results and vaccination card. We thought VeriFLY would eliminate this. Silly us.
From there it was security, face scanning, check in with passports, US Customs (WTF?) using their kiosks (just like last night – we got a receipt then gave it to a customs officer), and finally (! @#%) being seated in a cordoned off convention hall on crappy folding chairs. As it turned out, we were seated in the wrong section, an oversight that Cathy quickly corrected.
Even with all this, we were on the ship a little after 11:30 AM as we had to wait a few minutes for the dining room noon embarkation lunch. Fortunately, when we reached our room a little before 1:00 PM, we had a beautiful, if a bit cool, afternoon with nary a cloud in the sky.
Our aft balcony had a great view of downtown Vancouver and the throngs of people enjoying a sunny Sunday. About 2:30, Jack heard a parade. A banner at the front said, “The world needs compassion, truthfulness and…” (he didn’t get the third word) in both English and an Asian language. Everyone was clad in yellow and, unless playing an instrument, was shaking pink streamers in time to the music. Most of the afternoon, a lone guitar player stationed in front of Canada Centre serenaded us. As we people watched, we became impressed with Vancouver’s diversity. This included numerous men wearing brightly colored (hot pink, yellow, cobalt blue, etc.) turbans. About 3:30, a street performer began his act. Through the binoculars, we saw him spread out a straight jacket. He soon began juggling knives. By the time Jack left for the FOBW meeting about 4:15, he’d attracted quite a crowd.
FOBW was Jack and Jim, a man Jack’s age from Montana. This was not really a meeting, just a nice 45-minute chat. Jack beat Cathy to our 5:30 dinner at a two-top in the center of the restaurant. They had a nice Mother’s Day menu that Cathy especially appreciated.
There wasn’t much to our evening. Our only activity was the “I am Alaska” program at 8:00 PM in the theater, a nice multi-media presentation about Alaska and its peoples. Even so, Jack struggled to keep his eyes open at times. This was like the opening night presentation on the history of HAL on our December cruise. It appears these presentations are a mainstay of HAL’s entertainment programming. Certainly, a glorified PowerPoint presentation narrated by the cruise director is much cheaper than even a stripped-down production show.
With that, we were back in the room before 9:00. Cathy was down first, and Jack called it quits about 10:00.