Day One of the journal I kept on an Alaskan cruise I took in 2003.
Other Days: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
3:39 PM PDT
Well, I'm here. I'm sitting in my obstructed view cabin in the Coral Princess cruise ship of the Princess Cruises line. I'm starting to get pretty tired, most likely because I feel like it's 10:40 PM on a normal work day. Well, where should I begin...
DTW: I got to DTW rather early and ended up walking the new Northwest Midfield Terminal about twice, and I took the shuttle a few times as well. Seeing as it's a mile long, that's at least two miles that I walked before my flight. I ended up grabbing a big old latte and a bagel with cheddar right as all the food stations opened. In my wandering I decided to take the tunnel over to Concourses B & C. This is the first part of the trip in which I was absolutely completely blown away. Lining the walls of this tunnel are floor to ceiling plates of etched glass which are back-lighted with what have to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of color changing LEDs. Set to music these panels would throb and pulse in patterns. When I saw that my jaw dropped, I felt like I was in a 1980s sci-fi film, and I knew beyond all doubt that fictional writing drives both the art and technology of the future. I was floored. We have arrived.
The Flights: After getting on the aircraft some nice thunder and lightning started up. That wasn't really a big deal either, except the grounds crew at DTW had to go inside until the lightning stopped. To make a long story short, we were 45 minutes late getting into MSP. No big deal, but I was still hungry. On the way to MSP I sat next to someone from the Lansing area who worked as Probation Officer for Ingham County. Not a bad guy at all, but he sure seemed like the typical late 30s guy who is interested in 'hot women'. Nice enough guy, though. Once we landed in MSP I snagged a quick Cinnabon, then made it to the gate with about 10 minutes to spare before boarding.
While on the MSP to YVR leg of the trip I ended up sitting next to a guy who introduced himself as Joseph, although I think his name really is Yousef. Then again, the two names are pretty much the same thing, I just think that one is the Israeli spelling and the other is the American / Canadian. Joseph is originally from Vancouver, but is current living in the Grand Rapids area going to Ferris State. He's a really nice guy who's getting his CS major. We exchanged email addresses and the like. This flight was the first trip back to Vancouver for him in 1.5 years and will be seeing his family for the first time in that whole period. I hope everything went well for him... While en route I watched the majority of Spirited Away with Joseph. Unfortunately I only had one pair of headphones and no splitter, so he just had to read the subtitles. I may watch the rest of this film tonight, as I only have about 20 more minutes to go. So far, I'm amazed.
YVR: After getting off the aircraft was customs. Canadian customs was ridiculously easy, even more so than, say, the Sarina cross pre-September 11th. After popping through customs and learning that it would be another hour before the shuttle busses started leaving I decided that I needed some food. There was a pretty decent looking Japanese place in the lobby of the airport. I gave it a try, and it was pretty tasty. I had some chicken / salmon teriyaki that came with a bowl of absolutely wonderful miso soup. I think I also had some random green tea with it. Tasty, but not that filling. (Yes, I'm talking about food a lot. After the emergency drill that's happening in 10 minutes [from 4:14 PM PDT] I'll probably swing by the buffet and grab some food. I don't think I'm in too much of a mood to have a normal sit-down meal tonight.)
The Bus: Okay, so once you leave the airport for a cruise you end up standing in a REALLY long line which terminates in your boarding a tour-style bus for a ride to the docks. The line wait was about 35 minutes for me, with the bus ride taking approximately another 30 or 40 minutes. The ride wasn't bad at all, except for the rather large (tall and big) guy sitting next to me. See, the bus seats are a little smaller than aircraft seats... But I digress... Throughout the ride the bus driver gave a nice play-by-play of stuff going by, buildings in downtown, things like that. I have to say that Vancouver seems to be a pretty nice place with a very large Asian population. I'm sure that makes for really, really good food and a nice mixed community. I did notice one odd thing, though. I don't mean to sound racist, and that's not what I'm intending, so I hope it doesn't come across that way: In Detroit most of your rough, thug-wannabe kids are either black or lower class white, in Vancouver they all seem to be Asian, and with really interesting hair styles. Oh, one other thing I thought of, during the ride we drove past a hot dog stand called 'Mr. Tube Steak'. Yes, I did get a picture. After we reached the terminal we had to exit the bus, go though a couple of Princess Cruises check-in ports involving things like a SARS question/answer sheet, ticket checking, boarding / billing card issuing, etc. Then came American customs... Wow, was that easy. The guy at customs just stamped my paperwork and let me go. Nothing else to say.
The Ship: First off, let me tell you, these ships are huge. Absolutely amazingly impressive. If you've seen the inside-the-cabin scenes from The Fifth Element, well, that's how this is. Granted, this ship is brand new, but there's everything from a casino to internet lounge to countless bars. To celebrate being on the ship and being in Vancouver, I treated myself to a pint of Guinness and grabbed a hot dog. The bun on the dog was a bit dry, but I was hungry. I think I should have skipped the Guinness, though, as it seems to only have contributed to my aircraft-descent-induced headache. My room is definitely nice. The bedroom area is about 12' x 12', with a small bathroom and closet area close to the door. It's hard to describe, but I got some photos of it that will help.
Well, it's 4:27 PM PDT which means that it's time for this emergency muster thing. I think I'll go check out what it's all about (as it's required by maritime law) and then grab some food. Maybe after that I'll explore a bit more, maybe I'll go to bed. Tomorrow is a entire day of cruising up towards Ketchikan, so sleeping in shouldn't bother me too much, although I should be out before 11:30 AM PDT (or will it be ADT? Hmm, need to find this out) in order to get some breakfast.
5:42 PM PDT
After the emergency drill and some food I feel a lot better. I think I ate a slice of pizza, some mashed potatoes, some deli ham, some fried potato things, a piece of what was essentially a grilled cheese but with mozzarella and ham, a piece of bread, and some coffee. Mmm. That's better. After that I went and wandered around a bit more and got a few more pictures of Vancouver, including a helicopter lifting off from the local heliport, and some more mountain shots. Mountains truly, truly amaze me. Since I get this feeling every time I see real mountains (read: not the Michigan variety) I'm starting to wonder if I should really be living some place that isn't as flat as where I currently do. Eh, who knows...
The ship is supposed to depart at some time around 6:30 PM PDT, so I'm going to attempt to be outside some place to watch this. I did find that if you walk to the complete aft of the ship on the floor I'm on there is a smallish deck. Maybe I'll be back there so that I can be alone and just take everything in.
Some other interesting things I've come across, but haven't taken pictures of, are the huge casino, the four floor atrium complete with live piano player, the couple of stages, the night clubs, the movie theater, and all the pools. (Side note: It's very easy to inadvertently pull the knobs off the drawers. Just now I had to swap knobs with a lesser used drawer so that I would continue to have a place to stick all the paperwork that I receive every day.)
I think I might have to grab a random tasty drink a bit later on and make my way over to someplace. Where, I don't know, and I haven't really met anyone yet. I don't foresee that being a problem as my intentions weren't to meet people on this trip, but it still wouldn't be bad. We'll see, though... You never know what could crop up. (Another side note... The Nottwist's One With The Freaks still continues to blow me away. It just represents what can happen when all the good things in music come together.)
At this point I think I'll find myself something to do beyond sitting in my room. It's departure time, anyway. Besides that, there's also mini-golf, more food, Spirited Away, sleep, and a showing of Two Weeks Notice, if I'm really interested. At some point this week they will be showing LOTR: TTT, and while I've already seen it three or four times, once again in the theater might not be a bad deal. I already managed to lock my key in the room, so I'd rather not do that again. Maybe... Bah. Who knows. I'll just wander around and see what's going on.
7:57 PM PDT
Well, it seems that I did end up meeting some people. Unfortunately I'm not too sure of their names, but I am signed up for a wine tasting with them tomorrow at 3pm. Could be interesting... Never know... I was watching the ship pull out of port from some high up back deck when they asked me to take their picture. So, I did. Then all while just standing there and watching things we ended up wandering around, talking a bunch, things like that. They are both from the San Diego area and seem to generally be standard girls. It doesn't matter, though. I don't mind having friendly people to talk to about just whatever. I think I'm going to head over to the buffet now and, well, grab some 'dinner' to munch on, whatever dinner ends up actually being.
10:01 PM PDT
I just wrapped up the last 20 minutes or so of Spirited Away. I'm wholly impressed. That is an absolutely wonderful film. In fact, when I return to Michigan I'm going to have to pick up Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle In The Sky, just to give Miyazaki two more opportunities to impress me.
Things are feeling just like home right now because I just found The Discovery Channel on the TV. While I'm very much aware of the fact that Discovery Channel (and the like) programs are only high school level, but I think they still provide better background watching than something like MTV or other garbage like that.
Well, I think I'm going to go lay in bed. I'm starting to feel a bit sleepy and I wouldn't mind getting some more reading done today. I managed to read a good 100 pages of Body of Secrets today, but I still need to finish it and start The Illuminatus! Trilogy. So, I guess this is goodnight for now. I'll be attempting to set an alarm of some sort for ~10:00 AM PDT, but we shall see how that goes. If I'm late, ah well. I just have to be at that wine tasting at 3:00 PM PDT.