The Sapphire Princess

Slept in for a bit longer this morning but still plenty early for our boarding of the Sapphire Princess around noon. We decided to hit up the restaurant next door for breakfast, we received a 15% discount by staying in the hotel, so the meal was reasonable. Fueled up we went back to our room to finalize our re-packing and kill some time before heading to Canada Place, the main cruise port about 4 blocks away.

We decided not to order a cab or Uber and instead walk to the harbor. It was a nice morning and the 4-block walk would help burn off that bacon I ate for breakfast. Although it was only 4 blocks, Vancouver is a city of skyscrapers, very hard to tell direction just looking down the street and GPS is lost here. The buildings are so packed in, GPS can’t find a signal so you have to resort to old school techniques. No, I didn’t get on Collette’s shoulders to scout out the way. We simply got a map and found street names to make our way down to the harbor.

North Vancouver skyline

Sky King!

We had prepared for the worse, thinking the boarding process would take hours and be a mass of people. Actually, there was a representative from the cruise line at every corner helping guide people through the process. It was painless! We did need to clear customs, we are going back into the US in Alaska, which was quite easy. (We will clear customs 4 times during this trip!) And since we had programmed our Princess medallions before arriving, we didn’t have to stand in line to have that done at the terminal. All-in-all it took less than 30 minutes for the whole process. At the end, we simply walked on board, found our stateroom (Deck 14, Lido 255), then headed off to the pool area and watched a 2.5hr concert of the band “Journey” on a massive big screen. Oh yeah, also had a couple Gin & Tonics.

Ye olde stateroom

Canada Place – the cruise terminal that looks like a ship.

The BIG screen on our deck – Deck 14 Lido (top of the ship)

Cruise terminal

Sometime around 6:20pm Collette let me know our dinner was at 7:00pm so time to change clothes and get down to Vivaldi dining room. Our selection for dinner was pork roast with sweet potatoes and Greek salad for me, while Collette had seafood stew with goat cheese and eggplant for her first. Desert was a cheese plate and a blueberry cobbler with gelato. Nice meal.

After a bit of a walk around the ship to burn off a few calories, and a few minutes in the jazz bar, we strolled off to our stateroom and called it a night. Tomorrow is a full day at sea and going to be somewhat cloudy, cooler.