Embarkation Day

The story belonging to our embarkation day is a long one and I had originally planned on making it a part of the previous blog post.This is the story:

They day started hot and sweaty due to the fact that the airconditioning in our hotel room was not working and we had turned the fan off overnight as it was quite loud.  Factoring this in with Jetlag, I had trouble sleeping. After walking around the previous day, I knew that a Starbucks was just one block away and thus decent coffee was within reach. Venturing outside told me that it was not going to be a pleasant day with incredibly high humidity. 

After a long morning of last minute shopping and checking out of the hotel, we ordered a taxi to take us to the cruise terminal.

Now we knew that it was going to be pretty crazy at the cruise terminal as I had looked up how many ships were going to be in port that day for embarkation. There were 3 ships heading to different destinations. That works out to around 7,000 people going through the same security and customs lines. The taxi driver was nice and dropped us off at the luggage drop location, along with everyone else being dropped of in taxis. Now accounting for waiting time for the taxi and also the amount of traffic heading to the terminal, we dropped our bags off just before 12pm. This was the start of a long journey to get on the ship.

As new comers to the cruising world, mum and I were not all that sure about what had to be done in order for us to get on the ship. First thing to come up was joining a line to join another line. Eventually we made it to the check in counter where we got our cruise cards and other information. After that we went into another room with lots of seating to wait for our number to be called to go through to security. This was where mum and I had to be separated as I was travelling on a Canadian passport and she was on a Kiwi one. 

Travelling on a Canadian passport made the entire thing slightly faster for me by about 10 minutes, even with me setting the security scanner off because 1) I forgot to take off my jewellery and 2) I have the metal rods in my back to help correct my scoliosis. Now with the back one, as they could not visibly see that there was something there I had the joy of getting my first pat down. After security I followed the lines and just walked through what seemed like the entire length of Canada Place (the cruise terminal). 

Fast forward 2 hours and a lost of 'now do we get to board the ship?' I finally headed out to the gangway. Once onboard the ship the first thing that I did was make my way to our stateroom to see if it was ready for us to enter. When I walked down that corridor, I could instantly tell where our room was. Our massive suitcases were sitting outside the door. This next part wan entertaining, me trying to get 3 suitcases in a door that like hotel doors did not stay open. I am not sure if anyone walked passed me during my struggle to keep the door open, the suitcases upright on their wheels and push them inside at the same time butt am sure that they would have found that entertaining. After about 10 minutes, mum came a joined me and we went off to have some food.

After food and unpacking our suitcases, we went out on deck to enjoy some cocktails as we sailed away from Vancouver for the start of the cruise.