Guess where we are?? I don’t know exactly, but we are somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean, gently rolling in the waves as we cruise our way toward Hawaii. In the past few hours we have crossed over some kind of significant weather line. This is our 5th day at sea and it went from being chilly outside to being downright toasty. And humid. But I am getting ahead of myself, so let me back up to the beginning.
A few months after moving into our new home, we decided a trip to Hawaii was in our future. It is the only state we did not visit during our fulltime travels, and in fact, neither one of us had been there ever. More importantly, our daughter, Tara, moved to the Big Island a couple of years ago and we had not been there to visit! So, two birds, one stone!
We traveled from Vancouver, WA to Vancouver, BC nearly a week ago. We spent the night at a downtown place, something between a hotel and a hostel, where we had a private room. The next morning it was pouring rain, like I haven’t seen that much rain in forever. We got a coffee and got out and walked anyway, having the good sense to bring an umbrella. We walked to Canada Place where for the first time we saw the ship we would soon be boarding, Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas. It was massive.
We were scheduled to board at 1:30 in the afternoon, which was a few hours away, but the rain kind of put a damper on our sightseeing plans. Instead, we walked back to the hotel/hostel, grabbed our luggage and called an Uber to take us to the ship. While there weren’t long lines to speak of, the maze we had to go through and the walkways we had to navigate to get through customs and immigration and on to the ship was impressive! Once we reached the final check-in point we were told our cabin was ready! I immediately regretted checking in our luggage, as now it would be a while before it would be delivered to our cabin.
There wasn’t much to see in our cabin, we chose an inside room near the middle of the ship on Deck 12. First, it was a good price, but it was also the best location for Steven given his penchant for motion sickness and the number of At Sea days it takes to get to Hawaii. One portion of our wall is actually a big vertical video screen that shows a live feed of the back of the ship, so it feels like we have a view. Plus we turn on the television to the camera showing the front of the ship. We see the sunrise and sunset every day without every having to leave our inside cabin. Pretty clever, actually!
Since we didn’t have anything to unpack, we took off to eat lunch. We walked around wanting to first see what was on offer before we made our decision on where to eat. What we eventually learned is that everything is on offer. Anything you want. Some of it is tasty and some is not. I suppose that depends on your taste buds and your tolerance for industrial cafeteria food. The food in the Main Dining room is of slightly higher quality, but by Day 5 none of it is appealing anymore. Still, the sheer amount of food is so plentiful that there is always something to eat. No one is going to starve on a cruise.
We sailed out of Vancouver after dark and woke up at sunrise in Seattle. We had originally decided not to go into town, but it was a such a great day that we couldn’t resist visiting some of our favorite places. We walked into town and then rode Lime scooters back to the ship. There is no better place to be than Seattle on a sunny day! Just as we arrived with a beautiful sunrise, we departed at sunset. Perfect!
By midnight on our second day aboard the ship we entered the Pacific Ocean and began our voyage to Hawaii.
Up Next: Six days (!!) At Sea.
We loved Seattle. There’s so much to see and do. The fish market was a hoot!