And she’s here!!!
Day 0, Sunday, May 28, 2023
When we went to the lobby for breakfast, we glanced out the window and there was the Noordam, with crew members turning over the rooms and washing the windows, waiting for us to board shortly after noon.
Over the years and cruises, we’ve grown to love the Day of the Week rugs that are placed in all the elevators overnight. It grounds me to get the reminder of what the day actually is as I’m living the fairytale life. I was amused to note that the Pan Pacific has adopted that practice for itself.
We went to the Oceans 999 lobby restaurant for breakfast. Again, we were seeking just a small meal, as we’re dining in our favorite Pinnacle Grill tonight. For breakfast, Jas chose lox and bagels, and I had a wonderful bowl of steel cut oats with golden raisins and bananas. The buffet looked fabulous, but we had what we needed. Now to wait for 11:00 to go through the embarkation process.
As I had been repacking the bags last night and this morning, I discovered that one of the zippers on my third bag had some broken stitching on the zipper. I knew I would need to get a strap to hold it together before I put it on the airplane in eleven days, or there would be unmentionables all over the cargo hold when we arrived in O’Hare. We walked back to the Rexall and checked their travel aisle, to no avail. So I came back to the room and started googling “ketchikan shops near cruise port.” I found Tongass Trading Company on Dock Street. Wouldn’t you know it—they had just the strap I was looking for. I purchased it and it’s being held for my arrival on Tuesday afternoon.
I was saying to Jas last night how thankful I am for the wonders of the internet. All the logistics of planning a vacation like this are made so much easier by being able to do all the searching myself, then just calling the Holland America Personal Cruise Consultant, or the airline reservation agent and getting exactly what I want. #geeksanonymous
Another choice I’m glad I made is the Pan Pacific Hotel, where our bags are already being loaded onto the ship before we even leave our room. We don’t have to drag our bags from the train station or the hotel up the street. See those people dragging their bags in the photo? In another hour, a retake of that photo would show 300% more people doing the dragging. I’m glad I won’t be in that number.
After breakfast we sat in the room to kill time before heading downstairs to go through the check-in process. We’re again in a Neptune Suite for this cruise, which entitles us to priority boarding. So here’s what it was like: shoulder our carry-on bags, take elevator to lobby level, head to the west side of the lobby and walk through the glass doors down the long hall of the Pan Pacific Conference Center, to the very back, Room C, which was assigned to Holland America. Look for the Priority Boarding sign and show our [twelve-page] boarding pass, and be handed a little slip of gold-colored paper marked Priority, and tuck in into our passports, with the end sticking out anytime someone wants to see it. Then we were pointed to the next available agent, ahead of about ten people waiting in line. #gloatingnotgloating (This is the first place paying extra for a suite pays off.) The agent asks me to stand in front of a machine. I take off my glasses and push a button to take a “selfie.” Then the agent takes my passport and holds it behind the machine to photograph the data page. All this information is displayed on the screen, along with my address and other personal info. I confirm that it’s me, and press Accept. Then I step aside and Jas goes through the same drill. Then we head to the TSA line, where we again display our passports, then put all our bags, coats, etc., on the belt for it to be scanned while we walk through the scanner. Now we see the line, which goes back and forth through the ropes. The line is probably 30 feet long and two people wide and there are probably eight or ten times we have to go back and forth. About 45 minutes pass and we finally get to the Customs machine. I slip my passport in the reader, click all the boxes saying I don’t have too much of this or too much of that. It asks if I need to add another person to my party, and I click “yes” and move out of the way so Jas can can his passport and answer all the questions. (Here’s where I rat him out. When we came through the same process entering Canada at the Vancouver airport on Thursday, he pushed the wrong button, saying he had too much money and cigarettes with him. Boy, were all those Customs agents staring at him as we approached the Customs window. It was, of course, a case of someone not paying attention as they were trying to get through the line.) After the machines in the cruiseport, we were able to bypass the agents and exit the line. The line had been passengers for all three ships in port that day, Holland America, Royal Caribbean, and Princess. Now we were pointed to different doors for each ship. We were instructed to sit in a waiting room for about ten minutes, then—finally, happily—we were directed to the gangway to board the ship. Here our record was brought up on the computer, verifying we matched our info, and we headed to the elevator to take us to Deck 7, the Rotterdam Deck. We were home!!!
After dropping our carry-ons in our room, we headed to the Lido Deck to get burgers and the best fries in the world at the Dive-In. Oh, and our first margaritas of the cruise. After finishing our lunch, we headed to the room again and saw our bags were all in place. We got everything put away as the ship was pull out of the port, then stood on our verandah for about 45 minutes as the engineers finished backing the ship out and turning to head toward the Inside Passage. It was a beautiful but windy afternoon, and we loved watching all the activity on the shore of West Vancouver and beyond. Under bridges, past paddleboarders and kayakers and kite flyers and dog walkers, enjoying every minute of the beginning of our vacation.
If you’re interested, here’s information about the Noordam. Scroll to the bottom to look at interactive deck plans. If you’d like to see a floorplan of our suite, we’re on Deck 7, room 7049.
Ships are basically all-inclusive results. All the food is free in the Main Dining Room, the Lido Market (buffet), the Dive-In burgers and hotdogs, and room service. However, there are several upcharge restaurants. On all HAL ships there is a Canaletto Italian restaurant and a Pinnacle Grill steakhouse. Some other ships have additional upcharge restaurants, but these are the ones we know and love. We like to schedule dinner in the Pinnacle Grill on the first night, and Canaletto for our final night onboard. We always enjoy both of those dining experiences. However, on this night the service in Pinnacle Grill was lacking. I don’t know if some of the servers were new to the job or something wasn’t working right in the kitchen, but we did not receive the service we’ve grown to expect. Another dining aspect I’ve come to know and love is the portion size. You know how you go out to dinner at a nice restaurant and the portions are so large you have to ask for a take-out container to take half the food home for your next-day meals? HAL’s chefs have sized the portions much more realistically and we like that we can have a three course dinner and not leave the restaurant feeling stuffed. Last night I ordered the filet mignon, which was an 8 oz portion rather than the 6 ounce I prefer. And for my side I chose the lobster mac and cheese. When I saw that dish come to the table, I was so sorry that I didn’t just order the mac and cheese as my entree. I had to cancel my chocolate soufflé order, and didn’t even eat half the mac and cheese. Jas had ordered a second glass of wine and it was never delivered. Our water glasses were not filled when empty. The desserts came out before our entrées had even been served. And rather the remove our empty dishes when a course was finished, the server stopped what she was doing to bus the table behind us, even though there was no one standing in line waiting for it. It just was a very unnerving, especially when we had never experienced any service like this in such a—usually—fine restaurant.
We were happy when our meal was done and we could leave the table.
I’ve been having right knee pain, despite my pre-vacation Euflexxa gel injections, all I wanted to do was go back to the room and crawl into bed. Jas went out for some more exploring, and I was asleep by the time he got home.
It had been a very long day, but I was glad to be where I was. On the sea, heading toward a wonderful vacation in Alaska.
Alaska 2023, Day 0
