- The start of a 3-night Vancouver to San Francisco Star Princess repositioning cruise
- Day 2 on Star Princess repositioning cruise, stop in Victoria
- The end of our Star Princess repositioning cruise
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(thanks to my girlfriends for providing some of the pictures!)
Sunday was a welcomed day at sea. We started the morning by combing through a sale of Princess merchandise. A lot of it was souvenirs from old ports, but there were great deals on ladies' accessories.
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Then we enjoyed brunch in the dining room. Everything was very tasty.
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After our meal, the group split up, attending an art auction (did not buy but enjoyed looking at the pieces and had a glass of complimentary champagne) and going to quilling (paper filigree) class. Quilling looked very fun to do!
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Afterwards, we all went to the Lotus Spa pool. At one end of the pool, you could "swim against the current". There were also two hot tubs.
Pretty soon it was time for the last dinner of the cruise, complete with baked Alaska.
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We headed over to the Explorers Lounge to partake in karaoke again; "Kathy and the BFFs" reunited to sing ABBA's "Mamma Mia", like on our last cruise. A fellow in the audience helped take pictures for us.
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I did another solo and it went well. Stage fright lessens the more times you go up.
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After karaoke hour was over, we went to the cosmetics boutique to stock up on essentials as my Elite status offered a 10% discount on purchases. This, plus the duty-free prices, offered a great savings compared to buying on land.
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We also participated in another activity - a game where a participant sits on a stool on the stage and is interrogated by the assistant cruise director; if you could last three minutes without saying the word "no", you won a prize. Lots of people tried but they would get tricked into saying no. Some of us signed up to play. Sandy persevered but got tricked in the end. Jennifer survived all the way, continually using replacements like "Negative" or "I don't believe so". Another bottle of champagne collected! Unfortunately the event ran out of time so no one else in our group could try.
When we got back to our cabin, our steward did not pick up the customs forms that we had left out on the coffee table so I went downstairs to Guest Services to drop them off. While waiting in line, a fellow passenger walking by stopped and complimented me on karaoke! It was awesome though a bit unnerving to be recognized by strangers.
Star Princess was scheduled to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge Monday morning around 5:30am, so I set an alarm on my mobile phone. Somehow during the middle of the night, my phone glitched and switched to Eastern time zone. The alarm rang at 5:30am but it was really 2:30am. I was wondering why it was still very dark. I got onto the balcony and waited 10 minutes, listening to the waves crashing, seeing nothing but ocean and a few lights out on the horizon. I went back inside the cabin and checked my phone again, realizing that the time was wrong...grrr! I fixed the time zone and went back to sleep until 5:30am. This time, light was shining in from the impending sunrise. I rustled Rachel and Sandy out of bed, because it wasn't often you get a chance to sail under the Golden Gate at the break of dawn.
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| Alcatraz Island |
In the morning, we packed up and exited our cabins. We had breakfast at the buffet, then reported to US Customs at the indicated time that we received in our cabins the night before. However, there was a huge delay, with the US citizens line snaking all around the deck. The non-US citizens line went very fast. Eventually we made it through (customs officer just checked our names off a Excel spreadsheet print-out) and we disembarked from the ship.
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It was about a 20 minute walk from the pier to the Hertz Local Edition on Beach Street, where I had reserved a minivan for the drive home. Easy peasy!
We all had a great time on the cruise...maybe we'll make this an every-other-year tradition. Re-positioning cruises (to move the fleet from Alaska to Mexico or vice-versa) are very convenient for people on the West Coast. It's an inexpensive short vacation with quick flights and is mostly all-inclusive with different activities to suit individual preferences. If you're interested in booking a cruise like this, feel free to contact me at yellowdogtravel at gmail dot com for great deals.
What's next on the agenda? Kaleb and I are going to play tourist in San Francisco for Memorial Day weekend...stay tuned!
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