Day 2-3 of my 40th birthday cruise - May 14-15, 2012

This 2-night cruise had no stops in between San Francisco and Vancouver, so today was a sea day.  (on longer re-positioning cruises, ships may stop in Oregon or Washington on the way up towards Alaska)  Being on a cruise works really well with groups as everyone can do anything they want; most of the girls exercised in the morning while Sandy and I opted to sleep in as we needed the downtime.  The two of us bumped into the other girlfriends at various places on the ship...we learned that they worked out in the fitness center, walked several laps of the wrap-around Promenade Deck, swam in the lap pool, attended an art auction and went hot-tubbing.  I had planned on hitting the hot tub, insisting to all the girls that they bring their bikinis ("because we're awesome!") and I ended up not having any time to do it!  (I did bring a bikini, I swear)  We were able to arrange to meet for afternoon tea at 3:30pm in the dining room.  In the meantime, Sandy and I had lunch with a mixed group in the dining room, played a few hands of video poker in the casino, and relaxed on lounge chairs in the covered pool area reading magazines and Kindle.

New Zealand mussels at lunch.  I forgot to take a picture of my Philly cheesesteak

afternoon tea

It was risky having afternoon tea so close to dinner time, but with only 2 nights on a cruise, we had to make the most of it!  The tea service was a bit slow and the servers with the platters of sandwiches, scones and desserts took a long time to come to our section.  We didn't leave the dining room until around 4:45pm, and we had one hour before we returned to the dining room for dinner!  Originally, I had planned for us to have a special dinner at Sabatini's, the alternative Italian restaurant.  However, I delayed on making the reservation when I got on board as it was not known when shows would start or when karaoke would be held.  By the time I called the reservation desk (I think I was on hold for at least 15 minutes...thank goodness for speakerphone), the operator said that it was all full, even the Crown Grill, the alternative steakhouse.  So we were relegated to our normal meal time.

As we were waiting for the dining room to open at 5:45pm, we saw a girl wearing a tiara and a sash (couldn't make out what it said)...so there really was a beauty queen contingency on board!  I thought the waiters were playing with us last night.

The menu was "Captain's Welcome Dinner".  The girls had a surprise in store for me...a bottle of champagne appeared and I was delivered a beautiful orchid corsage; thank you so much!  The waiters also had a surprise for me, a birthday cake complete with a burning candle to blow out, along with singing "Happy Birthday".  Well, it wasn't really a surprise as I added the celebration on my reservation. :)  (celebrations are free of charge)  There were two other birthday celebrations in the dining room that night.

what a hot bunch of ladies!

cheers to being 40...I mean 30!

I can't wait to dig into this duck appetizer...

I ordered the cornish game hen...I like to eat things I don't make at home

the waiters made a little chair out of the champagne top

"Love Boat Dream" chocolate mousse dessert, so yummy

I made a wish...hope it comes true!

After dessert was served, some diners passed by and asked us "Are you going to sing again tonight?"  We were recognized from last night's performance!  They said that we looked like we were having lots of fun, and that we were better than some of the other singers.  This encouraged us to do another song that night as we couldn't let down our fans!

Before karaoke, there was a choice of two shows: one comedy show and one stage show.  The girls split up to watch each of the shows.  I attended the comedy show and the comedian (Carlos Oscar) was hilarious!  I particularly remember his segment on how women have so many shoes ("do they think they're caterpillars?") and how the French language sounds like baby talk.  I was glad that we were able to laugh really hard without the comedian needing to succumb to telling dirty jokes.  The other show was also entertaining; Rachel was able to get a shot of it so you can see how the theater was set up.

showtime!

Our plan was to meet for karaoke at the Explorer's Lounge after the shows.  We had decided to do "Summer Nights" and divided up into two groups to do the male and female portions.  As the words popped up on the screen, it was colored pink and blue so we naturally assumed pink was for female and blue was for male.  Not so...after a few bars, some of us realized it was swapped and adjusted accordingly, but not everyone did, but it didn't matter, as we had a good time.

waiting for our turn to go on stage

"ohhh, those summer nights!"

We were tired afterwards, and a bunch of us turned in to pack and get ready for bed, but Sandy and Melissa decided to head up to Skywalker's for some dancing.  Chite and I were already in bed by the time Sandy crept into the cabin, but I was still awake.  I turned to ask her how the night went.  She whispered, "We danced with a sailor..."  Ooh la la!  I asked if he was good looking..."ohhhh yeahhhh...!"

The next morning, we had to vacate our staterooms by 8am, so we met for breakfast in the dining room at that time.  At least we were allowed to keep our baggage in the cabins before we disembarked. 

view of the coast from our balcony...what a nice day!

dining room breakfast

they had papaya, hooray!  I also had an omelette

 
Jennifer met us late for breakfast as she was stuck for a while at Passenger Services to take care of an erroneous charge on her bill.  We had no idea that the ship's accounts receivable was so archaic; the employees brought out that particular night's box of paper receipts and had to go through each of them to find the transaction in question!  You'd think everything would be organized in a computer database, especially for a ship that can hold close to 3000 passengers.

The Princess Patter said that we would be sailing under the Lions Gate Bridge around 9am, so after breakfast, we made our way to the front of the ship to behold the beautiful waters and landscape of the Canadian coast.  Another play by play:

approaching Lions Gate Bridge

going under the bridge (but sadly,  no photo of the ship under the bridge like in SF)

Stanley Park and downtown Vancouver

getting closer to Canada Place, our disembarkation port

need gas?

Kathy and the BFF's!

As the ship parked into the pier, we returned to our mini-suite to relax, taking care not to disturb the freshly-made beds nor use the restroom as our steward had already prepared them for the next guests.  The night before, we were given Canadian customs forms to fill out, but our steward only gave us one per cabin, but we needed one per family.  I went down to the Passenger Services desk to get another one, weaving through people strolling around with their luggage or seated in the lounges, bodies and bags pretty much anywhere there was a place to sit.  I was glad that we had neighboring large cabins for our group to wait in.  On the way back to the mini-suite, I saw a set of narrow stairs that landed right where the exit door was going to be for disembarkation.  I took these stairs up to the room to see where it was located on our deck.  This knowledge came in handy later...

From our balcony, we watched our 109,000 ton ship parallel-park(!!!) beside Canada Place, the crew tying it up, and the passenger gangway brought up to the Promenade Deck exit.  Since none of us had luggage out the night before for the porters to take down (our assigned luggage tag was "cream", which was scheduled to exit by 11:45am but ended up around 1:30pm from discussions on Cruise Critic), we could exit without waiting for our color to be called.  The ship docked by 10am, but it wasn't until after 11am when we started seeing a steady stream of passengers exiting the ship.  It was time to leave, since I had made reservations for high tea in downtown Vancouver at 11:45am to accommodate the earliest flight we had leaving Vancouver, and it would take 15 minutes to walk there from the port, not including waiting in line to exit and go through customs.  Knowing there would be hundreds of passengers queued to exit the ship, I had to use my prior knowledge of the stairs that dumped us at the exit.  We were essentially cutting in line (sorry! :( ), but we had to in order to make the reservation since it took so long for the ship to begin disembarkation.  I don't think many people did this because (1) they didn't know about this set of stairs, (2) by the time you figured it out, you were already about to exit, and (3) you had to carry your luggage down several flights of stairs.

Canada customs line went pretty quickly, then we followed the signs for "City Centre", which took us by a bus loading area, then out onto the street towards downtown.  At first, I had planned to drop off our bags at a luggage storage facility inside Canada Place that charged CAD$5 a piece but as we were running late and I had seen a SkyTrain stop near the tea house (no need to double back), everyone agreed to roll our luggage for 9 blocks.

what a nice sunny day in downtown Vancouver!

We arrived at the Urban Tea Merchant a few minutes past our reservation (I wasted a couple of minutes by going down the wrong side of the street thanks to Google Maps), but at least we made it!  The tea house was small, and our table for 10 took up half of the dining room.  The employees helped us find space for our luggage so the bags were tucked in side hallways and at the ends of our table.

I had already pre-ordered the "Petite Signature Tea Service", but everyone was given a tea menu; there must have been over a hundred teas to choose from!  It was hard to pick one.  Eventually some of us asked the "tea ambassador" to narrow down the choices.  I ended up trying a white tea called "Eau Blanche", very good!

we made it!

high tea with the ladies

most scrumptious platter of delicacies

everyone got their own insulated pot of perfectly-brewed tea (leaves removed)

savories:  the egg salad and the chicken salad cone were so good

assorted scones with Devonshire cream and preserves in a tangine-like container

mixed fruit, pickled rhubarb (yum!), chocolate covered berries, petit fours and macarons

in the beautifully vibrant tea shop

Everyone enjoyed the experience so much that we were inspired to do a high tea back at home, including replicating the tea-infused egg salad sandwiches and baking scones accompanied with homemade Devonshire cream.  I also want to take the challenge of baking macarons!

Our tea ambassador was able to give us directions to the nearest Sky Train station serving Vancouver airport.  It was just a few blocks from the tea house, so it was a good choice to have carried our bags with us instead of going all the way back to Canada Place.  The group split up by earlier flights and later flights.  (our transfers were in SFO or LAX with different layover times, but eventually all of our planes would land in Sacramento within 30 minutes of each other, close to midnight)  The earlier flight folks (Rachel, Karen, Karen's mom, Chite, Lily, Sheri) went to the Sky Train station while the rest of us (Sandy, Jennifer, Melissa, and me) stayed behind and did a little bit of shopping.  Jennifer bought a tin of "Happy Birthday" from the tea shop for our future high tea get-together.  We walked to Pacific Centre mall and browsed some stores, but as prices weren't much cheaper than back at home, we decided to go to the airport early.  There were two Sky Train stations at the mall; for the airport, head to the Canada Line station!  Ticket machines accepted credit cards...I helped buy tickets for everyone as my credit card did not charge a foreign transaction fee.  The fare was CAD$3.75.  The train came quickly and we were off to the airport.  It took about 25 minutes to get there.

trains to the airport run every 7 minutes or so

Once we got off the train, there were signs directing people to go to Canadian domestic flights (where most of the passengers went), or U.S./International.  There was no line to check in at the United kiosks.  Melissa got upgraded to first class on the flight from Vancouver to San Francisco, due to her Premier Platinum status.  I had purchased an award ticket, which weren't upgradeable, else I may have joined her.  There were U.S. customs forms nearby, so we all filled one out.

There were apparently two security checkpoints at the terminal, one for U.S. departures and one for International.  We learned this the hard way by going to the International one (wasn't the U.S. an international destination?), but the security agent saw our passports and informed us of a separate U.S. checkpoint on the other side of the terminal.  The U.S. checkpoint does customs beforehand, which was good so we didn't have to deal with customs when we landed, and the line went very quickly.  The security line afterwards wasn't very long, but it was soooo slow.  Two lanes were open, with about 20 people in line for each.  They check your boarding pass and ID, then you ready your items for the X-ray machine, but before you could put your things on the conveyor belt, a second person takes your boarding pass again, scans it, and checks something on a monitor.  When you are cleared, you walk through the metal detector.  If you are unlucky and the security agent finds something in the X-ray image, you are pulled out of line, your luggage is opened and searched, and you get to go through the backscatter X-ray machine (aka the nude-o-scope) situated at the back of the room.  So it was a good thing that we went to the airport early so we could be patient during security and not panic.

The early flight girls were surprised to see us arrive at the airport so soon.  We perused the duty-free shops (balked at the high price of ice wine!), then went to the gate (we had neighboring gates) and sat down to check our email, etc. as YVR had free wi-fi.

mother and daughter connecting

The early group flying to LAX left after 5pm.  Our flight to SFO wasn't until 6:50pm, so I walked down the terminal to look for dinner to carry on board, since I would be sitting in coach.  I bought a black forest ham and cheese sandwich to go, and as I was walking back to the gate, I noticed a non-descript glass door that said "Air Canada Lounge".  Then a light bulb turned on; we were taking an international flight!  (it's hard to remember that Canada is international)  Frequent flyers who are Premier Gold or above can enter the club free of charge if the flight is international, and we could bring in a guest.  Since it was just the four of us, and Melissa and I had status (and were carrying our frequent flyer membership cards), we would all be able to enter.  I went back to the gate with this good news, and we all grabbed our bags and headed to the lounge.

The lounge had a coffee machine, self-service wine and cocktails, plus Coors Light and Molson on tap.  A refrigerator held canned soft drinks and juices.  Snacks included veggies and dip, hummus and pita chips, garbanzo bean salad, and cream of carrot soup.  There were a variety of cookies for dessert.

hitting the snack buffet

We headed back to the gate when it got close to departure time.  However, our flight was delayed a bit, but we believed we still had time to catch our transfer if our connecting gate wasn't too far away.  The plane ride to San Francisco was uneventful...the sandwich I bought was actually very delicious!  (the multigrain bread was so fresh)  When we arrived in San Francisco, we found that our departure flight was only a few gates down, so that was good, but it was also a bit delayed.  Melissa was keeping tabs on the LAX to SMF flight, and it seemed that we would end up very close in arrival time.  It felt like The Amazing Race, where two teams are flying to Sacramento via LAX and SFO...

We were riding an EMB-120 turboprop plane to Sacramento, so it was plenty loud in the cabin, but it was just a 30 minute flight up and down.  The LAX flight ended up arriving earlier than scheduled, reducing the original time difference between the flights to just 10 minutes.  All of us were so tired from traveling; it was getting close to midnight and we were dreading the whole "taxi to Sandy's-pick up people back at the airport-drive 40 min home" ordeal.  I suggested maybe by chance there would be a minivan taxi that could take all of us to Sandy's house, since we were now 7. (Rachel got in earlier flying solo and was picked up by her family)  That would save some time not needing to return to the airport.  We walk outside to the taxi curb, and voila, a minivan was waiting there, how fortuitous!  We taxi to Sandy's and then we all carpool home by 1:30-2am.  Going to work that morning was pretty rough.  Chite had a 7am meeting; I had to put the finishing touches on a document to present at a 10am meeting.  I (and several others) was feeling a "rocking" sensation as if I was still on the boat, which lasted a couple of days.  The aftermath was a small price to pay for such a fun and memorable trip.  I am truly blessed to have so many friends be able to join me on my birthday cruise, including everyone else who wanted to come but couldn't due to work or school schedules.  Thank you for making a party out of turning 40 years old!

(You can also read about the cruise and view more photos in Jennifer's blog, located at yellowhead.xanga.com.  If you are interested in booking a cruise like this or any other destination, feel free to contact me at yellowdogtravel at gmail dot com.)

But the celebration's not over yet.  Next month, I will really turn 40...in the Galapagos!  I'll be sailing on Celebrity's Xpedition with none other than my beloved Kaleb.  But before then, Memorial Day is coming up...Kaleb and I are flying to Denver and visiting Rocky Mountain National Park.  Come back in a week to read all about it!