My early 40th birthday cruise on the Star Princess, Day 1 - May 13, 2012

(a big thanks to Melissa, Rachel, Karen, Jennifer and Mountain House Photography for their pictures of the event!)

A woman normally should not reveal her age, but I have no choice, else you will think that I celebrate every birthday with so much fanfare.  I will be 40 this year...it's the new 30, right?  Most of my girlfriends have already turned 40, and the celebrations ranged from dinner at The Kitchen, a spa day at Indian Springs in Calistoga to a girls' weekend at the Venetian in Las Vegas.  To add to the variety, how about a short cruise?  There was a 2-day repositioning cruise on the Star Princess from San Francisco to Vancouver BC that was sailing six weeks before my birthday.  I tested the waters by asking a few of my girlfriends last October, and was surprised to receive all positive responses!  I opened the invitation to a bunch more friends, and in the end, I ended up with an entourage of 10 guests (including myself and Karen's mom), though it would have been a larger number if work or school schedules were not conflicting.

The advantage of having a group celebration on a cruise is that a lot of event planning is already done; you just decide what to do by perusing the daily newsletter/schedule.  Plus, not all guests have the same interests, and a cruise offers all sorts of entertainment and activities.  All I asked of my girlfriends was to meet for dinner every night, and to do karaoke on stage. :)

We occupied 2 mini-suites with 3 people in each, 1 outside cabin, and 1 interior cabin.  Pairing up roommates was a lot harder than collecting payment, but eventually it was all sorted out.  Transportation to the cruise port was the next challenge.  My Bay Area cousins Lily and Sheri had no problem, but the rest of us from the Sacramento area needed a one-way trip to San Francisco.  I did some research on Cruise Critic, reading about taking Amtrak to Emeryville, followed by a ferry to the Embarcadero, then walking or taking light rail to Pier 35, but at the price of $28 per person for the train ticket, and the logistics of getting to the Sacramento downtown station, the ferry, etc. made a one-way minivan rental a more straight-forward and economical alternative.  I was able to get a company-discounted leisure rate on a Hertz minivan to be picked up at Sacramento airport.  With 8 people, a minivan wasn't big enough so we rented an additional sedan.  There was plenty of room for people and luggage.  Sandy lived near Sacramento airport, so it was convenient for everyone to carpool to her house and pick up the rental cars.  When the trip ended, the plan was for Sandy and the carpool drivers to taxi back to her house, pick up the cars, and collect everyone else from the airport.

All the guests had a mixed variety of cruise experience, from first time cruising to myself having gone on 12 cruises.  To help everyone prepare, I created a packing list, described below:

• PASSPORT!
• "Boarding Pass" printed out from princess.com.
• Dressy clothes for dinner - as dressy as you want, pants or skirt...business casual all the way to formal gown.  But it may be limited to how much space you have in your luggage.  Best if you can bring wrinkle-proof clothing as there won't be any irons to use.  If you bring something that may wrinkle, roll it up while packing.
• Exercise clothes if you plan to work out
• Swimsuit and cover-up if you plan to hit the jacuzzi/pool/spa
• Pajamas/sleepwear
• Casual clothes during the day
• A light jacket (weather in Vancouver may be in mid 60's)
• Umbrella in case it rains
• Personal items (ie. medications, makeup, toiletries, feminine products)  The cabin provides shampoo, conditioner, bath soap, and body lotion if you don't need to bring your own brands.  If you are not checking luggage for your flight home, remember that to get through security, liquids and gels need to be in containers 3 oz or smaller, and all items must fit inside one quart-sized Ziploc bag.
• Camera to capture memories (or for future blackmail)
• Shoes:  the ones on your feet when you board the ship, a dressy pair for dinner (this could be same as the shoes on your feet if you are creative), one pair of sandals/flip flops for pool/spa if needed
• It may be a challenge to try to stuff everything into a carry-on, but it can be done if you are creative with re-using pieces of clothing or bring a backpack as your 2nd carry-on item.  If you need to bring a bigger suitcase, that is not a problem; you'll just need to get to the Vancouver airport earlier to check it in.

I also needed to get everyone together to select a karaoke song and practice for the cruise.  Rachel had been kind enough to host a girl's night out at her house a few weeks before the cruise.  I brought over my karaoke equipment and we tried a bunch of different songs.  I selected ABBA's "Mamma Mia" based on the amount of participation by the girls and it seemed everyone knew this song.

May 13th finally came...it seemed so far away since we planned it last October.  It also happened to be Mother's Day, so many of the girls celebrated it with their children on Saturday, or early morning on Sunday.  I had already sent my mom a card and talked to her before she boarded a Panama Canal cruise that departed May 12.

Everyone met up at Sandy's by the appointed time, the rental cars were picked up, and we were off to San Francisco!  I drove the minivan, and Karen drove the sedan.  I printed out directions to Pier 35, as well as to the nearest gas station, and the Hertz rental office near Fisherman's Wharf as this was the first time I had ever embarked on a cruise in San Francisco.  In the minivan, we passed the time listening to my iPhone (of course, Mamma Mia was a selection), gabbing about everything, calling moms to wish them Happy Mother's Day, and taking turns commenting with each other on Facebook, even though everyone was in the same vehicle... :P  There wasn't much traffic heading into the Bay Area, and no line at the Bay Bridge.  The fog seemed to be burning off as the day progressed, a good sign!

Melissa was able to snap this through the minivan window while we were crossing the Bay Bridge! (notice the traffic?)

We exited off the freeway towards the Embarcadero, then everything was at a standstill.  The city had blocked off the Embarcadero in front of Pier 35 in order to facilitate luggage and passenger drop-offs, causing traffic to move at a snail's pace.  After being in traffic for 40 minutes and moving only 1 mile (remembering the opening scenes of the movie "Office Space"), we decided to take the next left turn and drop everyone off at the corner to walk to Pier 35, while Karen and I returned the cars.  The side streets weren't as busy as the Embarcadero, and we were able to make it to the gas station fine.  The Hertz office was just a few blocks away.  Note, if you plan to drop off a car here, you have to enter the parking garage adjacent to the office and go to the upper levels to park the vehicle in specially-marked Hertz stalls, plus note down the mileage and fuel level.  We didn't know this (it was not mentioned on the Hertz website) so we had to move our cars from the front of the office into the parking garage before we could complete the transaction.

The walk from the Hertz office to Pier 35 was "1.2 miles/10 minutes" according to Google, and wasn't far at all as we could see the ships docked as we made our way in that direction.  About a few blocks in, someone came running up to us.  It was one of the Hertz agents; I forgot to give her the car keys!  Whoops!  That's the hazard of having the renter take care of parking the car without attendants.

The weather was great for San Francisco, sunny and clear with a bit of wind.  We walked by Pier 39/Fisherman's Wharf, which I had not visited in probably over two decades.  Then we came upon the line to get into Pier 35 around 1:30pm.  There were two ships docked, our ship the Star Princess, and next door was Sea Princess, headed to Alaska.  The rest of the gang already checked-in and boarded the ship.  We called to tell them to start lunch without us, as it seemed to be a long wait.  Then I texted my two cousins to arrive as soon as they could as the line was long and traffic terrible; I didn't want them to miss the 3pm cutoff.

long line getting to Pier 35 (under the flagpole), not unlike lines in Miami

There were porters calling to take luggage to Star Princess, but we could roll it ourselves, plus I'd rather keep my luggage with me than having it show up hours later in the cabin. (There was some discussion on Cruise Critic that some passengers' luggage got mistakenly placed on Sea Princess to Alaska!  Another reason to keep your luggage if you can, if embarking at a port that's not used to multiple cruise ships in dock.)  We finally made it inside the Pier 35 warehouse, and the lines were separated for Sea and Star Princess.  There was a person checking boarding passes and directing passengers to the "regular" or "preferred" line.  The "preferred" line was for passengers in full suites, or had Platinum/Elite status.  I had Elite status so I was directed to the preferred line, but I stayed with Karen in the regular line, since there wasn't much of an advantage anyway.  Check-in was quick, our pictures were taken for the cruise cards, and then we were on our way to the ship.  Both Karen and I were in mini-suites next door to each other on Dolphin deck 9, a few flights of stairs up from the embarkation door.  We were fortunate to be facing into the bay!

view from the mini-suite balcony, the Bay Bridge in the distance

another view of the city

a free mini-bar setup comes with Elite status

beer, water and mixers also part of the setup

we had twin bed configuration

the third person to sleep on the sofabed (an upper bunk in the ceiling for a fourth)

two TV's! (we never used them)

the mini-suite had a tub/shower combo

supposedly the upgraded toiletries (ie. eye mask) were because of Elite status

Melissa's shot of the interior cabin

We met up with the girlfriends at the buffet (Horizon Court).  I was starved, but I only ate a little bit, knowing that dinner was at 5:45pm.  We checked our cruise cards for our dining table assignment, and we were all at the same table!  I had requested a table for ten on all of the reservations and linked them together, but that is never a guarantee, so I was happy to see the dining working out.  Lily and Sheri were able to board the ship and join us half an hour later.

our first meal

Around 3:30pm, people were leaving the buffet in preparation for muster drill, so we headed back to the cabins to retrieve our life preservers and went to our assigned muster station, the Vista Lounge.  It was nice to sit down inside, versus standing outside on the promenade deck on other ships.  During the briefing, we looked over the Princess Patter (daily schedule of events) and saw that karaoke was at 10:15pm, so we could do our performance then.  There was also a show at the Princess Theater at 8pm, so we planned to go to that before karaoke.  Despite the distraction, I did pay attention:  I still remember that if I need to abandon ship, I put on my life preserver, step to the edge, pinch my nose with my thumb and forefinger, use my other hand to hold down the life preserver (so it doesn't hit you in the face when you splash), then take one step forward to fall straight into the depths...I'll get right on that.

After the muster drill, we returned to our cabins to put away our life preservers, then made our way as high as possible on the ship to get a good view of San Francisco during sail-away, and be in position for when the ship would pass under the Golden Gate Bridge.  Being up high meant that the winds would be merciless once the boat cleared the pier.  Many of our pictures looked like we were in a wind tunnel.  Folks standing on the Golden Gate Bridge were waving at us as we passed.  It was an exciting experience to see the underbelly of the Golden Gate Bridge up close.  The play-by-play action:

the girlfriends as the ship was sailing slowly out of the pier area

bye bye Sea Princess and Fisherman's Wharf

approaching the Golden Gate

people on the Golden Gate waving at us; we do clear the bridge by a few stories

the other side of the bridge

about the same time, Mountain House Photography snapped this awesome photo!  do you see us up top?

me and Rachel

the cousins getting wind-swept

like our blow outs?

It was time to get ready for dinner as we had the early seating at 5:45pm.  Even though both nights were designated as "casual", we all dressed up anyway.  I was ready to eat!  Tonight's menu was the standard "Sailaway" dinner.

the waiters asked if we were part of the "beauty queen" group

table 278, with freshly baked rolls and addictive European butter

lobster and seafood pate

porcini mushroom soup

tender medium-rare prime rib with loaded baked potato and veggies

piping hot passion fruit souffle with vanilla cream

Dinner took longer than expected as there was a big gap of time before our entrees were served, so we ended up being a bit late to the "British Invasion" show at the Princess Theater, only finding six seats together and remaining folks had to find single seats.  I didn't recognize a lot of the songs (perhaps 60's and 70's).  There was a short montage of current British songs (80's to now) but no special dance number for them, which was disappointing for us, but understandable since the average age of cruisers are in the 50's.  After the show, we headed over to the Explorer's Lounge for the 50's/60's sock hop, which was before karaoke.  We did dance to a few songs to get warmed up (and burn off that souffle).

groovin'

check us out!

Finally, karaoke was up.  We submitted our ticket for Mamma Mia (as sung by "Kathy and the BFFs") and was second in the lineup.  We were the only group that went up to sing...everyone else was a soloist.  The words on the screen didn't seem to follow along with the song, so we were left to our own devices, which I'm sure sounded terrible, but it was all for fun.  I was happy that everyone participated! 

"I've been angry and sad about the things that you do"...

yay, everyone is singing and dancing!

After karaoke was over, we stuck around when a live band came on, but it got boring once line dancing started, so we headed up to Skywalker's nightclub, located at the very top of the ship.  More modern music was played here (I think we also got in a few requests since I heard "Baby Got Back" and "On the Floor"); the girls were dancing while Lily and I chatted in the lounge area.  It was getting late (12:45am) so we turned in.  Sea day tomorrow!