13 May 2006: Day 1 – Embarkation At Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Today marked the start of our 11-Day Cruise to Alaska and overland tour to Anchorage. We were supposed to board our ship – the Diamond Princess – at 12.00pm; the day before a representative from the cruise line called me to tell me tt embarkation time had been delayed to 5.00pm, and subsequently 5.30pm.

So we had to check out of our hotel and spend the extra 5 hours whiling tt time away downtown. We had lunch at Nikko’s Japanese Restaurant first, and then we went to watch M:I 3. It was surprisingly worth the CAD $32.95 we had to fork out in total for 3 persons; I’d expected crap from a brainless action-franchise, but the action in this movie had been non-stop frame by frame by frame, such tt the 2 hours passed without us feeling it at all.

After tt it was on for a cup of coffee at Blenz, and then onto the Canada Place Pier. Customs and Immigration wasn’t too bad, but the queue to check in was the killer. We waited over 2 hours just to check in… The waiting made most of the passengers fume. But the story was tt the ship had left its last port of call very very late – at least 4 hours late, so it wasn’t ready for us to board. Hence the delay.

Nonetheless, we finally got on close to 8pm. The ship is amazing. It really is a luxury cruise. The floors are all closeted, the lobby is huge with gold railings and 4 elevators with panoramic views and grand staircases and the like. The ship has what: 5 bars with live music, a live classical band in the lobby by the stairs, a night club (i.e. disco, not the Singapore kind) on the top deck, 6 dining rooms and a 24-hour buffet restaurant, 3 swimming pools, a gym with 8 treadmills and a spa… and it doesn’t stop here.

And what about our room?



This is me on my mom’s bed, with Mr. Pig behind me (yes yes, my hair is black). This is how a part of the room looks like.

Our room is an ocean-view stateroom on the 11th floor (it’s called a deck here) of the ship. And it has a balcony.



I can come out here to read by day and look at the amazing expanse of ocean. And it truly is amazing.



After putting our stuff down in our room, we went to one of the four dining rooms for dinner – The Pacific Moon Dining Room. The food is included in our cruise ticket price, so we can eat for free. From the menu, I’d ordered the cream of porcini mushroom soup, the prime rib with sautéed potato and broccoli, and for dessert there was the chocolate mousse with a chocolate rice crispy base and topped with whipped cream and raspberry puree.

The cruise also had a theatre tt featured liver performances almost every night. We caught the “welcome aboard” performance, and then it was back to our staterooms for rest. Except tt coz I wasn’t sleepy, me and my dad stayed up to catch the second half of The Family Stone (I’d missed the first half).