Decks

On Sunday, Helen and I headed out on our latest cruise. We don't exactly go first class.

Into the car with the bags nice and early. We went the kilometre to the bus stop, and I got dumped out with the luggage. Helen took the car home, and walked back. Usually that's my job, but not with my current cranky knee. Caught the 7:23am bus that runs the 25 km to the ferry terminal.

Onto the ferry we went as foot passengers. It wasn't hard to manage, as we travel carry-on style.

45 minutes on the water, and onto another city bus on the other side. A small bonus was that the bus's money machine was out-of-order, so everybody got to ride for free.

Got to downtown Vancouver and turned into pedestrians for a bit. By this time we were in texting communication with our travel buddies who were already in the cruiseship terminal.

A few blocks later we were with them, awaiting the start of the three-part loading process. This got rolling pretty quickly.

Security was first. I beeped a bit, but no problems. Then it was US border control. It annoys me that they do this on Canadian soil, but it makes things work a lot better than if they didn't.

The last step is getting checked in with Princess Cruiselines.

We always go for low prices when we book these things. Sometimes we don't even splurge for a window or porthole, and sometimes we do. This time we did, as the deal was ridiculously cheap. Our three day cruise was bundled with two days at a nice hotel in LA, and included the flight home. It came to less then the air fair should have cost.

Cruise ships have their cheapest cabins way down low in the vessel, starting on deck 2. Ours were window rooms on deck 3. Classy?

Anyhow, during the processing we were informed we were getting an upgrade. We are first-time customers with Princess, so getting bumped up a bit was a pleasant surprise. Their room numbers didn't give much of a clue, as their passenger decks all have names instead of numbers. Our friends and us were all now on "Aloha" deck. I don't know what deck name our old rooms were supposed to be on.

We boarded and received directions to our cabins? A better class of deck 2? Deck 3? Keep in mind that every layer of upgrade is a good thing. As you move up through the categories the rooms grow in size, and amenities. Deck 4? Deck 5?

Our new home was way up where the cabins have outside glass walls instead of windows, and have private balconies. Deck 9? Deck 10?

We were to spend the next few days on the highest of the balcony decks. We were fancy deck 12 people. If you deduct the value of our flight and hotel from what we were paying, it came to about $40 per day. Under that, actually.

So what do we do with such a big, balconied cabin, besides giggle over our good fortune? Well, we tried to fill our walk-in closet with our two tiny carryon bags, and didn't make much of a dent.

My favourite feature turns out to be the balcony door. We sleep with it open to get the most wonderful air, and the lovely sound of the bow wave as we motor along.

The only down side is that we're rapidly getting spoiled for anything less.