We only have two days until we depart, and have begun our packing efforts. The weather will be cooler than at home, with the highs in the low to mid 60’s once we reach San Francisco. Cooler weather always makes packing a little bulkier and harder. Luckily, as an Elite Cruise Status person, we get free laundry and dry cleaning, so that may lessen our clothes, and also reduce our time spent in the ship’s laundromat.
The last couple of days have been spent trying to determine what sections of town we wanted to stay in in both Vancouver and Seattle. Both seem to be fairly consolidated in the downtown area, and fairly close to the normal sights that we would want to visit. We also spent some time investing the “Quick Shuttle”, which is one of the more prevalent bus services between Vancouver and Seattle. Of importance was trying to get hotels in both cities that were fairly close to the pick-up and drop off-points. They do claim that they provide pick up service to many hotels, but when I called in to ask, our hotel was not on the route. Since the shuttle service also promotes hotel reservations, I asked and was told that those are the hotels where pick-service is provided in Vancouver, go figure. We will have to make a reservation sometime while we are traveling, if not before we leave, as reservations are required. Also important was some proximity to the cruise port in Vancouver, which is right downtown.
The hotels we are staying in while visiting Vancouver is the Hotel Soleil. Our hotel in Seattle is the Hotel Motif.
As it is with all hotels, they were both compromises in location versus cost, but still only a few blocks walk away from the main sights. Both had gotten fairly good and consistent reviews on Booking.com, which we use to find hotels. Some reservations are made through booking.com, but we always also compare to the hotels direct reservations cost, and in the instance of the Hotel Soleil, it was less expensive to book direct with the hotel.
We have also spent some time investigating our various ports of call. Below is an itinerary of the cruise.
| Day | Date | Destination | Arrival Time | Departure Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturday | May 2, 2015 | Flight to Los Angeles Embark Ship | 5:00 PM | |
| Sunday | May 3, 2015 | Santa Barbara, Calofornia | 7:00 AM | 5:00 PM |
| Monday | May 4, 2015 | Sea Day | ||
| Tuesday | May 5, 2015 | San Francisco, California | 8:00 AM | 8:00 PM |
| Wednesday | May 6, 2015 | At Sea | ||
| Thursday | May 7, 2015 | Astoria, Oregon | 8:00 AM | 3:30 PM |
| Friday | May 8, 2015 | Victoria, BC | 8:00 AM | 11:59 PM |
| Saturday | May 9, 2015 | Vancouver, BC Disembark Ship | 6:00 AM | Overnight |
| Sunday | May 10, 2015 | Vancouver, BC | Overnight | |
| Monday | May 11, 2015 | Seattle, Washington | Overnight | |
| Tuesday | May 12, 2015 | Seattle, Washington | Overnight | |
| Wednesday | May 13, 2015 | Flight Home |
We will spend the first day of the cruise in Santa Barbara, which is our only “tender port” of the cruise. There is a nice downtown area, with a shuttle from the location where the tenders dock to downtown. We are planning to attend the 9:30 AM mass at the Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, which is near the end of the shuttle route. We are not sure if the shuttles will be running at 7:00 AM, the normal time for the service, provided year round through their transportation system, is 9:00 AM. If need be, it is only about 1.2 miles to walk, and it is straight down the main street through downtown, State Street. Hopefully, since a cruise ship is in town, they will start running the shuttle earlier than the normal schedule. It is one of the oldest churches in California, dating back to 1782.
The remainder of the day will be spent wandering through the town. There is an Urban Wine Walk, which visits many of the local winery stores in Santa Barbara.
We had already done some planning for San Francisco, so we will spend the port day in town visiting the many sights, and possibly take a ride out to visit Alcatraz. The Alcatraz tour takes about 2.5-3 hours itself, so we are not sure we want to dedicate that much time to one sight. However, with the extended port stay until 8:00 PM, we may have sufficient time to go in the afternoon, depending on the weather.
We also stop in Astoria, Oregon, which is a couple of hours away from Mount St. Helens. We were considering renting a car there and driving to Mount St. Helens, but Astoria is a small town, and the only two rental car agencies are fully booked. I even called the Hertz location at their regional airport, and the man working there said the Hertz system was already over booking him. I then remembered that a reservation does not mean a guaranteed car, so I know he was not happy that the Hertz reservation system was still accepting reservations, and he had no more cars. He suggested we come over to their pick-up location at the pier the morning we arrived to see if there were any no-shows. Without a car, we are not sure what we would do there, maybe just relax and enjoy the town.
Our next stop is Victoria, British Columbia, and we are contemplating taking a boat out to hopefully see whales. The tour company “guarantees” whale sightings starting on May 16, the start of their peak season, so we are hoping that May 8th, the date we visit, is close enough on to the start of the peak whale viewing season. We are in Victoria until midnight, and it is only a short cruise distance to Vancouver, where we end the cruise on May 9.
We are still looking into the sights in Vancouver and Seattle, but think we will have a little time to investigate them more during the cruise, using our free online internet access on the ship during our two sea days.
It looks like the weather will be in the mid to upper 60’s on the sea days so once we leave Los Angeles, we probably won’t have much chance to lounge out in the sun by the pool.