Arrival in Vancouver
On May 26, 2002, I flew to Vancouver, BC, and would board the Volendam the next afternoon for an inside passage cruise of Alaska. That night and the next morning I took photos from my hotel room windows. Even though I had been near the border several times in my life, this was my first time in Canada.
In the morning I was to do the express check-in for the cruise at my hotel and then board a bus. It was all early enough that I thought I wouldn't have any time for sightseeing in Vancouver. It turned out that the bus ride was a guided tour of the city, a great way to use the time until they were ready for us to board. We had some time to get off the bus and explore Stanley Park. We could see our ship from our stop.
I signed up for an inside room. Notice how they cleverly put curtains over the wall behind the beds to suggest that there's a window there instead of a blank wall. It did make our tiny room seem not so claustrophobia-inducing. It also turned out that being near the middle of the ship in all directions meant less motion. With our schedule, we spent very few waking hours in the room anyway.
I had also signed up to have an assigned roommate who was a member of our MacMania group. He turned out to be Mike, a lawyer in Colorado. That's his bed on the left. Other than my snoring, we got along well, and generally did the shore sightseeing together. The first group activity was a cocktail party in a lounge, where we could meet the speakers as well as our other group members. Mike was most interested in meeting John de Lancie, the actor who played the recurring character Q on three of the Stark Trek series. I was pleased to meet him, although I didn't watch any of those Star Trek incarnations enough to have seen him on it.
