We dropped Daisy off with our dog-sitter. Her buddy from across the street, Walter the Corgi, was already there, so she was a little happier than usual to be left there. Then we flew Alaska Air up to Vancouver B.C.
We spent the night at a Best Western sort of in the middle of this very complicated city, and not too far from the cruise ship terminal. We met up with our sister-in-law and her boys after they had breakfast with her niece, who recently moved to Vancouver. My nephew’s suitcase unfortunately went to Victoria instead of Vancouver, and they spent some time trying arrange how it would be reunited with him.
We took a couple taxis to the cruise terminal and boarded Holland America’s Volendam. The Canada Place cruise terminal seemed very organized and efficient.
We had lunch and spent a few hours exploring the ship and watching traffic at the nearby seaplane port. Our ship departed at 4:30 and we were able to see different parts of Vancouver as we left.
The ship passed close to an island while we ate dinner and watched through the windows. We shared a table with a couple from Canberra Australia who had been visiting their daughter who was spending a year working in Banff, so we talked a bit about Banff as well as hearing interesting stories about life in Canberra.
Unfortunately the timing of the departure meant the ship passed through a long narrow channel of the Inside Passage during the middle of the night.