September 24th – Fresh off the boat

We landed in Seattle early in the morning and people started getting off the boat. Trish and I took our time getting up and showered before getting some breakfast. We went to the buffet and tried to find some food to eat from whatever stations were left open. Once we were done we headed down to the room, grabbed out back packs and headed off the ship.

At least that’s what we thought we were going to do. There was a gigantic lineup to get off the ship. The lineup of all lineups… This thing went from the exit ramp on the 4^th deck, about 200 meters along the outside deck, through the doors on to the inside of the ship, passed the picture place, the casino, and finally in the main hall. All told this line had to be at least 500 meters long. Crazy I say, completely nuts!

We’re not stupid, so we didn’t line up. Instead we found some comfy seats and chilled while people were in line. About an hour later there was a call on the PA system telling people to get off the boat. So we walked off the boat with the few other stragglers left. No lineup for us… suckers.

We get off the boat and find our luggage in the luggage bay. There was tons of people everywhere so I decide to put the wine glasses in our bags. Well, after some great effort and reorganizing of bags I fit one box of glasses in. I was going to start finding a spot for the second box when someone came by to kick us out. They’re telling us that the people for the next cruise are coming to drop their luggage off. So I start closing up the bags and someone else comes to tell us the same story. In the span of 5 minutes a total of four people told us the same story. Give it a rest already, I’m going as fast as I can.

In an attempt to get us out faster, one of the guys got us a cart to put our luggage on and then pushed it out of the terminal for us. We were headed from pier 66 to pier 69, so the bell hop guy decided to help us. He walked with us over to the next pier and wheeled our bags all the way into the Victoria clipper terminal. We checked our bags in and tipped our bell hop. The clipper even had a spot where we could leave carry-on bags for a buck a piece.

We had some free time so we visited the Smith Tower. Trish found a Groupon for a cheap visit of the tower, it was pretty cool but nothing super spectacular. We found a good place for lunch and roamed around some before heading back to the ferry to head to Victoria.

Trying to organize the lineup for the clipper was a little odd. They had a number system and people were confused. The workers explained the system very poorly, but eventually people formed a line and we were moving on the boat. This one lady had an excited pug dog that was wandering around until she told him to sit. Apparently he didn’t want to sit so she repeated “Sit!” and then when he didn’t comply a second time she added “Hey! This is not optional!” and the dog sat. Lady, instead of teaching your dog to sit at the command of “Hey! This is not optional!” maybe you should try training him to obey the plain old “sit” command.

The clipper ride was uneventful and we checked in at the Fairmont Empress on our arrival in Victoria. We headed over to the Old Spaghetti Factory for supper. I wonder why there aren’t any spaghetti factories in the US… it seems like a popular chain in Canada. Trish and I had a very wavy supper… it felt like we were still on the boat though we were fairly certain that the restaurant was not swaying. After a good meal we hit the sack… finally a comfy bed.

Thursday, September 23rd – The final night

Well, the 23^rd wasn’t the most exciting day. We were to spend most of the day on the water and land in Victoria at night. What a scam, the cruise says that it goes to Victoria, but really it only stops from 7pm-11pm. Scam. This was the last night on the ship though, so there was bound to be some fun stuff, right?

Well, there was food everywhere, kinda like they were trying to get rid of all the leftover food they had. This couldn’t really be the case because they were just gonna load up another bunch of tourists for the next cruise anyways. So those people could eat the food we didn’t.

Apparently someone on the ship wanted to celebrate October fest because we found a food station that didn’t normally exist. It was outside on the pool deck, there was a bunch of workers freezing their asses off trying to serve people some food. There was sausage and sauerkraut but the best part was the pig. They had what Filipinos call lechon. It’s basically suckling pig roasted to have crispy skin. So tasty… they even had the heads on display to demonstrate that is was authentic lechon or something.

We hung around the boat and did mostly nothing until supper time. This was the last supper seeing as this was going to be the last night on the boat. On top of that, dinner was early because the boat was going to be in Victoria for the evening. So our normal seats at 8:30 were moved up to 7:30. We considered going to the 5pm seating, but we were too lazy. When we got to the dining room the place was empty. I was half expecting to see tumbleweed roll on by. It was kind of a bonus for us because that meant that the wait staff could spend more time with us, making our dining experience a little faster than normal. We took some pictures of the staff and said our goodbyes. Even with the additional hoopla of pictures and giving the crew an extra little tip we still made it out in less than 90 minutes.

We got to our room and as usual the room staff had done the turn down service. What wasn’t normal was that our stuff was out of the fridge… Why would they take our stuff out of the fridge? So I figure I’ll just put it back in the fridge… what kind of jerk takes my stuff out of my fridge? Right. The kind of jerk that also locks the fridge. What about the paperwork that was also in the fridge cabinet you ask? Well you probably don’t ask cus you probably didn’t know that I had paperwork in the fridge cabinet… in fact you might not have known that our fridge was in a cabinet at all. In any case, the result was that they took the paperwork and unceremoniously dumped it on top of a night table. Screw the room staff, no additional tip for them. If I can’t keep my cake in the fridge, they don’t get money!

We took the time to pack and leave our luggage in the hallway as instructed and then we left for Victoria. Rainy, drizzly, dark, damp, dreary Victoria. We spent our time location Shoppers Drug Mart and getting stuff for Trish’s long lost friend Cecilia. I don’t recall if I mentioned her before, but seeing as I’ve forgotten, I’m betting you guys don’t remember her either. She’s Trish’s friend from school in London (Ontario for you Americans), and we bumped into her at the spa place on the boat. Anyways, she wanted us to spend her money on Shoppers stuff, so we did. It turned out that our adventure in Victoria ran short, because of the indecisiveness and difficult to find items. Whatever we were coming right back to Victoria after we got off the boat tomorrow anyways.

We get back to the boat and head to our room. As we were getting ready to sleep, there’s a knock on the door. Trish had gotten some fancy wine glasses and they were to be delivered to our room. We had completely forgotten about them when we packed, mostly because we didn’t have them yet. So now we’re left with two somewhat big boxes of wine glasses and nowhere to put them. The sommelier chick that served us all week at the restaurant was the one to bring us the glasses and after some debating Trish asked her for a bag. She did finally find us a bag our only other option would have been to ship them home for $30. Awesome, sommelier chick saved us $30… woot.

As we were roaming the halls that night, trying to figure out the bag situation we did bump into Cecilia’s fiancé. He works in the finance department on the boat and this was one of his busy nights. We chatted a bit and he made working on a boat sound pretty good. Maybe that’s what I’ll do next. Trish and I could find jobs on a cruise ship and travel the world in a giant boat… why not?