Here are the chronicles of our FANTASTIC summer vacation to Alaska, Washington, and Oregon (and, CALIFORNIA! we snuck that one in, too!) You can thank my GREAT journaling for all the details! You know I couldn't remember this stuff on my own! This will serve as our scrapbook for the event... I really hate scrapbooking (shock, I know!) so this will have to do... Although I will be making a photo book online (more of that later...)
08.01.09
SEATTLE... our cruise begins!
The time change had us a little messed up... we were 3 hours ahead in our heads, on Tampa time, so the kids were up BRIGHT and early, by 6am Seattle Time. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn near the airport and started our day with a continental breakfast in the dining room... we were THRILLED to find Ryan's dad up already, too... they had gotten in late the night before and we were already asleep so this was our first time seeing him. Ryan was off running in Seattle. Mom joined us shortly afterwards.
At 11:30 am we headed off to Pier 91 to board our ship. Our first glimpse! It's huge! We've been on a couple of cruises to the Caribbean, and this boat is WAY bigger than those... we were BEYOND excited!
The Golden Princess... embarkation went really smoothly and we were on board and exploring by noon. We found our rooms, which were lovely (kids were all excited about their bunk beds!) then found some lunch. Afterwards, during MORE exploring, we stumbled upon a tour of the boat with one of the "ship people" named Jorge. Very informative.
Here's the Seattle skyline as we were pulling out of the port. Really pretty. We got the kids signed up for the kids programs where we were happy to hear that Carly would be able to move up to the 8-12 year olds, instead of staying with the 3-7 year olds. There are 400 kids on board, which we were AMAZED by! We didn't think there would be that many! Carly kept saying she's going to make lots of friends (no kidding) and Ben said that he will be playing video games. Sounds about right!
This is (obviously) the swimming pool on deck... there is another on that is indoors (pretty necessary in Alaska!) and several others "here and there" and many spas.
Fitness Center with MANY treadmills all facing out the front of the boat and they each had their own tv's on the front... THAT makes running much easier. For all my GREAT intentions, I only made it up here ONCE to run! BUT, we did plenty of hiking and walking OFF the boat.... although, I'm sure not enough to offset the ridiculous amount of desserts I ate! ANYWAYS, REALLY nice fitness center....Dinner in the Canaletto Dining room. We met our waiters for the week, who were really really nice. We (um, me and Ryan) were all excited that our table was just for SIX people, so no wacky strangers this time! Here's what Carly picked for dinner: French fries, and fettucini alfredo. Little did we know, it would be a pattern. Oddly enough, during dinner, a girl was going around pretending to be a lumberjack (albeit EVIL lumberjack) and the photographer was taking everyone's pictures with her. I'm going to need to know how many people actually PURCHASED their Lumber Jack Picture.
We also met up with our room steward, Alex. Kind of quiet guy, but nice. Every time we see him, we all say "Here's ALEX!" Probably only funny to us. But, we can't stop saying it, either.
After dinner, we went to the "Welcome Aboard" Show and saw the singers and dancers do a number, and mostly enjoyed the comedic efforts of Carlos Oscar. Pretty funny, and it's hard to find a "clean" comedian, and he really was family friendly! We loved that. Ben REALLY thought he was funny, especially when he was talking about people taking pictures of their food. Ben kept shooting me looks and giggling. Hmmmm....
We were all pretty tired afterwards, so we headed to bed. I'll leave you with one last picture...
1 comment:
Oh, so jealous! I know, I know, we went on a cool vacation too, but I want to go on everyone else's vacations also! Can't wait to see all 3000 pics.
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