Alaska cruise days 1 and 2: to Vancouver, and sailing
As I start writing this, it’s Sunday, June 16. Cathy and I flew from Whitehorse to Vancouver on June 1st, and arrived home the night of the 14th. The heart of the trip was a 7-night cruise from Vancouver to Whittier on Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam with two of my sisters and their husbands. I wasn’t able to blog during the cruise, and now I don’t know if I can do it at all, but I’m going to give it a shot because it was a wonderful trip and I really want a record of it. After editing, I have 1,093 photos from the trip. To make sense in the post archives, the posts will be dated when they should have been posted – in this case, June 3.
We left Whitehorse on Air North’s 08:00 flight. Taxiing to the remaining runway at the far side of the airport gave me a good look at the $106 million rebuild of the main runway, and I got a few photos of various aspects of it.
I have no idea what’s going on here, at the southeast corner of the airport property, along the Alaska Highway across from the truck weigh scales.
The forecast was for clouds for the entire flight, but I got some breaks for the first few minutes. In the centre of the next photo is Carcross, with Lake Bennett stretching to the south.
Looking south across part of Atlin Lake, with Birch Mountain on Teresa Island at the lower left. Then it clouded over and I slept much of the way to Vancouver.
We were grateful to be able to get into our room at The Westin Bayshore when we arrived at 11:30, very early for check-in. We got Room 715 which looks along the harbour and downtown.
Looking straight down at a fountain, the landscaping, and a guy walking his dog on the waterfront walkway. The Seaside Greenway is the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path, at 28 km – it’s one of the things we love most about Vancouver, and we almost always get a hotel very close to it.
After getting settled, we walked a block to Cardero’s to get our West Coast experience started with some great ling cod fish and chips on the deck.
Actually, I had fish and chips – above my plate in the next photo can be seen Cathy’s Buddha Bowl, which is “quinoa, hummus, roasted cauliflower, beets & yams, grilled avocado, broccolini & kale salad.”
While we were there, my sister Shelly and her husband Dick arrived. The server moved us to a larger table and we spent a while with them. That evening, the 4 of us and our niece Sari had dinner nearby at Lift (Lift Bar Grill View), another of the city’s best. This afternoon and evening was a great way to start this vacation.
On the walk back to the hotel I noticed this plant that was loaded with bees. I need to find out what it is, and see if it will grow in the Yukon. [Edit: the plant is pulmoneria or lungwort, and is worth trying in the Yukon. Thank you, Conny!]
From our room, we watched the Royal Princess sail away from Canada Place at 7:50, which is a later-than-usual departure.
June 2 started early. Neither of us slept well, and we watched the Celebrity Solstice arrive at 05:30. She’s a particularly fine ship – Cathy and I sailed from Vancouver to Hawaii on her in 2014.
We were watching our ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, approach on marinetraffic.org.
There is always lots of other traffic to watch in Vancouver harbour. The container ship is the Singapore-flagged 299-meter / 981-foot Ever Superb.
At 06:36, the Nieuw Amsterdam was pulling up to Canada Place in a light drizzle. With 3 large ships in today, there would be almost 7,000 people arriving and 7,000 sailing – the logistics are crazy.
By 09:00 the weather had really turned ugly. Oh, well, we had no need to be outside.
Just before noon, we caught a taxi for the short ride to Canada Place. Short in distance, but as expected, not short in time. The next photo was shot at 12:16 as we were dropping our luggage at the lower level of Canada Place.
A whole lot of workers and lots of signs made progress through the boarding and US Customs processes flow very smoothly. There were some backups but none lasted long.
At 1:07 we were walking onto the ship.
My comment when I posted the next photo on Facebook was “70 minutes from our hotel room to our ship cabin – remarkably efficient 🙂 “
The next 3 photos show our cabin, Verandah Stateroom 7015, on Deck 7, the Rotterdam Deck.
At 4:15 we began to sail away. In the next photo you can see a red-and-white de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver in the centre. That’s Harbour Air’s C-FFHA – a few days later, on June 8th, it was involved in a spectacular crash when a pleasure boat crossed in front of it as it was taking off. Incredibly, nobody was killed, though the people in the boat were injured.
It was nice to see lots of activity at the shipyards across the harbour in North Vancouver.
I shot many photos of the freighters were passed. Anne, flagged in Luxembourg, 116 meters / 381 feet long, was built in 2010. I don’t know what she was loading, but she’s now en route to the port of Leixoes, Portugal.
Passing under the Lions Gate Bridge usually gets the open decks well filled but today that probably didn’t happen. The next photo was shot at 4:44.
Passing by the historic (1912) Point Atkinson Lighthouse in West Vancouver at 5:11.
My final photo of the day was shot at 9:08 pm, somewhere north of Nanaimo.
We had no plans at all for the cruise, we would just see what happened. The weather forecast was calling for clouds with lots of showers or rain for the whole week, but that’s luckily not what we got 🙂
About The Author
Dear Murray, the plant is called pulmoneria or in English it‘s called lungwort. It grows mainly in Europe in light shade under trees und blooms in spring. Very essential food for bees and bumblebees. Give it a try in the Yukon. Greetings from Bonn, Germany
Thanks very much, Conny – I’ve edited the caption.
Can’t wait to read about the rest of your trip!