Our Alaska Cruise Day 1

Friday, July 1, 2011

Alaska Bound

Today is the beginning of yet another Alaska cruise for us.  This cruise will leave from Seattle and make three stops in its one week.

Even though we have cruised to Alaska many times, we are always excited to do so.  We were up at 4:45 with a list of things we had to finish before leaving our home on Anderson Island. 

We are leaving Ocho, our black Persian cat, by himself on this trip.  A neighbor will be over to feed him once a day, but Ocho, being the ultimate chow-hound finished his entire day’s rations in less than ten minutes.  Oh well, he won’t starve.

Taking the 7:30 ferry off the island, we made a quick stop in Olympia to visit John’s mother and then headed north to Seattle. We had very little traffic and didn’t even slow down until we were in sight of downtown.  Exiting on the “Mercer mess,” we drove to our parking space behind the condo that Leslie, Donna’s sister-in-law, owns.  Seattle’s daily parking rates are terrible.  The cruise port wants $25 per day and this made the idea of free parking near Pier 91 much more attractive.

Today has been quite a nice day, an exception to the cold and dreary spring that Western Washington has been having.  Boarding was very efficiently done and soon we were aboard the Rhapsody of the Seas.  The ship is one of the older in Royal Caribbean’s line, but is still quite nice.  In the earlier tradition, there seems to be more open spaces and not as much effort spent on creating venues that would produce revenue as the newer ships.  We strolled around the upper decks and reminisced over the familiar hills of Seattle, as well as Elliott Bay, to our south.

The ship is full, with 2000 guests onboard, 400 of which are children.  This is quite unusual on an Alaska run.  So far, all of the children we have met were well behaved.  We were assigned an inside cabin on the 7^th deck, a slightly different configuration that what we had encountered in the past, but adequate. 

It was some time before we could meet with a member of the cruise staff, but we new have our schedule for the week.  We are doing three lectures this week.

We attended the “Welcome Aboard” show which was followed by an 8:30 dinner. We enjoyed our table by the window. The food was up to RCI’s usual high standards.  We had a nice view of the Olympic Mountains as we approached Port Angeles and then headed out the Juan de Fuca Straits toward the open ocean.