VANCOUVER joined Westerdam Cruise Ship

We walked to Canada Place, in the warm sunshine, to join our cruise ship which will be home for the next 7 days. The boarding process seemed well organised, even clearing US border control (!) and the time passed quickly as we were given both seats and lemon drink whilst we were waiting. We also spent time chatting to a Canadian couple who originally came from Scotland.

Our cabin located on the 8th deck is very comfortable and in Vancouver we had a lovely view from our balcony of Stanley Park and were able to watch numerous seaplanes taking off and landing. We had lunch and wandered around in the glorious sunshine looking out at the mountains which surround Vancouver. We finally sailed away, with loud toots from our horn, at just after 4 pm, we passed under Lion's Gate Bridge (I think?) and watched the scenery which comprised tree covered hills and snow capped mountains in the distance, these would be sights we would be seeing frequently along our journey.

We attended a meeting ran by the cruise director, Kerri, for new guests to Holland America which was interesting and helpful.

We unpacked and settled into our cabin and changed for dinner. This ship has open dinning in the fine dinning restaurant so you can dine when you choose and you are seated with different people which works well and gives you a variety of people you get to know whilst on board. The food is delicious with sensible size portions. When it is not a gala night the dress code is very casual, much more so than on Cunard, so we could have packed less! After dinner we watched a short show performed by the ship's company. It was then definitely time for bed as we are still adjusting to the time difference and again we had a period of time awake in the night so watched some ship's TV!Read more