Graham had some digestive difficulties this morning, causing
Barb to do two trips to the local Safeway for drugs. After breakfast, John and
Amy arrived with Olivia and Beatrice. It was again a lovely visit with them,
reintroducing them to the adult children and grandchildren.
Soon it was time to throw in the final items and get down to
Pier 91; of course, we saw the Oosterdam from some way off, beside the Golden Princess
– pretty huge. We dropped the bags, left Rick and Barb and were warmly greeted
by HAL staff. Arriving at the doors to the terminal building, there was a long
line, but we were relieved to see that it was the Princess side. We walked
straight in, then had to queue for security: very smoothly through. Then
another queue for check-in, again very quick after about 15 minutes in the
zig-zag maze.
Then we spotted them! We were moved to the Inspiration
Cruises side of the boarding pictures queue and there were the Booth Brothers
to have their pictures taken with arriving guests. By the time we got to the
photographer 10 minutes later, Michael was no longer there, but Ronnie and Jim
were. They greeted us warmly and had a picture taken with us – so cool! (I’m a
hopeless groupie!).
Off we went to mount the gangway and head for our stateroom.
What a wonderful suite! It’s actually better laid out than the previous one we
had and, being on a corner at the back of the ship, there is a balcony wrapping
right round, giving us a view to the back and to the side.
We had a quick look around and dropped our hand luggage and
headed for the Neptune Lounge for lunch of finger food and coffee/tea. By the
time we got back to the stateroom, our bags had
been brought in and so I spent about an hour unpacking: once it’s done,
it’s done. 3.00pm soon arrived and we had to get ready for the lifeboat drill;
at the conclusion we were told that some late passengers had just come aboard,
causing us to then have to wait till the Golden Princess sailed ahead of us.
4.30 saw us up on Observation Deck 10, taking lots of pictures, followed by
some more light food in the Lounge. This is the Seattle skyline and a great
shot of Mount Rainier - you often can’t see the mountain because of cloud:
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At 6.00pm we had the welcome for the Inspiration Cruises
guests, which consisted of 2 items performed by each of the groups taking part
in the cruise. It was wonderful! We got seats in the 3rd row of
loose chairs that had been added to the showroom right in front of the stage. Legacy
Five was first – they’re very good to listen to; Freedom Singers, Taranda
Green, Booth Brothers, Collingsworth Family and some others, as well as the
comedian, Ken Davis. This is the Booth Brothers: <p/>
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Dinner followed and we met our table friends for the cruise
– Jenny and Duane from Montana and Boyd and Carolyn from Northern Florida
(Baptists). Such lovely people! Duane is a pastor in a large church and they
both tell it like it is! Carolyn and Boyd are in a church of about 1700 which
has lost some numbers over recent years, going from three services to one. We
had lovely chats, delicious dinner (salmon of course). As we sailed, it was so inspiring to watch
the mountains along the Sound, with their tall fir trees at ground level and
snow caps on top of the mountains.
Pretty late to get back to our stateroom, so no walk apart
from stairs; we’ll have to get our exercise during the day! Both very tired – I’m off to sleep now and
Graham is already asleep at 11.30pm here. Tomorrow should be a relaxing day.
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