The Skytrain took about 30 minutes to whisk us into Vancouver for a whole $2.50. What a fantastic public transport system. We then had to wait around until 12:00 before we could board the Statendam. Starbucks came in handy, a coffee and a check of emails.
Boarding took forever and included going through US customs (sped up slightly by the fact that we had already been through the US and had the green piece of card in our passports). The bonus for the day was an upgrade of our stateroom from one with a window onto a deck (Deck 6) to a room with a verandah overlooking the sea on Deck 9. As you can imagine, we were pretty happy about that. Lunch on board in the Lido restaurant – a very nice buffet and then it was getting to know the ship.
At 4:30 we had the mandatory lifeboat drill. Had to put on our lifejackets and go to our allocated lifeboat. Didn’t have to get in, fortunately. A bit of a get together around the seaview pool before dinner – dinner was very nice. We did some washing, not before time as we were running very short of clean clothing and finished the day with a performance in the Van Gough Lounge – some song and dance and a few silly games before bed.
