Friday, October 10, 2008

West Coast Cruise

Last month RaNae and I went on a week long cruise. It originated in Vancouver, B.C. with ports of call at Victoria, B.C., Astoria, OR, San Francisco CA and finally, Los Angeles, CA. WE were in a tour group of about 70 people. We flew to Seattle, WA and then were bussed to Vancouver. The bus trip took about 3 hours. Our first port of call was Victoria, B.C. where we went on a tour of the "Butchart Gardens." There isn't room here to tell of how the gardens originated, only to say that they were planted in and around an old lime quarry that Mr. Butchart owned and mined. His wife was the one who did the flower garden thing to cover up the quarry scars. Needless to say, it was beautiful with flowers from, I think, most countries of the world. My favorite flower collection was the rose garden. There were 1300 different varieties of roses there. Several countries were represented individually. The next day we stopped at Astoria, OR. Of course, we had to do a Customs thing on the ship before we got off in the USA. Astoria is at the mouth of the Columbia River. We were there for a whole day and toured the small city and the Mariners Museum. When we left there we were a whole day and night at sea. There were, that night, 3 foot swails in the ocean and though the ship was huge, it still rocked a little from side to side. RaNae felt a little seasick and opted to go to bed at about 9:00 PM. Our room had a balcony and so the rocking was more graphic as we sailed along. There were 9 restaurants on board and the food was all free except the drinks - all soft drinks and all mixed drinks were charged to your on board ship account. Of the 9 restaurants on board, four of the more up-class one's had a cover charge. We ate at two of those. The food was excellent and there were a couple of restaurants open 24 - 7, one of which was a buffet. There was a variety of evening shows that we enjoyed. One of the auditoriums was as big as an I Max theater. After Astoria, we were at sea again for a whole day and night, arriving at the Golden Gate bridge at 6:00 am. We were in San Francisco a day and a half. We had reserved a tour to Sausilito and Muir Woods. It was a nice tour that took about 4 hours. Muir woods is a part of the California Redwood forest and was awe inspiring with the huge redwoods. Sausilito was a typical tourist town. We also spent time at Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiridelli Square We left 'Frisco the next morning at 10:00 am and were at sea again for a day and night arriving in Los Angeles on Saturday. After de boarding and collecting our luggage, our bus took us to Long Beach where the Queen Mary is docked. We just sat around for six hours instead of sitting at LAX. We arrived home at 7;55 PM that night. It was a great trip and well worth the price.

1 comment:

Sandi said...

Welcome back, home in time to vote :-)