Wednesday 11th of July was the day that we left Vancouver and sailed out under the Lionsgate Bridge on our way to Alaska.
Breakfast in the hotel
As this was our last morning there was no Canadian five dollar voucher under our door. We left our two suitcases just inside the room ready to be picked up.
Our breakfast was in the Starbucks across in the other tower of the hotel.
The Starbucks was very busy and I added porridge to my breakfast muffin of egg and ham.
To Canada Place
The Princess Cruises representative was on the second floor of this tower. After a quick confirmation that we were on his list, we were asked to be back by 9.30 am for the coach pick up. This was in less than 45 minutes. We went back to the room to double check that our cases had gone and then went to reception to check out.
The meeting room had lots of tables and we joined the other passengers waiting. Everyone in the room went down to the coach before 9.30. We were then ready to for leave the port as requested. Then one of the passengers shouted to the driver that there were people missing. It seems they had assumed that the instructions were to be at the meeting room at 9.30. After a 10 minute wait they appeared having been upstairs waiting in the now empty room!
Registration and Immigration at Canada Place
The coach ride was quick to Canada Place which was down at the end of Burrard. As our cases had already left the hotel, all we had to do was to walk to the convention centre and find Hall C. We were directed along a long corridor to find the hall. Once there we joined the queue to pick up our cruise cards and register for the ship.
In the next hall registration was taking place for the Holland America ship. In a hall further along the registration for the Regent ship was also taking place. After our registration we joined the one queue for all non-US citizens for all three ships to be ‘immigrated’ into the USA. After our difficulty with all the machines in Fort Lauderdale, this was easy as we were processed by a friendly officer. We had put hand cream on our fingers and the machines had no difficulty in reading our fingerprints. This was the lesson that we had learned in Fort Lauderdale.
The next hall was a holding area under the control of US Immigration. This was where all the passengers from each ship were then segregated to wait. There were lots of jokes about cages as the hall did have mesh dividers behind us.
A snack while we waited some more
After a 30 minute or so wait, all the three ships had finally been cleared by Canadian Customs. This meant that we could now move forward to yet another holding area. This was yet another hall and there we had to wait for the ship to be ready for us to board. We were lucky as we had a choice of drinks and pastries while we waited.
