Saturday August 18th Our Journey Continues

It's a little over 800 nautical miles from Seattle to Juneau.  The ship went about 20 knots per hour, which is about 23 miles per hour.  So if you do the math...you see that it takes over 40 hours to get from Seattle to Juneau.  If you look at the map,  you'll see that the ship leave Seattle, heads north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then out around Vancouver Island, up to Juneau.  So Saturday is a sailing day.  A day to shop on board, a day to meet & mingle, a day to play BINGO and a day to generally explore the ship or just relax.  We went in the morning to the Shore Excursions desk and signed up for our off-shore excursions. We were blessed with smooth water, this day.  I normally don't get sea sick but had Dramamine & a bottle of Gatorade just in case. A lot of people had the Dramamine patches behind their ears.

The Vision of the Seas is 915 feet long, the beam is 105.6 feet, the passenger capacity is 2, 435, there are 765 crew members and the maximum speed is 22 knots (25.3 miles per hour).  Each cabin has a private bathroom, vanity area, closed circuit TV and phone.  It costs $7.95 a minute to place a call, so I imagine most people use the phone only to call Room Service (for meals, etc) or program their phone for a wake-up call (that's a great service when you forget your alarm clock)  There are 5 decks that contain cabins.  The upper decks of course have the outside cabins with balconies.  There are some connecting cabins and handicapped cabins on all levels.  Our outside cabin was on the third level (my request), nearly at mid-ship and was approximately 154 sq feet.  Sounds small but plenty of room for two people and after all you don't spend a lot of time there.  There were two single beds with two nightstands (with drawers) in between. A small sofa, a small round coffee table, the vanity area also had 3 big drawers and 3 small ones.  Then the closet, with more than enough room to hang your clothes. Above the TV was a cupboard with a small safe. You make up your own 4 digit combination & then are able to store your valuables there.   The bathroom has a toilet, a corner shower (with almost instant warm water & the best shower head I have ever used) and a corner sink and mirrored medicine cabinet. 

While you're at breakfast the cabin steward comes in and makes up your bed, takes away used towels and wash clothes & leaves new ones.  They come back in the evening, while you're at dinner...turn your bed down, leave a chocolate mint on your pillow or on the towel animal they create and again change out any towels, etc that need replaced. What service.......

A little after 12 noon we headed up to deck 11 to the Viking Crown Lounge for the Meet & Mingle event we had signed up for a couple weeks before.  Royal Caribbean had a little gift for each person, some non-alcoholic beverages and hors d'oeuvres.  I had been chatting on the Cruise Critic web site with other's  from all over the country and who had also signed up for this event. And this is where I met fellow journaler, Lanny and his family. We live about 10-12 miles apart but have never met in person.  On later days, we ran into each other around the ship, one day eating breakfast at their table, playing BINGO with them and even running into them in a store in Prince Rupert. We also got to know a young couple from Vancouver, WA down near the Washington-Oregon border.  We were on our Juneau shore excursion with Scott & Kim, and also ran into them several times during the week.  Wednesday night we went to Karaoke with them and didn't get back to our cabin until after 1am.  Pretty late for old people !! 

Saturday I also made my first trip into the ship's casino.  I had 5 Royal Caribbean silver dollar casino coins, that had been given to me from the husband of my friend Barbara.  I lost them in like 3 minutes.  My gambling budget was $40...so I put $20 into a quarter machine and played that for about 15 minutes, when it was also gone.  That was it !  I was out of there. My trip to the casino later in the week, with my last $20 went the same way...it just wasn't meant to be. 

Saturday evening was our first formal night.  The night to congregate in the Some Enchanted Evening Lounge for the Captain's Welcome Aboard Reception.  He told us a little about the ship and those of us onboard (passengers from over 20 countries on this cruise), he also introduced the various department heads of the ship.  After the reception it was off to dinner.  Most of the men tugging at their ties, trying to figure out how they were going to eat dinner dressed in a suit & tie.  Our friend Dennis said "he only wears a suit & tie for funerals and hangings."  And for Bob, being a retired commercial plumber, working in dirty construction sites for over 30 years, this was not his normal dress.  LOL

But everyone got thru it, and the first full day of our cruise, a day where we were sailing out in the Pacific Ocean all day was over.  By the way, we did see whale signs.  Some water spouts and glimpses of whale tails.  But none of them came clear up out of the water to give us a real show.   

The very last thing we did before retiring was set our watches & clocks back 1 hour to Alaska time.