Sept 9th - Back Home

We are home from our cruise. When we realized how hot it is in central Missouri we thought about staying in Seattle a couple of more days. (Not seriously since the cost of flying home would have increased dramatically if we changed tickets.)

 We drove to Kansas City, Kansas on August 31^st and stayed there overnight. The hotel we stayed at allowed people to leave their cars in the hotel parking lot over up to two weeks, at no cost, if they stayed overnight at the hotel. They took us to the airport in the morning and we flew to Seattle. The flight was no more than two-thirds full. Once in Seattle we took a shuttle bus to the ship and boarded.

 

Standing in the lines to go through airport security was nothing compared to the lines at the port. After arriving at the port customs area we stood in a line to get checked into the facility, Then it was the lines in the photo below to get checked in to the ship.

 Then it was this line to get on the ship. There are inclined ramps between this deck and the ship. After getting off the deck we stood in line going up the ramps.

 

I'm whining, but is really wasn't all that bad. It was a sunny day and the temperature was probably in the 70's.

Below is a photo of their luggage handling system. Fork trucks brought “crate” after crate of luggage out onto the pier. Then fork trucks moved one crate at a time up to doors I the sides of the ship. Small overhead cranes cantilevered out through the doors, picked up one crate at a time and moved it into the ship. They would move several crates into the ship, empty them, move the empties back out onto the pier and repeat the process with new crates full of luggage. This was happening at least at two locations along the ship.

 

We sailed on the Golden Princess

 The high windows across the back are in a bar. It is called deck level 17. I don't know how high it is but it is way above the water. During the day it was a great place to go set on watch out the windows.

 

The Golden Princess started in service in 2001, she was “refitted” in 2009. She is 951 feet long and 118 feet wide. She has a cruising speed of 22 knots (25 mph). The typical cruising speed while we were aboard was 19.3 knots. She has a passenger capacity of 2,600 with a crew capacity of 1,100. (Our cruise was full. I’m not sure if the passenger/crew numbers were accurate for our cruise.) There are 9 restaurants, 4 or 5 pools and I think 6 whirlpools on board. She is powered by two 56,000 hp diesels.

A couple of things that shocked all of us. The first was that the workers on the ship are absolutely wonderful, hard working people. They ALL seem to go to great lengths to make sure that passengers enjoy their cruises. They almost always have a smile for passengers as they pass by. The other thing was that I don’t think one of them was an American. Simona was our waitress every evening. She and her husband are from Serbia. They have been working on cruise ships for 7 (I think, but maybe 10) years. The work 10 months out of the year, 7 days a week, 10-12 hours per day. You have never met a person who is more pleasant to be around. Hedy was the young lady who took care of our cabin. If she saw you in the hallway she would always call out a hello to you, with a big smile. Folks who work this hard, and who are this happy about it, make America’s future a little scary. I bet there isn’t one 20-40 year old American in a hundred who could cut it working on one of these ships.

We flew out of Kansas City early Sunday morning and by late afternoon we were headed out to sea, headed for Ketchikan, Alaska.

More tomorrow. I hope all of you had as good a week as Kathy and I did.  May God bless you and yours.