September 20, 2022

Canada Place Cruise Ship Terminal

By roads-rus

We were in Vancouver for 3 nights before leaving via Windstar on a cruise to Alaska. It was great to be back in this city despite its costliness. It has to be one of the most expensive places to visit in the world. We had planned to take our guests to JJ Bean for coffee, our favorite spot for it, in the Marine Building where Bean is at street level while waiting for our COVID test results, but that diversion was not to be.

This was our first departure from the Cruise Ship Terminal in Vancouver’s Canada Place since an aborted cruise many years ago, and we felt uneasy being there. This Terminal had always been a certain stop in previous visits, but COVID had kept us at home for several years, and this was our first time in Canada since being quarantined. We did not like the changes we had already experienced. The main negative was the closure of our favorite visitor center practically across the street from the terminal, and we were told that it was never going to open again. This was a loss! We had never taken a Windstar Cruise from Canada Place before either. This was one of several new cruise lines leaving from this busy terminal that had opened in the last century for Expo 86. Since then, Disney, Celebrity, and Royal Caribbean cruises and many others had left from here for trips along with other cruise ship lines heading to Alaska. This was to be our first cruise up the Inside Passage from Vancouver.

But first we were supposed to meet family members at the Fairmont Hotel. We did not know that there were 3 Fairmonts in the area and had been since Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics. We also got the parking garage wrong. These were our 2nd through 5th errors that day. Since being built the Skytrain Canada had opened too, and it came to this destination to serve departing cruisers. We had crossed the international border from the US three days previously to get here, and had driven a vehicle to Canada that my sister and daughter planned to use after returning to the USA. We chose the most likely Fairmont and parking garage and hoped for the best. All of the Fairmonts in this area were expensive, which was typical for all hotels in downtown Vancouver, which was nevertheless completely booked. Prices didn’t keep visitors away from this city! We had been lucky to find any places to stay.

Anyway, we survived the wrong garage and the right hotel to meet our guests and were soon enough on our way to Alaska by passing under the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2022 at 9:44 pm and posted in Great City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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