Vancouver, Canada, Tuesday, Oct 3.

We wake at 7AM to another sunny day as the ship is beginning to dock at Canada Place. Our disembarkation time is 8:15AM, one of the first groups.

At 7:15AM, room service arrives with our breakfast. We used room service for breakfast once before. Both times it arrives on time, complete and HOT!  We eat, gather our stuff and call for the wheelchair....it is easier for Carolyn to do the terminal ramps in a wheelchair.

By 8:20AM we are in the terminal waiting for luggage along with about 30 others. Our 8:15AM luggage time has passed, but our color has not shown up. They ask us to be seated and say it won’t be long...one color is being picked up, one color is being unloaded on to the floor and there are still two colors ahead of ours. It takes another 20 minutes to get to our color. There seems to be only one big cart for each color, they unload the cart and go back for the next one. By the time the next color comes the earlier group has cleared out, not a bad system, just got off to a slow start.

We are parked in the terminal cruise parking, two floors down from immigration at the hotel elevator end. By 9:15AM we are loading the luggage into the car, very easy!!! The final test is using the email bar code to get out of the lot. The ticket machine reads the bar code and lets us out...after the entering experience, we were prepared for a hassle at this point, but all is good.

We work our way across the Lions Gate Bridge after a short drive through Stanley Park. We are driving to Whistler, about three hours north of Vancouver. The day is beautiful and the scenery is absolutely stunning, seascapes with snow covered peaks all around!

We have reservations at a small hotel in the Olympic Village, but check in is 4PM. We stop at a mall area before getting to Whistler and have lunch and get some medicine for Carolyn’s cough then drive on to the hotel, hoping for an early check in. We luck out and are in our very nice studio type room with a full kitchen, balcony and fireplace by 2PM. The downside is a $21CAD parking fee.  Carolyn has been suffering for several days and Dick feels a cold coming on, so we turn the fire on and lay down for welcome naps!

Around 5PM we get out to walk around the village and find some dinner. The place we thought we would go to is closed tonight for unknown reasons. We wind up at a Brewery and have a tasty meal and one of their craft beers.

It has been a nice slow day...perfect to get over the “off the ship let down!"