Day 01 - 10/02/2021 - Boarding in Seattle

At long last our departure day had arrived.  We happened to be in Bremerton, WA in the morning about an hours drive from our home where we were attending a marriage enrichment seminar. We made it home about 1:20pm, completed our last minute packing and preparation activities and left our house a little after 2pm for the drive north to the cruise terminal. There was some congestion along the way  but we made it to the terminal at 2:45 for our scheduled 2:40pm boarding time.  There were  literally few people there waiting to board so we literally sailed through the process with no delays.

 

For those familiar with the embarkation process, I'll try to describe it. You'll pick up on the differences.  At the door our boarding passes were checked and we left our roller suitcases with the porter.  We were then directed to another station where they examined our passports, Covid Vaccination card, and proof of a negative Covid test taken within the past two days. This was nothing more than a quick glance and the Abbott At Home proctored test results were accepted.

 

We were then directed to a kiosk machine manned by an attendant who scanned our passports and took our security picture as the ones I submitted weren't on file.  We were then directed to board the ship.  At the gangplank, the guard allowed us to snap a selfie before going onboard.  At the onboard security station, our boarding passes were scanned and we were allowed on board.  The whole process took less than 15 minutes!

 

Our itty bitty stateroom is an interior room #7116 in the aft of the ship. By itty bitty I mean it's the size of our camping trailer which is 8' x 22'. The bed is at one end of the room, there's a small desk with a refrigerator under it, and closets line the wall all the way to the door.  There's no couch.  

 

We dropped off our backpacks, met our steward, and then proceeded to complete the new muster drill process, a process I really like.  In the new process, one reports to one's muster station and gets one's room keycard scanned.  You then return to your room and watch a safety video on the stateroom TV. The TV can't be used for anything else until the safety video is watched in its entirety.  Afterwards, we were free to wander or find something to eat.

 

Since we had a 5pm dinner reservation, we just sipped on our Coke Zeros sitting beside the main Lido pool until we observed the ship backing away from its berth at 4:44pm about 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

 

The Tamarind staff warmly greeted us for our 5pm reservation and we selected a portside window table. For the first hour, there were only two couples there so we had nice chats with the staff. They are so happy to be back working!  The meal was excellent and we'll certainly return.  The main course was lobster and beef tenderloin with mushrooms, bok choy, and dungeness crab fried rice. Our appetizer was a satay combo and Chinese pepper flavored spareribs.  The dessert was a sorbet sampler and a macaroon and mango sorbet.  

 

After dinner we wandered around to refamiliarize ourselves with the ship.  We ran into cruise friends, Mary & Brent and we caught up with one another.  We ended up sitting with them for the multimedia presentation by Valerie, our Cruise & Travel Director, on the Main Stage about the 150 years of Holland America Line history.  We have seen the presentation previously several times, and this one was updated to include references to the pandemic.

 

Returning to our itty bitty stateroom, we unpacked.  It's nice to have 4 USB ports in there so we don't have to use extension cords.

 

I went up to the 10:30 feeding where a small section of the Lido Buffet is open where I enjoyed a couple cookies and some tea while I composed this blog entry.

 

I should note that everyone is masked except when eating or smoking on the aft deck.  HAL provides two cloth masks per passenger in the stateroom and they are nice.


As we fell asleep, it was good to feel the 'motion of the ocean' and some return to normalcy by being able to cruise.

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