Day 11 (Wednesday, May 31, 2006)
As we're having breakfast in the restaurant, the ship docks in Vancouver. After breakfast, we head to our cabin to wait to be called for disembarkation. (It's done by groups, and we know we'll be in the last group since we're doing a "post-cruise" package in Vancouver, so we don't have a flight to catch.) By 9:30, we're off the ship, and onto our bus for a Vancouver city tour. Some of the passengers are catching later flights, so they are also on the city tour. We drop them at the airport and head to the Pan Pacific Hotel, where we're met by representatives of Holland America and settled into our room which has a great view of the harbor, cruiseship terminal and the new Vancouver convention center under construction--it will be the media center for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The Pan Pacific is the tall building on the right. We didn't have far to travel from the ship!
Pan Pacific lobby:
Our view from our hotel room shows us the Volendam docked at the cruise ship terminal (and the hotel pool) in one direction:
In the other direction is the under-construction Vancouver convention center which will serve as the media center during the 2010 winter olympics:
We think about dinner. After all, this is a five-diamond hotel with a 5-star restaurant. We had planned to blow the budget and have dinner there, but find a notice in our room that they will not be serving their regular menu tonight. Instead, they are doing a seminar/tutorial/dinner for winemakers at $110/person. We wound up in another of the hotel's restaurants, and it was still great!
It's been a long day, so off to bed we go.
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