Day 7 (June 2, 2023) we were sailing back to Vancouver and it was a whole day at sea for us since we didn’t arrive in Vancouver until the early morning of June 3.
I had breakfast at my usual spot in Lido Market again. It
was my last breakfast there in Koningsdam. There were a couple of people that I
saw them almost every morning🌞during my breakfast.
Since it maybe the last time I could see them, I took my encouragement to approach and chat. First one was a cruise passenger who talked to me on the third day about what I missed. He told me he saw some passengers on the tender boat to Tracy Arm Fjord. Since then I paid attention to him, he was very friendly and talkable. I saw him chatting with restaurant staff. Don’t get me wrong, I am not falling in love with this guy. He is a senior person👴and we are both from BC (Greater Vancouver Area). Yeah😎
The other one was a dining service attendant in Lido Market. Her name is Peach🍑 So far she is the prettiest staff I saw on a cruise. She made me think of the winner of beauty pageant👑 I thought she is from Philippines since there are lots of Pilipino working on the cruise. Indeed she is a Thai with an university degree.
I enjoyed the last day of cruising with the food I like –
cool and refresh!
Too many places that I would miss on Koningsdam once I got
off the ship, one of them would be Grand Dutch Café on deck 3.
As its name suggests, the café served some Dutch dishes such
as Dutch pea soup, maatjes herring, broodje kroket, Dutch poffertjes, etc. It
also served pastries such as apple pie, chocolate vanilla cake, bran muffin and
chocolate muffin. The food was complimentary while the beverages (tea and
coffee) were at a cost.
Across Grand Dutch Café is Guest Services, already quite a few people lined up for questions or account settlement as next day (June 3) everyone has to left the ship. We better do ours too to avoid long lineup later on. It’s important to ask Guest Services for a printed copy of the statement 🖺 after the account has been paid.
The crew appreciation was $16 USD per day (total 7 days:
$112 USD) but I prepaid this fee when I booked the cruise. I also spent $22 USD
on a bracelet purchase (but I had $17.5 USD onboard credit). With taxes, fees
and port expenses adjustment (to a lower amount), I got a credit back of $28.30
USD😊
Looking down from the cafe we could see a mini art gallery 🖼
Let’s go down to deck 1 and check it out
Nobody was there except myself 😏 Any particular picture you
like?
I found Inch of Gold was out again … maybe trying to sell
more jewelleries before the disembarkation date!
They also put out clothes on sale – souvenir clothes with different names on them: Vancouver, Alaska, Glacier Bay, Inside Passage, Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan.
They even had Kipling bags and they were on sale. But I
already have many Kipling bags bought from Hudson’s Bay few years ago.
North America originally belonged to the Indigenous. Unique
designed Native items cannot be missed on a cruise for Alaska trip.
Of course products from Alaska should be available too! I
recall always seeing similar jewelleries in the ports in Alaska.
My friend suggested to check out on the directory if any
places we missed on the ship. What is Crew’s Nest Café in the front ship of
deck 12?
Crew’s Nest Café – where we could see the map, the itinerary
and where we were at! How come we didn’t find this place earlier 😓
It is a very spacious area with lots of windows to see the panoramic view. Not only that, there are books to read, board games to play and a bar to order drinks🍸🍷🍺
The chair was so comfortable and the view was just amazing! Our cruise was passing by the beautiful Vancouver Island ⛰ There was a background music 𝅘𝅥𝅮 that I enjoyed so I recorded it.
When I played the recording, I didn’t realize how noisy it
was (同酒樓噪音有得揮). I used Google to search
for the song and luckily it worked …
A picture of the King and Queen of Netherlands, they have three Princess of Orange🧡(three daughters). The Dutch Royal House is also The House of Orange🟠 Why is it related to Orange (the colour or the fruit🍊or something else)? Can anyone tell me?
Our ship was sailing in Beautiful BC, heading back to
Vancouver.
Time passed by quickly, it was supper time again. We needed
to pack our stuff in the evening so we decided to have a quick dinner in Lido
Market. Yes, Lido Market also offered dinner from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm🕗
As usual, I looked for dessert first …Wow! Hazelnut Mousse
Cake! My favourite😊
It was my veggie day🌿 I created a healthy vegetarian dish paired with my favorite cake🍰and a pear 🍐 My friend got a piece of steak, she said it’s not tender.
The ambiance was not bad, at least we had a nice window view.
Suddenly lots of people looked at the sea. We also looked with
curiosity 👀
Small black fish jumping out of the ocean beside our giant cruise. Weren’t
they scared?
Last supper was done, let’s walk back to the stateroom. I
needed to take a photo of this picture before I forgot. Do you think one of the
faces looks like Leslie Cheung 張國榮? My friend even said the one on far
left looks like Ruco Chan 陳展鵬.
We saw a weight scale on the way back. Probably for weighing the luggages for passengers who would take a flight after disembarkation. Any other guess?
We asked Guest Services, different coloured tags represented different disembarkation time. For example: Lime 1 & 2 needed to be ready to get off the ship by 8:00 am, Blue 2 by 8:15 am.
Normally those who needed to catch a flight had to get off
first. We were just back to our home city Vancouver, we preferred to be the
latest ones to disembark.
Oh no! By the time we found out the coloured tags were available near Guest Services, only the brown ones were left😐 We wanted the gray or black ones with disembarkation time 9:30 am – 10:00 am. We had no other option but to pick the brown 3 with disembarkation time 8:50 am.
We wished we could enjoy the last breakfast on Koningsdam by going to Lido Market (6:00-9:00 am) or the Dining Room (7:00-8:30 am) but we were so tired as we couldn’t sleep the whole night ⭐ (眼光光, 數星星都瞓唔着)
Also we needed to be out by 8:50 am.
It was only 5 minute walk to our luggage pickup area after
we disembarked. Probably if we chose self-assist (keeping luggages with us)
then we could stay on ship until 9:30 am 😅
Next step was to submit the completed Canadian Customs Form
to the Canadian Border Services Agency before we could get out of Vancouver
cruise terminal at Canada Place which was built in 1985.
Another Saturday (June 3), which cruise ships were at Canada Place for the next group of passengers to Alaska?
Only two this time – Koningsdam (our ship) and Grand Princess (we saw it in Skagway and Ketchikan).
The cruise schedule of Canada Place can be found on 2024-Cruise-Schedule-as-of-Feb-23-2024-6.pdf (portvancouver.com). The terminal has four berths for the ships. It is
always busy from May to September with about 900,000 passengers each year. Most
of them are sailing to Alaska.
We came out and looked at our cruise ship Koningsdam again.
I wish I could have a chance to thank my room attendants Putu and Aris for the
warm welcome and hard work. Especially Aris who offered help immediately when I
couldn’t open the door to access my stateroom. Aris tried his card too and it
didn’t work either. Then he found out my friend locked the door from inside
that’s why nobody could open with the cards (原來在船上房間把門在裡面反鎖，其他在外面的人是開不到門) Aris called my friend with cruise ship phone🕾 right away
to let her know I was outside the room.
Now we learned that except sleeping time, we don’t lock the
door from inside😉
Overall it was a wonderful trip! Starting from Vancouver, coming back to Vancouver. Home sweet home 🏡
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