I have been home for about a week now from my May 27th sailing of Vision of the Seas, cruisetour #16. As a little bit of background, I am 30 and DH is 28 and we are Canadians. I am an indoor girl, and not very fit, but did a lot of outdoor things on this trip. This was our first cruise, and for me it was more about the excursions than the towns/shopping or even the ship itself. All of our excursions were booked months before we boarded. We did notice that once on the ship many of them were sold out. This is going to be really long as I packed a lot in, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Day 1 (Thursday, May 26th). Sunny and warm We arrived in Vancouver around 1 p.m. and went straight to the Sutton Place Hotel. We were 2 hours before regular check-in but thankfully our room was ready and we were able to dump our stuff and run back out the door. We had booked the room on Hotwire and were worried the staff would treat us differently as it is a 5 star hotel, but everyone was very nice and they gave us a room fairly high up with a nice view of the city.

Our first destination was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Trying to get there on the public transit system was difficult. Our first bus driver was cranky and rude and overcharged us, but eventually we did find some more helpful transit employees who helped us get to the bridge. We spent about 3 hours at the park, and really enjoyed it, despite having had forgotten the bug spray. (Don't forget the bug spray!) The bridge wasn't as long as I had expected from looking at in online, but I was still scared. Then I saw all of the old people going across and was determined to do it myself. It was pretty scary. I couldn't look over the sides, and if I stopped I had to get going again right away, especially towards the middle. It did not help that DH was gleefully trying to sway the bridge even more. Then we did a really short included 10 minute nature walk where we learned a few interesting facts about the park, before heading to the Treetops Bridges. These were much tamer and definitely not as scary. By the time I finished the little bridges I was ready to cross back across the big one. This time DH was very disappointed as I didn't really find it scary at all and could even stop for a minute to appreciate the view over the side. My legs were sore from walking funny for balance, but it was fun! Read more