After finding out that my husband planned to be out of town for the Mother's Day Weekend, I decided on a whim to book the very reasonably priced 1 day Pacific Coastal cruise from Vancouver to Seattle on the Ruby Princess. It would be a business trip, I thought to myself, because booking a cabin as a single would get me double credit towards becoming Elite on Princess. What a great idea!

Because I had never cruised out of Vancouver, into Seattle, or on a 1 day cruise, I didn't know what to expect and it actually did turn out to be quite a lot of work. So yes, a business trip.I was able to book Aeroplan points at a discount for a flight from Seattle back to Vancouver, so I wasn't out of pocket for the return trip.

I was very fortunate that I had not 1, but 2 different friends offer to drive me to the cruise port at Canada Place. I would have been happy with being dropped off at the Canada Line Skytrain station, but my friend insisted on driving me directly to the port. What chaos in the surrounding area. 9000 passengers disembarking and 9000 more ( 3 ships in port that day) embarking, construction in the surrounding area, and many tourists in the area made for slow going. I eventually got to the place where passengers without checked bags could go down the stairway to enter the check in area, only to be stopped by a security guard who insisted that Princess would not allow passengers to enter the area until 1pm. That left those of us unfamiliar with the procedure to stand outside in the broiling sun, potentially for hours. After walking around for 20 minutes, I realized that if his directive were true, there would be hundreds of people standing around waiting to enter, and there weren't. I decided to follow the many passengers with baggage who were using a different entrance, down a ramp. Surprise, surprise. I walked right up to the security area and Princess check in, and was on board in 15 minutes. Read more