There’s Darth Vader playing the violin – Day 7: Port Hardy – Prince Rupert

Today was the day I had most been looking forward to, but also the day I had been dreading the most. We were going to be cruising the Inside Passage – a 274 nautical mile journey through calm waters and beautiful scenery. It was described on the itinerary as “an early start” and having checked the ferry timetables we knew that the ferry left at 7:30 a.m. and arrived at 10:30 p.m. Check-in was 2 hours before departure and yesterday we had been given the good news – cases outside the door at 5:00 and departure at 5:45 a.m.! :shocked025: Our tour manager had checked in yesterday evening so we only had to be there 1 and a half hours early this morning.

So the alarm call came at 4:00 a.m. and by 5:30 we were down in the lobby enjoying a glass of apple juice before boarding the coach for the short journey to the ferry terminal.

We were the last to board at 7:00 but because the ferry only has loading doors at the back the coach had to back on ensuring that we would be first off at the other end. Apparently cars have to drive onto the ferry and then turn around on the vehicle deck so they are facing the right way to drive off.

We made our way up to the lounge and found that the seating was airline style in something like a 4x5x4 configuration. All of the window seats had been ‘claimed’ by people placing their bags on them so we settled right at the back of the lounge in the left hand seats of a block of 5 and began wondering how we were going to pass the next 15 hours.

We were on the move by 7:15 and I put on my Ipod and dozed on an off. We had a drink mid-morning and then at around 11:30 went along to the café for lunch where I had a smoked salmon sandwich and a root beer and decided that I would have chilli when we came back for dinner.

After lunch we went back to the lounge where I listened to my Ipod again and occasionally went up on deck to admire the scenery and take photos.

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At 2:20 there was an announcement that a film was about to be shown in the lounge and shortly after Madagascar came on. Dad and I hadn’t seen it before but we both thoroughly enjoyed it. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the same way as the previous hours and at 5:30 we went back to the café only to find that they had changed the menu and chilli was no longer on offer so I decided to have a shrimp croissant instead.

After dinner we went back to the lounge and at 8:20 they started showing another film I hadn’t seen, which was Lucky You about a poker player trying to win the World Series of Poker. I popped up on deck at one point to take what has become one of my favourite photos from the holiday.

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Unfortunately before the film had finished we got called back to the vehicle deck and by 10:15 p.m. the ferry had docked and we were waiting to get off. We waited about 15 minutes before we were finally allowed to disembark and after a short journey we reached our hotel, the Coast Prince Rupert.

Cases arrived in the room soon after and we both fell into bed at 11:15 after what had turned out to be not such a bad day after all.

Tomorrow: Prince Rupert from a new perspective