July 7, 8, 9th, 2017
Once on board the Grand Princess, we settled into our spacious rooms and waited for the ship to push out from the dock – Alaska here we come…
It was a wonderful send off, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, then out to the open sea. We ate dinner at the elegant buffet and watched as the fog enveloped our ship. Just after passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, we saw 3 whales heading inland to the bay. We were surprised to see them so close in the bay.
An official looking boat, that turned out to belong to the US Coast Guard, escorted us out of the bay. Behold it had some kind of large gun mounted on the bow of the boat and someone with their finger on the trigger!
The weather while on board was changeable – from fog, to cloudy, to rain with a small mix of sunshine. We spent the afternoon getting our sea legs and finding our way around the ship: Our rooms were on the 10th deck, the buffet was on the 14th deck along with the pools and hot tubs (on either end of the ship), as well as an outdoor movie screen for Movies Under The Stars, The Sanctuary (for adults only) was also on deck 14. Dining rooms were on deck 6, the Princess Theater on deck 7 along with the casino, and the International Café on deck 5 (where our specialty coffee and Earl Grey waited for us each morning at our portside window table just above the water).
None of us took advantage of the pool or hot tub as the ambient temperature was in the 50’s – although we did see kids splashing around (kids never seem to get cold). The winds were variable, making it hard to get a suntan on our balcony. The sea was fairly calm with 5’8” waves (how they measure the wave height is beyond me), so we spent a lot of time watching for whales, dolphins and sea turtles, no luck yet.
We enjoyed our time talking, laughing and sipping champagne on our balcony raising our glasses to toast San Francisco, and Alaska. The moon would be full on the 8th of July around 10pm, but alas it was too cloudy to see. As we sat on our balcony we watched the sun set into the watery horizon reflecting the beauty of endless water in all directions: It could not have been more magnificent!
We were all very excited by this time to be actually underway. We will spend tonight plus 2 more days at sea traveling north to “Alaska, the Last Frontier”. 
First Port Ketchikan, AK
gypsyroadgallery 
As always, some great pictures. That looks like a huge ship!
LikeLike