Days 83 & 84: 20231215 Heading into the Way Back Machine to Return Home.
Funny thing about going somewhere as far away as Australia and New Zealand from the US. When you go there, you skip forward a whole day, but when you come home, you go backward a whole day so it's like a day is missing one way or another.
Since we are traveling with Price and Ciara, we have socialized mostly amongst ourselves as family time, so we haven't really bonded much with other passengers on this New Zealand cruise segment, other than those who we did the Australia Outback tour to Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru with, and of course the Marlborough 19 who were stranded off the ship for 3 nights. The ship was much more crowded than the Grand Princess or Coral Princess, so that also made it a more anonymous experience. That means fewer teary farewells to other people we have met during the cruise, and because we spent so many days and nights off the ship (both planned and unplanned), we didn't really bond with the cruise director's staff as much doing trivia and other activities as well.
With the extra suit cases that Price and Ciara brought out, and the fact that Ben and Janet's business class tickets came with a more generous free baggage allowance (2 checked bags up to 70# each), we had no trouble with getting everything off the ship and onto a homeward plane. We had also upgraded Price and Ciara to Premium Economy which also gave them 2 checked bags but only up to 50# each.
After a quick breakfast, we kind of found ourselves a bit rushed to get off the ship because our airport transfers were at 7:30am.
At 7am, we got a letter slipped under out door. It was from Helmut Leikauf, Hotel General Manager of the Royal Princess. He again apologized for the inconvenience and disappointment caused by our getting stranded in Blenheim and missing Tauranga altogether and offered as a gesture of goodwill a 50% future cruise credit for the cost of our base fare. That came as a pleasant surprise because Princess was in no way responsible for the accident that closed the road for more than 8 hours, and they did put us up in nice 4 star hotels and covered our meals and beverages without hesitation. But there were certainly others in the Marlborough 19 who were much more upset about the situation than we were, so they were probably responsible for squeezing a nice compensation package for us. We will be shopping for another cruise to spend that on. We have until December 2024 to book that sailing. The same applied to Price and Ciara, but they didn't get a letter. So Ben paged Helmut and explained Price and Ciara didn't get a letter. He had his staff rush one up to us just as our deadline for heading off the ship was approaching. That letter showed an amount that was half of what they had offered to Ben and Janet, so that triggered another call, but we had to leave the ship before that was resolved. However, after sleeping on it, Ben figured it was because Price and Ciara skipped the Australian Outback land tour, so their cruise fare was about half of what ours was. So they ended up getting 50% future cruise credit too.
It was a good thing to have the extra man power with Price and Ciara to handle all out suitcases. Between us, we had a total of 9. But since Ben and Janet had booked business class, they got to cut to the front of most lines and were allowed to drag Price and Ciara along as well since we were traveling as a family. Air Canada did a very nice job of making our flight as comfortable as possible in business class in the 777-200, which had fully reclining capsules in business class.
Price and Ciara were hardly in steerage, flying premium economy, but the difference in meals and service was pretty stark. We had a 3 course dinner with wine and desserts, while the kids had sandwiches and didn't realize that snacks were self service (the flight attendants hadn't mentioned that until Ciara hunted down a flight attendant to ask for a snack and drink since hours passed without a beverage or snack service.
When the flight arrived in Vancouver, we ended up going through customs there. Our family all have Nexus memberships, but Ben had forgotten to take his Nexus card out of the checked bag and keep it with his passport. But the customs agent said to just try to do the kiosk without the card, and sure enough, the system was able to recognize me by my biometrics alone, and waved me through.
Our bags were checked all the way through to Seattle. We got on a twin turboprop for the hop from Vancouver to Seattle. It was a sunny morning with broken clouds, and the turboprop flew a lot lower than the jets normally do, so we were under the cloud cover for much of the trip. It was like a scenic flight with very familiar sights as we flew down Puget Sound past Whidbey Island and downtown Seattle.
Interestingly enough, our bags didn't have to go through customs this trip. In the past, we have had to collect our bags and then get processed through customs with our bags. We had a very attentive parking shuttle driver who helped load all our suitcases both on and off the shuttle van. That earned him a nice tip. Our Volvo XC-90 was barely able to contain all our suitcases, backpacks and bodies, but it managed. It was a good thing we didn't have a smaller car.
Nothing feels more like being home than a lunch stop at Chiang's Gourmet. WIth a refueling stop at the Angel of the Winds Casino, we managed to get home by 2:30pm. When we got to the front door, the electronic keypad was just flashing red, meaning the battery was low. It was unresponsive to code entry. We have gotten so used to keyless entry with this that we don't keep house keys on us or in a hide-a-key anywhere. As a security precaution, the kids had also locked the inside garage door deadbolt, so we were locked out of the house.
Just as Ben was starting to look up a locksmith to come out and pick the lock, Price got the idea of climbing on to the roof and jimmying his upstairs bedroom window open because he has been in the habit of leaving it unlatched. Well, no scolding for that, because he was successful in getting us inside the house finally. I guess we should never allow ourselves to become overly reliant on technology because it can always find a point of failure. We'll be stopping Ace Hardware to have some physical house keys cut for backup access. We also need to replace the battery on the door lock at the same time we do the smoke detectors.
It'll take a few days to get unpacked, laundry done, and suitcases back into storage. But on the whole, it was a very fine adventure for Ben and Janet to take the slow boat across the Pacific and really get to know Australia on the circumnavigation and land tours. Our only disappointment was that John wasn't able to make the New Zealand cruise with Price and Ciara due to his work schedule and new assignment in France. But we know John is having his very own great adventure in France as we speak.
