#154 Nomad Diary. 30 September-6 October 2023. Vancouver, BC. Begin 26 Day Cruise on Majestic Princess to Auckland, NZ.
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| Fall Colors in West Vancouver, BC |
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| Our Persian Pizza. Loads of Veggies and a Sliced Hot Dog (? lol!)in Deep Crust. |
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| Waiting for Our Persian Pizza Saturday. 30. Today we did our regular DDP Yoga morning workout routine. We stayed in through lunchtime. I spent the morning on the phone with my longtime friend Laura who lives in Tennessee. We are great friends who share faith, encouragement, prayers and so much more. Darrell spent the same time working on his knowyourbible.org blog and also preparing for his sermon tomorrow. After lunch we drove to the mall down the hill in West Vancouver. We walked around to several stores. We got our cruise luggage tags printed for getting on the ship on Tuesday. We drove on to Edgemont neighborhood in North Vancouver where there is a fancy bakery called Bjorn Bakery that I wanted to go to. We got a couple of biscotti and sat outside enjoying the quiet street for a while. Then we went on a walk to a nice park. The walk was through a woods with a stream. It’s a beautiful place just on the edge of North Vancouver. Then we drove to another walkway in North Vancouver where we walked down to the water. We walked more through a park and then decided to go to a Persian Pizza place for dinner. We both enjoyed the large amount of vegetables that they piled into their pizza. Then we came back to our apartment. Darrell finished working on his sermon prep for tomorrow. |
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| White Rock Pier |
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| Lynn Canyon. North Vancouver Sunday. 1. We are thinking of our cruise starting Tuesday. We have two more nights here. Today is a beautiful sunny day. Darrell made our last pancakes for a while. We don’t usually have pancakes or real maple syrup on a cruise. We drove an hour to White Rock and Darrell taught the class and preached a sermon. We all enjoyed the encouragement of our worship including singing and communion. The next four Sundays in October we are to be on the Majestic Princess sailing for Auckland. After enjoying our worship together with the church, we drove a short distance to a Vietnamese restaurant and had lunch. We walked from the restaurant down a very steep hill to the White Rock Pier. From the Pier we could see the snow-capped Mount Baker in the US! We walked back up the steep hill into town and back to our car. We put our GPS on for Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver and on our way back toward West Vancouver. We walked through the woods at the park on planked walkways and up and down wooden staircases. We crossed 2 of the 3 bridges in the park. The waterfalls and stream were beautiful. We drove back home and made soup for dinner. I’m so tired after dinner as I am doing a load of laundry. We have the tv on Antiques Roadshow and watch the mini stories told around people’s old objects. It’s been a beautiful day with sweet memories. |
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| On the Majestic Princess Oct 3-30 |
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| View on Majestic Princess in Vancouver Port. Pool Deck and Movie Screen. Monday. 2. 8am Whatsapp call with my friend Sharon. We talked for two hours! She’s on the road as a nomad since August. We have had ongoing conversations about living as a nomad and resources and different ways of approaching problems and solutions together. While I was on the phone, Darrell was working on his amazing spreadsheet of our finances. So we had a meeting together and he taught me some more of this world of managing our finances. We stayed in all day. We ate most of our food today with enough for breakfast tomorrow. Somehow the food is coming out about even. This outcome is an odd skill to cheer on in each other! Lol! The rest of the day we spent reading, packing, having phone calls with a Eric, Owen and Jeremy. This evening I will do one last load of laundry and we will be able to check out by 9am tomorrow. Tuesday. 3. Today is a moving day. We check out of our airbnb, turn in our rental car, and move into our cruise ship suite. We dropped our luggage at the ship and then drove to the car rental return. Next we walked to our ship and stopped for a pastry along our way. We easily arrived and boarded our ship before 11:30 am. Our room wasn’t quite ready to move into so we went and had lunch, and met a few other passengers. After our lunch we went to our room on the 15th floor of the ship! It’s the highest floor that we have ever stayed on. We have a balcony and a small couch in our room that gives it a nice seating area. We went through the standard emergency briefs that are always required before the ship sets sail. Our evening was dinner in the dining room seated at a table with 3 other couples. Then we went to a show in the theater before heading to bed around 9pm. |
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| Sign in Victoria Wednesday. 4. Today we ported in Victoria, Canada. It’s a very short port call since we are to be all aboard for sailing at 1:30pm. Darrell and I had breakfast with a couple of men who are familiar with the town, and one lives near here. He suggested going to the museum that he thought was very well done. So we easily walked off the ship and walked toward town. We got a tourist map at the dock and some advice from a welcomer there. The days weather is really nice and mild. We enjoyed our walk past Fisherman’s Wharf and on toward the museum. We stopped and took pictures of some gardens and trees. By the time we got to the museum around 10am, we decided that we wanted to keep on walking and go to a donut shop. Darrell said he wanted to go to several donut shops and make our own tour of it. So we kept on walking and taking pictures. We arrived at our first donut shop and it was closed. We eventually went to two more donut shops and a bakery before heading back to the museum. We decided that we didn’t have enough time to look through the museum and we shopped in their gift shop for a few minutes. On our walk back to the ship we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and we had an ice cream cone. We got back to the ship and had some lunch after having all that dessert first! |
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| Resting in Our Stateroom |
Thursday and Friday. 5-6. Sea Days going to L.A., California. On these two days we have about the same schedule. We woke up early about 5 am and went to the gym and did our morning DDP yoga routines. Then we have breakfast and coffee and reading time. At 9am there is a Bible Study that meets in a designated room. Darrell is leading the study in the book of Mark. We meet people who like to study the Bible and enjoy our time together on sea days. We read or go to presentations on the ship. Today is sunny and about 70 degrees. Dinner is in the dining room seated with other couples. Lunch we have at the buffet. This ship has a ‘noodle station’ and I have enjoyed eating miso soup two days now. There are a lot of Asians on this ship and there are things onboard that they like as in this noodle restaurant.
Nomad Notes:
Part of my retired nomad life with Darrell is dedicated to paying attention and learning about the management of our finances. I knew that when I ceased working in November 2021 in preparation for our Retired Nomad life, that I would be his finance student. We discussed about how I would need to sit with him at the computer as often as possible to get more and more familiar with all the moving parts of our finances. Now that we have been on the road since September 2020 and both retired since March 2022, and I am sitting with Darrell often at the computer and learning more and more about this incredible and complex finance spreadsheet he has built and been using to manage our resources. I know that I cannot learn it all in one sitting. Like so many things in my life, doing it a little at a time consistently will get me farther along over time.
Once we arrived to the ship we felt quite comfortable. We have sailed over 150 days with Princess Cruises so we are very familiar with the flow and set up here. It does have the feel of a vacation for us. We have a tour of international port cities and exploring to enjoy. All of our meals and housekeeping is taken care of onboard. So this does feel like an extremely nice vacation for a month.
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