San Francisco to Vancouver - May 2024

Photo from Princess Cruises 

Seeking a spring outing, we booked a short cruise on the Grand Princess. We'll travel from San Francisco to Vancouver. During the cruise, we'll have a day visit in Victoria, British Columbia, before heading to Vancouver. Recently, we've been cruising with Viking Ocean and this was our first Princess trip since 2019, when we toured Japan.

The Grand Princess is now the oldest ship of the Princess Cruises line. Its inaugural cruise was back in May 1998, a mere 26 years ago. It was last refurbished in 2019. The Grand Princess carries about 2,600 guests. At 107,500 tons and a length of 857 feet, the Grand pales in size to the latest Sun Princess, which is rated at 175,000 gross tons, has a length of 1,133 feet and a guest capacity of 4,300. As a comparison, the Viking Ocean ships from our most recent cruises only have a guest capacity of about 930.  These Viking ships do not have features such as casinos or art auctions - which is fine with us. That said, the Viking Ocean ships have a wonderful sauna offering - complete with ice room and cold bucket rinse.

On a three day cruise, there's just enough time to reacquaint ourselves with the Grand Princess, relax in our cabin and enjoy a few dining venues - and maybe enjoy an ice cream or two. One dinner for us will be at the Crown Grill (extra $40 per person) and all other meals will be in one of the included dining rooms, Horizon Court (buffet area) or smaller cafe areas.  We have some on-board credit (OBC) from a Princess promotion and from ownership of Carnival Cruise Line stock. Between the Crown Grill and gratuities, we'll pretty much exhaust our OBC. I don't believe we'll have any other on-board expenses on this short duration cruise. 

While in Victoria, we'll have lunch with neighbors that have a second home near there. This is a nice  departure from our typical Victoria outing to Butchart Gardens.  

Upon docking at Canada Place, Vancouver, we'll disembark the Grand Princess and head over to a nearby Fairmont Hotel for a few days. Afterwards, we board a flight from Vancouver to San Francisco and will use a 24 hour Hertz rental car to return us to our Northern California home.