Day 117: St. Martin

 I'll confess...I'm not typing the first word of this post until the following day. Yesterday was a blur; I didn't take anything to help me sleep, and, therefore didn't sleep well. My rib(s) are most troublesome at night, when I'm laying down. In fact, they're still sore enough that we're giving some thought to going home on Saturday. No decision yet, but you know us...we have flights booked to go home on every turn around day between now and March 7. Of course, I won't feel any better at home, and the next three cruises- 5-, 4- and 5-nights- were very inexpensive, so it isn't as if it's costing us a lot to stay and just chill. However, one of us (not me) doesn't do 'chill' very well. He's getting antsy.

So, anyway, back to yesterday morning. The alarm did go off at 6:30am and I checked online one more time to see if a seat had opened up on a morning Winair flight from St. Martin to Saba. When it hadn't, we decided to scrap that plan and try to get some more sleep. Apparently I sleep more comfortably between 7am and 11am than I do between midnight and 5am, because I slept, which means G slept, too. 

There were once again five ships in St. Martin. Perhaps that port is always that busy these days?  They've certainly built the infrastructure to support it. But we knew that any beach chairs on nearby Grand Case Bay beach would have been long claimed by lunchtime. We decided to make it a ship day. We walked in the Promenade Deck and G went to the fitness center to work out. I took the time to explore the new (to us) Princess@Sea free website that has the Princess Patter online as well as my onboard spending statement (which is a huge drawback; why can't I see both mine and G's?). I was immediately tickled by the photos that accompany each event held throughout the day. For the LGBT get together, the picture is of a clearly heterosexual couple looking lovingly into each other's eyes. Whoops! 

And this Latin lover type certainly caught my eye. What a great smile, and this is clearly a man who likes to have fun...

...and is skilled at remembering music lyrics...

...knows a thing or two about artwork...

...is a skilled ballroom dancer...

...enjoys himself some acoustic guitar...

...and some party band music, too. 

What a cruise ship Renaissance man!!  ;-)

I am also into another great beach read:  The Astronauts Wives Club by Lily Koppel. It latched onto my attention and isn't going to let lose until I finish it, which, being a good beach read, should be in about two days. 

We went to the Piazza at 5pm to watch the lovely ladies of St. Martin do their Mardi Gras dancing (how appropriate!) and then went to dinner a bit early. This cruise's MTP party was held in Skywalkers at 7:15pm. About 7pm, Captain Pomata announced that we would be leaving St. Martin late, because the Chief Engineer couldn't resist using our scheduled 11 hours in port to do some routine maintenance, and they weren't yet finished, but said that it would not affect our arrival into St. Thomas the next day. That allowed him to get to the MTP party on time and so the delay worked out well. 

Captains Circle host Yuki announced at the party that we are the #2 most traveled couple this cruise, which must explain the bar staff's extreme attentiveness in bringing me my fav Breeza Marinas, which also explains why we and another couple (on since December 30th!) were the last to leave the party, almost two hours after it officially ended. This caused us to totally miss the Mardi Gras party in the Piazza (again, how appropriate that it was held today!), but we did get to the Discovery at Sea stargazing session up on Deck 17 forward. It was a great night for stargazing, and we enjoyed it very much. This is another of those new things that Princess just added this year.

And that was it. Feeling the affects of my attentive bar service, I fell into bed shortly afterwards. We found out, at the MTP party, that the Caribbean Princess would be docked at Havensight in St. Thomas today, putting an end to our Water Island plans (but I'm certain we would have been on the 8am ferry.  Really!! ;-)). G is talking about running up the hill to Paradise Point. I will lie in a lounger on the Terrace Deck and wave at him.