For some inexplicable reason, my husband ordered room service coffee last night to be delivered at 0 dark 30 this morning. A sharp knock on the door woke me from a deep sleep at 6:37am, and so foreign was this morning room service thing to us that my first thought was that there was an emergency and we were being awakened to go to our muster stations. There was no going back to sleep after that heart-racing excitement!
Still, I dawdled a bit in bed, using up my few remaining free internet minutes from last cruise and setting up my free150 minutes for this 4-night cruise. And it's a good time to talk about that...free internet minutes for Platinum and Elite cruisers on back to back cruises. Apparently, the new Princess@Sea Internet system has standardized a practice that that been consistently inconsistent since internet was first introduced on Princess ships.
For years, it seemed to depend on the whims of the Internet manager to determine whether or not we could carry over unused internet minutes from one cruise to the following one. Sometimes the answer was yes, but more often recently it was a definite no. Apparently the policy is now the same on all ships (until someone emails me to tell me it isn't), and this is what Internet manager Miguel said is the new standard practice: Internet minutes from one cruise do carry over to the next. Only when those minutes are exhausted can one sign up for the free internet package on the current cruise. If the Internet minutes from the first cruise are not exhausted on the second cruise, they still carry over to the third cruise, but the Internet minutes from the second cruise are lost. Got that? ;-)
I liken it to the fuel points we get from our local Kroger store. It's not exactly the same, but the 'use it or lose it' part still applies.
What this means in practice is that I will go from famine to feast with on board Internet. The first 10-night cruise, I was carefully allocating 25 minutes usage per day. If you saw more photos on one day's posts compared to the others, I simply had some minutes left over at the end of the day. G, on the other hand, used only 32 minutes in 10 nights. He must use the 218 minutes that rolled over to this cruise or lose the 150 minutes he's entitled to for this 4-night cruise.
Luckily, I am here to help. ;-)
I now have 150 minutes in my own account and will be burning through G's minutes so he can get his new internet package before the cruise ends. That means more blog photos (yay!), and the ability to read the sports news surrounding the NFL games this weekend.
Life is good. :-)
And speaking of Life is Good, I am kicking myself a thousand times over for being so cheap. Just before I left home January 3, I was in my local Hallmark store and saw a woman's Life is Good t-shirt with a football on it for $26. It was something I could have worn on so many occasions, starting with football games at MUTS but also to the twins' football games. There are definite drawbacks to not being an impulse shopper, and missing out on treasures like that is one of them.
So, back to this morning, with me using up the last of my internet minutes from last cruise and setting them up for this cruise. G left the cabin to (I thought) go check out the weather and perhaps have breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet. I eventually got dressed and left him a note that at 7:37am I was going to the DaVinci Dining Room for a civilized breakfast. And I guess that brings me to a second thing I've been wanting to talk about: Princess@Sea Messenger.
We now have the ability to 'text' fellow cruisers with friendly greetings and information about our whereabouts on the ship and plans for the day. In theory, this should be a wonderful thing. In practice, it really isn't very useful, primarily because there is no audible notification ability. I can have four texts waiting for me for hours, and don't realize it until I pick up my phone or iPad and look at it. So what it really does is let me know where someone was hours ago, not where they are right now. Or, if you're like my husband who is easily frustrated by the limitations of the system, it doesn't get used at all. This is a man who, when we're home, will excitedly text me that he got a survey on his Chick Fil A receipt good for a free sandwich on his next visit. But texting me his real time whereabouts on the Emerald Princess? Not a chance.
When I arrived in the DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast, hostess Valeria from Ukraine told me G was already there dining at a full table for 6. He had told them I was sleeping in. I stopped by his table to say hello but asked to be seated at a table for 2. Honestly, sometimes, particularly at breakfast, we are like two ships that pass in the night. As soon as he finished eating, he joined me at my table and we planned our day, which, like most sea days, involved lunch and dinner together and several activities apart.
I left the dining room and went only as far as the International Cafe, where I settled in to start this post and read, but decided to try one of the new Barista Coffee Fusions. I had not yet tried any of the new items on the coffee menu, sticking with my usual decaf nonfat cappuccinos. I chose the Salted Caramel Strata, also decaf and skinny, and it was spectacular. I was even able to get a large one ($3.75 value) for one coffee card punch. In fact, anything on the menu is just one punch, unless a double shot is requested. The coffee card is really a great deal, especially when we can trade our Elite minibar in for two of them.
Eventually Suzan and Greg did came down to the International Cafe, and we sat and talked until it was nearly 10:30am and time for line dancing with Yazmin from Australia in Club Fusion. We spent a fun 45 minutes doing some of the most traditional line dances (to Elvira, Achy Breaky, Shania Twain's Feels Like a Woman and Play that Funky Music). Then we learned the Australian version of the Chicken Dance, called the Nut Bush, and by the end of it all we were sweaty and feeling very virtuous for having participated.
I met up with G in the 11:30am veterans get together in the Adagio Lounge. This time it was hosted by cruise staffer Madison, also from Australia, who just came on board yesterday. She sounds exactly like Bindi Irwin and can't be more than a couple of years older than her and is cute as a button. She, like Brandon last cruise, did a great job. But it's a very sobering thing, to listen to the stories these vets tell of their years in service, and to see how it still moves them to talk about it. I wish every politician who advocates sending troops to unwinnable wars could sit through just one veterans get together on a Princess cruise. And drink a glass of the cheap champagne that is offered there.
Speaking of Brandon, his parents are on board this cruise, and he introduced me to them this morning. (Heaven help me, I think they're younger than me, which means I'm more than a generation older than the cruise staff. When the heck did that happen???). Brandon is a star, and was born to his role. I asked his parents if he was always like that and they said yes, from the time he started to talk. I guess that, while some things can be learned, it helps to be naturally inclined that way.
G and I went down to the Wheelhouse for British Pub Lunch and sat with Sue and Carl from Atlanta, who were also on that 28-night round trip LA cruise to Samoa and French Polynesia on the Crown Princess in October. We've met several people who did that one. We enjoyed talking over lunch about the differences between Celebrity, Holland America and Princess. For them, as for us, it comes down to the fact that we get so much on board credit with Princess, even more than the loyalty benefits, that keeps us coming back again and again.
I went from there to the Deck 6 Conference Room for another quilling session with Lucy from Brazil. I tried something very different this time, and am not displeased with how it turned out. But the most fun comes from simply chatting with all the other passengers while sitting and twirling strips of paper. It's not like on the Pacific Princess, where it felt like we were guests for the weekend at an English country manor, but it's still fun.
It was almost 2:30pm before I returned to the cabin for the first time since I'd left at 7:30am. Seriously. Who needs a fancier cabin? We're never in ours anyway! G was napping, and I spent some time reading and resting, until it was time to start getting ready for dinner. Tonight was 'Dress to impress' night on the Emerald Princess, as there are no formal nights on 4-night cruises. We both dressed in our nicest smart casual dinner clothes and fit right in, though we saw all sorts of attire tonight.
We had a reservation for dinner in the Crown Grill at 5:30pm, part of our MTP benefits this cruise. We were seated at a booth right next to a window overlooking the Promenade Deck and the beautiful ocean beyond it. Our waiter, Anil, made it a great dining experience for us, and a bottle or Merlot certainly helped. I had a scallops starter, onion soup, salad and filet mignon. Anil also brought an entire plate full of lobster to the table and I did an admirable job making my way through that too. We were stuffed, but still squeezed in a few bites of dessert. What a feast!
Though we walked around the ship a bit afterwards (the 50th anniversary balloon drop in the Piazza was just wrapping up), the major entertainment tonight was production show Magic to Do and we just weren't in the right frame of mind to see it. There was not much else going on until 9pm (grrr...) and so we decided to return to the cabin to watch the Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies. I'll say one thing about these cruises: if we miss a movie on MUTS, it's almost always shown in the Princess Theater and/or on our cabin TVs later in the cruise. Still, the entertainment seems a bit weak on this 4-night cruise, but we won't care a bit over the next two days. It's playoff time, and there is football to be watched!
