I wore everything I brought with me (including waterproof gloves) and camped on the Terrace Deck for hours in the cold drizzle while we cruised College Fiord. It was just so beautiful and moody with the clouds hanging low over the mountains. Somehow, there was still enough light to see some beautiful reflections on the water. I’ve seen College Fiord in all kinds of weather and from cruise ships and the much smaller 26-Glacier boat tour from Whittier and I’ve loved every experience.
G eventually joined me outside, and we stayed until the Ruby Princess did a slow turn at the end of the fiord. There was still a sizable ice field in front of Harvard Glacier so we couldn’t get very close, but then we’ve never been up here this early in the season. I think it makes a difference. But even the ice flow was beautiful.
It was easy for me to think the Ruby Princess could just push on through the bergy bits in the water, but then the Ruby is a cruise ship, not an ice breaker and I know that we were just seeing the surface ice, and there was much more under the water. But I really have to get to Antarctica, don’t I? (And today just proved that Antarctica is NOT in G’s future!).
Once we made the turn and started to cruise back out of the fiord, the fog quickly moved in and the fog horn started sounding, and while I truly love that sound, I love it better when heard from inside the ship. It’s quite loud on the outer decks. So we moved into the buffet and struggled a bit to find two seats at a table but finally did.
To my delight, we were seated with an older couple, and he was a PhD who taught rocket science or something similar at the University of Michigan, many years before I got there, and you can imagine how much I enjoyed talking about the university and Ann Arbor with another fan.
The back portion of the buffet (it used to be called Cafe Caribe) was open this morning, and if it has been open for breakfast before that, I’ve missed it, but it was so crowded up there that we just stayed in the very back and I got some oatmeal from there. And orange tea. Always with the hot beverages on this cruise.
We had to take care of some bookkeeping then, changing the credit card our on board folio will be charged to. The Princess Chase card we’ve used for years to pay for our cruises has reduced the bonus award benefit that used to make it more valuable to us, so we originally were going to charge our on board spending to a different card giving us 2% back. But we have since cancelled some future cruises (with expired FCDs) and have a credit balance on the Princess card and I wanted to use up that credit. We took the Princess card to Guest Services and it was a quick and easy process to get it changed.
While I’m on that topic, and having related most of the day’s excitement (and it was only 11am by then), I thought I’d discuss how it is to cruise without the Plus package after having only cruised with it since COVID. I miss it, I really do. But what I really miss is the ability to drink alcohol and specialty coffee which is a separate thing altogether. Package or not, that wouldn’t change. G is still ordering drinks and getting lattes, and it’s costing him less than $30 a day. But I can’t have any of that, so it would be a total waste for me. And I miss having wine with dinner and hot beverage choices other than herbal tea. I am also weary of having to review and get G’s drink charges (and my few Perriers) corrected. There have been several errors, and while there were errors when we had the packages, they were easier to identify. So it would be tempting to get a package next time just to avoid that, but, really, it wouldn’t make economic sense at all. When G travels solo, he’ll probably always get the Plus package. At least he is making his way through the Elite minibar package. If he gets Plus, it rarely gets touched.
So, back to today…we went to lunch in Botticelli and were able to get a large table for two. Love it when that happens! I had been avoiding the Cobb salad because it has bacon, but tried it today. Don’t avoid it for that reason. There was the tiniest bit of bacon on it, easily removed, and, served with salmon it made a healthy and delicious lunch.
I napped a bit in the afternoon, having been up early and stood in the cold rain for hours. By late afternoon the sun was out and the air temp was warming up and I dressed more lightly for the evening, and, since we were skipping the Princess Theater tonight (a magician), even left the blankets behind. Instead, after dinner, we sat in the warm sunshine on the Promenade Deck until we decided to change out of dinner clothes and after that sat on the Terrace Deck for a long time. Love our cabin location!! We were the only ones anywhere back there for a couple of hours, and enjoyed the sun and solitude. But with sunset being after 11pm, we didn’t stay up that late. I’m not sure we could ever before say that in our lives, that we couldn’t stay up for sunset. Harious!
