Day 18: At Sea

I was determined not to get up early today, determined not to eat breakfast, not to drink (very much), not to have anything sweet. Yeah, that lasted until I first opened my eyes at 7am. G was already out running, but he kinda woke me when he came back to the cabin and showered. I didn’t feel like a ball of energy, but it was a sea day. I didn’t have to!

He wanted to go to breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room. Huevos rancheros were on the breakfast menu, and I do love me some Mexican food, so I ate that (but apparently I neglected to take a pic of the menu or the food…sorry!).

We returned to the cabin where I laid back down and slept almost until lunch. What the heck?!? I do enjoy my sleep, even at home, but here on the ship with this too soft Princess Wonder Bed mattress that doesn’t agree with me, I seem to be missing out on the deep z’s I need to awake feeling rested.  I’m hoping the mattress next cruise is a lot better.  And by better I mean firmer. 

I wasn’t one bit hungry for lunch but waiter Michael had told me this morning that paella was on the menu (he definitely knows my food preferences by now). And it was. It just wasn’t like any paella I’d ever had. I ate the shrimp and two squid circles and called it lunch. 

Paella?

And that is where the day definitely went off the rails. G had sat and watched me eat paella, but he wanted Carolina BBQ and slaw from the Trident Grill so we went to the Lido Deck for that. Just for the record, the Carolina BBQ is NOT real eastern Carolina BBQ (IYKYK) but it is improved from what it used to be and the way I am with seafood, G is with BBQ. 

I ordered a beverage through Ocean Now delivery while I was sitting there, waited 20 minutes while it was prepared and then ready to be delivered…and then it was cancelled. G instead went to the bar to get us both a drink and brought us something blue and creamy (Blue Hawaiian?) and there went my no sugar and no alcohol resolutions in one drink. And then he added ice cream, and what a food fest the day was turning into. 

But it gets worse. By then it was 3pm, and all I had done all day was eat and sleep, and we decided to go to afternoon tea in the Concerto Dining Room for the first time only to see our junior waiter Matthew from Zimbabwe. We adore him. Naturally, we had to have a scone while we were there and there is nothing as superfluous as afternoon tea at 3pm when lunch #1 is at 1pm and lunch #2 is at 2pm, with ice cream at 2:30pm too, and dinner at 5pm. 

Ugh. 

That is how I came to have just ratatouille for dinner (love it!)…but had to have my favorite pavlova for dessert, too. 

We have a meeting time of 7am tomorrow morning for our excursion in Grand Cayman, which should be illegal but apparently isn’t. We’ll be joining our next door table mates (our Russian American friends) and can’t wait to spend some more time with them.  We are all set to phone each other in the morning to make sure we’re up.  G wanted to go to tonight’s entertainment (a juggler) but I returned to the cabin to pack a backpack for tomorrow and when I got here I saw a notice that clocks are going back an hour overnight (the final time change of this cruise) so I probably could have squeezed in the show, but instead I’m getting this post written, and that’s a very good thing too, since we have to hit the ground running tomorrow morning. 

And, finally. to answer a couple of questions that I’ve been emailed…I am feeling totally recovered, thanks for asking. I came prepared with decongestants, expectorants, cough suppressants, antihistamines, and throat lozenges and treated myself with just an expectorant and throat lozenge. I also took COVID tests four days in a row but I’m done doing that now.   Our next door neighbor (the one in the adjoining cabin with the air literally screaming between our cabins despite the duct tape as I type this) was quarantined for three days with a sinus infection, which I’ve never heard of before on a ship, but I clearly don’t have that. 

I’m assuming I just had a simple cold (they still exist). I’m also convinced cruise ships are Petri dishes so (Rosanne) do take every precaution. We also left home with over 200 Wet Ones wipes and use them after touching a menu, but it’s the airborne germs that are harder to avoid, and I’ve concluded that most of them get spread sitting in the Princess Theater waiting for a show. 

It will be interesting to see what happens with the number of coughs on the upcoming shorter cruise. 

Day 17: At Sea

Oh, sweet sea day!  When I joined G at breakfast this morning I announced that I was so happy not to have to get off the ship today and the people at the next table laughed and said they felt the same way. 

Sunrise pic by G

We awoke early, which is not a surprise. I was asleep before 7pm last night. G went off to do his morning walk/run, and I left the cabin shortly thereafter, but went directly to Guest Services to get my Medallion taken care of. Sure enough, the battery was dead.

At breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room,  I was so excited to see, on this morning’s menu, blueberry pancakes. Yum!  I don’t usually allow myself to have a sweet breakfast (because I’m hungry two hours later if I do) but today was a sea day so food availability would never be an issue. A mimosa, a cappuccino, orange segments and blueberry pancakes…life really doesn’t get much better than that. 

Somehow, I forgot to take a photo of the mimosa or the cappuccino or the blueberry pancakes. 😆

I had two blog posts to get caught up on and giving myself some grace on writing these has made all the difference in choosing to continue to blog. When I think of all those nights when I would force myself to finish the post du jour before I fell asleep, because the next day was also going to be busy with sightseeing…well, I’m not quite that intense any longer. 

Thank you to those who have emailed me, and some of you are suggesting stories for me to tell (because you know me so well). Sheila, I even heard from Steph and Peter, 20 years after that magical Sapphire Princess transpacific cruise to Sydney during its inaugural season. That was one of the best, wasn’t it?

Not to belabor this point, but it is a huge topic of conversation onboard:  it is HOT and muggy, both outside and on most of this ship. There are occasional pockets on the ship where we can feel the AC, but the elevator shafts and lobby areas are crazy. We are leaving our room thermostat set to almost as cold as it goes, so we have at least one place where we can count on being comfortable. Last night when we came back to the cabin, G walked out into the balcony and within 5 seconds the mirrors and countertops were all fogged up. G says he doesn’t remember the ship feeling warm at all last year, and said that the Princess Theater was, instead, always freezing. I’m sure things will cool down as the weeks go by. 

Also, because I forgot to mention it last night, Yacht Haven Grande was empty except for one yacht yesterday. My guess is that all the mega yachts are hanging out further south until hurricane season passes, but it would be interesting to see if it fills up like it used to later in the season. 

I’ve eaten all the collard greens on board. They served me cabbage and I was just as happy. 

Fish street tacos and a margarita. Again. It’s just that good. 

Back to today…I had not gotten to The Enclave for a couple of days, not wanting to spread any germs, so I made up for lost time this afternoon. There were only two of us there, quite a change from earlier in the cruise, and it was wonderful. When the bubbles in the thallasotherapy pool turned off, I was able to just leave them off and hang out a little while longer. I usually use the showers in the locker room when I am done, because they are huge and have a rain shower head in the ceiling, and I can also blow my hair dry right there in the locker room, freeing up our cabin bathroom with the bathtub shower for G. 

I skipped Crooners tonight and we went right to dinner at 5pm. It was a formal night menu without being a formal night, and, gosh isn’t that a wonderful thing?  Tonight’s Princess Theater performance was production show Born to Dance, and that is one of my very favorites, and, seriously, if you’re fussy about seats you need to be there for that one an hour before show time. And that just reminded me of a story I can relate later in the post. 

Salmon starter

Escargot

I love the NYC video they show for 90 minutes or so before Born to Dance starts. G has obviously seen this more often and more recently than I have, and he would predict who was going to next appear on the video. “Watch for Yellow Pants”, “Here comes White Face”. The video loop repeats every so often and it’s fun to watch for characters to reappear.  It’s a brilliant way to keep an audience occupied while they wait for an hour and even longer for a show to begin. 

Yellow Pants

Do people really walk around NYC dressed like this?

And this yawn. Harious!

Born to Dance is just as wonderful as I remember it, and we sit in the front row where we can really see how hard these dancers are working and how much they appear to love what they’re doing. Huge standing O at the end. Loved it!

The Wheelhouse for Derek Dishington’s first set was next, then back to the Piazza for G’s ice cream. There was music and dancing in the Piazza, but we didn’t linger. By 10:30pm, we were back in the deliciously cool cabin. 

And finally, a quick story. On that Sapphire transpacific cruise, things were getting kind of heated on all those days at sea. It seemed like every port day, people were being put off the ship for fighting, and we’d see some senior guy looking sheepish hauling his luggage off the ship while his wife looked absolutely pi$$ed as she followed him. Elevators were a huge source of contention; fights also broke out at the gaming tables, but saving Princess Theater seats was the largest source of altercations. One night, after a particularly nasty fight had erupted, CD Alastair Greener (what a gem he was) came out on stage to introduce the show wearing a combat helmet and we all roared. People tend to think of young cruisers on Carnival as being the issue, but old men and too many sea days just don’t mix. We’ve been very lucky this cruise. 

I think G should get his hair and beard cut like this.

 

Cristian is getting his law degree!  He’s a wonder. 

Day 16: St. Thomas, USVI

The Regal Princess arrived in St. Thomas at dawn today, 7am, but we had to clear US immigration as this was the ship’s first stop in the US after spending the summer in Europe. Oh my, what a cluster that was almost destined to be. The Sapphire Princess arrived after us and was berthed just behind us, but its guests were off and running before immigration was even underway on our ship. 

Sidebar:  We actually had that Sapphire Princess cruise as well two or three others booked before it went down to South America for the winter. I’m not sure when or why we changed our minds on them, but it was quite a while ago as our sights had been solely on the Regal for six or seven months. 

We had received letters in our cabin a few days ago that we were to go through US immigration in Group F and that they anticipated it would be 8:15am or later. I have no idea how many groups there were- the highest I saw was M- but we initially had no plans for the day so group F was fine with us. We went to breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room (we call it Al’s Diner) and planned our day while we ate. 

Since we were docked at Havensight, we decided to try to get to St. John, preferring the longer ferry ride by going directly from Charlotte Amalie instead of the shorter ride from Red Hook.  There was a public ferry leaving at 10am for St. John, and a return ferry at 3:45pm. That sounded workable, though we might have had to take a taxi to the Charlotte Amalie waterfront depending on our immigration timing. Then we looked at the Princess excursions using the app and found ‘St. John on your own’ that left at 11am. We are still trying to use up on board credit, so that one sounded perfect. 

G ran down to the Shorex Desk to buy the tickets and I went to the cabin to start packing for the day. He called me (St Thomas!  We had phone service!) and told me we had to be immediately walked through immigration with an officer as they didn’t want anyone holding up shore excursions due to immigration delays. When I joined them on Deck 5, I was shocked at the mass of humanity in the Piazza. People were packed everywhere waiting for their letter to be called. We were led to the front of line and and cleared and then had a short while to return to the cabin to finish packing for the day. 

We later heard that some people were still waiting around noon to get cleared. Moral of the story:  either book a ship’s excursion or just avoid the process until they call for last and final passengers (you can go after your letter, but not before). Or don’t book a transatlantic cruise with a US port before the disembarkation port. 

When we walked off the ship, we were assaulted by that same hot, muggy air we’d had in Antigua. The large ferry boat was a short walk from the ship, but some people were struggling even with that distance due to the heat. We opted to sit on the upper, open level and I applied a second layer of sunblock while we waited to leave. I had to laugh. G’s yellow shirt, our Tilley hats and Teva Toachi 2s (no longer available), my buckets of sunscreen…it’s been years since we cruised this side of the Caribbean but we fell right back into old patterns. 

Upper ferry deck seating


Sapphire and Regal Princess

St. Thomas coast line

The ride to St. John is always a beautiful one, and, because we did it as part of an excursion, it was narrated today with lots of good info (though we heard only part of it up on the open deck). Sadly, Jeffrey Epstein’s Great St. James and Little Saint James islands could be seen on the starboard side, and I thought about how many times we sailed past those islands with no idea about what was happening there. They were recently sold for $125M and the money is being used to settle his many lawsuits. 

Once we arrived at Cruz Bay on St. John, the heat quickly squashed any thoughts we might have had about walking around. Instead we jumped on an open taxi for a two hour tour of the island for $35pp. We’ve done this tour several times in the past, but it gives great views of several beaches and neighboring islands as well as provides interesting narration. In fact, driver Kevin was an excellent guide, probably the best we’ve ever had on St John. 

Our St. John taxi

Cruz Bay, St. John

Cancel Bay Beach

Trunk Bay


A shower just offshore

Driver Kevin

Trunk Bay

Maho Bay

We saw a few donkeys and one deer in the National Park

My cousin lived and worked on St. John and I remember two things in particular that she told me. First is that whatever you might need from a store, even if it’s just a roll of toilet paper, it costs $50 (15 years ago) just to get you and your car to St. Thomas and back. And when our dads passed way just two weeks apart in July 2010, and we were all in NW Ohio and SE Michigan for few weeks, she said that the heat and humidity on St. John was nothing compared to what we were experiencing.  So having been raised there, I really should be used to it. But I’m not. 😉

We chose to sit inside the ferry on our return where it was shaded and air conditioned. Once back on St. Thomas, a couple of people had a tough time walking the short distance from the ferry to the ship, and we were getting cold water from the crew to take back to them. We purchased the excursion very quickly this morning, and I’m not sure the walking part was adequately spelled out, because some people struggled. The heat didn’t help. 

There wasn’t enough time to go to the spa to shower, so I used our mini suite shower and thought again that we may be moving to an inside cabin next cruise, but I won’t be totally unhappy about that. 

Our Restaurant Manager Roxanna had a special Indian dish, chicken vindaloo, prepared for me tonight, and, oh my, that was so delicious. The same cousin who lived on St. John got me hooked on Indian food, though I rarely have it at home. 

This caprese salad was a disgrace. 

Heirloom tomatoes? No, unripe tomato slices and two halves of a cherry tomato

Basil?  No, tiny (very) piece of arugula

Chicken vindaloo made special for me 💙

I was wiped out after dinner, and decided to skip tonight’s comedian in the Princess Theater. The shows were 30 minutes early to allow for tonight’s Deck party. There was never any thought of making it to that. G did go to the show (he said it was a country music comedian and that he was good). I returned to the cabin where my medallion would not open the door. Grrr. 

There is a bit of a story here. Both of our medallions were getting sluggish a couple of days ago. We went to Guest Services where they determined G’s battery was dead but mine was fine. I told them I was staying on for the next cruise, and asked if they could just replace my battery now because it certainly wouldn’t last for the next cruise and they wouldn’t do that. So mine had continued to be sluggish and required me to hold my wrist up to the unlock panel until last night when it quit altogether. Luckily, steward Blinson was nearby and let me in, but I had to remember to get to Guest Services again first thing tomorrow morning. 

Apparently G texted me from the Princess Theater before the show even began, but I was already asleep. He returned to the cabin afterward and watched Monday Night Football on TV and I still didn’t wake up. Yep, I was that tired. One port, just one day in port wore me out. Times have certainly changed.