Day 16: Antigua

Regardless of how much we enjoy the sea days on a transoceanic crossing (a LOT), there is something very exciting about finally reaching land. And when that land is the beautiful island of Antigua…well, that makes for a really good day.

It was mostly sunny today with a few billowing clouds, and hot, but not as humid as I recall it being when we stopped here last year on the crossing. We were in port with the Grand Princess, which I believe is doing cruises out of San Juan. It was fun to see the ship again for the first time in over ten years, especially as we are booked on it next year. We took a good long look at the back decks, as we have booked our favorite cabin just inside from the Terrace Deck and will be living back there.

After breakfast in Snobatini’s, we gathered up a few things for a beach day (yay!), much easier to do since, unlike when we spent the winter in the Caribbean, we didn’t bring floaties, cooler, snorkel gear, beach mat or uninsulated bottles full of ice. Just two towels, eye drops, sunscreen and, as always, an inhaler.

Walking off the ship to find a taxi, we instead found a water taxi making trips to Dickenson Beach. G had just this morning said he wished we could find a harbor tour with a little narrative on the history and forts surrounding the harbor, so, bam, two birds with one stone. Emron and Rocco told us we were the first two large ships in port this year (the Regal was last year, also), so I think their business plan still needs some hashing out, but for $10pp (same as a taxi) we got a most enjoyable ride to the beach, passing Fort James and Runaway Beaches on the way.

As we passed the remains of Rat Island Fort, Emron pointed out that it was totally unrestored and no one went there. Au contraire! Click on the Rat Island Fort label on this blog to read about the time I was dragged through foot high undergrowth on one of our forced marches. In fact, we have walked along both sides of St. John’s Harbour in the early years of this blog. Lots of memories today!

That water color!

Dickinson Beach was busy today. I can’t imagine it when there are three ships in port. I was a little concerned about what the current price for two chairs and umbrella rental would be. What used to be $20 or $25 is now $30, not too outrageous. Beers and rum punches served out of a cooler were $5, and for under $100 we had a most enjoyable day.

We’re no longer doing forced matches (well, at least not right now), and other changes these days include the helping hands extended my way to climb up and down ladders and my compulsion to survey the wave breaks on a beach to determine the most level point of entry and exit. Damn, time really is marching on. But we both returned to the ship in one piece, a smidge more colorful (though not burnt) and very happy with the way we spent our day.

Emptying pockets of wet currency, dumping sand when we peeled off swimsuits (at least I had the good sense to do it in the shower, unlike the Antigua visit years ago when I dumped a sandbox on the carpet and wrote a note of apology to Ambrish, something he remembered years later), returning to the ship ravenously hungry after spending the day in the water and skipping lunch…yep, we’re in once-familiar territory again. Pure joy.

Money laundering- more memories

Back on the ship, G went directly to the Terrace Deck but I simply had to shower the grit off of me. We had already decided to skip the dining room tonight to watch from the open decks as both the Regal and Grand Princess sailed. We believe that Antigua sail aways are the prettiest ones in the Caribbean, rivaled only by those from Crown Bay (no longer used by Princess). I got a fajita salad (my favorite buffet food) and chips and guacamole and joined G in the comfy seating on the back of the ship.

We heard the Grand’s sail away party, watched as it slowly released its lines, and then were confused as it put a few a back out. Whatever the reason, it did still sail just before we did, after some horn fanfare back and forth between the sister ships.

Shortly after we sailed, we crashed in the cabin. Tonight’s Princess Theater entertainment was another antic-driven show, and it was easy to pass on that.

As for the state of our cabin…a fan was run in there all day and the carpet has pretty much dried in the bedroom area and is only a little damp near the bathroom. The shower has held up through two uses, so we think the issue is resolved. The worst casualty was my beloved green silk kimono, which has been on nearly as many cruises as I have. Somehow today, in the blast from the fan that ran for hours while we were out, it partially slipped off its hanger, got wrapped around another hanger, and a foot long gash was ripped in its side. Fortunately it ripped along a side seam, and I believe I can repair it if I re-cut both side seams to even it up. Not happy but resigned. These things happen. Complimentary dinner in a specialty restaurant would be welcomed, but no recompense has been forthcoming. We are lucky that it displaced us once we had arrived at a port and not while we were in the midst of multiple sea days.

And ending on a different note…

It’s the next morning as I prepare this post, and I was in Sabatini’s well before G this morning. Somehow I turned on the microphone about the time he showed up, and it captured our conversation, which was all me since he was still half asleep. Here you go; an intimate look at our life on a ship.

“They’ve been coming over to check on me every two minutes and then I said don’t worry about me over here, but I know you wanna get coffee. He probably saw you come in and is bringing it. I’m so happy I enjoyed yesterday so much. It almost has me thinking we should go back to the Caribbean a little more Although that’s the best of the islands I mean that really is Dominica Grenada St. Lucia not so much. We got the best I mean, yeah did you see what I sent you about Mexico last night. We gotta be really careful. I mean, actually especially since he’s blowing up drug boats with perhaps innocent people maybe they’re drug boats maybe they’re fishing boats we don’t know we no longer care in this country but anyway I suppose they’re particularly sensitive about that right now for me thank you but I know he’ll thank you so tomorrow we have a bridge tour I don’t know what time that is, but I’m sure it’s at a time that will not have us getting out of bed at 6 o’clock in the morning. I put the laundry out this morning. You look wonderful babe. Your the best looking guy on the ship, except for that Argentinian piano player in Neptune‘s groove with that ponytail, he would give you a run for your money”.

Run on travel opinions, political commentary, ego boosting and verbal lusting from Yellow Fish in the morning.

I mean.

😆😆😆😆😆

Day 15: At Sea

Today at sea was rather uneventful, at least until dinner time, with a few fun activities thrown in. Breakfast in Snobatini’s accompanied by stellar service, lunch in the Allegro Dining Room accompanied by stellar service, dinner in the Symphony Dining Room accompanied by stellar service, yada, yada, yada…you know the routine.

I went to a 10am enrichment lecture on the cultural and historic importance of the Silk Road, which I found fascinating. A fellow guest said she thought that the speaker was a bit too professorial in style, but that’s exactly what I like most about her. Well, that and the fact that she presents such interesting topics.

Peppered throughout today (and yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before…), the discussions about if and where to travel beginning in January have been non-stop. Who else spends hours on a cruise deciding where to go next? These are basically “escape winter” cruises, no new ports for us and we may just stay on the ship in the ports that are offered. Therefore, it really doesn’t matter to me where we go, and it really came down to preferred ship and cruise length. Today was a final payment day, and, in the end, we decided to stick with our original plan, booked a few months ago.

For those wondering, it looks like we’ll be on ships for another 63 days this winter, possibly more, artfully shoehorned in between holidays at home and indoor track championships. Sadly, I may not do any further blogging this year. Just considering playing hooky makes me positively giddy, thinking about what I might do with an extra hour in every cruise day.

Today’s lunch in the Allegro Dining Room featured the pub lunch menu, which makes us both happy. G always chooses the fish and chips while I love the curry.

We went right from lunch to the Princess Theater to get “good” seats for the finals of The Voice of the Ocean. One of us is quite particular about our seating for that show. And the other is a very good wife. The singers did a brilliant job, all six of them, but the final one, a man from Anchorage, just blew us away with the opening notes of “You Raise Me Up”. No surprise…he won with a whopping 74% of the votes.

And here the day took a little turn. It was formal night, so we returned to the cabin to get showered and dressed for the evening to find it flooded. It was clear the issue originated in the bathroom, but we weren’t sure exactly where. We could see water coming up out of the shower drain, and it had overflowed the bathroom and run into the bedroom area. It didn’t appear to be sewage (thank God!) but we weren’t certain if it was clean or grey water. Someone from housekeeping responded to our call pretty quickly, and we sat on the beds as he called for backup. When he left to get a shop vac and a plumber, we threw on dressy clothes and fled the cabin.

We returned to a fan in the cabin (removed overnight, but I suspect it will be there every day until we disembark trying to dry out this carpet) and the issue, a burst pipe in the utility cabinet behind the toilet, repaired. Now we just have to refrain from tripping on the pool towels covering half of the floor in our cabin during our middle of the night bathroom trips.

I splurged tonight at dinner and we split escargot and I soaked up that delicious garlic butter with a garlic roll. My day was saved!

We had a dearth of entertainment options tonight, a mentalist in the Vista-less Lounge and a gymnastics duo in the Princess Theater. Well, it is the fifth of five days at sea, after all. We chose the mentalist and he wasn’t awful, and then, because we just felt too grody to mingle on a formal night, what with our nonexistent ablutions tonight, sat on the Horizon Terrace listening to the ship’s wake for awhile. And that is where I discovered the ship, which features a new brand of tea bags (Eilles) has rooibos tea. Rooibos tea! My favorite! Do all the Princess ships now have that brand of tea onboard? I hope so.

We move clocks back an hour tonight, and then tomorrow…land ho!



Day 14: At Sea

Breakfast in Sabatini’s

Morning destination lecture on Liverpool

MTG luncheon in Sabatini’s

Afternoon matinee performance by the Womacks

Dinner in the Symphony Dining Room

Production show Born to Dance in the Princess Theater

Princess World Orchestra in the Piazza

Today was about as perfect as a sea day gets.

I don’t usually go to breakfast on MTG luncheon days, but when breakfast is in Sabatini’s, I make an exception. Still, I limited myself to orange segments and mixed berries, just to get something in my stomach for that morning vitamin taking activity.

I got cleaned up early for the luncheon, and then went to the Princess Theater for Cruise Director Aaron’s talk on Liverpool, his home city. They have been presenting destination talks on cities obviously not on this cruise’s itinerary, just to fill the days, and today’s lecture served to whet my appetite for a trip to Liverpool (and maybe not by cruise; we’ve long talked about doing a land-based British Isles trip).

Lobster starter

I was so excited by my scallops entree that I forgot to take a photo!

Delicious for coconut lovers (we are)

We had missed singing duo The Womacks when they first performed a couple of nights ago, and so were happy to get a second chance in a matinee performance at 3pm. From there we had 30 minutes for a lie down before heading off to the PES Lounge and then dinner.

The lighting in this afternoon’s show was so impressive!

We had no right to eat anything for dinner, but Roxana had told us last night that she would be making penne arrabbiata again tonight, and there is always, ALWAYS room for arrabbiata. We even enjoyed one scoop of orange sorbet, because that’s another favorite.

Tonight’s Princess Theater entertainment was production show Born to Dance, my current favorite on the Regal. We got front row seats more than an hour early and the theater was full more than 30 minutes before showtime. Luckily, this one has the Times Square video lead in, and we were kept occupied watching for our favorite people (the penguin guy and the speedo and cowboy hat guy) to appear. Based on the LG GS phone ad in the video, we think it dates back to 2012.

Unfortunately, there was some technical issue with the video so it was closer to 8pm that the show began, and it was still lacking the backing video which made the stage a bit dark, but the cast persevered and, in reality, it provided more of a connection to the cast because there was nothing else to look at in the background. But it was harious to see CD Aaron do all but tap dance to keep the audience entertained while we waited.

We exited from the theater into the Piazza for the Regal Princess World Orchestra. It was very different from the rock concert on the Ruby but so much fun as we took a musical trip around the world, finishing up with Hey Jude and Uptown Funk. It was a very good evening after a very, very good day.

As predicted, the time changes are starting to catch up with us a little at the end of the day, as 10pm was 3am just a few days ago. Still, with just two more changes remaining before we arrive in Texas, I will miss our 25 hour days.

And, finally, the Blogger app and Hotmail worked again for me. I’m pretty sure it was a geographic issue. I was quite happy about that; I thought it would take cell service in St. Thomas to get them working again. I remember last year on the crossing I lost access to my bank accounts for a few days and then it magically reappeared.

Day 13: At Sea

Blogging life sent me another curveball this morning when I discovered had been logged out of the Blogger app on both my iPhone and iPad and was not able to log back in or reauthenticate my account. I also had been logged out of my Hotmail accounts and can’t get back in. I suspect the two issues, though one is Google and the other Microsoft Outlook are related, and possibly related to our location at sea. Interestingly, G was finally able to stream video last night that had been blocked due to geographic reasons. Perhaps time and location will resolve these issues; in the meantime I finished up yesterday’s blog using Safari (ergo the centered pics) and am posting today using the same. It’s just a battle using Safari to blog on mobile device so that’s why I don’t use it as my default method. 

Moving clocks back another hour last night (as we will again tonight) had us in Snobatini’s before 8am. That was a good thing, because when I looked at the Patter, I saw an enrichment lecture at 9am that I was very interested in on the historical relationship between the British and Greek royal families. I have recently read Gyles Brandreth’s biographies of Queen Elizabeth 2 and the Duke of Edinburgh so this lecture fit right in to those.

Following that, I returned to the cabin for some Kineon red light therapy and morning pill taking, and then accompanied G back to the Princess Theater for a Behind the Scenes with the Hotel Department at 11am.

Lunch was in the Allegro Dining Room (cobb salad with salmon) and then we went up to the Lido Deck to listen to party bad Gravity playing pool side. Except they were a no show, so G stayed for a hot tub visit and I went to the Sanctuary to cancel my reservation for Antigua afternoon. We have decided to go to a nearby beach that day, but I may try to reschedule the Sanctuary for St. Thomas or Grand Cayman

Today’s lunchtime pondering…why put vegan chicken on a Cobb salad with eggs, bacon and blue cheese? 😆

By then football games were about to start, so I returned to the cabin to watch NFL Sunday and the early games online. I could have at least listened to the games on the pool deck but it was pretty windy up there again today, and I really don’t want (actually, I should say NEED) the sun anyway. Speaking of football…how ‘bout that Broncos 4th quarter? Holy hot dog, that was exciting!!

It was so nice to return to our usual dining table with Berenice and Sebastian this evening. Two sweeter people do not exist anywhere.

Male vocalist Shane Hampsheir performed in the Princess Theater last night. He was so good that G returned for the 9:30pm show also. I would have, but 28 years cruising have resulted in a limited personal tolerance for Frank Sinatra songs (but he really was an excellent performer).

I finished the evening by listening to music in the Wheelhouse and fighting every urge to return to our cabin via the dessert area of the Horizon Court Buffet (success!).

Clocks are going back an hour again tonight. We will then be just hour ahead of EDT. Too sad! I really wish this utopic existence could last forever.

Day 12: At Sea

We didn’t move clocks back an hour past night, and so it was easy to sleep in a little. We had never seen so many guests in Sabatini’s for breakfast as this morning, but we still enjoyed the same attentive service we always receive. Even less food, though, just salmon and fruit for me, because I really wanted to go to lunch in the Allegro Dining Room.

The view from my table at lunch. Captain Traverso said in his noon announcement that there is a low pressure system north of us causing wind gusts of 20+ miles per hour and larger sea swells than we’ve experienced to date. Lunch was the salmon poke bowl for me.

My first salmon poke bowl of the cruise was even better than I remembered from last year.

G went to use a hot tub while I continued to try to figure out where we might be cruising in January and February. We’ve had something booked for months but are suddenly rethinking

Production show Bravo was performed again in the Princess Theater at 2:30pm this afternoon. Sure, we’d seen it already this cruise, but since we haven’t been to a Princess Theater show for three consecutive nights (and wouldn’t be going tonight) we spent a most enjoyable hour there. Since we missed Fiera (Ponta Delgado night), I hope they perform that one again too.

I spent another hour before the PES Lounge working an alternative plan about how to spend our January and February. We have a final payment due in two days, so we have a decision to make quickly. What we had in place is suddenly looking less appealing than another option, but it took being on this ship with these sea days to realize that. Thankfully, our original cruises were booked with refundable deposits. I continue to believe that non-refundable deposits will serve only to encourage us to refrain from booking what we consider to be “normal” cruises until the last minute. 

While I was working on that, I was also watching the Michigan v Washington game online. Small yay for that one; we’ll take whatever victories we can get this year. Since Streameast was finally shut down for good, I’m using https://tvpass.org/. It’s rather hit and miss as to whether a specific game will be offered, but I was lucky today.

It was nice to return to dinner tonight in the Symphony Dining Room with Berenice and Sebastian. Like our breakfast waiters in Sabatini’s, they simply could not be any sweeter to us. Tonight’s menus (including the vegan menu) had some of my very favorite items, and I had to work hard to choose, and then still ordered four things.

Grilled chicken salad

Green goddess salad with tofu

The ship had been a bit bouncier today, and that continued into the evening. In fact, it had been almost impossible to stand up straight around the Retreat Pool today, so strong was the headwind. I can’t imagine what the Sanctuary was like. Captain Traverso said there was a tropical storm north of us causing the trouble, with wind gusts over 20mph.

With the stellar entertainment choices of a juggler in the Princess Theater and a hypnotist in the Vista-less Lounge, we chose to listen to Argentinian band Neptune’s Groove in the Wheelhouse. All of the live music on the ship has been so enjoyable, which is good, because the entertainment has become a little weak during these many days at sea. 

Finally, thought I’d take some time today to discuss a myriad of items, totally unrelated but simply observations from over a week on board.

The ship had remained, at least from aural observation, a “well” ship, but we could sense that beginning to change today. The number, frequency and productiveness of coughs seem to be increasing, and it’s getting a bit scary to sit in a crowded Princess Theater. So far, we both seem to be unscathed. Please, may it continue!

I have spent this entire year trying to boost my immunity through nutrition, exercise, supplements and even aromatherapy oils that support a healthy immune system. I’ve brought one with me and place a small amount of it on a used dryer sheet in my pillowcase every night. I was quite proud of my efforts until my rheumatologist pointed out that, with autoimmune issues, my immune system has already set its sights on things I’d rather it didn’t, and there is no way of selectively boosting just the good immunity. Yeah, talk about a bubble buster. Still, I’ll see if this all helps. I’m tired of returning home from every. single. cruise with a bug.

We are experiencing a variant of washcloth-gate on this cruise that we are having fun unraveling (haha). When we first entered our cabin, we had two bath towels, two hand towels and two washcloths and I thought we were set. Then we used one washcloth to prop open the cabinet door where our refrigerator is located and pointed out to our cabin steward that is where it was. That evening we got just one washcloth. Connecting the dots, we switched out the refrigerator washcloth for a hand towel. The next morning we received just one hand towel. This went on for a couple of days…it was becoming obvious that our cabin had an allotment, and how we chose to use it was up to us. Amused by this, we tried using G’s beanie to prop open the door, and returned to a full compliment of towels in the bathroom. We had cracked the code.

Then I decided I’d like tissues on the nightstand, and used the extra box in the bathroom for that. When the bathroom box was empty, we received no more. So I took a few tissues out of the box on the nightstand and returned the remainder of the box to the bathroom. The box was then placed back in the bathroom dispenser by the steward . It’s obvious our cabin steward is doing his part to help Princess meet its cash flow goals, one towel and tissue at a time!