Day 11: At Sea

The weather gets warmer (and more humid) every day, and today we even had more sun. Even without paying any attention to the navigational stats, it’s clear we’re heading south. I went to The Enclave this morning, and then, for the first time (can you believe this?) I made it out on the Lido Deck where the chair hogs were out in force.  Something loud and Tom Brady-related was on MUTS, and despite the football theme, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. We were sitting off to one side where I couldn’t see the screen and it was no different than having the TV on as background noise at home (which cutting the cable has happily ended). 

I mentioned in the last post that I was having a drink on the Lido Deck while G had a burger from the grill and I finished up yesterday’s blog post. Despite food all around, I still prefer to have lunch in the Allegro Dining Room, so we went there as soon as G was done eating, which led to this year’s first time commenting, “Hurry up and finish eating so we can go to lunch”.  It never fails to be said at least once every year. 

Today I had the summer roll

and the poke bowl, which I love. 

Something fun (last night’s Captains Circle party, being on the Lido Deck, deleted my social battery completely, and I actually returned to the cabin, sat on the balcony (did I mention we have foot stools?), put on my sleep mask and slept for an hour or so, which was just what I needed. I awoke refreshed and ready to be social again.

Also signaling that it might be time to take a break is my Check Liver Soon light, which is flashing and alarming a bit more every day. I actually had eight drinks today, but didn’t finish half of them. Still, I now know quite clearly what my limit is (4 or 5). Much of my consumption is done while sitting in the Wheelhouse every evening listening to live music, so I just need to switch to Perrier while I do that.  Or cut out Crooners before dinner. I really should just stick with wine at dinner. 

G convinced me to accompany him to the third Captains Circle party tonight, but, it turned out, MTGuests 1 and 2 were also there. We used to not like it when none of the top three most traveled (and sometimes the captain, too) were not at the parties and so we make an effort to show up if we can. Apparently others feel the same, and it made for another nice evening. 

After the party, we grabbed a quick dinner in the Concerto Dining Room (we had to…it was cioppino and key lime pie night), but skipped the Princess Theater show, because magician. Instead, we chose to see one of the production show vocalists, Leo Rowell, do his own show in the Vista Lounge backed by the Regal Princess orchestra. It was the first time he had performed his show, called A Singer’s Journey, and it was excellent. 

Sea scallion and shrimp cocktail

Cioppino (my favorite)

Key lime pie

I always want to ask them to save the leftovers for me

It was only 9:30pm when the show ended, but we were worn out. I think that’s the less familiar side of moving clocks back most days on a crossing. Yes, we get to sleep a bit more, but 9:30pm now was after midnight a few days ago and we feel it. 

And before I fail to mention it again, as I did last night, we were at the Captains Circle party last night and who appeared in front of us but Cristian. Cristian, our best cabin steward ever (though Awesome Ambrish is a very close second). Cristian was our steward on our first long series of cruises, for 100 nights on the Emerald Princess 13 years ago. We saw him again on the Ruby in Australia in 2019 where he was a supervisor. Well, he is now Rooms Division Manager on the Regal and just started this contract, so he’ll be here the whole time we are. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are for him, and how happy it makes us to see that Princess is promoting good people. 

(Now I’m a mission to get a certain junior waiter promoted to waiter. Fingers crossed this works.)

Day 10: At Sea

Today was a very fun, extremely social day, but it was also the first day that sitting on our balcony was comfortable all day, and I’ve learned that’s a great place to go to recharge my social battery. 

I mixed things up a little today, going to The Enclave first thing this morning instead of my usual after lunch visit. G went to a Q and A session at 11am with the captain and we met up afterward in the Wheelhouse Bar where I was drinking by 11:30am. Alcohol on an empty stomach before lunch…yeah, this can’t continue. 

My usual collard greens starter at lunch…

…followed by tortilla soup…

…and my favorite fish street tacos. 

I spent most of the afternoon sitting in our balcony and trying to fix my Hotmail accounts. All of them decided to stop working on the same day, regardless of device. I must have logged in, attempted to re-authenticate, and changed the password at least ten times to no avail. I really wouldn’t have sweat it too much but for the email notifications I receive when my credit cards have been used. Oh, and the email Princess sends us when they change our cabin at the last minute. I kinda sorta found a workaround solution using Safari but I wasn’t happy about it. Nor about the amount of time I spent working on it. At least (and I thought this a hundred times) the WiFi I was using was “free”, fairly fast and unlimited. 

Last night there were two Captains Cirvle parties for this cruise, and we were honored to be the third most traveled guests on board.  

Ok, I’m dying here. I’m typing this post sitting with G on the Lido Deck, again having a drink before noon on an empty stomach. And somehow I turned on dictation mode and this is literally what I was saying.  I was drinking and talking about the bars we haven’t gotten to yet. 

“Why haven’t we gone there (to Bellinis) yet? I haven’t done that.  What’s that bar? Good good spirits? I haven’t done that yet either.”

There is no hope for me. 😂

Anyway, back to last night’s party. All three most traveled numbers ranged from 1536 to mid-1600 days. G had met an 2012 Air Force Academy grad at the veterans get together on board.  He is PCSing from England to Washington DC, and is on board with his family. We invited him and his wife to be our guests at the party and it was fantastic to meet a Major with so much going for him (he just earned his PhD at Oxford and will be working at the Pentagon).

I hadn’t seen Captain Fabrizio Maresca for ten years, since he was the captain on the Pacific Princess in French Polynesia. I wasn’t sure he’d remember me (let’s just say I’ve changed, most noticeably my hair color) but he did and it was wonderful to see him again.  We’ll be having MTG luncheon with him in a few days so we can get caught up. 

We went from the party to the Princesses Theater for vocalist Peter Grant, who sang in the style of the Rat Pack and who was accompanied by the Regal Princess orchestra and his partner, who, as it turns out, is the violinist who performed two nights ago. 

And that is how it was 8:30pm by time we finally got to dinner, for another great Italian night menu. There was also fresh made penne arrabbiata which I ordered topped with shrimp. We chatted with the couple next to us until 10pm , and despite that late (for us) dinner, I was asleep about ten minutes later. 

Seafood antipasto

Parma greens

Day 9: At Sea

I may have retired to our room early last night, but I was up until the wee hours of the morning for the second night in a row watching football on my iPad.   The website below, which I got from my guys, is working perfectly on board (must survive all the pop ups for online gambling). 

https://the.streameast.app/v78

With not nearly enough sleep despite the extra hour we got last night, we made it to breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room. Our “two meals a day” theory fell by the wayside today as we’ve met amazing waiters and we want to return to see them time and again. In fact, if we miss a meal we almost have to present a note from home as an excuse. 😉

Keeping it light with fruit and a mimosa (naturally)

The Terrace Deck is G’s favorite hang out, and apparently the favorite of many of our fellow cruisers. There’s the same “save a chair” mentality that exists on the pool decks, though, frankly, it was the frequent deep coughs that kind of turned me off. How ironic that, at the same time the weather improved enough to enable sitting outside, the coughs are multiplying and deepening. So far so good with us though. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼

The rest of the day involved food, The Enclave and listening to live music in the Piazza and the Wheelhouse Bar. G also went to tonight’s Princess Theater show but it was a hypnotist and I consider life too short to watch hypnotists and ventriloquists. Instead we met up afterwards at the Wheelhouse Bar where we enjoy all the musical entertainment, especially the Lilo Duo. They are from Argentina and play lots of contemporary music. 

Today’s dining room lunch was the pub lunch menu

Salad with goat cheese- fantastic  Next time I will order two of these. Maybe three. I love big salads!!

Roasted red snapper -decent but a little dry

And, finally, McGee sent me his running stats for the last four weeks. He is a machine, and despite an injury (not running related) keeping him from competing right now, he still manages to log 100 miles a week. I don’t know how he does it, but I remain in awe of his commitment and ability. In fact, it reminds me of a story, perfect for today’s telling, that I’ll call Running Spikes and Rear End Collisions. 

On a very busy day in May 2022, McGee and McGuy’s separate high school sports required all day spectatorship in two different venues. McGee had a divisional track championship, with a few events spread over several hours. McGuy had a basketball tournament. We decided that I would start the day at McGee’s track meet and watch him run in two esrly events, go home for a short time and then drive downtown to the college campus where McGuy’s tournament was taking place. Meanwhile, their parents would go to McGee’s later track events and then when the meet was over, join me at the tournament.  It was a beastly hot day, and that early schedule outdoors followed by an air conditioned afternoon suited me just fine. 

The track meet was at a stadium perhaps 35 or 40 minutes away, and I left home at 7am because I knew that my only hope of finding a nearby parking spot would be to get there before the start time of 8am. I watched McGee compete and drove home. My plan was to have a quick breakfast and then head into town. As I walked into the house, McGee texted me. He had blown out one of his running spikes. Help!

Fortunately, I had at least minimal experience with running spikes repair. A couple of weeks earlier, he had brought one by for a repair, so I knew what I was going to need. I immediately felt bad that the repair hadn’t held, but later found out it was the other shoe that ripped, and much worse than the one I’d already fixed. 

I ran upstairs and grabbed embroidery floss, heavy duty but sharp pointed needles, thimbles, scissors and an old bath towel (those spikes are sharp!), packed a couple of water bottles and started to drive back to the track I’d just left. By then it was around 11am on a Saturday and traffic was fierce.  I was waiting at a light near home to turn left onto an expressway on ramp when I was rear ended by an SUV (larger than mine). Ugh. 

I got out of my vehicle and walked back, and the teen aged girl who was driving was already in a flood of tears. “I was just looking at my phone!”  I offered that maybe that wasn’t a great idea, which brought on more tears and then I realized that I was going to have to do the adulting here and suggested we pull into a shopping center parking lot nearby and I would report the accident. 

Luckily my SUV was driveable; hers was, too, and I found two small trees with a little shade to park under while we waited for the police. By the time we drove that short distance, her mother, father, grandmother, sister and brother were all showing up, with the adults sniffing around the back of my vehicle and saying things like, “Well, that’s not so bad” and “How old is this SUV anyway?”  

It took awhile for an officer to arrive, and meanwhile McGee was texting me for my ETA and telling me when his next event was taking place, and, yes, I was definitely stressing but I also sure as heck hoped I’d get a good story from this debacle. 

Finally, a police officer arrived and I explained that I was really sorry but I needed to be somewhere immediately and since it was obvious who was at fault, to her credit she took my information and got me away from the situation as fast as she could. 

So I drove the 40 minutes back to the track, but by the time I arrived, the stadium was packed and the closest parking was a 20 minute walk away. I texted McGee and he instructed me to drive to the back side of the stadium where he would meet me. I parked along the street where there was an uninterrupted eight or ten foot chain link fence enclosing the stadium. McGee was already there; he tossed his shoe up and over the fence and I sat in my vehicle (for shade) and started working on trying to do….something to make this shoe wearable and strong enough to race in. 

If you’ve never seen running spikes, they are basically mesh and a sole and spikes and little else. He had obliterated the mesh on the inside edge of the shoe, so I had to first use the embroidery floss to create a woven mesh, and then attach that mesh to the hard sole.

Even using a thimble was not strong enough to do that, so I tried using the road to push the needle but it was so hot the asphalt was swallowing it up and then I had to get the needle out of the blacktop. Finally, I saw that dented bumper on the back of my SUV and, with nothing to lose, used the steel to push the needle into the sole, over and over again. I closed the gap, tossed the shoe back over the fence, and it survived not only the rest of that day but got him a third place finish in the state championship two weeks later. 

I was so happy when he was recruited by a D1 college. I knew my running spike repair shop would be closing forever as he is now awash in new Nike swag every season. 

But there was still a basketball tournament to get to. I don’t know what made me happier:  watching McGuy’s team win their first and second games, or sitting down for a few hours in a cold gym on a 100° afternoon. 

These guys:  never a dull moment since 2003.

Day 8: Funchal, Madeira

There was much excitement last night about porting in Funchal today, and I think that everyone was looking forward to a stable ship just as much as beautiful Madeira. The Concerto Dining Room had been emptier and emptier the last two nights as many of our fellow guests were feeling the effects of the ocean motion. We were not similarly affected, but I found getting around on the ship pretty difficult. 

We awoke to a new experience this morning:  bright sunshine, warm temps and no wind whistling through the cabin. It was a beautiful morning and we actually stepped out on our balcony before we headed off to breakfast. Good things await us for the rest of this cruise, and I might pack away my cold weather gear on an upcoming sea day. Yay!

I made it to breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room morning!

(I really just needed to get my Michael and Valenton fix. They are so good to us.)

Caribbean sunrise with berries on the side

Veggie egg beater omelet

So happy Princess has egg beaters again!

G was feeling sleepy this morning, which actually worked out perfectly. While he returned to the cabin to catch a little more sleep, I wanted to get to Mass on this Sunday morning, and my research had indicated that there was a church within walking distance of the pier, the Chapel of Our Lady of Penha de Franca, and that they had a Mass in English at 10am with a social gathering afterwards. I walked down the pier and up a steep hill (that wasn’t shown on the map!) and when I had just about reached the church, two couples were walking back my way and told me it was closed. 

Closed on a Sunday?  Very strange, but information was posted on the door about Mass at the Funchal Cathedral, a 20-minute walk away. They started walking but I knew I’d never make it in time for the 10am Mass, and grabbed a taxi returning to the port to take me instead. I felt so badly…I told the driver we might stop and pick up others on the way, and looked for these couples walking along the waterfront road but there were so many couples and I had only met them for minute. I never saw them again. Having ridden there in a taxi, I knew it would take more than 20 minutes to walk, but there was another Mass at 11am and hopefully that worked out for them. 

I arrived as the church bells were ringing. This was a very old cathedral (late 15th century!!), but still beautiful. The stone floors really showed their age, as they were worn and grooved. Fortunately, Mass was in English,  and speedy, too, with that next Mass starting at 11am. And talk about another grief bomb (as dear reader Fran called them in her email to me)…the entire time Mom was on hospice care, I played a Spotify Catholic instrumental playlist on my iPhone in her room.  It seemed to bring her peace and was calming for everyone who visited, too. Having heard that at least a hundred times, I’ll never forget it, and three songs from today’s Mass (Done Nobus Pacem, Panus Angelicus and Ave Maria) were on that playlist. 

This was our third or fourth visit to Madeira,  and on all of our previous visits we had toured outside the city of Funchal, so we decided to stay in the city today.  I had texted G to let him know that my plans had changed and I was at the cathedral further from the ship, but quite close to the cable car that we planned to ride, and that I would meet him there after Mass. I walked, he ran (literally) from the ship and we rode the cable car up to the first stop where we bought tickets for the botanical gardens. This was more trees than flowers, so we next hired a taxi to go to the tropical gardens and what a ride that was. 

Driver August took us along the same road that the toboggan baskets the island is known for run on, but they don’t operate on Sundays. Very narrow, very steep roads edged with tall stone walls (that act as bumpers), this was the ride of a lifetime and so much fun. We spent an hour wandering around the beautiful tropical gardens while August waited for us and then drove us back to the ship. 

The cable car, exactly like a ski gondola 

The tobaggon road

Madeira has a semi-tropical climate and we saw many unfamiliar flowers

Building roads on Madeira must be extremely expensive due to the steep hillsides. Check out that elevated road and tunnel. 

We had both been overdressed for the day, me because I started with church and G because he didn’t knew it would be so hot and sunny, and changed into shorts and sat on the Terrace Deck and drank until it was time for dinner. The scenery from there was spectacular. But I was wearing down at dinner, and knew I would be skipping tonight’s violinist in the Princess Theater. 

I think the vegan menu was our first repeat, which makes sense as it was day 8 of the cruise and I think there are 7 different menus,

I had already had two margaritas on the Terrace Deck, and stayed with that theme. 

I started with ceviche…

…had a very spicy guacamole

…and actually had beef fajitas. 

Serving sizes are very small, but I kind of like that as I can try more courses. 

We asked for the dessert menu tonight (we usually don’t) as soufflé was an option. 

And that was my evening. Sore, tired and tipsy, I didn’t even go to The Enclave tonight. Instead, I changed into jammies and enjoyed our balcony as we sailed along the southwestern coast of Madeira. G must have sat in the just in case seats at the show, because he joined me soon after. It was an early evening for both of us, and we were going to move clocks back an hour overnight, the first time of many on our crossing.