Day 48: At Sea

We are continuing to bounce our way across the North Pacific…bounce being the key word there. I think it may have been a little better this morning, at least there were a lot of people walking in the sun on the Promenade Deck. But by early afternoon the sun was playing hide-and-go-seek, there were intermittent squalls, the winds had increased and the Promenade Deck was closed off. 

It can stop anytime as far as I’m concerned, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to. I think this whole crossing, both directions with the exception of one day is going to be like this. 

I was up fairly early today. I think the ship’s movement was on my mind; I was having a dream where the Emerald Princess was encountering turbulence as it sailed across the sky, and it ran into a bell tower in Italy and broke it off. Really. Yeah, I think it’s starting to get to me. 

We went to both breakfast and lunch in the Botticelli Dining Room and in between, at 10:15an, there was something called Hotel at Sea in O’Malleys. That sounded different and interesting, and we were happy to see F&B Director Roy and his Food Supervisor and Beverage Supervisor and they talked about provisioning (watermelons provisioned in Honolulu cost 5x as much as watermelons provisioned in San Pedro!). 

Last turnaround day they got a pallet of food at the Emerald Princess that was supposed to go to a HAL ship in San Diego. Actually, the truck driver was confused and started to deliver his food to the Emerald Princess and one pallet came off the truck and got mixed in to everything else before they figured it out. Roy said in his 40 years with Princess, no two days have been alike. 

They all talked about the three special events this cruise (Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras) and how they’ve planned things to make each event special, like the special desserts and drinks they featured yesterday. It’s been really nice. 

A breakfast bonus 🌈

Waiter Romeo at lunch provided entertainment with his folded napkin creations. So clever!!

Lunch was followed by ukulele (what else?) but I was delighted when new friends Mary and Ed showed up bearing gifts. Ed is a talent with a 3D printer and air brush, and prints and paints the cutest ducks and other items, like textured heart ornaments and iPhone holders to use on plane tray tables. It was like Christmas for me and even better when they stuck around for a few songs and cheered me on.

In fact, it reminded my a great deal (alert: incoming story) of when I was a kid and had to practice piano every day. I started taking lessons at 5 years old, and my required practice time quickly grew to an hour a day, probably before I had the attention span to actually accommodate that. But it was the 60s, and a different time, and parents- at least my parents who were paying for my lessons- didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about my attention span. I was going to practice, dammit, before I could go out to play. So my friends would play in our front yard where they could hear me, and applaud after each song to keep me motivated so I didn’t end up losing play time altogether and, yeah, Mary and Ed brought back some fun memories today. 

With my new duck from Ed and Mary 

Angry Duck looks like I felt practicing piano 60 years ago 😂

The act of getting around the ship is wearing us out, and we returned to the cabin to rest until Elite Lounge and that was an experience. We positioned ourselves in Skywalkers where we could watch down the length of the ship as the waves crashed over the bow. They were impressive, kind of like fireworks. To be fair, we’ve twice seen them larger, where they crashed well above the Promenade Deck, both times in the Tasman Sea, but these are definitely the worst we’ve seen in this section of the Pacific Ocean. 

At this point in the cruise, I’m generally having salad topped with a protein (salmon tonight) for dinner

We don’t need to eat for at least a week when we get home 

Tonight’s Princess Theater entertainment was a magician, so we went right to the Piazza where we snagged front row seats for tonight’s Princess World Orchestra. It was fun to watch them set up, especially since we know many of the musicians by now. 

The Imperial Strings Duo

Where we usually are for Princess World Orchestra

Then we went directly right to Club Fusion for another candlelight concert, this time by new (to us) Groovy Tunes Duo from Argentina. The guitarist’s skills are incredible, and they play more contemporary (ie Prince) music. If you get a chance to hear them on a ship…GO!  Truly the best duo we’ve ever heard on Princess. Such a great venue for this type of concert, too. 

Another great entertainment day on the Emerald Princess. But, please, make the bouncing stop!

Day 47: At Sea

Happy Valentine’s Day! ♥️

I was moving so slowly this morning that my husband was long gone by the time I finally left the cabin, and the first person who wished me Happy Valentine’s Day was dear cabin steward Rocky, but he is cute and always smiling, so that was good, too. 

Today was the day I decided that I am too damn old to sit in a chair on the beach for hours drinking sugary alcoholic libations and think that I am going to feel just fine the next day. But it was sure fun while it lasted. 

I skipped breakfast all together and instead went to Fred Cink’s enrichment lecture, today in Cruising to the Comets. And here I have to chuckle a little. There was a recent discussion on Cruise Critic about the value (or lack of it) of on board enrichment lectures and anyone who doubts their ability to attract cruisers and hold their attention while simultaneously educating them way beyond anything we could grasp from the internet has never heard Fred Cink. He was on last year’s (or was it two years ago?) total eclipse cruise and is already booked for two more and I can’t imagine a more perfect pairing. 

I finally met up with G for lunch in the Botticelli Dining Room and ordered chicken and potato curry only because the menu stated that it would be served with condiments. Condiments!!  I was immediately imagining chicken korma-style condiments, and when it was delivered, no condiments were offered. Upon closer examination there were no condiments in the curry, either, so of course I had to ask. It took a few minutes (I imagined a cook in the gallery furiously finely dicing onion, tomatoes and peppers), but waiter Mieddy appeared with that glorious tray of all the good things, and I took some of everything except raisins (of course) and then extra cilantro and was so so so happy. It wasn’t korma, but I decided right then that the best part of korma is the condiments. Who knew?

But, as always, I had to leave G at lunch to get to today’s ukulele lesson and we are now warming up with songs that I struggled with just a few days ago, and that’s a confidence booster, which is good because we’ll soon be performing en masse for our end of cruise program so confidence boosting is a welcome thing. 

I swung by the World Fresh Marketplace after ukulele because I had heard about all the Valentine desserts that were being offered there and had to see them for myself. Yep, everything had a heart on it, and there were cakes covered in Britto inspired fondant and I’ve been a big Britto fan since before Princess went all Britto-crazy so I really enjoyed seeing them. 

This red velvet cupcake was very good

Or so I heard 😉

The bounciness we dealt with all day intensified by mid afternoon, and we opted to skip the Elite Lounge and instead go to the Piazza for the group renewal of vows by Captain McBain. Actually, we got pics of the renewal for this blog but didn’t actually renew our own vows because 1) we’ve done that many times in the past; 2) we didn’t want to have to try to stand up for the whole thing; and 3) our old vows hadn’t expired yet (you get one guess to figure out who said that). 

Smiling F&B Director Roy Kelly

Love that guy!

Valentine’s Day on the ship was made very special. The decorations were beautiful but they really went above and beyond with the menu, food and displays. 

We even had double heart brioche dinner rolls!

Hawaiian Ambassadors Brian and Rowena performing hula and Hawaiian music in the decorated Piazza

The Princess Theater entertainment tonight was the last production show we’d be seeing this cruise and the last night this cast would be performing together before they return home for vacation. Luckily, it was my favorite Rock Opera with guest rock tenor Connor Bogart (my guess is we’ll see him in his own show before the end of the cruise). 

Darling dancer Jorge singing (but not really mic-ed) 😉

I would have loved to return to see their final performance at 9pm, but, damn, it was bouncy at the front of the ship. I’m always amazed the cast can even perform (and still keep the lifts in the choreography). 

Instead we went to the World Fresh Marketplace just for coffee and if we thought the front of the ship on Deck 6 was bouncy, we hadn’t seen anything yet. Deck 15 in the very back was downright dangerous.  This, of course, caused us to second guess our cabin choice for future cruises, so, when we left the buffet we walked down one flight to Deck 14 and even that was an improvement (but, seriously, the paneling in the stairwell was creaking and groaning). Still, we went down to the cabins on Deck 5 just forward of the Piazza and they were like being on a different ship on a different ocean. The air was also very stale down there, which was a surprise, but, in thinking about it, we have very rarely ever stayed on a deck with no balcony cabins, which certainly promotes air flow in the corridors. In fact, on our current Deck 14, we have balcony cabins and the door to the Terrace Deck at the end of the corridor. It makes a big difference. 

So we scratched Deck 5 cabins off our list. I guess we will just bounce our way through several cruises next year. 

We returned to the cabin where I finally finished and published my Honolulu post, still leaving me a day behind. Tomorrow will have to be a two-post day!

After several tries, I gave up trying to get the photo banner at the top of this page to scan.

I got no time for that nonsense!

Day 46: Honolulu

If it’s a Honolulu post, you know it’s going to be late. Generally, my posts fall into one of two categories: I either have too much to write about and no time to write it or nothing to write about and all day to write it. Honolulu is always a little different; I have nothing to write about and no time to write it anyway. 😉. But here goes…

We were up fairly early (though it is so tempting to sleep in when the ship is docked and stable) and had breakfast on the Terrace Deck to enjoy the sunshine. We had sunshine!!  I texted my younger bother about seeing Todd Fournier in the Princess Theater the night before and he knew all about him. In fact, he knew all about his nine(!) brothers and sisters too, and said there were three of them at CCHS at the same time my brother was there, and his dad was a good friend of my aunt and worked for the same company where I met G and on and on…

Our view at breakfast

 

We priced an Uber and Lyft (half the price of Uber) to the Hale Koa and arrived there before noon, where we settled into a beach view table at the Barefoot Bar…and didn’t move until after sunset. It was a beautiful day, warm, not hot, a bit of a breeze.  We always feel so comfortable there and spend half our time reminiscing about past stays. We really need to return for an extended visit!

Our view for the day

That grassy park area makes it the best spot on Waikiki Beach

Round 1: Experimentation 😆

We had planned to walk down the beach as far as the Sheraton but, in a delightful turn of events, a lady came up to me and asked if I was YellowFish, which really threw me, because we weren’t even on the ship, but it turns out Mary and her daughter have been long time readers, and she was also cruising on the Emerald Princess with her husband Ed who was retired Coast Guard, and, well, seven hours later we were still talking (and, yes, doing some minor drinking and snacking and generally having a fun and frivolous time). At the end of it all, we felt like we had known them forever, and Mary heard some of the life deets that will never make it into this blog, and I never anticipated we’d make such wonderful new friends during our day in Honolulu. 

In the midst of it all, I had to take a time out to watch McGee race at a meet in Seattle. This was his first indoor track meet this season. He’d told me he was putting all his eggs in this basket, wanting to save his body to do well here. I had already subscribed to RunnerSpace and had the website queued up on my phone to watch it but the men’s Elite 5K race started nearly an hour late so I continued to chat with Mary and Ed and had one AirPod in and one eye on my phone while I waited. 

Simply stated, McGee was a star. In an exciting finish I’ve re-watched at least ten times, he pulled into first, dropped back to second, and, in the last 150 meters, through sheer grit fought back into a first place finish. And his excitement at the end was on full display (and documented forever on YouTube). My excitement was audible (Mary and Ed can attest).  Then I was texting him and his mom was texting me and, best of all was McGuy texting me, so excited for his brother. I love seeing that. 

We stayed for sunset about 6:30pm and had fully intended to stay for Friday night fireworks, but they were starting until 7:45pm and we were fading fast. It was also packed on the beach and we knew that getting out of there and finding an Uber would be tough after fireworks. 

So we all shared an Uber back to the ship and at 7:45pm were having a light buffet dinner on the Terrace Deck when we heard the fireworks and, leaning off the back of the ship could see the high ones. They lasted less than four minutes.

I’m glad we didn’t stick around. 

We fell into bed shortly afterwards where I re-watched McGee’s race in its 13:46 entirety and the last five minutes of it several more times. 

New friends, a beautiful beach, sunshine and a win. 

Life is good. :-)