Day 19: At Sea

My first order of business this morning was to make some more travel plans for late May. Actually, I was getting texts last evening about getting new plans in place, but was too tired then to safely be cancelling flights and booking other flights and extending hotel stays. We are on the final stretch with track meets and graduation travel; in less than two months I’ll be sitting at home wondering where almost 23 years went and what I’m supposed to do now.  

I had just Greek yogurt and fruit for breakfast. And lots of hot coffee. I simply have not been able to warm up since we left Cabo. Then, as I mentioned in my post for Los Angeles, I attended James Engman’s lecture on glaciers, which was very interesting. He mentioned the Tracy Arm landslide that happened last August and shared some photos of its impact. I don’t think any ships will be allowed back in there for years, and most are substituting Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier. I know I said this last June when we were in Alaska, but it bears repeating. The Endicott Arm fiord is simply gorgeous. It’s not the lesser option at all. 

I had to go by Guest Services before it gets too crazy at the end of the cruise. We decided to purchase Princess transfers for $44pp from the ship to the Seattle airport. It was about the same price as pre-reserving an Uber and will require less luggage dragging.

It took until early afternoon to finish up yesterday’s blog post, which is quite a trick. I need to remember that for the future.  What did I do today?  Wrote about what I did yesterday. What did I do yesterday?  Wrote about what I did the day before. And so on and so on.   Harious!

We did return to the Sanctuary Restaurant for a light lunch (soup for me). Finally I gave up trying to warm up and just stood in the shower for fifteen minutes or so. That finally did the trick. On a related note, this ship in Alaska will be the first time this class of ship will be in a cold weather environment and they’re working hard to figure out how the outdoor food prep on the Dining Pronenade is going to work. I think it’s going to be quite a different experience. It already started feeling like that after we left Cabo. The outdoor dining works because of the heat lamps in the ceiling but they already can’t keep the cooked food warm enough to serve. 

Today was the final formal night of the cruise (joy!) and there was amother Most Traveled Guests event, a cocktail party, held at 7pm in Good Spirits. It was attended by all the senior officers and we were able to get to know Captain Gennaro Arma better and I just tonight connected the dots that he was the captain on the Diamond Princess in Japan during Covid, and the person in that photo that went around the world’s media of the last person to leave that ship when it was all over.

Lots of goodies at the cocktail party. Why did the we even have dinner tonight?

HGM and the F&B director shaking the cocktails with Captain Arma videoing them with his own phone. 

No one enjoyed themselves more than the captain!

His world -famous photos from six years ago.

We went from there directly to the Princess Arena for tonight’s theatrical production show called Illuminate and we walked into the arena to find a huge circus tent on the center of the stage. As soon as the score started it was quickly swept up and away but I have no idea where it went.

The show was different. Lots of energy, lots of talent, not exactly my kind of show. 

This dance with lights from above was the most entertaining part to me

And that was our day. Just two more left. We’ve had the best time on this ship!

Day 18: Los Angeles

It is 9:40am the next day as I start this post, sitting in the Princess Arena awaiting the start of Dr. James Engman’s morning lecture on glaciers. I guess he’s exhausted his normal retinue on this long itinerary and we’re dipping into the Alaska season. That’s fine by me; I like them all (except caves…not caves). 

There was not an ounce of energy left in this body last night to even start on this post. In fact, while we were sitting and waiting for the show the Princess Arena…that’s all I did. Sit. And wait. 

First, a bit more about that immigration process during our first hours in LA. It was a predictable mess. Not predictable in the sense of, “ Someone could have averted the problems since they’re so predictable”, but predictable in the sense that these things never go well, fingers always get pointed, and the only people who come away unscathed are people like us who had no schedule and never intended to leave the ship that night.

The passengers who were the real losers were, ironically, those with the early group numbers who got through immigration first and then left the ship, not knowing that they couldn’t re-board until the entire ship had been cleared. They waited, and waited, until nearly 10pm, many of them stuck in the terminal with the entertainers who were supposed to be able to get on board to perform that night but couldn’t. The ship tried to deliver food and beverages to them and were apparently prevented from doing even that. And CD Dan Looney was inspired to pitch hit and do some vocals in the Piazza to keep the natives from getting too restless. 

Ah, well. Life goes on. And we were tucked into bed early and missed most of the excitement. 

Then, between 5 and 7am the next morning, the gangways had to be taken out of service for some testing and’s calibration, and, as a result, the ship turned around in its berth. I was so confused. We went to bed with the webcam facing north and woke up with it facing south. 

It was an unusual few hours. 

But the day settled down after that. We went to breakfast in the Sanctuary Restaurant and then walked off the ship surely before 10am. We wanted to get to the battleship USS Iowa docked directly behind- and then in front of- the Star Princess when it opened at 10am

I was emotional before we even walked up that wide gangway and paid our admission, simply reading some of the biographies posted outside the ship. 

She is about my age. I know how difficult those early female academy attendees had it.

This one gave me chills.

We paid about $48 for two admission tickets and toured the battleship on our own. It was a beautiful day, just a little chilly but perfect in the sun. If you haven’t yet done this tour, there is a lot of walking over irregular surfaces, stepping over bulk heads and climbing up and down steep stairs. After more than two hours of that, I was getting tuckered out. 

G had said over breakfast that he wanted to take a harbor cruise, but we weren’t aware of any. Then this boat cruised by while we were on the Iowa and we started making plans.

Vicky for Victory

These are the only active duty deaths to ever occur on the Battleship Iowa. Three men were also killed in its construction.

Looks comfy 😉

I did really well with the confined spaces as long as I could look out and see sky. But once we were down on the lower decks where the galley and mess were, I started getting antsy. 

There were over 2500 sailors on the Battleship Iowa during WW2

We then walked along the waterfront past the Maritime Museum for the 1:45pm harbor cruise

This is hard to see, but the rolling carriers in the background are all unmanned and fully automated

Even with four large cranes, it can take 2-4 days to unload a freighter.

The containers are stacked as high below decks as above.

The port of Los Angeles was the busiest freight port in the Western Hemisphere in 2025. 

Terminal Island Coast Guard station housing

The Battleship Iowa with the Star Princess just behind. 2500 men on the Iowa, 6000 total passengers and crew on the Star. We really can’t complain too much about the Princess Arena seat situation.

While the sun felt good, it was darn chilly on our harbor cruise!

We were back on the waterfront by about 3pm but had one final mission in mind. We needed to purchase a gift for someone on board, and I wanted it to be a nice bottle of wine. That shouldn’t have been too much of a problem, but San Pedro is not the best area to be wandering around in. I had called around to several liquor stores that stated they carried “fine wines” and settled on Cabrillos liquors and fine wines as being the most promising. We Ubered over and our driver seemed incredulous. “You want to go HERE?”  Well, I wasn’t sure sure at that point but we went inside.

Maybe they should call themselves Cabrillos Liquors, Cigarettes, Candy and Plonk. This place was as sketch as they come…and it had seemed like the best option. Luckily, there was one corner housing decent wines, so I settled in with the Wine Enthusiast website open on my iPhone, dusted off the bottles and eventually found one that really was quite decent. Paydirt!  One was all I needed. I asked if they had a wine bag and not of the brown paper variety and they did…one. I dusted that off and paid and we walked out of the store having no doubt made the largest single purchase ever made in the history of Cabrillos Liquors and Fine Wines. 

G was holding the bag as I navigated the Uber app to get there hell out of that neighborhood as quickly as possible. Apparently it wasn’t quite quickly enough. While we were waiting, a decidedly unsavory character walked up to us and grunted something and…well, you don’t want to push at me when I am as tired as I was in that moment. I told him we had no cash and he motioned to that decorative wine bag G was holding. G said later his first instinct was to throw the bag and run but I was raised with brothers and learned early on how to stand my ground. I said “Sir, I don’t believe you will be getting what is in that fancy bag”.  Or words to that effect, and grasped my walking stick a little more firmly in my hand. The vagrant circled around us one time before our Uber drove up and we fairly flew into the back seat. 

Never a dull moment. It’s San Pedro. Let’s be careful out there!

We got back on the ship just as the Elite Lounge was starting and so headed down to Princess Live for that. The day continued to feel weird. Deck 7 was full of Princess Santa Clarita employees (I didn’t know there were any left!) who had spent the day on the ship while it was in port, so Deck 7 felt crowded when we had expected it would be nearly empty. So many passengers had had exciting plans for the day, and were still off the ship, Disneyland and Universal Studios and Hollywood and a Dodgers game.  I really wanted to stay up until 9pm to watch people returning to the ship wearing Mickey ears and carrying souvenirs, but we didn’t make it that long. 

These soup pours tickle me!

We had a quick dinner and were in the Princess Arena by 6:10pm when nearly all the seats were already filled for Stephanie Hodgdon’s first show She Will Rock You. It was fantastic!  Stephanie is the fiancé of Erik Bryan, the Magic Maker in Magic To Do on the Emerald Princess and also the Let Me Be Frank performer, and, regardless of my feelings about Frank Sinatra songs, we got to know Erik during our nearly 8 weeks on the Emerald and he told us to watch for Stephanie’s show.  I’m glad we saw it, and she’ll have a second show tomorrow night. 

That put us back in the cabin during her 9pm performance but we fell asleep immediately despite the noise. As I pointed out to G over dinner, we’d had a busy day in the area right around the ship, doing most of the things there are to do in San Pedro:  the Battleship Iowa tour, the harbor tour, and he finished with “getting mugged”. Yep, I think we’ve just about covered the local bases.