After a lot of sleep last night (and we're so glad that we allowed ourselves one "down" evening), we awoke early and well rested and ready for a day on the beach at Princess Cays. Admittedly, the weather didn't look at all promising- there appeared to be a solid layer of clouds blocking the sun- but we packed our beach gear anyway and headed over to the island on an early tender. My one concession to the weather was to leave behind my snorkel gear: I figured that I'd had and would have again better, sunnier days to snorkel at Princess Cays.
I should have had more faith. By noon the sun was out to stay, and, in fact, forced me into the water on a couple of occasions, just to cool off. While our intention had initially been to just go over for the BBQ lunch, we ended up staying until nearly 3pm. It turned out to be a really nice beach day.
I carted over a second thick hard cover book that I'd checked out yesterday from the library on the ship. Looking at me holding this book up to block the sun's bright rays while I read, G observed that, while we did fine with just one iPhone between us this cruise, he knew I was missing my audiobooks and ebooks. And he's right...I am. But less than 24 hours now, and I'll be back to normal.
We went to Skywalkers at 5pm for the last pre-dinner drinks and hors doerves for this cruise. We'd missed just two evenings up recently, but friends Janet and Bob caught up with us on the beach today and we promised we'd make it tonight. After dinner tonight, Sutti again provided me a beloved alternative to the Baked Alaska...a bowl of toasted meringue.
Life is good.
G wanted to see comedian Carl Banks' show at 7:15pm in the Princess Theater. We recognized him from his bit part on Seinfeld, and were hopeful, but...once again that's 30 minutes of my life I won't get back.
Sol Provider started playing in Club Fusion at 8:30pm, and we listened to them for awhile before getting popcorn and fuzzy water and calling it a day. Tomorrow will be very busy for us, as we either walk the 4.5 miles to the AT&T store at the Galleria Mall, or take a bus, then get ourselves back to the dentist's office by 11:30am to finish up this root canal, then swing into Publix on the way back to the ship to buy still more hand soap and pick up a prescription that, hopefully, the Fort Lauderdale port agent dropped off there on Monday.
The good news is that I'm learning so much about how all this medical stuff works during our winter at sea. The bad news is that it's knowledge I could have happily lived without.
The first post of each season:
- 15 nights Panama Canal 2021~Emerald Princess
- 22 nights Alaska 2021~Nieuw Amsterdam, Majestic Princess
- 140 nights Transpacific, Australia & South Pacific 2019-2020~Ruby&Majestic Princess
- Around the World 2018
- 37 nights Hawaii land trip 2018
- 31 nights Hawaii land trip 2017
- 80 nights Australia & South Pacific 2017~Golden Princess
- 17 nights Panama Canal & World Cruise 2017 Segment #1~Pacific Princess
- 14 nights small ship Caribbean 2016~Pacific Princess
- (Not 77, instead) 65 nights Mediterranean and Transatlantic 2016~Pacific Princess
- 60 nights Caribbean 2016~Emerald Princess
- 87 nights Polynesia 2015~Pacific Princess, Easter Island, Rarotonga
- 30 nights Caribbean 2015~Caribbean Princess
- 9 nights Mexico 2015~Grand Princess
- 96 nights French Polynesia 2014-2015~Pacific Princess
- 150 nights Caribbean 2013-2014~Royal Princess, Nieuw Amsterdam, Allure OTS, Emerald Princess
- 120 nights Caribbean 2012-2013~Emerald Princess, Noordam
- 14 nights Alaska 2012~Island Princess
- 100 nights Caribbean 2011-2012~Emerald Princess
- FAQs about spending winters at sea