Boy, was this one day at sea ever well-timed and welcome!!
I was wiped out last night, which given our day yesterday and the day before is understandable. I awoke feeling a bit worse for wear, but once I got going (just after 7:30am AND we had moved our clocks ahead an hour last night!), I decided that I'm still not too old for those sorts of activities. Old, certainly, but not too.
We enjoyed breakfast in the dining room with waiter Stephen and junior waiter Lem who knew what we wanted before we even ordered it. After 72 days, it's easy to start to fall into a trap of taking for granted the wonderful food and service, and just expecting both to be always be there, but I can say that this morning, as my coffee was poured and then refilled and then refilled again, it really did strike me how different things will be when we return home. It was a sudden, strong awareness that just hit me from out of the blue, and I vowed not to let a moment go by over the next 47 days when I don't consciously take note of every little thing that is done for me on this ship. 'Cause we all know that change is gonna come...too soon.
While feeling pretty good after our hike yesterday, I was not a bundle of energy today. We went to the first part of the Cruise Critic meet and greet for this cruise (so many familiar faces- great to see!) and then I returned to the cabin to finally restore my new iPhone from iTunes. Easy...good grief, it was so easy to do. I plugged my phone into my laptop, launched iTunes and basically everything was just set up on my new phone and it now looks exactly like my old one. So here's my Public Service Announcement for today: if you have an iPhone, keep it regularly backed up in iTunes. Life is so much simpler when you do.
I also took the time to back up G's photos from his iPhone on my laptop (while I back mine up every few days, his haven't been backed up since we left home), and then, as further protection, backed up all our photos from this winter onto a flash drive, just in case my laptop gets fried while we're here.
After all this strenuous work ;-), it was lunchtime.
Once again, we were seated window-side at a table for 2 with Stephen and Lem, and with my renewed determination to notice and appreciate...EVERYTHING, I took a photo of the view from our lunch table (Photo 1).
Then it was time for another rest. It was sunny outside, but I had gotten plenty of sun yesterday on our walk. Instead I spent the next couple of hours reading and resting and generally recovering from the past two days.
It was formal night tonight, and after skipping the last one (the only one of twelve formal nights we've missed on our six Princess cruises so far this winter, so please spare me that look), we were re-energized and ready to dress up. We started the evening at the Vines Wine Bar, on Deck 5 in the Piazza. We hadn't stopped there yet this winter, and somehow the time was right. We enjoyed a fruity Reisling and some sushi, and sat and people watched (always fun on a formal night) and observed the construction of the champagne glass tower for the champagne waterfall later in the evening, until it was time to go to dinner. First formal night of the cruise means beef tenderloins for both of us, and Sutti is continuing his M.O. of delivering a scoop of sorbet as an intermezzo before our entree is served. THAT I've never taken for granted; it's hard not to appreciate a dessert served right in the middle of dinner! Today's sorbet was pink grapefruit and, while all Princess sorbets are good, this one was even better than that. G finished up dinner with another dessert, bananas foster flambé, one of his favorites.
The chicken breast and black beans and canned tomatoes that await us at home just aren't going to cut it anymore, are they?
We left the dining room in time for glasses of champagne and people watching at the Welcome Aboard champagne party. Again, the champagne starts tasting better after the fourth glass. Maitre d' Jean Paul stopped by to chat for a few minutes and he instructed us in champagne tower construction for the champagne waterfall. 628 glasses are used, and I know bar supervisor Meldon had a headache building it.
We then went to comedian Al Katz's second show of the cruise in the Explorers Lounge (take note: it was a two-different-performances night, the first time for this cruise). While we really enjoyed his first show last night, he kind of lost us tonight by mentioning the Aurora theater shooting and the school shooting in Connecticut. Some things, especially things like that, don't belong in a comedy routine on a cruise, even if they're mentioned to make a point. D'ya know what I mean? Still, he went on for almost an hour, so we still had 30 minutes of great entertainment before it turned on us.
Afterwards, we returned to our cabin to change into comfy clothes, and then it was Jazzio in the Adagio time again, and we enjoyed listening to the Emerald Princess orchestra enjoying themselves...they seem to love playing jazz.
Tomorrow we're at St. Thomas, at the Crown Bay pier, and our initial plan is to go back to Water Island for only the second time this year. Thank God we're at Crown Bay; I'm not certain I could drag myself up that hill to the top of the Paradise Point tram if we were docked at Havensight. A day on a beach- a wonderful beach- sounds just about perfect.
On the Steward Nazi front- a little thaw in relations! My birthday poster disappeared off our cabin door on turnaround day. I asked G if he had taken it down for me to keep, and he said he hadn't. I assumed it was gone forever. Then last night I was looking at all the information and invitations and calendars and photos on our wall, and noticed the Happy Birthday poster on the wall, up high. Steward Nazi had taken it off the door and put it on the wall. He had done something nice, and outside of his normal duties! I was deeply touched. When I thanked him today, he shrugged it off and gruffly said he had taken it off the door because the ship has either run out of them or was no longer providing them (I'm not sure which) and he didn't want other passengers celebrating birthdays to be asking him for one.
I decided to think he did it just to be nice.
He's okay for a Steward Nazi.
;-)
Photo 1: meals with a view; you can't get any more "on the water" than this!
Photo 2: sushi and Reisling at Vines wine bar
Photo 3: sushi displays at Vines
Photo 4: G, and Nancy and Rhonda of Sol Provider, from Guyana. They are amazing!
Photo 5: maitre d' Jean Paul at the champagne waterfall