Tonight was the only formal night of this 5-night cruise, but we had not received a form to fill out for the usual Elite hors doerves. No matter; I phoned room service and G's favorite chocolate covered strawberries were delivered minutes later, as were some minibar items we wanted to change out.
Speaking of minibar, you might remember that we get a free minibar set up with 8 mini bottles of liquor, 2 beers, some sodas, sparkling waters and still water bottles simply by having reached the Elite level in Princess' Captains Circle (their loyallty program). Well, because this is only a 5-night cruise, we had decided to skip buying soda stickers that provide for unlimited fountain drinks. We'll be lucky to finish our minibar items! So, no fuzzy water this cruise, and, boy, do I miss it!! It's nice to be able to order something every time we go to a lounge or sit by the pool. While we had popcorn from MUTS on the first night, we've been way too tired (last night) or too full (tonight) to do it since. I miss that too. Fuzzy water and popcorn means blog time and bed time for me!
So, I'm all over the place here, but I'll bring it back to this afternoon and evening's activities now...
While I was roaming around the ship and blogging this afternoon, G was hot tubbing and going to the 4pm Veterans get together. He brings back the most interesting bits of gossip from these hot tub sessions (and people think women gossip; men are much worse). Yesterday it was that five suites somewhere (I think on the side of the ship) had been flooded with ankle deep water when a pipe above them burst. Wouldn't that be an unfortunate experience on a cruise!?! We had something similar happen one pre-cruise night at the LaQuinta, and we're running around in the middle of the night trying to close open suitcases and rescue electronics. Today's conversation apparently centered around the slow service in the dining rooms, which is generally being attributed to the galley's Inability to keep up. What's odd is that people are being told that by their waitstaff (as we were this morning) so there appears to be a little finger pointing going on. Passengers' first inclination is to blame the waitstaff, but, as he pointed out to us, our waiter had just 6 passengers and still couldn't provide timely service. No doubt this will get resolved eventually, but it's interesting that it's become such common knowledge.
Again I'm getting distracted here...
We chose not to dress up for formal night, but were surprised by how many passengers did, although G said he only saw two men in tuxes. Still, we went to Club 6 for the Elite lounge at exactly 5pm. That's the ticket; today I got food and had my drink order taken. Things are looking up! We left about 6:15pm to go to the 6:30pm production show next door in the Princess Theater- Sweet Soul Music. Loved it!!! It's all our favorite music (reminds me a little bit of Motor City), and the singers were all excellent. But one of the male singers, Jesse Hamilton- was just superb. It was the first of two production shows we're going to see this cruise, and an entirely new show developed to be performed on the Royal Princess. I had forgotten now wonderful it is to see a new production show!
We swung by the Piazza for the captain's Welcome Aboard cocktail party and got a glass of champagne before we headed up to the Horizon Court Buffet, not for a buffet dinner, but for a special, extra cost offering tonight, a fondue experience. We remember well a fondue restaurant we enjoyed on the Norwegian Sky in 2000; we'd not had fondue since then. Well, it was fun and delicious and we enjoyed very personalized service from waiter Kitiphong from Thailand (who knows Suttipong, so I have to email Sutti to tell him we've met his friend). We each ordered different appetizers and entrees, and loved them all. Of course, the piece de resistance is the chocolate fondue for dessert. Oh my. It was decadent. Served with the entree is a shot of kirschwasser for each of us. We should have known at that moment we weren't going to able to stay awake long. We felt the fondue experience was well worth the $20 per person charge, and a nice change for those of us who have done the Crown Grill and Sabatinis over and over again.
We dallied so long over dinner that we missed illusionist David Cats' 9:15pm performance in the Vista Lounge. His next one wasn't until 11:15pm (scratch that- the kirschwasser was taking a toll), but we went down to the Wheelhouse Bar to listen to pianist Ray Cousins again (I could do that every evening), and when he took a break, we decide to call it a night. We're stuffed and relaxed and well entertained...does it get any better on a cruise?
Tomorrow: an 8am arrival into Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos islands.
Photo 1: Jesse Hamilton performing during Sweet Soul Music
Remaining photos: from the Fondue Pot in the Horizon Court Buffet