Prepared Tuesday evening, January 14th, but waiting until Wednesday in St. Thomas to post due to the number of photos.
We have been much luckier with weather this cruise than last. Not from a wind standpoint- it's still very windy- but we've definitely had sunny days lately, and today was no different. We did the International Cafe/ DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast routine, then returned to our cabin to pack for a beach day. Our intention was to go to a different beach today (you know, Antigua claims to have 365 of them), and we ended up on a stretch of gorgeous beach with a breakwater, which made the waves marvelously gentle, despite the wind. But here's the kicker: we were the ONLY people on the beach the entire day. We had our own private beach!! We rented chairs for $5 each, used the palm trees for shade, and spent hours in the water with our floats. We weren't worried about theft; except for the restaurant waitress who rented us the chairs, there was no one else around.
We pulled one lounger into the water, and relaxed nearly into unconsciousness as the waves lapped at our feet.
I wished I could stay there forever.
However, we couldn't stay there forever. In fact, we had to leave by 1:30pm. We had received an invitation to tour the navigational bridge today at 3pm as part of the recognition of our 50th Princess cruise. So we packed up to return to the ship, and, just as we did, we encountered cruise director JJ arriving with a friend. He had told a taxi driver that he wanted a private, out of the way beach. Well, he'd certainly found one, and we left it to them.
The courtyard of this restaurant featured all sorts of flowering tropical plants and we saw several hummingbirds fluttering around the blooms.
Our taxi driver did not show up at our requested 1:30pm time, and there was certainly not a line of taxis out front waiting for passengers, but no problem mon. The waitress called her boyfriend to take us back to the ship, and we arrived back at 2pm as planned.
After a quick clean up (we just went ahead and got dressed for the evening while we were at it), we presented ourselves along with four other couples at the Deck 14 forward elevator lobby at the assigned time and were led into the bridge for a tour by senior 2nd officer Michele from Italy and 3rd officer Daniel from the UK.
G sitting in the senior officer of the watch's chair with senior 2nd officer Michele
The steering wheel
The forward and aft thruster controls
We'd had bridge tours before, but never on Princess, and not for several years. To be honest, a lot of the bridge tour was pretty technical (despite sitting in on several navigational bridge lectures). It's really the simple act of being there that is so exciting. And to be there while the Emerald Princess was docked in St. John's, Antigua was a special treat. The view of the town from the bridge on a sunny afternoon was really spectacular.
The controls are duplicated on each bridge wing.
I particularly liked the cubby holding all the flags that are displayed for each island...
...and the bell that is used for the eight bells sounded at the beginning of the noon bridge update announcement (with 3rd officer Daniel from the UK).
We finished our tour in time for the bridge shift change at 4pm, and returned to our cabin to chill two bottles of champagne we'd received. Just before 5pm we went up to Skywalkers to set up for a small party we were hosting for four couples who we've cruised with for years. We had a wonderful time drinking champagne and enjoying the Elite Lounge hors doerves while we sailed away from Antigua at sunset.
At 6pm we went to Dinner with Darko (and Jim and Marcia). We had skipped lunch today, and so were hungry enough to enjoy the delicious Italian night menu, including penne arabiata prepared by headwaiter Martins and tiramisu for dessert.
We ended the evening with comedian-magician Ben Seidman. I was sad we'd missed both of singer Mark Preston's performances this cruise, but he didn't do a late show tonight due to the Ultimate Deck Party being held on the open deck tonight (and football had prevented us from attending his first performance on Sunday). After a busy day, fuzzy water, popcorn, bed and blog post typing held more appeal for us.
We can only handle so much excitement in one day. ;-)