I promised you I'd fill you in on this 'upgrade', which frankly, if I was a complainer, I might complain about, but because we love our new cabin's location and our cabin steward, we're actually satisfied with. A couple of weeks ago I asked Captains Circle Host/ Future Cruise Consultant (on this small ship one person does both jobs) Tracy to mark our reservation for this cruise to show that we would be willing to accept an upgrade but only to a higher cabin type. In our case, that would be a balcony cabin. We felt certain that, with all the contractors here working on the ship in preparation for the 50th anniversary cruise beginning the day we disembark, December 3, they'd love to have our Deck 3 cabin. In fact, I think we may have been the only revenue passengers on Deck 3 last cruise; the four seamstresses on board to fit the costumes to the new cast, the Tahitian pearl expert, Douglas Pearson...these were a few of our neighbors.
I was not surprised, therefore, to receive an email a couple of days ago that we'd received an upgrade. I was surprised, however, that it was to another ocean view cabin, granted one with a full window instead of a porthole. If we weren't happy with that, we needed to contact Princess within 48 hours. I suppose we could have asked Tracy to do that for us, but we certainly were in no position to call anyone. In the end, we decided we were happy with the new cabin location and that packing up our things one interim time was worth it. I might have questioned that after our third trip up the stairs from Deck 3 hauling hang up clothes and shoes, but, now that we are settled, we are happy to be here.
And I still want to know the secret of those people for whom someone else has actually moved their things from one cabin to another. After many cabin moves on many turnaround days, we've never had that offer.
So, settled and happy in our new cabin by 9:30am, we walked off the ship into sunny and increasingly hot Papeete. The temperature reached 88F today, and, despite a nice breeze off the water, in the sun it was hot. We think of these islands as having a constant temperature year around, and compared to home, they do. But it is definitely hotter here than it was in late September when we first arrived, and is increasingly reminding us of those very hot days in Papeete last year in late December when we stayed at the Hotel Tiare Tahiti.
Our first stop was to see Hiro (of yesterday's Hiro's tours) on the pier, where he was selling his trips for Moorea tomorrow to passengers boarding the Pacific Princess today. We had a gift bag with t-shirts and Princess cups we had picked up for our guide yesterday, Maka. Maka is a big guy, but we think the 3XL shirts we bought will fit him or his wife.
Next we walked over to the Hotel Tiare Tahiti to say a final goodbye and distribute the mesh bags containing our Elite bath amenities for these past four cruises. We wanted to leave them with the breakfast ladies and the lady who keeps the lobby so spotless. On the way back, we stopped at an ATM for what is hopefully our last French Polynesian francs (US $186 for 20000 XPF). We can't easily get money tomorrow in Moorea, but if we do need more, we'll use an ATM in Bora Bora.
Flush with cash (we had been down to the equivalent of US $13), we walked over to Le Marché for the last time, and G helped me find just the right shade of Tahitian pearl earrings for the right price. It was funny...G was looking at hundreds of pairs and two men were trying to push one pair or another, but when I took off my sunglasses, they suddenly knew what we were going for. And by then I had three men, in addition to my husband, holding earrings up to my eyes to compare colors. What we ended up with might be a shade more blue than green but they are really pretty close to perfect. Success!
I picked up a few gifts for friends while we were there, and was tempted to buy some scented coconut (monoi) oil for me, too, but I still have some from last year. I can really only use it in the summer at home because it solidifies around 72F, which is not a problem they are familiar with in French Polynesia. ;-)
We were back on the ship by noon, just in time for our final embarkation day lunch, at least for awhile. G happily ate his beef tenderloins and orange soufflé with banana ice cream and I had the delicious salmon and happiness reigned. Afterward, we took the time to get the new cruise paperwork straight in our cabin. With ten sea days, and more Elites on board, we will be having an MTP luncheon this cruise. Captains Circle Host Tracy is all over this stuff, and we had invitations for MTP and Captains Circle party already today. We also had a notice in our cabin tonight that laundry will take up to 72 hours to be returned. Considering I was always getting it back no later than the following evening and sometimes even the same night up to this point, it will be interesting to see if that changes.
Finally, we gathered up our iDevices and walked over to Chaplins bar for the last and final time to use their WiFi. Or, as a comedian put it last cruise, we paid $8 for a bottle of water to get 20 minutes of free WiFi. Actually, Chaplins has always been good to us about that, and their waitress (the same person as last year) lets us stay as long as our batteries and bottoms (the seats are hard) hold out. But the speed there has just not been as good as it was last year. I remember uploading videos to YouTube from there; I could never do that this year. I started uploading photos from yesterday's Moorea excursion and finally gave up before I even added them all. It was taking so darn long. :-( Additional photos will have to wait until Hawaii, and then until I return home, which leads me to my next bit of news...
We had been told that a new internet provider was installing a new system on the Pacific Princess today. We were not surprised at this news; G has said at least 100 times, "Just wait until those Princess execs get on this ship on December 3 and see how crap this internet is". We were both incredulous that there would be no improvement to this system for the 50th anniversary cruise. In fact, Princess CEO Jan Swartz had been on the Pacific Princess last summer and promised the crew that improvements were in store. Well, the day has finally arrived, and isn't the timing coincidental? ;-) The Pacific Princess now has the Princess@Sea service, making internet log ins at least ten times easier and faster. Note: I didn't say the internet speed was ten times faster. I'll have to use it before I can say it's an improvement. Also, as of tonight, the message service is not working, and the only person in the Internet cafe is the system installer who says he doesn't know how it works. (???) I'll let you know if things change on that note.
We returned to the ship just in time to get showered and go to dinner. This first night, it was open seating, as muster drill was taking place at 8:15pm, but we were still seated at our usual table with Melvin as our server. But his assistant Larry Mark moved to a different section, and we now have Sebastian from Mexico. I passed on the flourless chocolate cake (there will be more in my future), and, instead we walked off the ship after dinner during the muster drill to go to the creperie food truck. And sitting there, enjoying a salted caramel crêpe in the much more comfortable evening air, I realized just how much we will miss Papeete. We've probably spent close to four weeks here in total, and will never forget its wonderful people and all the incredible experiences we've enjoyed here.
The alarm is set for 4:30am. We sail at 5am and want to watch, one last time, as the Pacific Princess leaves Papeete harbor and sails across the Sea of the Moon en route to an 8am Moorea arrival. Just two more days...and then we have five sea says in a row we sail almost due north to Hawaii.
After 72 days, we are homeward bound.
Life is good. :-)