Despite his promises to the contrary last evening, G refused to wake up and couldn't offer even a half-hearted promise that he'd be joining me for breakfast. No matter; a little alone time is always a very nice thing. I stopped by the Club Bar and got a decaf Americano with cream (love them!) and then was seated in Romeo's section at a table for two in the Club Restaurant. I was not the first passenger in there today, but was the second. This ship on sea day mornings is a sleepy thing. While I had the usual (fruit and egg white veggie omelet), I went online and downloaded some news stories. G and I have declared politics off limits for this entire cruising season, but, just between you and me, I cheat a bit during my alone time and got as caught up with the drama as 5 minutes of ship WiFi would allow.
Following breakfast, I sat in the library for awhile with its 'best on the ship' WiFi and uploaded my blog post from last night. I no longer even try to do that in our cabin. I was burning through too many Internet minutes every night in the attempt. I get 250 free minutes for each of these 12-night cruises, which are far less than the 250 minutes I'm used to getting on a 10-night cruise (especially when St. Thomas and Fort Lauderdale are two of the ports and I get free AT&T internet in those ports). Except for Dubrovnik, we haven't had the combination of time and fast WiFi to do much interneting in port but I am saving all my best photos as Favorites on my iPhone and will upload them to this blog at some point. I am up to 74 of them now. Sadly, this may not be accomplished completely until we return home.
Since this was a sea day, this will predictably be a GPS-worthy post, as I posted throughout the day the myriad of things that I've been meaning to mention for days. First is alcohol control. These ports all have wonderful local wines and some spirits and passengers have been bringing things on board, often to take home. Surprisingly, there has been an alcohol control table set up on Deck 3 in the elevator lobby in every port. Liquor is being collected and held until the end of the cruise and wines, after the first two bottles per cabin, are being charged the $15 corkage fee. Princess is absolutely within their stated right to do this but I was a little surprised to see the diligence with which this is being handled on the Pacific Princess. This ship often escapes this sort of regimentation. We have done all of our drinking in port ;-) and haven't yet even brought our first two bottles of wine on board. We buy the wine packages and don't deny Princess the profit they make from them. Being served the wine in the dining room is a large part of the pleasure of drinking wine for us.
Our bed has a roughly 2" mattress topper already on it (unrequested by us), but I think that, even without it, the mattress is a good one. It's hard to make any firm judgements. When we move on turnaround day, I should be able to compare to see if there is any consistency on this note. We are getting the heavy ribbed towels, but we are on Deck 8 with the mini suites and it may be easier for the stewards to stock just one kind. They seem very lush and stiff and almost too thick. The bed linens are the old ones, which is not a disappointment to us. The sheets are muslin-like with their scratchiness but we enjoy not having a top sheet sheet. Trust me, I have enough trouble keeping the mattress topper staying square on the bed!
The Pacific Princess public rooms are always chilly. This was true in hot French Polynesia and it was true in frigid Kotor. And though we've had very flat seas until today, the front of the ship is bouncy. We attended wine tasting today with a couple whose cabin is on the front of Deck 7 and they slept very little last night. It's the nature of this ship design.
The new cast of singers and dancers are arriving on board in Barcelona next turnaround, along with seamstresses to fit the existing show costumes to the new performers. They will be able to observe the existing cast and practice the routines they learned in California and may, by the end of next cruise, actually perform one or two of the shows on their own. We are pretty familiar with these cast handovers but we feel them much more personally on the Pacific Princess because the dancers also function as members of the Cruise Director's staff. We will miss them but are thrilled we had the opportunity to see them again.
So, back to me, sitting in the library this morning...
I went to the Shore Excursions desk when it opened at 9am to get an answer for a reader who will be on an upcoming cruise and was standing behind a man asking about the Cinque Terre shore excursion through the ship. Apparently he had been online checking the weather and it looked bleak for his tour. Oh no. We have the Cinque Terre booked for tomorrow in the port of Livorno. When I asked him about it, he said that the weather looked good there, but not so good for the next day in Portofino. The Shorex staff member suggested he switch his tour to tomorrow and he said he was not going to miss Florence.
And therein lies my only rub about these itineraries.
We will only be in Livorno, Italy one time in five cruises, and that's tomorrow. The next day is our only stop in Portofino, Italy. These are two ports that I would have liked to visit time and again. There is so much to see and do from the port of Livorno- Florence, Pisa and Lucca- but we have never been to Portofino. And I was set on going to the Cinque Terre and read on Cruise Critic that it was best done through a ship excursion, which operate from either Livorno or Portofino. We had a tough decision to make.
In the end, it was the fact that we've been to Florence and Pisa that made it just a little bit easier, but there has not been a day since we booked the excursion that I have not second guessed myself. There is no turning back now, but I could empathize with this fellow passenger. It's a tough choice to make, and I'm kind of surprised that, although we are doing multiple itineraries, we still had to make it.
And on a related note, we suddenly remembered yesterday just why we started our season with this cruise and not the following one starting October 16, as we had originally planned. Malta and the remaining ports until Barcelona will not be repeated this season and that was the major motivation to leave home two weeks earlier.
At 9:30am I went to the port lecturer's talk on Nice and the French Riviera. We have no specific plans for that day, having spent some time in that area and Provence on land trips, but I was interested in hearing our options.
G and I met up for British Pub Lunch held in the Steakhouse. I did not eat anything but enjoyed taking with our tablemates, and then G joined me for lunch in the Club Restaurant. Or at least we intended to eat lunch in the Club Restaurant; we walked in and were told by waiter Joey that there was a dessert extravaganza in the Panorama Buffet until 2pm. G had already eaten one lunch and we each just had an appetizer and then went up the buffet to indulge. I had a pavlova and a slice of flourless chocolate cake (which I had skipped on embarkation day) and we sat on the Panorama Terrace and watched the sun dance on the ship's wake for the first time this cruise.
At 2pm we went to the Grapevine Wine Tasting and were happy to see several totally different kinds of wines being offered. It was over by 3pm which gave us just a little break for a lie-down before we needed to start getting ready for the second formal night of this cruise. We weren't especially hungry at dinner (gee, I wonder why...) and each had a salad and entree (I had the salmon for the third time this cruise. I love it!). We certainly didn't need dessert, which was a good thing because at 6:50pm we were bring met at our cabin by a ship's officer and escorted to the Cabaret Lounge for the Captains Circle party. We were honored to be the 2nd most travelled passengers this cruise; first had about 920 days and third about 580.
Tonight's entertainment was a Celine Dion tribute artist, Tracey Shield. Her voice was amazing, almost too large for the tiny Cabaret Lounge stage. I was fading by the time it ended, and returned to the cabin about 5 minutes before G did, which is helpful on formal nights as it gives me time to hang up and put away and wash up and get in bed before he returns and does the same. At 10pm we are in bed with not one, not two, not three but FOUR alarms set for 6am tomorrow. We meet our tour group in the Cabaret Lounge at 7:15am and need to sleep well before what I hope is a good day.