But along that same vein, I had logged onto WiFi yesterday morning and downloaded several emails from Princess titled: Itinerary Change. And for a brief but blissful moment I thought that perhaps Princess had decided after all to return the Pacific Princess to French Polynesia next fall (we are already booked in the Med). Alas, it was not that, but instead notification that Princess was already removing Istanbul and Kusadasi from the planned Pacific Princess itineraries. While their replacement with (mostly) Rhodes and Kotor was not a surprise, the timing certainly seemed a bit premature. I guess Princess believes that more people were deterred by the prospect of visiting a troubled Turkey than were booking the cruises specifically for those ports.
So, back to today (this will be a very GPS-worthy post as I try to relay miscellaneous disjointed thoughts I've had recently that haven't yet made it into this blog)...
We went to breakfast in the Panorama Buffet and it was so nice to not have to plan my meal with an eye toward activity levels in port and potential bathroom availability and feasibility of a lunch stop along the way. I knew I'd have food at hand all day, and I could get by with a low protein breakfast because I could have a high protein lunch and bathrooms would be plentiful and in pristine condition. Yay!!! I therefore allowed myself a whole cup of decaf Americano coffee and had two slices of stollen (#3 and #4) and nothing else. I ate only about half of the second slice (but made certain that half included the streusel topping and marzipan blob, my favorite parts). It was warm and pleasant enough on the Panorama Terrace that we ate outside and were soon joined by Paul and Marlene and a new friend named Mike.
Finally, at 9:30am it was time to get busy doing...something. After yesterday's steep downhill march, I felt entirely justified not doing a dedicated walk today (my quads and hip flexors were giving me what-for) but did go to the gym and used a bike for 30 minutes just to loosen things up and then did upper body weights. Feeling righteous, I returned to the cabin determined to select my favorites from the last week or so of photos. I've been a bit remiss about that lately and didn't want to fall behind. I am now up to 975 favorites and am increasingly aware that only a minority of these will be able to find their way onto this blog. If I can keep it at 500 or so in total (including our last couple of ports and the Caribbean) I might stand a chance of getting them added before we leave for Hawaii.
We spent a few minutes resetting our iDevices and watches to reflect moving clocks an hour back last night (resetting the cheap digital watches was a tedious effort but we'll have several opportunities to improve our speed over the next ten days). We are now five hours ahead of EST.
At noon on the dot we were in the Club Restaurant for lunch, wanting to be seated at a table for two (which requires an early arrival). It was nice to be hungry and I had a bowl of Hungarian goulash followed by a smoked duck on mesclun salad followed by a second smoked duck on mesclun salad (paired with a raspberry vinaigrette, it was sooooo good). G had an appetizer, two soups, a pasta entree and dessert. I think we made up for all the lunches we've missed in a single day. ;-)
I had taken a rolled up pool towel to lunch and immediately went out to a lounger in the pale sun on the Promenade Deck. It was nice but borderline chilly, and I unwound the ever-present scarf from my neck (this one was a Naples purchase) and put it around my shoulders and happily spent an hour out there listening to an audiobook and watching the slightly rolling sea pass by.
And speaking of slightly rolling seas, Captain D made a very rare appearance on the Wake Show with Cruise Director Frank this morning, explaining in more detail how tricky yesterday's docking in Gibraltar had been and how only the Pacific Princess and a navy ship were allowed in, and how we had to stay in the outer harbor instead of the usual inner harbor (so it may have been more than a 3/4 mile hike to Casemate Square). And then he went into some level of detail about the decision to skip Ponta Delgada in the Azores in two days and instead port at Funchal, Madeira tomorrow. He came prepared with several weather charts and wave height forecasts and explained how we would have had a high probability of missing Delgada had we gone that way due to one of a series of North Atlantic storms but that the real issue would have been the 20 plus foot seas we would have experienced between Delgada and Bermuda, jeopardizing our arrival time and therefore our day there. By going instead to Funchal, we will remain about 300 miles further south, and the storms coming from the mid-Atlantic states will have a chance to dissipate significantly before they cross our path.
Captain D then went on to give some advice for preparing to cross the Atlantic, such as take care of any nail trimming and hair cuts and manis/pedis now before we leave Funchal and start the crossing in earnest. He also said not to eat too much but to eat frequently, and, based on his observation, we should have no trouble with the latter. Captain D is a bit of a comedian.
It was all very interesting and informative. Have I mentioned I really enjoy sailing with Captain Domenico? Well, I do.
We started getting ready for the evening early, by 3pm for two reasons. First, it was getting bouncier and that always adds a degree of difficulty to any shower, and mentalist Sean Alexander, who now needs to disembark tomorrow in Funchal instead of the following day in Ponta Delgada, was doing a matinee performance at 4:15pm in the Cabaret Lounge. I like matinee performances; there's nothing like squeezing an extra show into a down day. We went to the PES Lounge but I skipped hors doerves all together and then we went to the Club Restaurant for dinner at precisely 5:30pm. We ordered just salads and entrees and made it to the 6:45pm performance of Irish fiddler E. Sarah Carter in the Cabaret Lounge. (The late show was scheduled early tonight to allow all passengers to get to the 50s and 60s Rock and Roll Party at 9:15pm). E Sarah Carter was a fun and talented performer; she used to play with Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.
We grabbed a quick dessert and tea in the Panorama Buffet (key lime pie!) and are settling in awaiting Jere Ring's piano entertainment in the Casino Lounge. We will be skipping the Rock and Roll party, though. This ship has started to pitch a fair bit and Deck 10 forward in the Pacific Lounge is not where I need to be.