Our beautiful weather of late changed on us today. The day was cooler and mostly overcast until late in the afternoon, which is when we began to experience the swells that Captain D had warned us about. I went outside only to observe breaching whales- and there were many, many of them- from the Promenade Deck. I love cruising in this area in January! Breakfast was once again in the Club Restaurant and the rest of the morning was spent sorting through paperwork and packing. G had checked the weather in LA for tomorrow and the forecast was for 100% chance of rain. We have fingers crossed that our flight departs on time, but there's no point in worrying about it. At least the weather at home looks decent and we should have no difficulty getting from the airport to our home.
Captain D, in his noon update from the bridge, said that these winter storms rolling across the Pacific had affected four Princess ships sailing from the West Coast, and tomorrow was expected to be so bad off the coast of California that he was speeding up and the Pacific Princess will arrive in the Los Angeles Cruise Port in San Pedro at 3am in the morning and stay there until 4am Sunday morning. He also said that he was supposed to be going home to Italy from Honolulu but would instead be leaving the ship on Saturday and wished all the onward World Cruisers a wonderful journey. Captain JP Bryant, newly married and just back from his honeymoon, will re-join the ship early for the next segment of the World Cruise.
We were not one bit hungry but still went to lunch. At this point it is the fact that there is no food in our house that compels us to keep eating until the end. I had a wonderful chicken soup and calamari, and blueberry roulade for dessert, because I really, really wanted it. After lunch we sat side by side in the library with its strong WiFi signal to simultaneously check in for our Southwest flights tomorrow. I got position A58, not bad, and G was just six positions behind me at B04. That bodes well for our travel tomorrow.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent at the navigational chart auction (it went for $300 for charity, which Princess matches), and then going to the Human Slot Machine game in the Casino Lounge. G had had so much fun with this last cruise that he convinced me to join him, and we added to our Princess water bottle collection. By 4pm our packing was nearly complete, and we dressed for dinner and went to our final PES Lounge of the season. It was sad to say goodbye to Cornilio from the galley team who did such a wonderful job setting up and plating hors doerves every night, and to some of our favorite bar waiters, but the suffering was just beginning...
We finished our last bottle of wine with our last dinner, and enjoyed a beautiful sunset despite the cloudy day (the sun had appeared about 4pm). I had mussels for the first time this winter and we finally celebrated my birthday with a cake and lots of waiters singing Happy Birthday. And all the time I was dreading saying our final goodbyes. It was just as hard as I'd imagined. We love this dining room team, from Maitre d' Oscar right down to the assistant waiters. They were just wonderful and thoroughly spoiled us.
We popped into the back of the Cabaret Lounge to catch the early show by cellist and vocalist Brandon and James, but just weren't feeling it tonight. Instead we returned to the cabin and packed away the clothes we had worn to dinner and set our suitcases outside our cabin door the earliest we ever have, before 8pm. Go us! I was secretly so relieved not to be finishing the packing at 11pm as we sometimes have in the past. It has helped that we moved cabins a lot this season which kept things organized; plus we had two sea days at the end of this cruise to slowly and thoughtfully pack. I can assure you that packing up a cabin after being in it for more than four months in a row is much harder!
The Pacific Princess is only an hour or so away from crossing the US/Mexican border. We are going to sleep early, and moving clocks back one final time to PST tonight. I suspect we'll be up very early tomorrow, even if we manage to sleep through the ship docking in San Pedro at 3am. We simply cannot wait. I know that G us most looking forward to decent TV and high speed internet, and I am too, at least the latter. But seeing friends and possibly spectating at a college swim meet on Saturday (if I get my car battery reconnected on time) and definitely at 7th grade basketball games on Sunday top my list. And to Suzan, who has so faithfully stayed in touch with Mom and sent me lots of cheering texts...warm up your texting fingers. We have a lot of lost time to make up for!