Yellow Fish cruises: Day 60: At Sea

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Day 60: At Sea

I felt so much better yesterday that I thought I’d wake up today totally recovered. Alas, I instead woke up with no voice and the same persistent cough. Still, when I looked at the Patter over breakfast, there were so many activities today in which I was interested in participating that I thought I’d just soldier through them. My body had other ideas: I stood up from the breakfast table, did a little sway and was walked back to the cabin by G.

We ran out of fresh oranges about 3 or 4 days ago, and canned mandarin oranges filled the gap.

Apparently, the delivery we picked up in Sydney yesterday hasn’t yet been unpacked,

or they’re not ripe enough to use. No worries, I like these, too!

I am racking my brain trying to remember if I actually did anything in the cabin this morning besides watch The Crown (I don’t understand all the angst about the change of actors; the current ones are excellent, too), and I did add Princess EZ Air to a cruise reservation we have for next fall. That was as strenuous as it got. I finally sat out on the Terrace Deck for awhile before lunch. It was a grey day -we actually had rain by late afternoon and evening- but the temperature was much warmer than it looked. I was comfortable in shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

We did go to lunch at “our” table in the DaVinci Dining Room. Our new waiters for this cruise are Samuel from Philippines and Arjun (I think that’s it...checked later, yes, that’s his name) from India and I already adore them. I am not a huge fan of the dining room rotations that some Maitre d’s like to make every cruise, but I will say that it gives us the opportunity to meet a lot of waiters. We can’t walk through the dining room or Horizon Court Buffet without being repeatedly greeted by name. That is not uncommon on the little Pacific Princess but I certainly would never have expected it on a ship the size of the Ruby.

Day 2 lunch menu, page 1

Day 2 lunch menu, page 2

I slept most of the afternoon, and was momentarily concerned I’d even make it to dinner tonight, but caught a second wind while I was getting ready for formal night. We had to have a photo taken tonight (you might be able to guess why), so we used three different backdrops to do that. I couldn’t help but think today that it’s too bad we’ve been cruising for two months when we needed a photo. I left home with freshly cut hair, and certainly looked more photo-ready that I did today, with my nose raw and peeling, my eyes red, with deep, dark circles under them and my hair in desperate need of a trim. These should be some interesting photos; I’m hoping just one of them isn’t too egregious.

Day 2 dinner menu, page 1

Day 2 dinner menu, page 2

Day 2 dessert menu

Grapefruit and kiwi salad

(Still no sense of taste or spell. On a cruise! That’s tragic.)

Sautéed prawns made dairy-free

G with waiter Jorge on the left and his assistant Kirby on the right

We stopped in the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Champagne Waterfall Party long enough to chat with Rex from ShoreEx and Third Officer Sam from the bridge...and for G to have a couple of glasses of champagne. We continued on to the Princess Theater for comedian Scott Williams’ show. Scott is still on from last cruise, and reviews weren’t great then, but he must have picked up some jokes in Sydney because he was quite harious tonight.

Champagne waterfall

Luckily the Tasman Sea is being very kind to us this cruise!

Captain Lewis said he’s seen a lot of these collapse in these same waters.

We have 44 guests on board from Japan (the 4th largest country group!)

and several of them wore their traditional clothing for formal night tonight.

We loved it!

My final thoughts tonight are with McGee, competing in the biggest cross country race of his career in the next few hours. If I was back there, I would definitely have flown out to watch him run, but I’m doing just fine being nervous from thousands of miles away. Run Seabiscuit, run! 🏇🏼