We had another beautiful day at sea today, with gorgeous weather, calm seas...and lots of activities to keep us busy the entire day. I was up by 5am, and finished the blog post from Isle of Pines. That day had been so full of fun that I just couldn’t soldier through it without falling asleep last night. Once again, we had breakfast in the DaVinci Dining Room (unwilling to forego our window-side table and exemplary service from William and Lizel), and the few hours of free time I had today followed. Somehow, things get very disorganized after just three days at sea, with currency and coins from Vanuatu, French Polynesia and Australia co-mingled in the safe. I needed to break some AU $50 bills into smaller denominations at Guest Services, prepare tip envelopes for tomorrow, replenish toiletries, give my water bottle a good scrubbing and gather items to go to the laundry, all those housekeeping-type activities that are necessary whether at home or on a ship. The morning moving for the Traveling Film Festival at Sea was in German with English subtitles, and I was too lazy to work that hard, and so, while I was in the cabin, I watched American Woman, a movie I had missed on one of the sea days, on TV. It was excellent.
G and I met up for lunch at noon. I had never been a fan of eggplant, or any kind of squash for that matter, but that has changed this season. I’m really enjoying caponatas and today’s stuffed eggplant Provençal, made dairy-free. I guess I need to add eggplant recipes to my repertoire at home. G wants you to know that the banana cream cake he had for dessert was wonderful (and this from a guy who tends to shy away from cakes and pies).
Day 7 lunch menu, page 1
Day 7 lunch menu, page 2
Immediately after lunch, I needed to get cleaned up and dressed formally for the evening. These are crazy days; I didn’t want to miss the afternoon film, a documentary called Maiden about the first all-female crew in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World race. This one was emotional, exciting, infuriating (the things these women put up with from men and the media!), inspirational...I loved it. If you, like me, did not know the story about the Maiden and her crew, Vanity Fair has a great article on their achievement.
I went directly from the Princess Theater to Club Fusion, where I met up with G for tonight’s first Captains Circle Party. We were honored to be this cruise’s first most traveled guests (the last time that will happen this season, so I really did enjoy it!), then raced to the DaVinci Dining Room for a quick entree at 5:45pm, then back to Club Fusion at 6:45pm for the second Captains Circle Party. We always try to make sure that each of the parties has at least one of the three most traveled couples at them, because we never liked it when none of them showed up at the parties we went to over the years. Sometimes that means we go to one party out of a sense of duty and the other one to join friends. It’s all good.
Day 7 dinner menu, page 1
Day 7 dinner menu, page 2
Day 7 dessert menu
Headwaiter Mehai insisted we come back to the dining room for coffee and dessert afterward, and we were only too happy to oblige. A dinner without sorbet for dessert is a very sad thing indeed. We had just enough time for a second cup of coffee before we needed to go the Princess Theater for Patrick McMahon’s second show of the evening. It was past our bedtime, but we weren’t willing to miss that. His shows become sing alongs, and the entire theater was belting out the chorus to American Pie. Loved it!
By the time we chatted with a few of our fellow guests (people remain very curious about how we do this extended cruising thing), it was after 11pm when we returned to our cabin. We had seen contractors making their way down our corridor today, doing something in each cabin that required furniture moving and power drills, but weren’t sure what that was about. When we walked into our cabin and lights came on automatically, we figured it out. We now have motion sensitive lights in the bathroom hallway (but not where it shines into the bedroom part of the cabin), and, even fancier, at the base of the nightstands. They act like little nightlights for middle of the night bathroom visits, and stay on less than a minute. Fantastic, and much safer.
Have you seen this before? We hadn’t. Too cool.
I was dutiful, and uploaded photos to this post, but got only two paragraphs into it when I once again fell asleep mid-word. Even my usual “keep just one eye open at a time” trick didn’t work for me. The iPad dropped again, this time between the wall and the bed when I rolled over in my sleep. Those lights in the nightstands came in handy when I was pulling the bed away from the wall and rearranging the suitcases stored under it to retrieve the iPad in the middle of the night. ;-)
A construction update: the area that was the bar next to the International Cafe has been remodeled to serve as the home for Good Spirits, a cocktail demonstration event (I think). We haven’t yet been to it, but I promise I’ll do it at least once and report back. The construction area in a corner of the Photo Department is now an Ocean Medallion center. All the accompanying accessories that are available for purchase are on display and there are several large screens. I think this is where assistants will be located when the Medallion goes live in January.
And, finally, we were horrified to hear of the volcanic eruption on White Island, about 30 miles off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand. Horrified and shaken. Just last cruise, in Tauranga, we had made a reservation for a helicopter tour over the island on December 26. We desperately wanted to see it, but could not figure out a way to do it by boat in the time we have in port. Getting there by boat would have given us the opportunity to actually walk on the island, armed with gas masks and hard hats. We decided a helicopter fly over with a possible landing was as close as we would get, and we would leave from Tauranga. But we were never given any indication that there was increased volcanic activity on the island. In fact, we could still book the tour again as of today. We were shaken to get the news. This one was a little too close for comfort.
Day 7 Princess Patter, page 1
Day 7 Princess Patter, page 2
Day 7 Princess Patter, page 3
Day 7 Princess Patter, page 4