I was up really late last night (actually, this morning). First, we are on the windy side of the ship and everything is rattling and shaking and squealing, I finally threw a pool towel over the hangers in the closet to calm them down, but was still pretty noisy. And about the time I started to drift off, my guys, in their typical “It’s Friday and we survived another week” fashion texted me to get caught up. No complaint here, not one, but I did have to finally mention that it was after 1:30am here and I needed to get some sleep. Love those guys!
Still, G was awake early, and snuck out of the cabin as quietly as possible. Between you and me, I did hear him but promptly fell back asleep…
…until our next door neighbor opened their sliding glass door and left it open most of the day. It’s wildly noisy, and it also renders us incapable of cooling our cabin. It’s not as much as issue now as it will be when we reach the Caribbean. Stay tuned to see how this works out.
Life in an inside cabin is so much simpler.
I was happily starving by the time lunch was served in the Allegro Dining Room starting at noon. I am finding so many good choices on this new lunch menu. Even though its options initially seemed more limited, I haven’t run out of choices yet.
Today I again started with the collard greens from the chicken and waffles and then ordered the fish curry and the salmon poke bowl. It was all delicious and reasonably healthy. We’ve been served by Michael from the Philippines and Valentin from India for three days in a row and they simply can’t do enough for us. I do love that part of cruising!!
Fish curry
Salmon poke bowl
It was still very rolly (side to side) today. I risked the slippery floors in The Enclave simply because I love it there so much. In fact, I’m glad I set an alarm for 3:45pm, because I fell asleep on one of the heated tile loungers. That is remarkably relaxed for me.
Cruise director Olivia announced that tonight’s champagne waterfall was postponed to another night, and G told me that all the pools are emptied and netted over, only a couple of hot tubs are open and several of the outer decks are closed off. We’ve been on a ship when the champagne waterfall actually did collapse due to rough water. Postponing was wise.
It was a Dress to Impress night, which is really no different for me than a formal night. I arrived in Crooners for a pre-dinner drink (Empress Kiss, an upscale gin and tonic) and was entertained by the Twins Tripp, a busker-type juggling act that everyone seemed to enjoy. They certainly had the audience engaged. I had seen them scheduled in the Patter but had no idea what they did and am glad I caught their act.
Empress Kiss
They were so many good choices on tonight’s vegan that I ordered two entrees and ate part of each. I have no need to special order a meal a day ahead of time any longer. I can always count on something being available that I will like.
Seaweed and tofu starter
Vegetable lasagna (wasn’t there a Seinfeld episode about that?)
Mushroom bourguignon
(I made this for Christmas dinner last year)
We arrived in the Princess Theater a full 30 minutes before show time, and there was barely a seat to be found. That is insane on what is supposed to be a relaxing retreat at sea. Luckily we like front row seats, except for comedians and magicians.
Part of the seat shortage tonight was surely due to the fact that both vocalist Tom Ball and pianist Kyle Esplin have already performed on this cruise and we all knew how good they are. They actually performed one song together tonight and the crowd went wild.
We finished our evening a little earlier tonight at the Wheelhouse Bar because of our port day tomorrow. Actually, I can’t wait to step on solid ground. Or even a stable cruise ship. This has been a little rough for those of us (me) with bad knees. There is no cushioning to absorb the deck going up and down and every step is a death defying exercise.
And finally, I have no story tonight, but I will answer a question that was emailed to me yesterday. For years we had T-Mobile as our cellular provider and while we were overseas, we would have free data (albeit not speedy data) to use in ports. It worked great overseas…but we never had a signal at home and seldom had one around our town. They had no 5G towers in our area and we finally got tired of paying for service we didn’t have. At the same time, we were ready to cut the cable and ditch Xfinity also.
Our house is located between two Verizon 5G towers, and we moved our home internet and cell phones to them. It’s been perfect, without a single issue, but we lost that free international data coverage. No matter. We purchased one eSIM through Airalo and it has worked great for mapping and using Uber while in Europe.
To use it, I take my phone off Airplane Mode and turn off Verizon cellular data and turn on the eSIM data coverage. I paid $20 for 5 GB of data in Europe and since we lost a port, I’ll probably have some left over. It’s also 5G coverage, so it's much faster than T-Mobile’s international coverage.
My phone in Airplane Mode here as seen in Settings
Choosing Settings> Cellular
I named the eSIM “Travel”
Turning on Cellular data on the eSIM
I just have to remember to put my phone back in Airplane Mode before I reboard the ship.
We don’t arrive in Funchal tomorrow until 9am and 9am arrivals are my favorite way to start port days. We’ve been been there several times, but are going to do something new tomorrow. The weather forecast is calling for rain showers in the morning but improving later in the day. We can deal with that.
