The first post of each season:

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Day 23: At Sea

Today was a perfectly wonderful day at sea. We had sun, the sea swell was slight (say that three times fast), and it’s not as windy as it was last cruise. I was up pretty early but, because I went bed well before dinner last night, I got over 11 hours of sleep. I needed it after a couple of sleepless nights. 

I was also starved, and we were at breakfast in the Allegro Dining Room shortly after it opened. I can already predict that I will miss my cappuccino each morning more than any alcoholic beverages without the Plus package. And G will miss his ice cream, though he’s discovered caramel and chocolate sauce is available for the soft serve on the Lido Deck, and he seems pretty happy about that. 


Fruit carving was taking place in the Piazza when I walked through there en route to a shop on board. 

Today was the day…I had run out of face wash a couple of days ago and was using the liquid hand soap in the cabin (which I don’t recommend), and I had also run out of shampoo and nearly run out of conditioner. G had told me I could use his shampoo, but he then left it in the shower in our old cabin and the (most likely) deck steward who cleaned the cabin didn’t realize we were just around the corner and probably tossed it. G used the ship shampoo one time and ended up looking a little Albert Einstein-ish. Simply stated, I needed to visit that shop on board.  $65 later I have Clinique face wash and Morrocanoil shampoo and conditioner and we are both set for the duration.  I miss the simplicity of restocking when cruising out of Fort Lauderdale with Walgreens a ten-minute walk away. In Galveston, an Uber is required to get to anywhere for supplies. 





Roasted cauliflower for the first time, but it won’t be the last. 
This ranks right up there with the broccoli salad as a favorite food.
(I also had it for dessert). 


Seafood curry


After lunch (also in Allegro), we went up to Deck 17 aft to use the pool and loungers back there. It was my first time doing that, and, while the pool is nice, it’s right next to the smoking area and it’s hard to avoid the smoke. I do like that it’s much quieter than the mid-ship pool area. Much quieter. And there’s a beautiful view of the wake. 

And, before I knew it, it was time to get cleaned up for formal night #132 of the season. Our junior waiter Nyoman has gone home and we now have Dima from Ukraine. This new pairing seems to be working better already, thankfully. We have nine bottles of Prosecco in our cabin, and plan to take one to dinner nearly every night. Room service sometimes is delivering them two at a time, and we hadn’t opened any of them while we had the Plus package. I ordered sorbet for dessert and poured some over that, too. Yum. 







  Vegan menu roasted carrots with always available salmon

The Princess Theater show featured vocalist Willis White performing a Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores tribute. This was another incredible show, and he finished it out with All Night Long which had the theater rocking. How good was it?  We went back to our cabin to change into more comfortable clothes and returned for the 9:30pm show. 






We finished up in the Wheelhouse listening to Colin Salter. And that is how, after sleeping half of yesterday, I managed to stay up until 11pm tonight. I’m back on track and ready for this 14-night home stretch before we return home. But I’m left wondering-  how in the world did we ever do this for 150 nights in a row?