My emotions on most turnaround days run the gamut from “I’m so homesick; I just want to go home” to “I can’t believe I get to do this again!!” Today was no different.
I’m not a big fan of the 6am wake up that is required on turnaround days, but that’s what it takes. I wasn’t hungry enough for breakfast in the Botticelli Dining Room and so I just grabbed a light breakfast in the World Fresh Marketplace and moved along quickly.
My current favorite breakfast in the buffet: yogurt parfait, muesli and chia sludge mixed together and a green smoothie side
When housekeeping came to our cabin to move our things, I actually let them today. A move from one cabin to another on the same deck is easy; having to use an elevator on Embarkation Day morning raises the degree of difficulty quite a bit. However, the guest in our new cabin chose to stay in it until after 9am. I sat in the unlocked balcony cabin across the hall with my stuff until she left and I could store my luggage and hang up clothes in the new cabin before it was even made up to get to there in transit meet up for immigration at 9:30am. G opted to move himself and it was probably easier to just do that.
G was so intent at being in O’Malleys (our meet up location) at 9:30am; me, not so much. We could tell that disembarkation had fallen behind, and I knew we’d be waiting. And we did, nearly 90 minutes. 67 people weren’t getting off the ship as they should. Grrrr… But we finally got through immigration in the most convoluted way possible. They paraded us through the terminal where the new guests got all excited about why these people (us) were being allowed to board when they still couldn’t. We finally got back to our cabin where I quickly unpacked before going down to lunch in the Botticelli Dining Room.
On the way, I swung by our muster station in Explorers Lounge to satisfy that requirement. We hadn’t needed to do muster drill since December 30, but could tell from our cabin TV that we needed a refresher today.
Embarkation day lunch is always the best, though it’s getting increasingly crazy as more and more people take advantage of it. We finally left before G got his soufflé for dessert; we both needed to make some phone calls this afternoon.
And then all the day’s hard stuff was behind us. I got cleaned up for the evening and we went out to the Lido Deck for the Sail Away party, which gets more fun each tune we see it because we know more of the cast dancers and singers. It was a beautiful day for the party, sunny and about 80° in LA. Captain McBain did say, in his welcome aboard message, that we will be facing a weather system to the north on our crossing to the islands, and we can expect some movement, but that they are taking a more southerly route to avoid the worst of it.
We went right up to Skywalkers for our actual sail away (as opposed to the sail away party) and the Elite Lounge. What a view we had! We had to back up almost to a large freighter and let me just say that I’m glad I wasn’t responsible for steering. We were close!!
It’s always a little weird to go to the same dinner table but waiters and neighbors have changed. We now have waiter Richard from the Philippines and junior waiter Anthony from India, and it’s going to be a wonderful 16 days. Tonight’s dessert menu featured the flourless chocolate cake with macadamia nuts and, oh my, it is the BEST dessert I’ve ever had on Princess. It’s like the old flourless chocolate cake but even better, with macadamia nuts.
Book an Emerald Princess Hawai’i cruise for this dessert
Thank me later
We went to the Princess Theater for tonight’s performance called Dance Fever. We really didn’t know what to expect with this. We had ballroom dancers doing shows in the Explorers Lounge late last cruise, but we never made it to one. This is the first time they’ve performed in the Princess Theater (that I know of). Katia and Zhenia from Belarus left us all amazed. If you love Dancing with the Stars, you’d love this show. The costume changes alone were unfathomable.
Then we still had room for coffee in the buffet before we called it a day. We are settled in for our last cruise of the winter.
Life is good. :-).
