I was moving so slowly this morning that my husband was long gone by the time I finally left the cabin, and the first person who wished me Happy Valentine’s Day was dear cabin steward Rocky, but he is cute and always smiling, so that was good, too.
Today was the day I decided that I am too damn old to sit in a chair on the beach for hours drinking sugary alcoholic libations and think that I am going to feel just fine the next day. But it was sure fun while it lasted.
I skipped breakfast all together and instead went to Fred Cink’s enrichment lecture, today in Cruising to the Comets. And here I have to chuckle a little. There was a recent discussion on Cruise Critic about the value (or lack of it) of on board enrichment lectures and anyone who doubts their ability to attract cruisers and hold their attention while simultaneously educating them way beyond anything we could grasp from the internet has never heard Fred Cink. He was on last year’s (or was it two years ago?) total eclipse cruise and is already booked for two more and I can’t imagine a more perfect pairing.
I finally met up with G for lunch in the Botticelli Dining Room and ordered chicken and potato curry only because the menu stated that it would be served with condiments. Condiments!! I was immediately imagining chicken korma-style condiments, and when it was delivered, no condiments were offered. Upon closer examination there were no condiments in the curry, either, so of course I had to ask. It took a few minutes (I imagined a cook in the gallery furiously finely dicing onion, tomatoes and peppers), but waiter Mieddy appeared with that glorious tray of all the good things, and I took some of everything except raisins (of course) and then extra cilantro and was so so so happy. It wasn’t korma, but I decided right then that the best part of korma is the condiments. Who knew?
But, as always, I had to leave G at lunch to get to today’s ukulele lesson and we are now warming up with songs that I struggled with just a few days ago, and that’s a confidence booster, which is good because we’ll soon be performing en masse for our end of cruise program so confidence boosting is a welcome thing.
I swung by the World Fresh Marketplace after ukulele because I had heard about all the Valentine desserts that were being offered there and had to see them for myself. Yep, everything had a heart on it, and there were cakes covered in Britto inspired fondant and I’ve been a big Britto fan since before Princess went all Britto-crazy so I really enjoyed seeing them.
This red velvet cupcake was very good
Or so I heard 😉
The bounciness we dealt with all day intensified by mid afternoon, and we opted to skip the Elite Lounge and instead go to the Piazza for the group renewal of vows by Captain McBain. Actually, we got pics of the renewal for this blog but didn’t actually renew our own vows because 1) we’ve done that many times in the past; 2) we didn’t want to have to try to stand up for the whole thing; and 3) our old vows hadn’t expired yet (you get one guess to figure out who said that).
Smiling F&B Director Roy Kelly
Love that guy!
Valentine’s Day on the ship was made very special. The decorations were beautiful but they really went above and beyond with the menu, food and displays.
We even had double heart brioche dinner rolls!
Hawaiian Ambassadors Brian and Rowena performing hula and Hawaiian music in the decorated Piazza
The Princess Theater entertainment tonight was the last production show we’d be seeing this cruise and the last night this cast would be performing together before they return home for vacation. Luckily, it was my favorite Rock Opera with guest rock tenor Connor Bogart (my guess is we’ll see him in his own show before the end of the cruise).
Darling dancer Jorge singing (but not really mic-ed) 😉
I would have loved to return to see their final performance at 9pm, but, damn, it was bouncy at the front of the ship. I’m always amazed the cast can even perform (and still keep the lifts in the choreography).
Instead we went to the World Fresh Marketplace just for coffee and if we thought the front of the ship on Deck 6 was bouncy, we hadn’t seen anything yet. Deck 15 in the very back was downright dangerous. This, of course, caused us to second guess our cabin choice for future cruises, so, when we left the buffet we walked down one flight to Deck 14 and even that was an improvement (but, seriously, the paneling in the stairwell was creaking and groaning). Still, we went down to the cabins on Deck 5 just forward of the Piazza and they were like being on a different ship on a different ocean. The air was also very stale down there, which was a surprise, but, in thinking about it, we have very rarely ever stayed on a deck with no balcony cabins, which certainly promotes air flow in the corridors. In fact, on our current Deck 14, we have balcony cabins and the door to the Terrace Deck at the end of the corridor. It makes a big difference.
So we scratched Deck 5 cabins off our list. I guess we will just bounce our way through several cruises next year.
We returned to the cabin where I finally finished and published my Honolulu post, still leaving me a day behind. Tomorrow will have to be a two-post day!
After several tries, I gave up trying to get the photo banner at the top of this page to scan.
I got no time for that nonsense!
