Day 64: At Sea/ Scenic cruising Wineglass and Oyster Bays

We had the most fantastic (notice I didn’t say best) day today. Honestly, sea days just don’t get any better than this one. We had some bounciness overnight as we were cruising across the Bass Strait that separates the Australian mainland from Tasmania, enough that the drawer dance woke us up. I dug the rubber band lashing system out of a nightstand drawer and tied the drawer handles together and we weren’t bothered again. 

Today, however, we woke to calmer seas and partly cloudy skies that became cloudier as the day went on. The temperature was perfect...shorts and Ts with a fleece when we were on the open decks. G had found a replay of Thursday Night Football on ESPN sometime in the early morning hours and we were happy to see the Broncos not only play, but win!  

I stayed until the end, but G left the cabin before I did and ended up having breakfast in the Donatello Dining Room because he was in that area when it opened at 7:30am. I ate in the Horizon Court Buffet, and enjoyed talking with more Australian passengers. I’m not sure I’ve said often enough how much we are enjoying our fellow passengers on these cruises. And this cruise, in particular, has 300 kids (that’s hearsay), many of them elementary age or younger, and it is a joy to see them traveling with parents and grandparents. 

G eventually found me (because we always try to sit in the same area in the Buffet, and also because all the waiters know us by now and helpfully point us toward each other). We returned to the cabin for the morning pill taking activity and then went to the Piazza early for a 10am activity that we were very much looking forward to: a Christmas tree lighting ceremony with Christmas carols and SNOW!  Now, snow is an all too-familiar concept for us, but it is still fun to see on a cruise ship.  But the real joy was seeing these Australian kids, most of whom have never seen snow in person, be mesmerized by it. The snow making machine was overlooking the Piazza on Deck 7 and it worked perfectly, shooting out fine plume of snow that wafted down to the floor on Deck 5.

Loved the red and green lights in the chandelier. 

Snow with no shoveling required :-)

G went from there to the Grapevine Wine Tasting (I felt just a smidge deprived), and I plugged in ear buds and walked on the Promenade Deck...but back and forth, over and over for an hour on just the starboard side of the ship as the coast of Tasmania was on that side and I was picking up enough of a cell signal to start to download a new audiobook. It was a perfect day for it, and there was much excitement when some passengers spotted dolphins, several of them, playing in the ship’s side wake. I tried-hard- to take a photo but they were just too fast to catch. 

G and I reconnected for lunch in the Donatello Dining Room, where he had his usual tuna melt with potato chips (natch) and I had the equally predictable Floret Family entree, with cauliflower and broccoli topped with light tomato sauce and pine nuts. Love that!  We left there and settled in loungers up on Deck 16 for the scenic cruising through Wineglass and Oyster Bays. What we didn’t realize until today is that the last time we were here, in late October, we cruised by but were not able to enter Wineglass Bay, probably due to the wind that day. Though the weather was less sunny today, the Golden Princess sailed all the way into the bay and did two 360° circles. The long, long stretch of beach at the end is incredibly beautiful, and offers views across the narrow island to the beach on the other side. 

Source:  Maps.me

Source:  Maps.me

Source:  Maps.me

Because we spent so much time in Wineglass Bay, we had to return to the cabin to get ready for formal night #416 of the cruise, and then watched our scenic cruising through Oyster Bay from our dining room table. Dinner today?  A feast. Like Christmas. Headwaiter Sean started me with a full plate of grilled shrimp, then a salad and finally the piéce de resistance:  two large rosettes of smoked salmon accompanied by my favorite grilled veggies. G had fruit and soup and salad and beef tenderloins and we were both too full to consider even a scoop of sorbet for dessert. Spoiled, I say!

View from our table

Through a Bernini Dining Room window

Shrimp starter

Entree

We were in the Piazza for the 7pm Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party and Champagne Waterfall, but left after G had a beer to get front row seats for production show Born to Dance. It is just superb!!  I was obviously not born to dance, but was born to be able to get from a front row center stage seat in the Princess Theater all the way back to an empty seat in the Vista Lounge in time for a comedy show starting just 10 minutes later, without turning it into a combat sport or mowing over slow moving passengers. It’s a trick:  go up the stairs from Deck 6 to Deck 7, use all my strength to push open a door against the wind onto the outside Promenade Deck, be blown down the length of the deck to the back of the ship, re-enter Deck 7 on the ‘quiet’ side of the aft elevator lobby, enter the Vista Lounge on that side and split up to look until two seats can be found together. Score! 

Aussie comedian Jason “Rash” Ryder was a new entertainer for us this season, and was well worth the 250-yard dash. And his show was also the end to a perfect formal night evening. From food to finish, it really was the BEST. 

Life is good. :-)

Day 15: At Sea / Scenic cruising Wineglass & Oyster Bays

We had just the best day today. Things came together in a sort of positive perfect storm and, really, couldn’t have been much better than they were. It always helps when we have a morning with no (or nearly no) schedule, and that’s what we had today. G was up and at ‘em early, but he left the cabin quietly and allowed me to sleep awhile longer. He does get at least an hour more sleep than I do every night, first because he falls asleep easily in about 16 seconds, but also because he doesn’t have to write blog posts. ;-) 

Still, we met up in the back of the Horizon Court Buffet for breakfast before 8am. I was so disappointed when I looked through the glass in the door from Aloha Deck out to the Terrace Deck and saw rain falling. Not today!  Please not today!  The Golden Princess was scheduled to be cruising through some scenic areas all afternoon, and I really had been looking forward to it. Breakfast was light (just cereal for me), and I headed to the fitness center for a workout until it was time to get ready for this cruise’s Most Traveled Guests luncheon. G had already gotten ready and was at the Grapevine Wine Tasting (excuse me for a minute while I shed a tear or two), but returned by noon. The luncheon was starting at 12:05pm so that Captain D could make the noon navigational update announcement. 

Except it wasn’t him making the announcement. When we arrived at the Crown Grill, we discovered he was a little under the weather. Instead we sat with Hotel General Manager Martin May, whom, it seemed, everyone other passenger on the Golden knew but we had never met. We were seated with two couples, one of whom, Christopher and Sandra, were celebrating their 50th anniversary today, and that was really very special.  

Lunch was fantastic, as it always is. I had a veggie starter like the one I had last cruise with grilled vegetables (and wondered, like I had last cruise, why nothing I do with vegetables at home makes them taste half as good). I was able to have one of the usual entrees, orange roughy with large prawns and a tomato sauce and, it was delicious. When dessert was served, something white and creamy was set in front of me and I was absolutely certain that this decadent looking dessert couldn’t possibly be for me, but was assured that it was strawberries with a vegan cream that the pastry chef had prepared especially for me. Seriously, could my life get any better?  As I’ve said, I am getting fruit plated-out at dessert time and even my beloved Princess sorbets are starting to feel a tad repetitive. 

I am so spoiled 

I discovered, when Martin shook G’s hand and said, “This must be G” that someone from Princess DOES read this blog. I once said that no one did, at least not that I knew, but then discovered one senior officer (or at least his wife) does, and now find out that a Hotel General Manager has it bookmarked. It’s a little unsettling. First, I’m always a little shy when I meet a reader in person. After all, I feel comfortable divulging a lot of personal secrets on my blog (it’s just my diary…that thousands of people read), things about hair color and root canals and bedtime ablutions and living for months in an inside cabin, and I’m totally comfortable with that because it’s anonymous.  Except when it isn’t any longer.  And today I racked my brain trying to remember exactly what I’ve said about the Golden Princess, most of which, I think, has been justifiably very complimentary. But don’t worry…you’ll still get me, totally unfiltered. I can’t be anything but forthright and honest in my comments. 

But Martin did ask, and I should probably explain again here, because I haven’t for awhile, where the name Yellow Fish comes from. I started diving in 1997 and took to it like…well, a fish. I adored it, and went on to get my advanced diving certification. Of course, scuba diving is an equipment intensive (and expensive) sport, and when I bought my gear (mask, goggles, fins, BCD, wetsuit, even a tank for dives in our area), I bought bright yellow or yellow and black everything. We were staying at an all-inclusive resort on the southern end of Cozumel and doing three dives a day and I got very good at managing my breathing to extend my time underwater. It would be middle-aged me and a bunch of 20-something athletic guys who would be the last to come up from a dive. One of the Mexican divemasters started calling me Pescado Amarillo, or Yellow Fish. When it came time to start this blog, I needed to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons, but thought that Pescado Amarillo was a bit of a mouthful and so stuck with its English translation. 

Or it could simply mean I like the color yellow and live in Amarillo, Texas. ;-)

But, I digress (it was, after all, a sea day). 

We finished the luncheon around 2pm, just as the first views of Wineglass Bay were appearing off the starboard side. Here I had a decision to make. I was all cleaned up for the Most Traveled Guest party, being held this evening, and so could have just sat up in Skywalkers and watched the view. However, the day, which had started out so dismally, had turned gorgeous and I just had to be on the open decks, regardless of what it would do to hair and makeup. (Lucky are men who don’t have to worry about such things.  G could be on a run and then be ready to go to the party 15 minutes later.)

We changed into shorts and T-shirts (really!  In Tasmania!  After we froze in Queensland!) and sat on loungers on the Terrace Deck and enjoyed Destination Expert Wendy Fuller’s narrative over the PA about the history of this area and how Wineglass Bay got its name (it’s very sad. It has nothing to do with its shape or wine at all. It’s because so many whales became trapped in this area and were killed and their carcasses dragged up on the beaches that the water was red from the blood). Happy thoughts!  Happy thoughts! 

That water color!

We loved watching the beautiful blue wake. 

The aft view from Deck 16. We were sitting in those loungers near the railing on Deck 14. 

The ship slowly curved its way through this passage. 

Source:  Maps.me app

Our location at 3:15pm

Source:  Maps.me app

The beaches were miles long with the whitest sand we’ve seen. 

Such blue water (and look at that sky!)

Colorful rocks and cliffs

But, truthfully, it was easy to put that newly acquired knowledge behind us because the scenery, which by then was on both sides of the ship, was so beautiful. The sky was bright blue with only a few hints of clouds, and the water was the most spectacular shades of blue, too. Wineglass and Oyster Bays are part of Tasmania’s Freycinet National Park, and the beautiful areas we were enjoying are not even reachable by road. Long beaches with bright white sand lined the shoreline in several places (but I bet that water is COLD!), and the rock formations were so colorful. We stayed out there for hours, until the weather changed in.a.heartbeat. and became suddenly windy and cold and spit rain and we ran to the comfort of our cabin. 

We had been invited to go the early Captains Circle Party tonight, at 4:45pm, but I asked instead to attend the later one at 7pm because of the scenic viewing that was scheduled. We gave up our table for dinner and opted to just have something in the Horizon Court Buffet if we were hungry later in the evening. We were joined at the party by Pat, whom we met last cruise (and who reads this blog too. Oh my.) and were honored to be this cruise’s second most traveled passengers (the numbers, because people ALWAYS email me to ask, were about 1120, 960 and 940 days with Princess).

Sunset about 8:15pm. 

Love spending our winter in the Southern Hemisphere!

We did go to the Buffet after the party, and had a light dinner, and then chose to skip production show British Invasion to go to the Wheelhouse Bar to listen to So Cool Quartet and their easy listening music. 

The weather for tomorrow is supposed to be clear and cool (low 60s) with a strong wind developing after noon, which was the motivation for Captain D to reschedule our port order. Low 60s sounds about 30 degrees warmer than our last visit to Hobart, and for that I am grateful. 

Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention that I’ve added some more pics from our first cruise to this blog, if you’d like to go back and look at them.