Day 4: At Sea

G must have been up and at ‘em early this morning; these pics from the World Fresh Marketplace arrived while I was still in jammies. 

Captain’s Circle events this cruise

He claimed his seat for today’s Super Bowl early (this is not his first rodeo😉) and was settled in with a burger and beer before the game began.

With  Sherita and Matt, the Three Musketeers 😆

I was so happy to see G wearing sun protective clothing while he waited for the game to start.

We have gotten fried watching Super Bowls at MUTS over the years. 

And he finished his day with another session of a jazz in the Adagio

Day 4 Princess Patter

Day 3: At Sea

I awoke to a white, but brightly sunny world this morning. G let me know right away that his world, while sunny, definitely lacked our snow and cold, by sending these beautiful pics of the sunrise at sea. 

Warmed me up just to see these.

He spent some time wandering around this ship, taking pics and sending them to me. It was a beautifully sunny day there, too, though just a tad warmer. 

Food choices on the Lido Deck:  Prego’s pizzeria…

…and the Trident Grill

I loved this starfish design in the towel caddy by the pool

Neptune’s Reef and Pool

G attended the 11am Princess Theater lecture about whales. Around mid day, the captain announced that, due to the medical evacuation, the Ruby Princess would be 4 hours late arriving in Honolulu on Tuesday. That’s pretty remarkable, but the bridge officers were taking advantage of today’s good weather and calm seas to cruise at 24mph. I know just enough about these things to know that’s really fast.  

Day 3 lunch menu

G loves lunch in the dining room and this itinerary sure has lots of them

He did some checking out cabin locations for future cruises (who knew that both C215 and C214 had noisy ceiling ventilation fans right outside their doors?), and then settled in by the Lotus Spa pool where he used the Medallion app to order a Strongbow cider. Spoiled! He couldn’t complete his cruise check in on the Medallion app but it appears to be working fine for the really important stuff. 

Platinum, Elite and Suite Lounge in Skywalkers 

Oh, and that Michigan v. Ohio State game?  In the immortal words of Darko (yes, that one) from Macedonia, “We will never speak of this again”. 

Day 3 Princess Patter

Day 2: At Sea

Our day at home was cold and overcast, with snow projected to start in the afternoon.  Luckily, tonight’s HUGE game was only 4 miles away and I have 4WD. There was no way I’d skip a cruise and then miss a game!

G started sending me pics early today, and we FaceTimed while he was finishing up breakfast. He admitted he’s been too busy to miss me, but was a bit sad that I wouldn’t be able to accompany him the Most Traveled Guest luncheon on Monday. We’ve been joking that he needs a robot with an iPad as the face, and I could just FaceTime my way through the cruise at his side (there was a Modern Family episode about this that was harious). Oh well.  As I told friends, I was going to feel badly about something whether I was on the cruise or not, but Hawaii and cruises will be around for awhile. McGuy’s Senior Night and Wish Week and these games won’t be. 

At his table by the window again. 

That’s Baileys for his coffee. I’m surprised he didn’t opt

for a mimosa too!

Through the Medallion app, G reserved a table by himself every night at 5pm in the DaVinci Dining Room. That’s where he was seated last night, though it wasn’t clear to him yet if that was going to be his table every night. 

It was chilly and overcast today. 

Hope that weather improves before Sunday’s Super Bowl!

Phenomenal WiFi speed on the Ruby Princess this morning

I didn’t hear from G most of the day, but knew he likely had Cruise Critic and Veterans get togethers.  He rarely misses the former and never the latter. The snow, as predicted, started to fall here at home, but much more heavily than had been forecasted. I needed 4WD when I left for tonight’s game at 4:30pm and knew I’d be driving home in a mess. 

I was in the final minutes of the exciting JV game when cruise friend Paige messaged me.  She HAD to talk to me RIGHT NOW!  Was I available?  I typed back that I was in a game and couldn’t even hear myself think because the students were blowing the roof off the gym, and that the varsity game was starting immediately afterward. Paige said she was dying of laughter, so I told her to message it to me so I could laugh too. At the same moment, G texted me. He had asked someone named Sherita to accompany him to the MTG luncheon on Monday. 

Let me back up a for a second. A week or two ago, G had posted on the Cruise Critic roll call for this cruise, asking if anyone wanted to climb Diamond Head with him the day the Ruby Princess is in Honolulu. Someone named Sherita immediately responded that she wanted to, and had booked the ship’s excursion since she didn’t want to do it alone. She’d cancel that excursion and accompany G instead. At the same moment G told me this and commented that Sherita was an unusual name, I was looking at Paige’s Facebook page on my iPad and someone named Sherita had replied to one of her posts. And I said, “Well, it can’t be that unusual, here’s another Sherita”, thinking that was the end of the coincidence. 

Yesterday, G texted me that he had met Sherita on board and thought he might ask her to accompany him to the Most Traveled Guest (MTG) luncheon and did I think that was a good idea? Knowing he wasn’t looking forward to going alone, I thought it was a great idea. Meanwhile, Paige’s friend Sherita messaged Paige that she was on her first Princess cruise ever (though she has over 800 days on Holland America) and was going to get to go to the Most Traveled Guest luncheon with the most traveled passenger onboard (yes, G is #1 this cruise). Paige quickly connected the dots and couldn’t wait to tell me. 

What, my friends, are the odds of that? What a small, small, SMALL world it is!

Sitting in a seriously overcrowded gym (when the game sold out, students figured out how to sneak in through the wrestling room), a COVID super spreader event if ever there was one, G continued to send me texts and pics and it really did feel like the best of both worlds, and like I had one foot at home and the other on the Ruby Princess.

Day 3 dinner menu

And at home…leftovers with a different dressing 

Coast Guard helicopter hovering to pick up patient 



The Dolly Parton Tribute Show in the Princess Theater 

A 1-point loss in the final second to their biggest rival couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm about being at the game. The snow was still falling heavily when I walked out to my SUV, and I’ll admit that having to brush 5” of snow off of it and get home in the most atrocious conditions I’ve driven in in quite awhile made me wish- just for a second- that I was on the Ruby Princess en route to Hawaii. 

Thank God tomorrow’s going to be a relaxing day…at least until the Michigan v. Ohio State game in the evening. 😉

Day 2 Princess Patter

The cruise I didn’t take: 15-nights to Hawaii on the Ruby Princess

This one is going to be a little different. I am blogging about a cruise that I am not on. That’s a bit of a trick, and my ability to successfully do it depends entirely on G’s dedication to sending me pics of menus, food items and Patters, so we’ll see how this goes. My final words to him as I dropped him off at the airport this morning?  “Pics or it didn’t happen”. Let’s see how he enjoys being an Ace Cruise Reporter. 

So why is G cruising and I’m not?  Well, one of us (not me) gets a little antsy at about this point in the winter. Our weather has been largely really mild, but it’s still that time of year when it’s tough to work on outside projects. We were sitting in the family room a few weeks ago when G wished he could just get on a cruise ship, preferably one to Hawaii. When I found the perfect solution, I warned him that I would not be going with him this time.  I mean, have I mentioned that I want to be home for the boys’ senior year sports? I know I have, but have I mentioned it lately?

Interestingly, I’ve learned today  that embarkation day, even if I’m not on the cruise, is tiring. Of course, that fact that the alarm went off at 3:45am might have a little something to do with it. I made a cup of coffee in a travel mug, pulled my SUV out of the garage to get it warmed up, G loaded up his suitcase and we were driving away at 4:30am. Our weather at home is pretty nice right now, so I was not expecting the fog/misty rain we encountered along the way, nor the splash back and temps hovering just below freezing. Between the dark of night, the potential for a deer (or 100) on the highway and the slick road, that was a smidge dicey. Luckily, we made it safely, but number one on my list of things to do today was to get my vehicle washed. Even the door handles were crusty. 

G’s flight to San Francisco was uneventful, and he was very happy to be met at the Terminal 2 baggage claim by Princess reps for his shuttle to the ship. 

A friendly face at baggage claim

We had been unable (and by we I mean me, because G was so nonchalant about the process that he was quite happy showing up at the terminal without opening the Medallion App even once) to get him Ocean Ready, but experienced quite the comedy of errors trying.  Oh well, it really doesn’t matter. G’s flight was booked using EZ Air, so we assumed Princess would know when and where he was arriving even without being able to complete that information in the app, and they did. And, unlike the Princess shuttle experience we had in Fort Lauderdale, this one went perfectly.

I was busy this morning at physical therapy, a trip to the library to get free N95 masks, some minor shopping and going to the car wash, but G kept me up to date with where he was and how things were going.  I was also keeping an eye on his progress with the Find Friends app on my iPhone (we call it the Find My Husband app). Apparently, once the bus arrived at the terminal for Pier 27, guests were divided into small groups for the COVID test, and kept waiting for about 30 minutes for the results until his group was told they were all fine to board. They only show stopper (for some) was that they had not yet completed the Hawaii Safe Travels documentation (https://travel.hawaii.gov/#/).  There were written instructions available in the terminal if needed, and everyone was required to show the QR code that is generated when the information is completed online (take a screen capture to show the agents, they don’t actually scan it). 

The last time I saw the Ruby Princess was in Auckland, New Zealand, when we

disembarked the ship to join the Majestic Princess. 

And then COVID changed the world. 


The COVID testing process in the terminal

About the same time I returned home from my errands, G started sending me pics from the embarkation day lunch in the DaVinci Dining Room. And that is when it started feeling weird. I made myself linner (that’s lunch/dinner), and sat down “with” him on FaceTime as we ate “together”. I have never before felt so much like I had one foot at home and the other on a cruise. 

The excellent service starts here

He really didn’t even need to see the menu 😉

Beef medallions

You may remember that G has cut short Sydney sightseeing to be on the ship for beef medallions

Soufflé a la mode

And, because I’m sure you’re dying to know, back home in the RW (real world)

I had quinoa and roasted veggies over chopped romaine with 

soy yogurt lime cilantro dressing 

G finally made it to his cabin, met his cabin steward Joao from India, watched the safety video on his cabin TV and checked in at his muster station (stopping for a drink on the way or on the return…or both). 

Get the party started!

No hanging around the bars in the current COVID environment


I *think* that’s a dirty banana, probably the first of many

Scenes from sail away, cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge

This is the first time I was convinced that G would survive his first solo cruise. 

A table by himself next to a window. His life is good!

And this was my second indication that all is right in his world. 

A garden salad with blue cheese and blue cheese crumbles. 

Chili. No prime rib on the embarkation night menu. 

Steve Moris is still entertaining on ships

G has a nice balcony cabin toward the back of the ship on Riviera Deck (our usual haunts) and has told his steward Joao that he rarely needs any service. He has extra towels and will return the wet ones and take the trash to Joao on his own.  Joao told him to just ask when he wants a linen change. And that’s the biggest difference between G and I. I want service and a spotless room twice a day on a ship.  That’s a huge part of the cruise to me.  G just wants a man cave. 😆

Senior officers on the Ruby Princess. 

Day 16: Home

It is actually two days later as I write this post, not because we were so overwhelmed with things to do when we returned home (as we are when we’ve been gone for months) but because I have been so caught up with football and celebrating McGee’s huge success at the state’s cross country championship. 

Plus, I’m just a bit weary of typing posts on my iPhone and had to psyche myself up for this. 😉

We were up at 6am and ate a quick breakfast in the World Fresh Marketplace on disembarkation day. I fear Sabatini’s has spoiled us forever, as a previously perfectly acceptable breakfast in the buffet suddenly felt like “roughing it”.  We were scheduled to meet at 8am in the Casino to be in the first group to disembark after walk offs (people who packed lightly and who can simply roll their luggage off the ship themselves). We spent the last of our on board credit to purchase a Princess transfer to the Fort Lauderdale airport but we won’t make that mistake again. It turned out to be pretty awful. 

First, we were delayed about an hour getting off the ship because they were having trouble offloading the luggage. I guess that’s not a huge surprise; the Emerald Princess was the first Princess ship disembarking guests at Port Everglades since the shut down. The driver of the bus to the airport seemed out of practice, too. He took forever to load the bus, and then took us to the wrong level at the airport and dropped us off between terminals, causing some of the people on the bus to have an absolute meltdown. Apparently some people have lost all filters and curse out anyone not doing things their way. It was quite ugly. 

Luckily the security line at FLL moved quickly, and, though our flight was 100% full, access to live TV, including the Michigan v. Michigan State game, made the hours go by quickly. About the same time Michigan lost the game, I started receiving texts about McGee at the state championship. It simply couldn’t have gone any better, and he led his team to the win. Yep, I was glad my double masks were soaking up the tears in my eyes. Interviews!  He is now giving post-race interviews!  When did he learn how to do that with such poise and humility?

Our driver picked us up exactly as scheduled, and we returned home on a warm and beautiful Saturday afternoon, which was nice because it’s been pretty dismal since then. Still, no sign of that four letter word (snow) here…yet. 

As for future plans, once again I can honestly say we have nothing on the horizon. I received word from a fellow cruiser about a Crystal Endeavor expedition cruise to Antarctica for about half price on November 17, and that was tempting, but I am scheduled to fly to Arizona in two weeks for McGee’s Nike Cross Regional race. Then reader April kindly shared with me information on the Windstar Wind Breeze cruise in French Polynesia starting November 22. That’s still a possibility, but we have to wait until we get my knee figured out before we book anything. I see an orthopedic surgeon tomorrow and she’s certain to order an MRI. Say what you will about US health care, but I’m sure I’ll get an MRI tomorrow or Wednesday and have some answers. Everything, including the trip to Arizona, depends on the outcome. 

It was never in our plans to spend a lot of time cruising this winter. I want to be home for the basketball and track seasons; this is the boys’ senior year and my last chance to see them compete. Travel, and specifically cruising is certain to be a lot easier a year from now. 

But we consider ourselves so lucky to have had three weeks in Alaska, and the utopic cruise experience on the Emerald Princess. We will never feel that celebrated and spoiled again, and those are some wonderful memories to keep us going until the next time.  Thanks for following along!  Stay safe and stay healthy!