Day 02 -- 6/02 - Pivot Day At Sea

 Overnight I woke up around 2:30am and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I composed and posted yesterday's blog entry before falling back asleep.  Just before 7am I woke up, showered and headed up to the Horizon Bistro for breakfast.  After I gathered my food and found a table, I noted to myself that we were still moving and we were supposed to be at anchor for our port day at St. Peter.  Shortly after, the 3 tones rang and the voice of the Captain announced that due to strong winds, our port call was going to be cancelled and we would be having a sea day.  He announced that the daily program would be revised and distributed as soon as possible in printed form and in electronic form and that the crew were receiving this announcement at the same time as the guests. It was truly unfortunate that we were going to miss our stop in Guernsey, but apparently the current storm was causing winds to flow from the wrong direction and they were so strong that the pilot could not be boarded nor tenders (water shuttles) lowered. Previous cruise ship stops over the past 2-3 days have also been cancelled.


We had an independent shore excursion booked and paid for, and I sent a quick note to the operator about the cancellation of the port stop and requested a refund which was part of the booking policy.  The operator quickly took care of it and my refund was processed back into my PayPal account within a few hours.


With this new sea day, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and conversation with a fellow passenger from Vancouver, WA.  Since it was now a sea day we attended the interdenominational Bible study in the Wedding Chapel.  A group of nine showed up and Romans 6:1-6 became the center of discussion.  It was a good time.


Because of the sea day, a new event was held in the 7th floor Vista lounge to welcome first time Princess cruisers.  Allie, the cruise director hosted it and played a nice game of guessing the job title of a number of the ship's officers.  A number of very nice prizes were given out.It was a fun event.  Following this Ken  Broadhurs presented a port talk on the first 5 upcoming ports.  It was probably the best port talk we have ever seen.


After a Lido lunch, we attended an enrichment lecture about the music of the 60's.  It was a fabulous presentation of the unique musical features of the music of that era.  It was presented by the pianist/singer from the wheelhouse lounge.  I'm not a musician and can't read music, but he totally engaged me in music theory.  Following that we attended a second enrichment lecture about British & Irish history and foods.  it was presented by Jennipher Jenkinson Marshall who does cooking shows all over the world and is based in England and comes from Wales.


Tonight was formal night and we dressed up and went back to the Allegro dining room where were warmly welcomed by last night's wait staff and seated with a couple from California in the same area we sat in the night before.  We were joined by a 4 some that sat next to us the night before.  We sprung for filet mignon and lobster and it was good.


The Captain's welcome was held in the Piazza with a champaign fountain that was pretty cool.  The evening entertainment in the Princess Theater was Bravo and we attended both the 7:30 and 9:30 performances.  It was a rock opera and it was this cast's final performance after performing it on this ship for 9 months.  In between, we attended the YES/NO game show which was quite fun.  We watched Don Terris last 2 minutes and 43 seconds out of a 3 minute goal to refrain from saying yes or no.  The shortest time was 3 seconds.



Angela elected to sing in Karaoke in the Princess Live theater while I elected to return to the room and compose and post this blog entry.


Tomorrow we will be in Cobh, Ireland and we're going to do some self guided walking tours and meet up with a fellow that I only know over the internet through a YouTube cruise travel show. It should be fun.


In retrospect, it was a great day to have a sea day so we could get a real good feel of ship life on a Princess ship.  We're certainly impressed the the programming and the Medallion which seems to be working.  We still struggle a bit with the APP as many of the functions are intuitive to us.  The deck was closed for much of the day due to the winds and we never ventured out. The ship is totally full at 3,600ish passengers but it doesn't seem overly crowded.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 14 -- 6/14- London - Day 1

Image
 We slept well and didn't get up early.  We just had to be a Buckingham Palace by 11am.  We took the Piccadilly Line to the Green Park station and walked about 1/2 mile to join the thousands already there and lining the fences.  We saw and heard the arrival of the guards but couldn't see the actual ceremony.  There was aggressive crowd control by mounted policemen, foot policemen, and bicycle policemen.  After the ceremony was over, we got a good view of the exit of the guard and the band.  There was definitely a lot of pomp & circumstance! I downloaded an app to purchase HOHO bus tickets and we made our way to the back of the palace to get on the bus. There we had a nice chat with a mother and daughter from Mexico. We first used the blue line route and then the yellow line on the Toot bus company.  There are 3-4 bus companies doing HOHO.  It was very interesting to see things we have only read about or seen on TV or film.  The sheer...
Read more

Day 11 -- 6/11 - At Sea to Le Havre, France

Image
 We got to sleep very late last night, so we slept in pretty late today.  I made it up to breakfast in the Lido before attending the Navigational presentation in Princess Live while Angela attended the cooking presentation in the Princess Theatre.  We joined up for Ken Broadhurst's port talk on Le Havre, France.  It was really good as has his previous presentations.   For lunch we tried Alfredo's Pizzeria and it was really good.  The pizza crust was perfect and a single pizza was perfect for two people.  The Voice of the Ocean (a licensed byproduct of the hit TV show "The Voice".  It was kinda cheesy, but we enjoyed the 5 contestants that participated.  In the end, Shawn, a guest from California won with an 83% win rate won by singing "Unchained Melody". Jennipher Marshall-Jenkinson presented a good talk on tea which was quite good.  And we enjoyed our last Gala Dinner.  My main course was seared tuna and it was a huge portion and p...
Read more

Day 05 -- 6/05 - Liverpool

Image
 After a quick overnight sail (actually the Captain plotted a longer course in order to produce enough water for mooring today in Liverpool), we awakened to find ourselves berthed at the Liverpool cruise terminal which is right in the heart of downtown.  While the ship was berthed at around 6am, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and disembarked at 9am.  We made our way up the steep gangway and out of the cruise terminal which had all sorts of tourist information.  We walked along the dock area and checked out the Beatles store and took a photograph of the FAB 4.  A Hop On Hop Off bus pulled up and set up shop to sell tickets.  So we purchased tickets for the fort loop of the day in combination with a second loop that covered Beatle related items and a ticket to the Beatles Story museum.   We boarded the RED line bus and secured an upper deck seat.  It was a comprehensive tour and most people just roads the entire loop which ended back at the Royal ...
Read more