Time Spent at Sea

The Princess Pop Up Chorus Performance - that's Scott on the far left in the Bass section. 

 I'll say right away that Scott and I have found the huge numbers of sea days a liability. Due to the Cyclone we missed a visit to American Samoa and therefore had five days at sea between Auckland and Tahiti. Then we had another five days from there to Hawaii. Next we'll have five more days to L.A. These stretches feel very long to us - activities and menus are repetitious. We enjoy the trivia games, but two of those a day are more than enough (there are many more). The "enrichment" sessions are few and far between and often turn into sales pitches for the art gallery or ship excursions for example. The musicians are very good but seating at the bars where they play is often difficult to procure. And we are not drinking much now. We didn't take the package thank goodness because we've often gone long periods without any alcohol due to our colds and even when we feel up to it, we might have one cocktail and/or a glass of wine. 

For this one we got to sit in the first
row and Scott got to dance with her.

Lisa Woodhouse gave two performances - both great. 

One highlight has been Scott's joining the Princess Pop Up Chorus. He attended four rehearsals and then they gave a performance in the Piazza. It was really fun and they were great!

Scott, Heather, Nina and Rhys celebrating Heather's 80th birthday!

But we have met some very nice people. And one couple, Rhys and Nina, have turned into real friends. We see them almost every day for a trivia session and a drink. As a team we've won two competitions - that's out of 200+ attendees! We finally celebrated my 80th birthday with them at Sabatini's - lovely night. But they are leaving the boat in Oahu - a big loss.  We mostly have dinner at a sharing table and enjoy meeting others, sometimes more than once. But so far that hasn't led to further involvement. 

We loved this performance of the Princess orchestra, which consists of all the musicians aboard.

The entertainment in the big theater. has been mostly good, occasionally great, often just OK. We loved Lisa Woodhouse, the Celtic Rau, and the Princess band and dancers. Jugglers, magicians and ventriloquists are not my usual preference but we have a lot of time on our hands so pretty much go to everything when we're well enough!

This salad illustrates the detail in 
presentation.

A selection of desserts

The food is always good and sometimes great. They do an amazing job really given the long times between provisioning. But our appetites have been affected by illness. And we're not alone. I think about 25% of the people on the ship are coughing! Loosing weight is nice but I'd rather we both were well! This is day 20 of our 33 - hopefully we'll both continue to improve and be totally healthy again. 

Right now we're in Honolulu and it's 11:30 AM and we are still not getting off the boat! They had to put the 800 passengers leaving us through immigration first and then the official tour groups (didn't get warned that would happen or we might have booked one of them). Two days in port and one of them is slipping away. Luckily our big booked event is a Luau tonight and the pick up isn't until 4:15 PM. More on all that in my next post.