Saturday Feb 29 – at Sea

---

Today is “bonus day” – at least as far as counting the days in the year. There is one extra day today. Unfortunately, that does not convert into a bonus day of the cruise. Today is still the last full day of the cruise and as usual it is disappointing to be so close to being finished.

We slept this morning until about 8:00. At 8:30 we called the Sieberts and agreed to meet for breakfast in the dining room at 8:45. It was a little crowded (many people having their last leisurely breakfast) but we got seated by 9:00. Janet and Kathy both got the Eggs Benedict while Jim and David both had the meat and potatoes breakfast with eggs. We also had juice, pastries, and coffee/tea/milk. So our next-to-last breakfast was very filling.

At 10:00 they had the Garage Sale in another dining room. This is a where lots of leftover clothing (t-shirts, blouses, & jackets), bags, mugs/glasses, etc. are marked down for a final attempt to sell to the passengers who are about to leave the ship. We bought a couple of things but not a crazy amount of stuff. That’s because the next exercise was to get the suitcases out and start trying to pack everything again. That chore proceeded throughout the day until everything finally was packed by the time we went to dinner.

In the meantime, we met up with the Sieberts again and had pizza lunch on the Lido Deck. When we have our family cruise vacation to Alaska Patterson is going to be thrilled with the size of the pizza slices. It looks like about a 24-inch pizza and is cut into 8 slices each, so you figure out how large each slice is. We added some dessert from the Horizon Court pastry shop.

We watched a couple of movies on the TV while we were packing – first was the new Lion King movie and then Dumbo. At 4:00 we ordered David’s Free Drink. Janet had stopped at the Medallion experts and figured out how to access his account. David’s cell phone is a long way from a “smart phone”, but Janet can now impersonate him on her phone, so we got his drink before the cruise was over. Jim and Kathy each ordered their drinks too, so we had a little pre-dinner party at 5:00 in the Siebert’s cabin.

We had made reservation in the dining room this morning, so we got seated at 5:30 as planned. Tonight it was very crowded, so we were glad of the reserved table. Although we have been using Anytime Dining, several of the nights we had eaten at the same table and so had the same waiter – we wanted him one more time. Tonight was the Surf & Turf dinner for David & Janet. Kathy had Pad Thai and Jim had Seafood Skewers. They had the Parade of Baked Alaska – traditional final dessert on a final night of a Princess cruise – however we had Deep Dish Apple Pie. Jim had New York Cheesecake (for the 6^th time this cruise) and Kathy had some ice cream. Byt the way, Tessa will be happy to know they still have Shrimp Cocktails every night for dinner if she wants.

After dinner we went to the photo shop to check out the pictures they have been taking of us throughout the cruise. Mostly they are bad, but we had them print one of our photos on the “map background”. We like to get that just to show where the ship went on the cruise. Then we were back in our cabin loading everything possible in the suitcases before placing them in the hall for tomorrow.

Thus ends the saddest day of the cruise. We will continue our vacation even after we get to Florida because we are staying for a few more days. But that wraps up the story for today.

---