Friday April 26th – Last Full Sea Day

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Hello from somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean. This is our last full day at sea during this cruise. It is also known as Packing Day as we have to get everything ready for our landing tomorrow morning.

First, we seem to have finally gotten substantially over our “coughing disease”. We both got a pretty good night’s sleep last night without many coughing interruptions. It would have been nice to have reached this point sooner, but we have noticed that there have been many people coughing on the ship the last few days. Anyway, we got up this morning feeling much better rested than the last few mornings.

We went to the Portofino Dining Room and had the breakfast we had hoped for yesterday. Janet got a very good breakfast of fresh melon and then Eggs Benedict. David had apple slices and a delicious Ham & Cheese Omelet. We had a very enjoyable and leisurely breakfast. Tomorrow’s breakfast may still be tasty but it will be a much more rushed activity.

Janet went off to her last session with the Knitters. She took some of the fancy scarves she has made previously and showed them to her new friends. Meanwhile David stopped at the Photo Gallery and got the picture which shows not just ourselves but also has a map showing the itinerary of the cruise. We usually are more interested in the diagram than the picture of ourselves.

At 10:30 was a new version of the Culinary Demonstration. Janet was still knitting but David went to the theater about 10:00 and it was almost filled even then. Previous “demos” had actually been a cooking show with the Executive Chef and the Head Maître D preparing a 3 course meal with some jokes. This time the format involved very little actual cooking and was much more comic and talent show reflecting the cooking and serving staff. There was a good bit of humor, some singing and dancing by the kitchen staff, and was a wholly different show than in the past. Again it was followed by a tour of one of the galleys, but David skipped that part.

We met back in the cabin a little before noon and started working on the packing task. The bags need to start being placed in the corridor during the evening, but there is a lot of work to get it all prepared beforehand. We need to keep out things which will be needed tomorrow. We want to minimize what we hand-carry off the ship in the morning, but there certainly has to be some of that. We also needed to think in terms of things not allowed to carry on the airplane as well as distributing weight limited for the luggage. Bottom line is that we worked on it much of the afternoon.

David brought down some light cheese and crackers for Janet’ lunch and got him one more cheeseburger from the grill. We expected a good final dinner and did not want to be too full to enjoy it. Then we continued packing and eventually got it largely done. Unfortunately the camera and laptop are both still out and available for us to use, but the cable to transfer pictures is somewhere in a suitcase, so there are no pictures in today’s blog. We had about an hour nap to finish off the afternoon before we got ready for dinner.

A little after 4:00 we went down to the Crooner’s Bar for a cocktail before dinner. Janet had a Milky War Martini and David had a Strawberry Daiquiri. The waiter came and brought Janet’s empty glass with chocolate swirled around the interior. Then he took the shaker and gave her drink a hearty shaking before pouring the martini in the glass. After she had finished the drink Janet almost licked the inside of the glass – our cat could have given her a good lesson on how to clean it up. Then we went to the dining room.

Tonight we both had one final shrimp cocktail, but David also had a bowl of baked potato soup. For her entrée, Janet had a small serving of veal sweetbreads with mushrooms. David had the New York strip steak. We both had a slice of the Deep Dish Apple Pie for dessert. On the final day of a cruise, Princess traditionally has the junior waiters’ parade around the room with Baked Alaska, with much hooping and cheering from the diners. David got a few photos, but they are stuck in the camera for tonight. It was once again a fun ending to a happy cruise. We said goodbye to our tablemates and to our serving staff and we went back to our cabin.

We were not really interested in tonight’s show in the theater, so we finished our packing and put the luggage out in the hallway. These bags will be waiting for us in the cruise terminal when we leave the ship tomorrow. For tonight, we are having a nice quite evening.

We became aware of a couple who had decided the other day that they would stay on for another 14 day cruise to Alaska – there were still cabins available. They will have to buy warmer clothes and reschedule their airline flight but it shows how happy they were with the cruise. We are ready to come home instead and will be happy to be back in St Louis tomorrow – we’re not really ready to spontaneously add 2 more weeks to our vacation.

FYI … The temperature today started in the high 50’s and never really got much above the low 60’s. Good night.

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