Day 25 - Cruise on Sapphire Princess

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Another great sleep on these super comfortable beds and down to the small dining area for some more continental breakkie. Arranged for Eddie our private taxi man to take us to the San Pedro Pier at 11AM to catch our cruise.

Not a bad time to leave the Disneyland area as there is a massive music convention here and it’s also a long weekend with Martin Luther King Day holiday on Monday.

It took about an hour to get to the pier and we experienced some pretty bad traffic on the freeway. They had seven lanes in one section and no-one was going anywhere (and this was a Saturday morning !).

The port of Los Angeles is huge which is no surprise when you think this is the major port that is closest to China / Japan as the USA does a little bit of importing.

We were onboard our ship the Sapphhire Princess by about 12.30PM, and checked out our balcony stateroom. We are on Deck 12 Aloha Room 602 which is the highest deck where cabins are situated. As we look down we can see the lower decks have larger balconies that extend out a bit further from the ship. These are big enough to have your own party. Ours is more modest with room for two chairs and a small coffee table. It is really warm today (must be close to 30 degrees and very unseasonal in LA but good none the less).

Went for a bit of exploring of the ship and found the buffet, and a pool, then another pool, then another pool. I think there 5 in total !

This ship is a little different than some of our previous ones with the main cabin areas in Decks 8-12, with shopping, casino bars & restaurants down lower on decks 5-7, and the pools / sports areas on Decks 14-16. No deck 13 which I presume is a superstitious thing.

On the sports deck we found a tennis court covered with netting so you don’t lose the balls over the side. It’s a bit of a dome shape which is good as when you hit the balls into the net they roll back to you. They don’t have conventional racquets but the wooden ones with small holes in them which makes it hard to do volleys. Luke & I had a hit which was fun.

Decided to give the Afternoon Trivia a go with Kerry & Elise and some locals but we were hopeless. It was real hard with a few questions about Shakespeare. Can anyone think of a Shakespeare play that is an anagram of a women’s name ?

For dining we had chosen the anytime dining option. We have always in the past chosen the fixed early dining sessions where you go to the main dining room at a set time usually 5.30PM. We had found this rather inflexible so we went with a new option.

Our first dinner was in the Santa Fe Restaurant, and we went there right on 5.30PM. The Restaurant was much smaller than I had imagined and more like a conventional restaurant on land. We had a window seat where there was a beautiful sunset forming behind Catalina Island as we sailed by.

I had soup as my entree followed by this Beef Ribs dish, and the serving size was huge. It had been slow cooked for 14 hours and was great. Luke had the same and he said it was delicious with his first bite. I had the New York Cheesecake for desert. We had a special wine waiter who asked us what we were looking for and recommended a Merlot from Sonoma which was nice. We only drank half a bottle and would keep the rest for another day.

After dinner we went to the Teen Centre to register the kids. There was no-one there and I found a list that said there was about 20 kids in their age group onboard (13-15). They had an icebreaker session schedule for 10PM so they were both keen to go back later.

We went to the main show room to see the opening show and they had this guy Carlos Oscar who was a latino from New York, and he had me in stitches laughing. It was only a 20 minute cameo and we will definitely catch his main show later on the cruise.

Went back to the kids club and Elise found a friend (from Gosford !), as did Luke who found a friend from Oregon (home of the Ducks). That was it. Only 4 kids 2 boys and 2 girls. At least that made it easy for them choosing a friend !.

Kerry went back to room and crashed at about 10.30PM. The kids rolled back in the room around midnight and I suspect that will be an ongoing pattern for the rest of the cruise. Luke has found another friend Charles from Pennsylvania.

The ship itself is very nice and stylish. It has a quality feel (that matches the price !). There are lots of deck chairs around, it’s not overly crowded (even though it is full). The demographics seem to be more of a retired age group.

This is our first cruise on board Princess and these guys are experienced at doing the Mexican Riviera and were the ones used for the old Love Boat TV series. We actually weren’t supposed to be on this ship as we had booked on Carnival Splendour before it had it’s fire which saw our scheduled cruise get cancelled and we made a last minute decision to book on this ship which does the same port destinations.

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