29 Apr – 7th Day at Sea

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First, let us thank an English teacher who is reading the BLOG. Our previous reference to a Child Fruit Salad should have actually been Chilled Fruit Salad. We will have to make our proof-reader work a little harder in the future. :-) We will blame it on auto-correct (erroneously).



Hello from the somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. We had a longer day today (24 hours) than we’ve been having lately. Yesterday when we described ourselves as being in the London time zone, we should also have said we were in time zone for Madeira (where we will be tomorrow). So there was no need to change the clocks today.



FYI … David did go to the theater last night and enjoyed the show. Not only was the performer a good singer, but he also did some tap dancing, and played several musical instruments (clarinet, flute, ukulele, and saxophone). His name was Joe West and he’s from England. It was a good show even if it was a little late.



We got up and went to the dining room for a nice breakfast before exerting ourselves knitting and treadmilling. So we had what might be called our “usual morning”, doing the things we’ve come to enjoy. However at 11:30 David went down to the Princess Theater where there was a “back stage tour”. There was a short introduction and then everyone got to go up on the stage and we were led back into the area where some of the “stage equipment” was stored for tonight’s show. We then went through the changing rooms and saw a few of several hundred costumes. The most expensive costume (for the lead dancer in the final production show) is hand-made from ostrich feathers and cost them $14,000 – we were not allowed anywhere near that one.



Afterwards, we went to Alfredo’s, which is a pizzeria on deck-6. We’ve been to the pizza stand near the pool and gotten a slice of whatever they were cooking that day. Today’s venue has a full menu of different pizzas and other Italian dishes. David had a specialty pizza with a beer while Janet had a Calzone with Sangria. This was about the last of the eating locations for us to explore on the ship, except for the specialty restaurants which charge an extra fee. Really we have yet to find anywhere that we didn’t enjoy the food at the time.



This afternoon David went for a walk around the decks. Deck-7 (Promenade Deck) on most ships goes entirely around the outside of the ship. On the Royal there are a few short segments for passengers, plus some areas near the lifeboats which are restricted to the crew, but also across the stern there is no deck whatsoever. The Royal is going in for a refurbishing sometime after this summer’s season and installing a full-circuit Promenade Deck is supposed to be part of their plan. Anyway, that left David walking the upper decks for a while. It has become mostly sunny skies today, but only mid 60 temperatures and still a strong breeze as the ship hurries to get to our first port call on schedule tomorrow.



At 3:00 we went to the Future Cruise Consultant’s office and checked into the Princess EZ-Air Fares for our next cruise in 2017. They were able to make reservations for us cheaper than if we had done them ourselves directly with the airline. This is also about the shortest length of flying time of any of various possible connections. So we are happy with this approach, although we could cancel them later on if for some reason we wanted to.



After that, Janet got a Salted Caramel Strata Coffee from the International Café and went back our cabin to read more of the book-club book (needs to be done by Sunday). David stayed in the Atrium and listened to the stringed quartet playing more classical music. Once again they were very good. They used to have a CD for sale, but they’ve all been sold so we cannot get one.



We went to dinner at the usual time and had our regular group. For appetizer we each had a Bay Scallop Salad and then a special Spaghetti Marinara prepared by the Head Waiter (last night’s was an oil based sauce). For the entrée we each had Cowboy Steak and it was delicious. For dessert we each had a scrumptious slice of apple pie. We had a glass of wine with our meal and an after dinner liquor. It was a very good dinner.



Tonight we went to the theater to listen to a Piano Entertainer named Antonio Salci. He played his own arrangement of a lot of well-known songs. It incorporated a lot of the brass players from the stage band. They were pretty loud – nobody was likely to fall asleep during his show. We enjoyed it, but not enough to buy his CD.



The Movie-Under-the-Stars (at 10:00 tonight) is “The Martian”. We agree that we want to see it, but we will wait for it to come indoors in a few days where it will less windy. And tomorrow we reach our first port (planned for 9:00 AM) so we probably will benefit from not having a late night tonight. Tomorrow will mark the beginning of the busier phase of our vacation. This past week has been quite restful (even with the 23-hour days) but we are looking forward to doing some new things. This should also provide more photo opportunities to include in the blog.



By the way, she finished her book this evening. It was The Lake House by Kate Morton. It was very good and should cause a good discussion. David finished his book today too. Good night from D206.

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