Tuesday Sep 25 – at Sea

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After leaving Vigo we embarked on a 3-day voyage to Livorno Italy. The captain announced that we would be sailing along the Portuguese coast and passing by Lisbon during the night, but too far out to see anything. Then in the middle of the night we will pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, but only visible by the full moon tonight. That is the tour-guide summary of our passage today.

We slept in this morning after a very tiring day yesterday. However after a good long night’s rest Janet was feeling better. Her ankles are still a bit tender after all the walking, but she is doing better. By sleeping late Janet missed the Knitters meeting, but we did have a good buffet breakfast about 10:30. For the first time since we got on the ship, Janet was able to eat everything on her plate (not counting the dried crust on her French Toast). So these are all good signs.

Before going to breakfast we watched the “Wake Show” where the Cruise Director gives some information and answers questions. David had sent in a question which they will have to research and will give an answer on a later date. However they did digress into a handwriting analysis which indicated a strong personality – thus the unusual question. Stay tuned in a later episode for the original question and what the answer was.

After breakfast, David took the unmentionables to the laundry room and ran a load through the machines. Since it is early in the trip, there was no one else using the machines. Anyway, we got all those cleaned and package up another bags of shirts and pants for the ship’s laundry to do. The free service we got from the first bags of clothes would have cost $47 and today’s bag would be almost $28 more. Hooray for Elite status at Princess.

While our steward was cleaning the cabin, we went down to the International Café for a pastry and one of Janet’s Special Salted Carmel Coffee. We found a table to share with a lady from yesterday’s tour and we compared our thoughts. She too had though it was more strenuous than she had been expecting but was proud that she had made it through the whole excursion. She also helped David identify some of the buildings to make sure he had the correct understanding of what each picture showed.

We returned to the cabin and checked our excursions for the remaining ports. The first one is Livorno and we are sure it will be alright. Toulon probably will be fine but Barcelona concerns us and we might make a change. After that we can make decisions about the following places. Anyway we will be taking it easy for the next couple of days and will see how it plays out.

Then Janet watched a movie on the TV while working on one of her needlework projects. Janet’s movie was a cartoon called Coco. David was having trouble getting the blog to upload the pictures from yesterday, but finally everything was transmitted. Sorry it was not ready last night, but we were just too tired and there was too much to get done.

We went to the Santa Fe Dining Room for High Tea. This room is decorated different than any dining room we’ve seen on any other Princess ship. Since we ate in Vivaldi Room last night, that still leaves us 2 dining rooms to find events during the rest of the cruise. Anyway, the late breakfast and various snacks meant we didn’t go to lunch today. Also we skipped going to the Skywalker Lounge but instead had some of our wine in the cabin before dinner. Altogether it was a restful afternoon.

Although we did not go out on deck, the temperature from the balcony was probably in the high 70s – very comfortable. It was also sunny most of the day and the wind was coming from behind the ship at about 15 knots, so there was very little breeze to be felt. Hopefully tomorrow will be equally delightful.

We went to dinner and explained our absence yesterday. We shared our views about Vigo and talked about our other excursion experiences from other cruises. For dinner Janet had the iceberg wedge salad and a Crab Cake entrée. David had the Crab Cake appetizer, the strawberry smoothie, and the Cowboy steak. Our friends Jerry and Joyce will remember that delicious steak from our previous cruises with them. This was just as good as David had expected. For dessert Janet had chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup and David had English Toffee ice cream. We both ate all our meals – we seem to have gotten our appetites back and had a good dinner.

Afterwards we went to the theater and watched a Magic & Illusion act. This was the same person who had done the escape tricks last night and had given the presentation on Houdini. A couple of the tricks were understandable and a couple tricks were real puzzles. Anyway it was light entertainment to wrap up our easy day. No pictures today. See you tomorrow.

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