Aug 29 – Third Sea Day

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Hello again. Today is a day at sea with no shore excursions. For that reason we were free to sleep as late as we wanted and not have to set a wake-up call. Despite that, we both woke up about 7:00 AM anyway. We decided to try the sit-down breakfast instead of going through the usual buffet. Janet was hoping for Eggs Benedict, but they weren’t serving that today, so she had the Classic English Breakfast instead. David had a more or less typical omelet.



After breakfast, Janet went to meet up with her Knitters & Natters group to work on her project. During that time, one of the ship’s staff came to check on them and heard how much this small group appreciated having the item on the Princess Patter schedule to help get them together. Also how much they appreciated the nice venue for conducting their gathering.



David went back to the cabin to publish the Gdansk blog entry, then on to the Central Piazza to see a Pastry Demonstration. When he first read the schedule he misread the item (omitting the “r”), but that made more sense for this public display. It was interesting but don’t expect him to start making fancy pastry figurines, or even cleverly decorated cakes.



After that David went around the ship to take a few photos of some of the ship venues. There are many more than are practical to photograph in one attempt, but we can add a little sense of “shipboard life” for your understanding.



We met again in the cabin about 11:00 and Janet checked her e-mail. We got a nice note from Elizabeth, who said the house & cats were doing well, and that she was going to pick us up at the airport when we return. We will send her a separate note with the flight information. Anyway – Thanks for the update and we appreciate all the help from her and Mike.



Along those lines, sadly we received of our luggage tags and instructions for leaving the ship in Southampton. That is a necessity, but we have been having such a good time we are not anxious to start thinking about ending the cruise. But that’s a sign that we will be returning to “real world” pretty soon.



We decided to have 11:30 lunch in the Wheelhouse Bar, which was serving a British pub-style lunch. We both had the Fish & Chips, but frankly it was not as good as we had in London. Maybe we are just spoiled now.



At 12:30, Janet wanted to watch the movie “42” being shown in the Princess Theater. She said it was very entertaining. Meanwhile, David walked a couple of laps around on the Promenade Deck until it got close to 1:00. At that time we cruised under a bridge which connects one side of Denmark with the other side (he got several photos from our balcony).



While Janet was finishing her movie, David rested and read some of his book before dosing off in a short nap. Janet returned to the cabin with one of her fancy coffees. And we rested in the cabin the rest of the afternoon. We have been invited to the Captain’s Reception for Platinum travelers. We had a glass of wine before going to the party. This evening is the last of the 3 formal dinning nights, so we got our fancy duds one more time before going to visit with the Captain. We got a couple of glasses of pink champagne and rum punch each before the Captain cracked some jokes and made a short speech thanking us for being faithful Princess travelers. They awarded bottles of champagne to the 3 couple who have had the most days sailing with Princess, 385 days, 417 days, and 522 days. We wonder how many of the crew has 500 days.



After the party we were off to have dinner. This evening is always Janet’s biggest dilemma of any cruise. They normally serve two of her favorite meals – Lobster or Beef Wellington. Tonight we both selected Lobster and Prawns, however the waiter had an extra order so he gave David 2 lobster tails and 4 prawns. Before that Janet had Roasted Tomato Soup and Veal Ravioli. David had a compote of Scallops, Shrimp, Crabmeat and Caviar, and a bowl of beef stock with vegetables. For dessert Janet had Floating Islands in Vanilla Sauce (small dollops of merguine), and David had Strawberry Cheesecake.



The Movie-under-the-Stars tonight is Hobbit, which David would like to see. The first showing starts while we are having dinner, and the second showing does not end until well after midnight. Since we have a tour scheduled tomorrow morning, that kind of rules out either movie tonight but he can probably get it from Netflix sometime. Instead, we went to see the final production show of this cruise with the ships singers and dancers. We haven’t been especially impressed with their previous shows and this one was no better – that’s sad because these kinds of shows on other ships frequently are good.



That’s about all for today – see you tomorrow in Oslo.

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Photos

Our Cabin
Crown Princess

Pastry Demo
Flower, something, bunny

Pool Area
CroWN Princess

Horizon Court
Food Buffet on Crown Princess

Janet with some Knitters
Seem to be done for the day

Central Piazza
Crown Princess