Friday, October 27, 2017; At Sea

Friday, October 27, 2017; At Sea

The ship has been rocking noticeably as we skirt our way round tropical storm Saola.  We awoke to gray sky’s but unlike in Alaska, we could see the horizon and the temperature outside was 72 degrees.  The seas are serving up 4’ swells and white caps.  

We had breakfast at the International Dining room, and then found seats for the 9:00AM trivia.  We were shortly joined by a woman from Sidney, BC whose husband hates trivia, and a couple from Montreal, Canada who remembered seeing us win yesterday, and wanted to join forces with us.  We made a pretty good team and ended up in a 3-way tie for first place.  They had a tie breaker question of “in what year did JVC come out with their first video cassette recorder”.  We guessed 1975, but another group guessed the correct answer of 1976, winning them a round of foam “Princess #1” fingers.  Well, we guess there are worse prizes than Princess carabiners and sparkling wine.

Ben got signed up for another Egg drop challenge, and it looked like there were going to be a lot of entries on this ship.  The Japanese were really into it.  

We attended a Ukelele class and learned a few songs and chords.  Janet’s finger nails proved too long to finger the chords, but she gave it a valiant try.

We toured the Horizon court for lunch.  We saw several Japanese people load up the Natto sticky beans onto their plates, like the Aussies line up for Vegemite in the morning.  There was also a cold okra salad with miso dressing that made slime strings, not unlike the Natto.  Must be a Japanese thing.

Next we attended a Bon-Odori dance class, which was packed with Japanese.  We learned that this festival celebrates and venerates people’s ancestors.  There must have been over a hundred people trying to fit on the dance floor. We did 2 dances (a coal miner’s dance and a Moon dance), but when they started a squid dance that would have involved jumping and spinning, we gracefully exited to spectator status so as to avoid crushing any innocent Japanese with our floundering.  It was great fun to watch all the Japanese enjoying the Bon-Odori dancing.  It was clear that many of the older women have been doing it all their lives.  

Princess posted a storm update on the Smart TV, showing that Saola is reaching typhoon strength, and that we are traveling east around the edge of the storm.  We will encounter 18’ seas and 20kt winds tomorrow morning, but had we not deviated course, we would have been caught between Kagoshima and Taiwan near the eye of the storm with 26’ seas and 55kt winds.  We would have ended up on one of those YouTube videos showing cruise passengers and furniture sloshing around on the decks.  

Tea in the International Dining room was a welcome refreshment.  The scones smelled so wonderful.  Then it was off to the Captain’s Circle reception.  We didn’t win the elite benefits or sparkling wine, but did get drink tickets.

We met up with our morning trivia partners from Canada for the afternoon trivia.  We ended up in  another tie, but a 2 way tie.  The tie breaker was “how many stars are there in the Paramount Pictures logo?”  Rick was pretty sure it was 23 so that was our guess.  The other team guessed 8, but the real answer was 22, so we came out winners!  We each got a Princess string bag for a prize.

We got dressed in our formal clothes, but didn’t pose for any photos.  Dinner was in the dining room with Marlon, our waiter.  Ben had beef tenderloin medallions that were actually rare, as ordered, and quite good.  Janet had tiger prawns.  We learned that lobster will be served on the last formal night of the cruise, along with tiger shrimp.  

There was free champagne in the Atrium for the Captain’s reception and champagne water fall.  It was interesting to see all the beautiful and exotic kimonos worn by many of the Japanese women.  We were warned that the early production show would be super crowded, so we opted to do a trivia game with 40 pictures of company logos.  Ben got all the automotive, airline, restaurant and tech logos, but we bombed on fashion house and Japanese toy manufacturing logos, aside from LEGO.  There were a few cruise line logos thrown in, including a logo from Princess cruises used in the 60’s that only the ship’s crew recognized. We got 28 out of the 40, placing second with the winners getting 32 out of 40.

We then did a “Guess Which is More Expensive” game where pictures of two items would come up, and you had to guess which was more expensive.  An example was a ceramic Tully’s coffee mug vs stainless Starbucks commuter cup.  Another was Monster energy drink 24pk 20oz vs Red Bull 24pk 8oz.  It turned out in most cases that the correct answers were counter-intuitive.  The Tully’s mug and the much smaller volume Red Bull both won out as most expensive.  We ended up with 6 points.  The winning team managed to earn 9 points. The prize was a bottle of champagne.

We then hurried to the Princess theatre to catch the late 9:45PM production show.  It was standing room only, so we stood along the side.  Fortunately the show was only a half hour.  It featured the Princess dancers and singers with the band.  They did a medley of songs from the 70’s and 80’s including songs by Cher, Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand, Lionel Richie and ending with the Madonna era.  

Ben made a detour through the buffet on the way back to our room to retire for the night to grab on last cup of miso soup and some strawberry rhubarb pie.  The ship has been rocking pretty good, turning the swimming pools into huge wave tanks, but it is warm and humid outside now.  Our closest encounter with Typhoon Saola should be tomorrow morning, when we may encounter heavy seas.  Swells tonight look to be about 8-10ft.