Thursday, January 25, 2018- At Sea

Thursday, January 25, 2018- At Sea

We must still be on west coast time because we had a hard time rolling out of bed even at 8:30.  We had breakfast in the dining room by ourselves.  It was hard to imagine trying to carry on a conversation before having coffee.  We missed the destination expert lecture at 9am but that should end up rebroadcast on the TV.  We did make it for the first trivia game of the cruise.  We were joined by Bob from New Jersey, Carl from the San Francisco Bay area, and Jackie from St. Louis.  Overall, it was a pretty easy game, but we scored 15/20.  there were 5 teams that scored 16/20.  The tie breaker was “How tall is the Eiffel Tower in meters?  Two teams guessed 300m, and they were awarded prizes, which were Princess wine bottle stoppers.  We would have guessed 318m, while the answer was 320m, so we could have won if we had gotten just one more answer.

We sat with a large group of Canadian’s at lunch. The majority of the passengers we have encountered have been either American or Canadian, with a lot of the Canadian’s coming from Vancouver.  

Although we told ourselves we would not spend so much time on trivia this cruise, we ended up going to afternoon trivia to keep us busy.  We joined a couple from Chicago, a gentleman from Vancouver BC, and Bob from New Jersey, whom we had teamed up with in the morning.  We ended up with 14 points, two points off the top, although there was one winning team with 16 points, so no tie breakers. The winning team got aluminum water bottles.

We had afternoon tea, and have to mention dining room procedure changes made due to the recent Norovirus outbreak on this ship.  There are no salt and pepper shakers, bread basket with rolls or butter on the tables at dinner.  The waiters come around and serve the rolls individually, along with butter pats.  If you want salt or pepper, they will bring the shakers out, but probably have to disinfect them between uses now.  The buffet now has a line of sinks for hand washing and the line has been restructured so there is only one way into the buffet area.  Once you exit the serving area, staff don’t let you re-enter the serving area unless you go back through the entrance.  Hopefully, these changes will keep us all safe and healthy, but it takes longer for the dining room staff to serve meals.  

We attended the early Showtime Princess Theatre show featuring vocalist and dancer Lovena Fox, who did a very entertaining and energy filled show.  

There was a long line for the dining room after the early show, so we retired to our room for a half hour to freshen up, but when we returned, the dining room line was just as long.  So we ended waiting another 10 minutes to be seated.  We ended up on a 2 top next to a couple from Naples Florida, who had moved there from Baltimore.  The husband is a fraud investigator, so it was interesting to learn about the scams that he has uncovered.  This couple was the first we have encountered who are getting off the ship in Buenos Aires, rather than completing the 60 day round trip to Fort Lauderdale.  Later in the evening, Ben met a woman from Vancouver who flew to Los Angeles to board the ship.  It then sailed through the Panama Canal to Fort Lauderdale, where we boarded.  Then she will do the 60 days with us, and then stay on the ship as it goes from Fort Lauderdale back through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, so she will be on this ship for 90 days.  She says she hates to fly.  

After dinner we saw the Canadian comedian Scott Harris in the Explorer’s Lounge, where he put on another very funny show.  The theme of this show was on getting older, and remember when…

Tomorrow, we cross a time zone, but rather than turn our clocks forward at bedtime, the whole ship will simply skip the 12noon hour, going from 11:59am to 1:00pm.  That’s the first time we have encountered a mid-day time zone transition in our cruising history, so we’ll see how that goes.