Saturday, February 3, 2018- At Sea: Cruise Day 11

Saturday, February 3, 2018- At Sea Cruise :Day 11

We do somehow manage to keep very busy on at-sea days.  The weather outside is dense clouds with scattered showers and a temperature in the mid to upper 80’s.  There is constantly water on our balcony door and railing.  Much of this appears to be from spray from the bow because when it dries, there are massive salt crystals on the small table on the balcony. Some of it may also be condensation because Janet likes to keep the room temperature closer to 67 degrees.  Unlike on the Diamond Princess, the Island Princess’s air conditioning seems to do a great job of keeping the room much cooler than the outside temperatures.  Ben bought a pair of inexpensive stick on waterproof digital thermometers.  We have one stuck to the sliding door on the outside to monitor the outside temperature, and another stuck to the glass cover to a painting that is at the foot of the bed, and near the thermostat.  

We had a relaxed breakfast in the dining room.  We are trying to not order everything on the menu, and are settling into a pattern of a plate of mixed fruit and the breakfast special of the day.  This morning it was minute steak with 2 eggs over easy and hash browns.  

We attended the destination expert’s lecture on Fortaleza Brazil, our first Brazilian port of call.  Humberto Neto is from Brazil and was happy to share facts about Brazilian culture and history, which is pretty complex.  

We left a bit early to get to the morning trivia, which was at 10:30AM.  Janet also stopped by the Effy Jewelry store to enter a raffle to win a Korite Ammolite pendant.  

An odd thing happened this morning as people were sitting for the trivia game.  We were going to have Bob from NJ join us and another couple and Dan from San Ramon play.  We were seated when another couple from S Florida came and sat at our table, even though there were clearly more than the maximum 6 people allowed already sitting.  They refused to leave and insisted on playing on our team.  Rather than get disqualified for having too many players, Bob left, and then the Couple from that we had originally sat with left because it was an uncomfortable situation.  I guess having an established and fixed team has its advantages in avoiding uncomfortable situations such as this.  It turned out that the couple that insisted on joining our team failed to contribute any answers or insight during the game, but we managed to tie for second place again.  

Janet left towards the end of the game to see if she won the pendant, but she didn’t.  She did score a few Mimosas though.  Ben got stuck with the invasive couple who wanted to know about the Galapagos since we have a separate trip planned next December.  Ben referred them to his travel agent and then rejoined Janet to head for lunch.  We went through the Horizon Court Buffet for something quick and light because Janet wanted to attend the art auction.  We weren’t really looking to buy anything, but there was free champagne and a raffle for prizes, which she didn’t end up getting a prize out of.  

For some inexplicable reason, our phones began to receive texts and email notifications during the morning.  There appeared to have been a glitch in the ship’s internet gateway that was giving everyone free internet for a few hours, so we logged on all our devices and got caught up on emails and even downloaded some useful trivia facts.  The ship’s IT department eventually figured out what was happening and they shut down the free internet, but it was good while it lasted.

We managed to rest up a bit and then get changed for our second Formal night.  We got to the dining room at 5:00PM.  It isn’t scheduled to open until 5:30PM, but they ended up opening the doors at 5:10PM and we got seated right away on a 2 top.  We were a bit disappointed to not find lobster on the menu, as one of the waiters had told us earlier in the cruise that lobster would be served on the second Formal night.  Now it looks like that will probably happen on the last Formal night- which we will miss because we will be on an overland excursion to Iguazu Falls instead of being on the ship.  

We skipped dessert and headed to the theatre to catch the early production show “Motor City” featuring the Princess singers, dancers and band.  Even though we were arriving late, there were seats in the first 2 rows, so we had great seats for the show.  Princess does a good job on their production shows.  The singers and dancers were all on their mark and put on another great show.  

We the attended the 7:30PM Musicals Trivia.  We were hoping to team up with Roger (Santa) who is a broadway wiz, but we ended up teaming up with Erica from S. Florida and her mother Diane, and a couple, Mike and Cathy, who had been sitting with Erica and her family.  Roger took the night off because the timing of the show and their dinner sitting wasn’t going to work out.  We ended up tying for second (again!), but we had a challenging and enjoyable game.  

Next we attended the Liar’s Club at 9:15.  The Captain was amongst the “celebrities” who came up with explanations of 3 crazy sounding words.  We had heard one before and knew it’s definition for certain (bumfiddler), but had to guess on the other two words (dik-dik- a small antelope, and kakkerlack- an albino cockroach).  We were able to guess the dik-dik correctly, but missed the kakkerlack.  3 teams had gotten all of the word definitions right, but all failed the tie breaker, which was to name the first Princess ship the captain had sailed on.  They ended up handing out 3 bottles of champagne to the tied teams.   

That pretty much filled out day.  Tomorrow we cross the Equator around 2PM.  Ben tried to see if he could tell what direction water in the sink swirled around, but it was impossible to tell without sprinkling something like pepper on the top.  The direction of swirling is supposed to reverse after we cross into the southern hemisphere.  We’ll see.