Saturday, March 24, 2018- Cruise Day 60; At Sea

Saturday, March 24, 2018- Cruise Day 60; At Sea

We have reached the last day at sea for this cruise.  Tomorrow we will be disembarking at Port Everglades.  We decided to book a disembarkation tour of the Intracoastal Waterway by Boat and Las Olas Blvd with transfer to the Fort Lauderdale airport, instead of just going to the airport at 9:00AM.  Our flight to Seattle leaves at 6:30PM, so this tour will keep us busy and store our luggage while we tour.  We get dropped off at the airport at 1:00PM so we’ll still have several hours to kill at the airport. 

After breakfast in the dining room, we had our final progresive trivia quiz.  This was number 8, and we had fallen into 3rd place after #7.  We had broken out Champagne and orange juice for mimosas to celebrate our last progressive trivia quiz.  Most of the final questions were pretty straight forward but the differentiators included what color is a Yorkshire rose, and what country is home to the world’s largest McDonalds restaurant.  We had to guess on the rose, starting with red, but then changing to white at the last minute, while we had initially guessed China for the McDonalds but then changed at the last minute to USA.  Well, it turns out our first change was for the better, while the second change went from right to wrong.  

There was some suspense while Robbie tallied the scores.  Then he announced the winners to be a team called The Sixth Circle with 66 points.  They had taken the lead after quiz #7.  Then Robbie went on to list 2nd place as Motley Crew and Loozers at 65 points.  He then went on to list 3rd and 4th places as Densa 6 and One Brick Shy with 61 points.  We were puzzled not to hear Santa’s helpers called out by now.  Then Robbie threw in, “Oh wait… We have another team tied for first with The Sixth Circle.  It’s Santa’s Helpers!”  We don’t know if he did that intentionally because we had criticized the Apple Computer logo and Hydrogen bomb answers, but we were very happy to have finished the progressive trivia tied for first place, coming back from a 2 point deficit.  Robbie ended up awarding prizes to both teams, which consisted of Princess string bags filled with an aluminum water bottle, coaster, wine bottle stopper, and hand sewn fabric coin purses from Panama.  We ended up giving away our water bottles because there was no way we were going to find room in our suitcases for those.  

We had our last lunch in the dining room and then Ben went to the fitness center for a quick workout before packing his workout clothes in the suitcases.  We watched “We Bought a Zoo” on the TV and then had a quick spot of tea for our last afternoon tea of this cruise.  Then we did the last afternoon trivia for the cruise.  We ended up 3 points shy of the lead on that.  The winners actually won ceramic beer steins with a nice metal Princess emblem on them.  That seemed like it could have been a more appropriate prize for the progressive trivia, which was 8 sessions, but those steins would have been hard to pack.  

The Showtime early show was a Lionel Richie tribute show by Derek Floyd, who put on a good show, backed by the Island Princess orchestra.  We then had a late dinner in the dining room- again our last for the cruise.  Janet had the turkey dinner and Ben had the New York Strip Steak.  They had Baked Alaska for dessert, but we got out of there before the parade since on this cruise, we had seen it twice before already.  Our last event was an International Crew Talent show.  They had several singers, one Brazilian martial arts demonstration, and a belly dance by Monique.  

We set out our large suit cases before dinner, and they were gone by the time we got back to our room.  We should meet up with them in the customs terminal tomorrow as we disembark.  

It’s hard to imagine how that 60 days went by so quickly.  When we disembark tomorrow, we will have travelled 16,146 nautical miles, circumnavigating South America, and then passing through the Panama Canal to cross back from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean.  We won 22 trivia games including the 8 session progressive trivia game during the last segment of the cruise.  We went through 2 captains and 2 cruise directors.  We saw more penguins than you can shake a stick at, and gone from tropical to Antarctic and back to tropical weather.  We saw the great human spectacle of the Rio Carnaval Samba parade, the great natural spectacle of Iguazu Falls, and the ancient mysterious spectacle of Machu Picchu.  But most importantly, we had a great adventure together.