Sunday, July 8, 2018- At Sea Warnemünde to Tallin

Sunday, July 8, 2018- At Sea Warnemünde to Tallinn

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We awoke to another glorious sunny day on the Baltic Sea with calm seas.  We had a late breakfast followed by morning trivia where we teamed up with Dave, Karen and John.  We ended up scoring 13/20 while the winners managed 16 to win princess notebooks.  

We did manage to win the Noon Motown Who Sung That trivia, tying with another team, but both teams got Princess notebook prizes.  

We then attended a seminar on amber, learning that virtually any amber containing visible insects that you can purchase in a store or on the street is certainly a fake.  There are so many ways to fake amber, it’s hard to know who if anyone to trust when buying amber, but the speaker, who is employed by the ship’s amber store seemed to imply that the ONLY way to buy real amber is from the ship’s amber store.  I can’t see a conflict of interest there!

The ship had a Matryoshka painting activity where they offered a lacquer box prize for the best Matryoshka painted by a passenger, but they wanted $35 for the unpainted doll and tempra paint set.  The paints looked just like the ones used in Kindergarten.  We ended up passing on that to have lunch instead.  

We dined in the Alfredo’s free restaurant in the atrium again, this time going for antipasto and dessert, all of which were good and came out quickly.  

Now that we have had a few days to get to know the Regal Princess, we can now see why other passengers like it the best out of the Princess fleet.  There are places that seem cramped like the public bathrooms, which generally have only 2 stalls and very narrow hallways, but there are unisex ADA compliant bathrooms nearby that can accommodate those who need them.  While there are certainly more people on the ship, the flow of traffic is generally pretty good, even after a big show finishes.  The design of the buffet with multiple islands accessible from both port and starboard with cross traffic keeps the people and food flowing.  There is also a much better selection of foods with more variation from day to day in the buffet.

The internet service on the ship started out with a few kinks, but after learning a few tricks on how to manually sign out and then re-log in, we have have been able to use our iPhones and iPads just about anywhere on the ship with pretty decent internet speeds.  We are actually able to do google searches and use IMDB while watching movies. The best part is for us, it’s free because of our Platinum status.  It has really changed our cruise experience because with all prior cruises, whenever we went into port, we spent a lot of time trying to find a working Wifi hotspot to try to check out emails.  Now we can simply enjoy the ports of call and upload pictures at or leisure in our stateroom.  We hope this level of internet service will soon be available on all Princess ships.  It will be hard to go back to what we had to deal with on the Island Princess after being spoiled on the Regal Princess. 

We played afternoon trivia but arrived late and teamed up with another family, scoring 15/20. The winners managed 18/20.  Anyone know what African Nation’s capital city is Antananarivo?

We got changed for formal night and had an early dinner followed by music trivia with songs from the 50’s through the 2000’s.  We managed a win with only 21/48 points, tying with one other small team, and managed to swap a bottle of champagne for some Regal Princess coasters since we already have a bottle of champagne in our refrigerator. 

We attended the Showtime Princess production show “Born to Dance” which showcased the Princess Dancers and covered the history of choreography through broadway.  It was a very good show with great production values and great dancing and singing.  The cast on the Regal Princess’s troupe remains racially diverse, but the dancers all look more uniform in height and build, unlike the mix they had on the Island Princess.

We swung by the buffet to gather sandwich materials for our Tallinn excursion tomorrow, and found that they had an Asian noodle bar, which Ben just had to try.  It was pretty good, with soba, Udon, rice noodles and vermicelli noodles with an assortment of veggies and protein to add in a DIY manner.  You choose miso, chicken or beef broths to complete the bowl, and it was hot and yummy.  

We hit the fitness center for a bit before calling it a day.  Tomorrow we hit the streets of Tallinn and do a coastal light house tour.