Day 82: 20231214 Thursday, December 14, 2023 At Sea, Private Bridge Tour for the Marlborough 19.
Even with moving our clocks back an hour, getting up was a bit of a struggle. But we made it to the morning trivia with Madonna, and won the trivia. We chose the Princess wine bottle stoppers for souvenirs.
The exclusive bridge tour was at 10:30am. The security was pretty tight with at least 2 officers keeping tabs and eyes on our group of 19. Everyone who had been stranded in Blenheim with us did join for the tour. One of the couples who had missed yesterday’s lunch said they were a bit under the weather (seasick) but were feeling well enough to join us today.
The ship’s bridge is larger than I might have suspected. There are captains’ and navigators’ chairs in the center forward part of the bridge. There were two officers manage the steering and navigational workstations. They have multiple redundancies in the ship’s controls and navigation systems. There is even a backup emergency bridge situated aft in a window less room where they can still control the ship in the event of a fire or other disaster in the main bridge. In addition to the two pilot/navigators there are a pair of full time lookouts and a team of security officers. The captain, Andre Spinardi, personally lead our tour and answered any and all questions our group had. It was a nice gesture of apology for being stranded.
Janet and Ben grabbed burgers on the pool deck for lunch. The weather has turned misty and windy. The upper decks and promenade decks were again closed. We spent much of our free time repacking and weighing suit cases.
Janet and Ben participated in an arts and crafts activity called Quilling. This takes narrow strips of construction paper, coils them around the Quiller- a small tool with a slot in the end to hold one end of the paper strip. The spirals of thin construction paper are then glued on edge to heavy paper to create patterns like flowers and sea creatures.
We spent about an hour working on quilling, making some flowers and fish. Then it was off to afternoon tea since we had not had the opportunity to do so since the beginning of this cruise.
The tea service isn’t as fancy as it had been in the past when they would wear white gloves to serve us, but we are happy to report that the scones on the Royal Princess are still good.
Suitcases need to be out in the hallway at dinner time, so we did the final checks, zipped up the suitcases, tagged them, and then pushed them out the door before heading off for dinner.
Dinner featured prime rib, lamb shanks and grilled prawns. We have a little more appreciation for how nice the cruise ship meals are after seeing how expensive it was to eat on shore.
The cruise director and entertainment staff had their farewell variety show featuring a short opening number with the production cast and Princess band, followed by two assistant cruise directors who showed off their singing skills. Then they brought on the two big state entertainers- Danielle Matthews who did the Shirley Bassey tribute, and a male vocalist who did a country music tribute, for encore performances. They finished up with a stream of crew coming down the aisles and crowding on the stage while the lead singer from the Crimson Duo, who normally play for dances in the Piazza, or in the Wheelhouse lounge, sang You’re The Best, ala Tina Turner.
It’s hard to believe we are at the end of this 84 day odyssey and will soon be flying back home over the Pacific. The clocks move back another hour tonight, then we’ll have our last breakfast on the Royal Princess and say farewell.
