We continue to work our way north around a low pressure system with swells now up to 3 or 4 meters. Every now and then the ship gives a good shudder as it hits a particularly large swell. The sky has been grey and there have been fits of rain on the upper decks as well. The low pressure system is heading south east and gradually weakening, so at some point, we should veer due east to make a bee line for Ireland.
We have regularly encountered men carrying pump sprayers and wearing coveralls that we jokingly call the Ghost Busters. They work in teams of two, and we found out that they are spraying lactic acid down each toilet twice a day to break down scale in the sewer lines of the ship. This is the first cruise we have encountered crews like this. They say the ship normally has this done when it goes into dry dock, but this ship has apparently been having more frequent issue with it’s plumbing, so they sent crews out to get on the task early to avoid problems with sewage back ups. We’re glad they are being proactive about it. We also learned that there is a trap behind each stateroom toilet designed to catch things like wet wipes and other items that shouldn’t be flushed. When they catch something, the toilet stops working, but it prevents all the other toilets on the floor from being backed up by one person’s indiscretion.
We had a typical morning trivia performance, missing out on a win by 2 points. Did you know the London Symphony Orchestra nearly went down with the Titanic? They had been scheduled on the first US tour by a British Symphony Orchestra, and were booked on the Titanic’s maiden voyage, but that maiden voyage was delayed because shipyard work crews were pulled of the Titanic to make repairs on the RMS Olympic and a Royal naval ship which had collided. This delayed the Titanic’s maiden voyage by a couple of weeks, but their concert tour schedule was already set. So they ended up having to take a different ship, the SS Baltic, to keep their engagement schedule. Needless to say, they were quite shaken to hear the news of the Titanic’s sinking when they were performing in St. Louis as part of their tour. We do seem to learn some pretty random things on these cruise trivia. Also, did you know that Google’s official company motto was “Don’t be Evil”? They dropped that in 2018, so I guess it’s now OK to be evil.
The gym was busier this morning than during most of the earlier cruise, mostly because the pools and promenade deck are closed, but there was still no trouble finding an elliptical or treadmill. But with the ship pitching and rolling as much as it is, running on a treadmill is pretty much out of the question. With an elliptical, you can hang on to the grips and maintain your balance. The cycles were by far the busiest pieces of equipment.
They had sushi in the buffet today during lunch, which was a treat. They also had a whole salmon at the carving station. For us, it is an odd sight seeing a whole salmon being picked apart rather than fillets. There will probably be a few people spitting out the little I bones.
Today was the last session for Progressive Trivia, but instead of any sort of quiz, it was an awards ceremony. There were 38 teams that completed all 8 sessions. Sid, the cruise staffer who ran the Progressive Trivia began by naming the teams finishing from 10th to 4th place and presented certificates and prizes to those teams one at a time. Then he took a really long time to call out all of the other teams, one at a time to present certificates of participation to them. Then as everyone was getting either bleary eyed or restless, he finally announced 3rd, 2nd and then 1st place. Since nobody knew the final scores except for Sid, there was some suspense. We did not do well on yesterday’s quiz, so we might very well have been knocked off the top spot, but when 2nd place was announced, and it was not us, we rejoiced. We had won the progressive, and the final score tallies showed we still finished 5 points ahead of 2nd place, so we had managed to dominate despite our poor performance on the last session.
Each member got a nice printed certificate as well as a Princess tote bag, blue note book, bottle stopper, coaster, and Winner medal. The team was also presented a bottle of champagne, which we donated to John and his wife, who would drink it. Mike was very pleased to finally win a string bag. We were just very happy to have come out on top again, as we had on our Transpacific cruise last fall and on our Rome to Singapore cruise which traversed the Indian Ocean before that. We can say we have circled the Earth via her major oceans and triumphed at trivia in each.
In the afternoon, we attended a Captain’s Circle party, which we now primarily attend to get free cocktails. Janet had her Moscow Mules and Ben had his 007 Martini’s so we could carry them into the dining room to have with our dinners. They do drawings for 3 bottles of champagne. In the Pre-Pandemic days, they would also draw for Elite benefits for the duration of the cruise, which amounts to free laundry and discounted internet, that those also fell victim to the pandemic. We did learn that the most travelled passengers were a couple who have over 2100 days at sea. It’s hard to contemplate over 5 years at sea, but they must have been working a long time to tally that many cruises on Princess. But it is less expensive than most adult care homes and nursing homes. We think Janet may have scored a Princess Duckie after talking with Cruise Director Gary to complain about not being able to find any despite her repeated efforts.
Tonight was the last formal night. On the two prior formal nights we had forgotten to request “pralines” that Elite members can have as a perk. So we did request and receive a plate with 4 hand made chocolates, which were nice. We have missed not getting Princess chocolates on our pillows every night. That tradition died with the Pandemic.
Dinner featured escargot, lobster tails and beef Wellington so we cobbled together our own Princess surf and turf. They also had crepe suzette for dessert.
The Princess Theater Showtime featured vocalist Peter Grant, who put on a high energy crooner’s show. His show also featured a guest appearance by Inna Tolstova who came in and played her violin on one song with him. It turns out they are married.
We wound up the evening’s events with standup comedy by Canadian Doug Funk. This was his second show, but we had only been able to see a little of his first show because Club Fusion was packed beyond capacity. His humor is more contemporary and plays well to a predominantly American and British audience. He also recruited a husband and wife from California who sat in front of the stage to participate in two routines. He had the wife be his puppet arms to pantomime a funny story, and he had the husband provide sound effects for a second story.
We started the movie “Poor Things” for which Emma Stone won an Oscar this year. It starts out a bit like Edward Scissorhands with more of a Frankenstein’s monster bent, and at least starts in black and white. We had to call it quits because it was getting late.
Ben had been concerned that the weather system might adversely impact our itinerary. During the mid day navigation update over the intercoms, the first officer made no mention of anticipated deviations, saying we’d arrive outside Cobh and take on a pilot at 5:30am. But Ben could see we had the worst of the storm to get through to reach Cobh. It had stubbornly remained centered between us and our destination. Well, the Captain did come on the intercom in the evening to announce our arrival to Cobh would be delayed by 8 hours, so we will arrive at 2pm. However, they will extend our departure from 5pm to 8:30pm so that we can still do some tours. Our tour was rescheduled to 2:15pm and new tickets were reissued. The ship is pitching and rolling heavily and shuddering a lot as we race through the worst of the storm tonight. Things should improve in the wee hours of the morning after we pass through the eye of the storm and approach Ireland’s shore.
