20240507 Tuesday, May 7, 2024; At Sea

 20240507 Tuesday, May 7, 2024; At Sea

The black our curtains in E308 work well- almost too well.  We were taken by surprise that it was 9:30am when we stirred to wakefulness.  We had to scoot to make to the morning trivia on time.  We missed a win by just one point, which was bitter sweet since we had debated two questions in which we were at least contemplating the correct answers.  

The cruise director Gary does not give away Wake Show prizes on this cruise, so Janet has lost one of her main streams of Princess booty.  But they are hiding Princess rubber duckies (10 over the course of the 15 day cruise) for passengers to try to find, so after trivia, Janet was on the hunt for rubber duckies.  We had no luck finding one yesterday despite them giving out a clue as to its location on the Wake show.  When we went looking, there was at least one other passenger on the same quest, so that Duckie was undoubtedly discovered long before we had got there.  

Our trivia team got back together for a “What the Heck” trivia, which had questions and pictures in various categories such as Logos, macro pictures, sounds and optical illusions.  We didn’t win that but didn’t embarrass ourselves either.

 

What the heck is this?

Lunch was casual burgers by the pool.  The sky was clear above and the temperatures were in the 70’s, but there was a long period swell on the ocean which had the pool sloshing out onto the adjacent pool decks periodically.  Late in the evening, we did spot one brave boy enjoying the wave action in the pool.

The third Progressive began with a reveal of scores for the first time.  Our team was tied for first place with 30 points with one other team.  There were about 6 teams with a score of 29, and at least 20 teams altogether.  On today’s quiz, we managed to better our daily score average to 17/20.  The other team that had been tied with us only managed an 11 today, but there’s no telling if any of those other 6 teams that were just one point behind us had a really good day. 

We finished our afternoon with a classic rock trivia.  Janet recruited a gal from Idaho to join us and Mike, and she proved to really be a classic rock savant.  She knew all but one of the songs and artists, but there was another solo woman playing on her own who had a perfect score so we got aced out of more coasters.  

Dinner service went a little quicker tonight.  Janet went for a Turkey pot, which she expected to be a Turkey Pot Pie, but turned out to be a turkey stew and she ordered squid to share thinking it would be calamari, but it was instead a grilled squid steak.  It was unexpectedly tender, and complimented the Kingclip fish Ben ordered.  The appetizers and starters of gazpacho scallop ceviche were excellent.  

The Princess Theater showtime featured Mikey Volcano who is a very high energy Aussie who specializes in mashups between classic swing beats with contemporary pop and rock.  He sings as well as playing a very good jazz saxophone and piano. 

  

Despite the high energy, we did find ourselves fighting heavy eye lids at points.  Our bodies still are feeling the effects of steadily heading eastward through the time zones as we cross the Atlantic.  

Ben did hit the gym for the first time this cruise in the evening and found the Caribbean Princess’ fitness center to have also been renovated and nearly empty at 8:30pm.  Janet got into a true crime lecture series on the room TV. 

 

We get a reprieve on the time zone changes tonight.  We hope tomorrow morning won’t seem quite so abrupt.  

20240506 Monday May 6, 2024: At Sea

 20240506 Monday, May 6, 2024: At Sea

We have had very pleasant weather for the most part with temperatures in the 70’s and most blue sky overhead.  We did have a downpour last night which gave the pool deck a good wash down, and gave people watching Top Gun Maverick reason to duck under the eaves, but there was no sign of that kind of weather even on the horizon this morning.  The seas have also been pretty easy with swells no more than 1-2 meters.  

Getting our clocks adjusted took quite some doing because our iPhones kept saying we could not manually adjust time zones because of “device restrictions”.  Ben spent an hour on Apple support chat trying everything short of completely erasing the phone, but to no avail.  He finally gave up when they got to a point where you had to wait an hour for security because we weren’t geographically at our home and it was past 2:30am by the.  Ben was finally able to find a work around while trying to completely disable the Screen Time feature which most people use as a back up security measure in case someone steals your iPhone after memorizing your passcode.  While the Apple techs had Ben simply turn off the Screen Time features, Ben discovered that if you select the option to change the Screen Time passcode, on the next screen an option appears that allows complete removal of the passcode.  Well, that turned out to be the key.  Once the passcode was removed entirely, he was then able to manually adjust the time zones.  Apple will be getting some vociferous complaints on their feedback page about how crazy difficult it is to do something as simple as change a time zone manually for when you are somewhere with no cellular service, which is what is used to automatically set time zones.  Since we both have Apple Watches which sync to the iPhones, it wasn’t just the iPhones that displayed the wrong time. 

 
We decided to have a sit down breakfast in the same dining room we have dinner at.  It sounded like someone was chiseling off paint on the outside of the dining room, so that was distracting, but the service and food were all excellent and Janet got to get eggs Benedict with no fuss.  Ben had what was described as a country breakfast, but which was more of an English breakfast, complete with two poached eggs on toast, a grilled tomato and small rashers with beans and corned beef hash.  
We warmed up with our trivia team during the morning trivia where we could only manage 11/20, but the winning team’s score was 14.  There was a riddle that stumped us. What is the size of a biscuit, the depth of a cup, but an entire river can’t fill it.

  
After breakfast, we spent a relaxed morning napping, doing DuoLingo French lessons and getting caught up on emails.  The ship had a pub lunch in the Palm Dining room, but we have done enough of these to know the Bangers and Mash, and Fish and Chips just aren’t worth the crowd.  Butch and Jane spent 90 minutes getting lunch there.  We opted for the buffet instead.

  
The afternoon second Progressive trivia was pretty challenging, but also had its share of controversial questions including how many squares are on a Tic Tac Toe board?  Well technically, if you define a square to have 4 equal sides, there is really only one square in a typical hash tag Tic Tac Toe game.  The other 8 playing spaces have only 2 or 3 lines and are open on the outside. But his answer was 9.  We ended up with another score of 15/20, but have no idea how things are going relative to all the other teams.

 
This was the first formal night of this cruise. Since we will have to deal with our own luggage during our land tours in the UK and France we needed to minimize our luggage for our 2 month trip. This is the first time Ben decided not to pack a suit or sport coat for formal nights, instead packing a tie and a button down sport shirt and casual  slacks.  Ben also didn’t pack any dress shoes, but we were not given any friction to get into the dining room.  We both had the leg of lamb, which came out sliced and boneless.  We had imagined lamb shanks, but these turned out to be excellent and very tender.  The veggies and mash were also excellent.  For dessert, we had the hazelnut bars which came from the former chocolate journey menu.  We learned from our waiter that Princess Cruises had dropped the partnership with world famous chocolatier Norman Love but kept his dessert recipes, so they are no longer called Chocolate Journey desserts.  

The Princess Theater featured the production show “Bravo”, which features popular opera and theater numbers with the full cast of singers and dancers.  We have seen this show many times on many ships, but it never seems to get old.  The casts on the various ships each have their strengths and weaknesses, but this cast had mostly strengths with excellent vocals and dance performances.  One of the female leads was Ellora Lattin, who had done a solo matinee show yesterday (with Taylor Swift vibes).  It is impressive to see how diverse these singers can be.  They also had their guest soprano from Chicago who really belted out those operatic diva notes, not missing a single one.

  

We finished up the night with back to back trivia wins in I’ll Take Trivia for 100 where we teamed up with Patty and Matt from New York and Gwen from Ontario with a perfect score.  We won champagne which nobody wanted but which we will donate to our room steward.  Then we also won Movie Themes with Angela. Mike joined our team after he played on his own during I’ll Take Trivia for 100.  We had actually tied another team of 2 for the top score so we negotiated to give the couple the champagne, and we took coasters to add to our collection.

The clocks move forward another hour tonight.  Now that we have fixed the issue with device restrictions by eliminating the Screen Time app functions, we can more easily jump forward an hour.  Matt showed us how you can directly enter the time once it is off Automatic by selecting the shown date and time below, as opposed to trying to find a city in the time zone that is in Apple’s extremely limited list of choices.  It’s nice to have gotten that problem sorted.

20240505 Sunday, May 5, 2024. Cinco de Mayo at Sea

 20240505 Sunday May 5, 2024: Cinco de Mayo at Sea

It sure was nice to sleep in a nice comfortable bed for a change.  The mattresses and bedding that Princess provides are among the most comfortable we have encountered in any hotel, and were vastly more comfortable than what we encountered in Mazatlán.  We slept like rocks.  We were able to get up in time to grab a quick breakfast in the buffet.  Perhaps it’s the layout of the buffet with multiple islands rather than a long single counter that seems to lessen congestion and improve efficiency of food distribution.  There also are many more 2 top tables than in some other buffet dining room set ups on ships we have been on so we had less trouble finding a place to sit.  

Signups for cruise long activities were this morning. Janet encountered a group of 4 who were looking for another pair to complete the maximum team size of 6, so we joined them.  There is a couple from Florida Butch and Jane, a single from Arizona Mike and a single from Florida John.  Mike had worked in Wenatchee for 6 years in the past. He is a retired medical technician.  

There was a 10AM regular trivia we attended to warm up for the first Progressive Trivia, which was scheduled for 2PM.  We sat next to the people who we had officially teamed up with for Progressive, but they seemed hesitant to team up for regular trivia, so we kept separate score sheets. At the end of the quiz, we had scored a win with 19/20 points, while they had scored 18 and 16 at their table, but we claimed the prizes (Caribbean Princess coasters) for all six.  

Later in the morning, there was a Logos trivia where we teamed up with Mike.  We won that with a perfect score, and got more coasters to add to our booty collection.  That was pretty good racking up two wins in one morning.  

Ben had a light lunch while Janet chose to save herself for afternoon tea.  You could hardly tell it was Cinco de Mayo but they did have churros at the buffet.  Oddly enough, in the evening, they would be replaced by a Ramen station.  There are no Mexican passengers and probably no Mexican crew either.  We then joined Mike for a Music through the Decades trivia.  While we do well from the 60’s through the 80’s, we do poorly on the 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s.  Mike got a few of the latter, but there was one team with a perfect score that took the win easily.  It proved we weren’t invincible.  

The first Progressive Trivia got off to a rough start with a couple of bad if not entirely wrong questions. One was what do you call a 4 sided polygon with all unequal sides.  Their preferred answer was rhombus, but by definition, all 4 sides of a rhombus must be equal in length.  The correct answer is a scalene quadrilateral, and there was some definite grumbling about that.  

Two other poor questions involved geography.  One was which country is considered Scandinavian but is not located on the Scandinavian Peninsula.  The most common answer to this question is Denmark, but their preferred answer was Finland. However, the northwest part of Finland is considered to be on the Scandinavian Peninsula and linguistically and culturally, Finland is much closer to the Hungarians than Swedes, Norwegians and Danes.  The third bad question (wrong answer) was what country is home to Europe’s largest glacier.  Google says it’s Iceland, but their answer was Switzerland.  Now Switzerland does have the largest glacier in the Alps, but there are certainly larger glaciers in Norway and Iceland.  The Aletsch glacier in Switzerland is the largest in the Alps, measuring 171 sq km, but the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland lies east of the mid Atlantic ridge which separates Europe from North America, and it measures over 8300 sq km.  This indicates a significant ignorance of European geography by the quiz maker.  A really clever person would have asked which European country lays claim to the second largest glacier in the world.  That answer would be Denmark, which owns Greenland, whose ice sheet is second only to Antarctica for glacial mass.

And one question was based entirely on a disproven urban myth that in the 1940’s museum workers accidentally dumped Cleopatra’s mummy into the Paris sewers.  In fact, Cleopatra’s burial site has never been found.

The Cruise Director’s staff who is in charge of the progressive trivia seems to have done a poor job vetting his questions, and also has not set it up very well.  He intends to only post progressive results once at the mid cruise point, and he does not award any prizes or recognition at all for winners of each session. He does not even survey who won each session so that people have at least some idea of which teams to look out for.  He just had everyone turn in their scored sheets without making a determination of what was the highest score for the day.  It also sounds like they are only giving out certificates of participation instead of any real sort of prize, so we’ll see how this plays out.  

We dropped in briefly to afternoon tea for Janet’s lunch and afternoon pick up.  It's good to note that the bakery goods on the Caribbean Princess are up to our usual high standards for Princess, which the Grand Princess seemed to fail utterly during our transpacific crossing last fall.  

Tea was followed with a Matinee show by vocalist and instrumentalist Ellora Lattin, who came across like a younger Taylor Swift at a much earlier stage of her career.  Her performance was energetic and entertaining but doing covers of other artists including Taylor Swift.  However, she did play a video clip she made in high school featuring a song she did write to allow her to do an off stage costume change, and that really cemented the early Taylor Swift vibe.

   

At last night’s dinner, we noticed a lot of vibration and noise at the table we were seated at, which was kind of in the middle of the dining room. On our way out, we spotted an empty table next to a room divider that looked to be potentially quieter, so we asked the head waiter if we could be reassigned and he obliged.  It turned out that the new table was much quieter and although the vibrations from the propeller shafts below still made a booming noise like a dance club on an adjacent floor, they didn’t shake this table at all.  The table we were at yesterday must have sat on a resonance node tuned to the propeller shaft’s vibrations.  Having a room divider wall next to us also eliminated 50% of the dining room noises, and also helped direct my voice to Janet so she could hear both me and the waiters better.  We had prime rib, which was quite good.

The Princess Theater showtime featured the wife of yesterday’s male vocalist.  Crystal Cimaglia did a Celine Dion tribute honoring Celine's long running residency in Las Vegas before she came down with stiff person syndrome.  Crystal did a good job of capturing some of Celine Dion’s mannerisms and could really belt out some power ballads, but on occasion was just a tiny bit pitchy.  And despite the potential for bad luck, she finished the show with Titanic’s My Heart Will Go On, complete with imagery of her being under water.  

We finished up the evening with comedian Ed Regine, who was featured on the Tonight Show 12 times, although we would guess that was about 20+ years earlier in his career.  His stand up was very much in the line of Red Skelton and Rodney Dangerfield, including some of the same very old by reliable marriage and relationship gags.  “My wife sees our neighbor kissing his wife goodbye every morning as he leaves for work, and she asks me why I don’t do that.  I say, why would I?  I barely know the woman.”

As we head east across the Atlantic, we will be crossing over many time zones, so tonight we lose an hour. 

20240503- Friday May 3 2024 and Saturday May 4 2024- Beginning a Transatlantic Crossing and Exploration of the UK and France

Friday, May 3, 2024 to Saturday, May 4 2024: Getting to the Caribbean Princess and Embarkation

Preparing for this trip was a little more complicated than a simple cruise since we are planning on touring the UK by self drive tour after we cross the Atlantic on the Caribbean Princess, and do a rail tour of France, meeting up with John and Ciara in Lyon before flying back to the US from Paris.  The land tour portions will require extra equipment (car chargers and windshield mounts for navigation), but will also require minimizing suitcases since the rail portion will require lugging suitcases through rail stations and subways.  We'll be gone nearly 2 months.

We managed to boil everything down to one large suitcase, two roller carry-on bags and daypacks.  We had Price drop us off at the Whidbey SeaTac shuttle.  This saves 3 hours of driving to SeaTac and parking.  Since we’ll be gone 2 months, parking is a significant issue.  The shuttle takes the ferry, which we rarely do ourselves, so it always feels more like an adventure when we take the shuttle.  

Check in at SeaTac went smoothly, perhaps because we were taking a red-eye flight.  We booked Delta Premium Economy, rather than first class since our past experiences with domestic first class didn’t seem worth the extra money.  You basically get more hip room and 2 alcoholic beverages and a meal, but for an overnight 4.5 hr flight, we figured we’d be sleeping, or trying to sleep for the relatively short flight.  This did mean we had to pay for our one large checked bag, but we were able to use Delta Mileage credits for that, and they offered free check in of carry on bags because the flight was fully booked, so we got all our bags checked.

Although 2 of 3 TSA screening stations were closed, we breezed through TSA screening thanks to the TSA Pre-Check that comes with our NEXUS memberships.  The lines for regular screening looked like over 30 minutes long, while the Pre-Check was pretty much walk through without stopping.  

The flight got off 30 minutes late, but we had a long enough lay over in Atlanta that we didn’t have to worry about missing our connection to Fort Lauderdale.  The flight wasn’t terrible but neither of us got much sleep.  Although premium economy has more leg room than economy, it’s still not comfortable to sleep upright, and for some reason, the flight was quite warm- to hot to sleep for the most part.  

We watched the Jason Stadam movie “The Beekeeper”- lots of gratuitous and hardly believable violence with a really flimsy plot, but that’s what sells in Hollywood.  We started “The Boys in the Boat” but quit about 30 minutes in when it was apparent we weren’t going to be able to finish it during the flight, and we were feeling sleepy since it was 2am Pacific time.  Try as we might we mostly forced ourselves to close our eyes and try to sleep without much success.  Fortunately it was a 4.5hr flight and not an 8 hour or 12 hour flight.  

The flight from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale was just over an hour, but we both slept more during that flight than during the longer flight, perhaps because we were simply exhausted.  The seats we had on the 757 from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale were really bizarre.  On the seating plan, they look like an exit row, but in fact, on this plane, it is a main entry door, 18 rows back from the nose of the plane.  There was lots of leg room but every single passenger boarding the plane had to shuffle past our feet during the loading process, and the flight attendants’ jump seats faced us directly, so it was kind of awkward.  

We also got a more intimate view of the process of opening and closing the main cabin doors and maneuvering of the jetway.  I wouldn’t recommend these seats to anyone else if they can avoid them, even though they are in the premium economy section.  There was no place to place our luggage without getting caught in the stream of traffic to the back of the plane, and then having to struggle to get back to the door.  The flight attendant ended up putting our day packs up for us.  

There were 3 cruise ships loading up this morning.  The Caribbean Princess was the smallest.  The Enchanted Princess and the Royal Caribbean Ovation of the Seas were also loading up so there were lots of shuttle buses taking people between the airport and cruise terminal.  Janet’s large suitcase came out of the shuttle bus at the cruise port missing a wheel.  This was the same suitcase that lost a wheel during the Antarctica trip.  The Viking Polaris engineers manufactured a replacement wheel to get us through that trip, then Ben managed to get the manufacturer to send a replacement wheel after a great deal of trouble.  Fortunately, Janet was able to spot the wheel amidst the other suit cases as Ben crawled around in the luggage bays of the bus looking for it.  There is a retaining pin that had come loose that allowed the wheel to fall off.  Fortunately, the pin was still attached, so Ben was able to reattach the wheel and temporarily used some duct tape to keep the pin from sliding out again.  

We ended up rolling all our bags onto the ship during check in with no real delays or troubles.  We were towards the last of the boarding groups.  Once we got up to our stateroom, Ben used JB Superweld UV cured resin epoxy to secure all the pins on Janet’s suitcase wheels to avoid losing any more in the future.

The Caribbean Princess is the same ship we took with the kids on a British Isles cruise in 2016, but the ship has undergone some renovations including revising the main dining buffet with more contemporary modern decor that also feels a little more upscale than the original.  

We had booked this cruise on a whim when an advertisement for a “Drop and Go” fare came up.  This was one of the least expensive cruises we have ever done but balconies were sold out so this is the second cruise we have done in an obstructed ocean view cabin.  Our first was a Norwegian Fjords cruise on the Golden Princess where there was a Marine Evacuation System outside our window.  This stateroom E308, is actually between two lifeboats, so we have a view obstructed by cables and a few beams but it’s not a bad view.  But the window hasn’t been cleaned in a very long time.  At least we’ll know if it’s daylight outside and what the weather conditions are outside.

We were expecting this to be a cruise with tons of Platinum and Elite passengers since these long voyages tend to be preferred by more experienced travelers.  There are plenty of Platinum and Elite medallions to be had, but also a lot of first and second timers on board.  There are tons of Floridians on board.  Americans make up the majority, while there are around 200 Canadians, and several dozens of UK residents aboard.  

The Princess Dine My Way system is still pretty broken.  It’s impossible to get regular seating set up online (same time, same dining room every evening for the duration of the cruise) if you want a private 2 top.  But the head waiter was able to get us set up pretty easily once we got aboard.  We also did our virtual muster drill which is simply watching a video in our stateroom and then tapping in with our medallions at our assigned muster station (Crown Grill for us).  From there, we hit the poolside grill and pizza venues.  The grill now has someone taking orders and handing out pagers, rather than having passengers waiting in line.  This seems to work out better, but the pool deck staff had trouble staffing these venues adequately.  The ice water and ketchup had run completely out and nobody was around to clean tables so that other passengers could use them right away.  

As we finished out pizza and burgers, the Sail-Away party got under way with the Princess Singers and Dancers doing some numbers around the pool and the Cruise director and his staff made brief introductions.  We indulged in soft serve cones while watching this.  

Fed and squared away on future dining reservations, we hit the bed for some desperately needed naps.  

We almost slept through our assigned dining plan, but got down there in time to the Palm Dining room, which is at the back of the ship at the waterline.  The ship pushed back from the dock as we ate dinner.  Janet had a potpourri of appetizers while Ben opted for Barramundi with mango salsa on quinoa.

We walked the promenade after dinner as the ship sailed away from Port Everglades and the Florida coastline.  It was sunny and slightly muggy with thunder showers on the horizon.  

The evening’s entertainment was a vocalist Shane Hampsheir from the UK, who did a crooner’s tribute.  He’s a good singer and entertainer but we still had pretty heavy eye lids for parts of that performance.  We did notice that they had remodeled to expand the casino so now it is impossible to get to the Princess theater on the promenade deck without going through the casino, which allows smoking.  You can still sneak in on deck 6 and bypass the casino.  

After the show, we made our customary “soup run” to check out the buffet. That’s when we discovered it had been updated.  They also took the aft-most area and closed it off as two casual (set fee menu items) dining venues- one featuring sea food and the other BBQ.  

We’ll probably sleep like logs tonight.  We have a series of sea days ahead of us to get us into the cruise mindset again.