Sea Day

Hello from a very sunny, very windy, and very cold sea day off the northern California coast.

50 degrees with 28 mph winds. BRRR

Even though it was so cold I still balanced my inside time with outside time. In the morning I bounced between breakfast, the Promenade Deck, the casino, and back to the Promenade Deck. 

Cold the entire day

My afternoon started with another Most Traveled Guest Luncheon for those 40 guests on board with the most days with Princess. We have a new chef onboard as of last week and the menu is different and quite tasty.

Did you know ensalada de pulpo was octopus salad?
I didn’t. 

Surf and turf

Delicious rhubarb dessert that had
rhubarb in the center of the ball.

After the luncheon I went back to the cabin to charge my phone for a little bit and then bundled up and went outside to Deck 16 for the afternoon movie. Can you tell what I watched?

The original Top Gun

Straight from Top Gun I went to my pre-dinner drinks. 

Lemon Drop Martini as usual

Even though tonight was formal night with a formal night dinner I went with the baked chicken again. It’s a nice small portion and mighty tasty. Somehow I forgot the picture. Didn’t forget to take the picture of the two plates of chocolate covered strawberries I found upon returning to my cabin, though. One was from the officer who hosted my table at the luncheon and the other from the casino. (The casino also sent a bottle of sparkling wine but I gave it to my cabin steward before taking a photo.)

Thanks to the tides we have a very early 4:30 AM arrival in Astoria tomorrow. You can bet I’ll be sleeping until long past then and I’ll wait to see on the weather before I make any solid plans for the day. See you then!

San Francisco Turnaround Day

Hello again from San Francisco, where I am ending one cruise and beginning another.

Awake by 6:00 AM. Go me.

There really wasn’t a reason for me to get up so early other than to check the weather. 

Looks to be a sunny day = go out and be a tourist 

Cold and cloudy = stay on board

It didn’t take long for the day to shake out. Sitting up in Skywalkers on deck 18 gave me the best vantage point of what was to come. Both before the immigration process and after things continued to look, well, definitely not sunny.

Dirty windows or not, you can see it’s dreary out there

I skipped my typical salmon in the dining room and had a hamburger in there instead. Since my clothes DID arrive to my cabin unlike last week, after lunch I spent a few minutes unpacking and sorting through the first day’s paperwork. 

Always important itinerary torn from the Princess Patter

Another thing I had in my paperwork was information on this week’s casino cruise. First on the schedule was the cocktail party where we would find out more about the going-ons. While I did have one drink and one Diet Coke, the time there was mostly a casino hosts schmoozing-with-the-high-rollers session. Pretty interesting to watch.

Some kind of a rum punch

Afterwards I tried to head back to Skywalkers for sailaway but they already had it shut down for the Elite Lounge. So I wound up in a lounger outside at Movies Under the Stars while keeping a close eye on the menacing clouds.

Rain, rain, stay away

And wouldn’t you know it as soon as we started sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge we hit the blue skies. But boy was it cold.

The Captain tells us we’ll have some rough seas tonight as we head north to Astoria, Oregon. But before Astoria we have a sea day tomorrow. See you then.