Golden Princess Sea Day

I tossed around all kinds of song titles for today’s blog post:

• You Shook Me All Night Long
• Don’t Rock the Boat
• Hippy Hippy Shake
• Shake, Rattle, and Roll
• I Walk the Line (but not a straight one)
• Shake it Up
• Rollercoaster

The Captain made an announcement as we were leaving Victoria yesterday, warning us we were in for high winds and rough seas as we made our way to San Francisco.

He was right.

It was a noisy night. Creaks and groans and shimmies and shakes. The 40+ knot winds and choppy seas made it rough going. Rough enough to grab handrails or walls when possible. Otherwise, a wide stance with arms spread seemed to be the best way to get around. Sometimes the ship was rolling, sometimes pitching, and sometimes both with lots of white caps thrown in.

And an FYI for those in a mini suite: The grab bars in the shower aren’t nearly as effective when the ship is rocking and rolling. At least when you’re in a cabin with just a shower you can both hold the grab bar and lean against the wall when needed. In a mini suite with the tub/shower combo? You’ll find when showering the ship is moving you from one end of the tub to the other as you try to hold on. Might as well call it a spread eagle shower stance. But at least one of us in the cabin smells clean!

The waters have calmed this evening and it’s much easier to get around.

Tonight we used our freebie Most Traveled Guest voucher for dinner at Sabatini’s Trattoria. Big mistake. I don’t know what word best describes how I felt leaving the restaurant. Disappointment? Frustration? Again, we are seeing a pattern on Princess Cruises of crew just not giving a sh**. The food gets served. The server goes away, never to be seen again until the next course comes around. My lamb skewers were so overcooked and rubbery it makes me never want to eat lamb again. I would have asked for something different or to get a lamb skewer do-over order, but the server never returned until he picked it up and took off. Didn’t even get a chance to stop him and ask for anything.

Then my soup was turned from this to this:

without me asking for it, without me being able to stop it. (I so don't do pepper.) And the pasta course? Same thing. He started covering it in pepper again. I was able to get it stopped before it got too covered, but by then it didn’t really matter. I was done. Before our last course was delivered, the head waiter finally made his way to the table to ask how things were going. And me, who usually keeps her mouth shut about these kinds of things, told him. Did he really care? Not sure. Yet again we heard the whole I’m sorry, let me make it right thing. While I appreciate the effort by him for the last course, it gets so very frustrating/disappointing to see this again and again, no matter which ship we are on. I took plenty of pictures, but it doesn’t matter. There is absolutely no way I would recommend Sabatini’s Trattoria on the Golden Princess. Ever. (Sabatini’s on the Royal Princess when Franco is onboard? Absolutely!) 

Tonight’s dinner just put a damper on things. We came back to the cabin, packed, and decided we’re ready to move on. Move on to San Francisco tomorrow where we have a SF Giants Baseball game and where we’ll spend the night before flying out Sunday to Los Angeles. What will we be doing in Los Angeles? Heading back to the Royal Princess, of course! We were on her for her first-of-the-season cruises to Alaska and now we’ll be on the ship for her first-of-the-season cruises to Mexico.

I’m working on a trip wrap-up for this short three day cruise and hope to have it posted in the next day or two.

Until next time….

Golden Princess in Victoria, Canada

Hello from Victoria! Today was an early arrival and early departure, neither which mattered to us much. We've done all we can do in Victoria over these past few years. We've taken city tours, been to Butchart Gardens more than once (three times maybe?), been shopping, eating, and pub hopping. So today was a ship day for us. A leisurely breakfast in the covered Calypso Pool area (boy, I've missed that space - the Royal Princess doesn't have it) followed by a relaxing morning on the balcony. What a way to spend a day.

With handicapped hubby's physical and stamina issues it takes A LOT of accommodations (with a big chunk of determination, persistence, and a healthy dose of patience) to make it work. But once we're here and it all comes together, it's so worth it. And having amazing crew member friends we get to visit with day after day is like icing on the cake. Having Princess make a mistake with our cabin turned out well for us, too.

When we first were looking at some shorter cruises, the prices were super low on the Princess website. Since pricing is important for us, we put several cruises of the super cheap cruises on hold for a couple days before making final decisions. In between the time of the hold and the time we had to put a deposit down, we got a call from Princess. An "oops, we made a pricing mistake" phone call. While they wouldn't honor the prices on their website for these cruises, they did offer a pretty dang good deal.

A mini suite cabin. For an inside cabin price. (I'll post more photos later, but here's a taste.)

Going rate for the inside cabin on this three day Golden Princess voyage? $155 per person for the entire voyage. So here we sit, in a mini suite, at a per night price less than what we'd pay for a cheap hotel in Boise. Plus we got onboard credit for using our future cruise deposit, and another $100 onboard loyalty credit we get for each and every cruise. When I looked at our account this morning I realized, even with gratuities being charged, we are going to have credit left over. Since it's all non-refundable it looks like we're going to have to do some shopping. I know hubby will be buying himself some coffee - here on the Golden it's the crap liquid concentrate.

We certainly won't be leaving any extra dollars for our cabin steward. As we've seen time and time again on these shorter cruises, crew members have an I-don't-care attitude. They know you're leaving soon and they have no interest in putting their best foot forward. A first-time cruiser may not notice the difference, but it's a glaring issue for folks like us who have been around the block (or in this case, the ship). Like the cigarette butt we found on on our balcony today. You may remember, we've had issues with passengers smoking on balconies on other ships and have been routinely told the same thing. While stewards keep their eyes out for evidence, they really can't do anything. So when we found a cigarette butt on our balcony and pointed it out to the cabin steward, the non-caring attitude really shouldn't have been surprising.

But at least from that balcony we got to see the Royal Princess. I so wanted to just toss our luggage on over to her since we're joining her on Sunday. But oh well, guess I'll have to pay the airline the baggage fee instead.

Tomorrow we're off to a sea day with absolutely no plans, other than our freebie dinner tomorrow night.