Sea Day, November 23

My billionth attempt to get this posted...the Internet has sucked these last couple days...

My days have pretty much fallen into a routine.

This morning's sunrise comes way of the covered Calypso Pool.

 

Up and at the buffet before 6 where plenty of seating is available.

The buffet is where I get my caffeine for the day in the form of a glass of ice tea. As I’m at the counter putting sweetener in my tea, I can’t help but think how Princess is only halfheartedly trying to show they care about the planet. Thanks to some bad environmental practices, they are now on a get-rid-of-single-use-items kick to prove their commitment. They’ve done away with sugar packets and gone with these weird, hard-to-use glass containers.

But with the sweeteners? Are they worried about the single use packets those come in? By the looks of the pile of sweeteners I get to choose from every morning, I think not. You can’t convince me the new practices aren’t more about cost-saving measures than anything else.

After my tea glass is empty, I grab the same thing every single morning - an omelet and bacon. On the Royal Princess and Caribbean Princess you can fill a container with your omelet ingredients. It was nice because you could pick from a wide range of fillings and could choose exactly how much you’d like in the omelet. But from our experience on the Royal, the person making the omelet dumps the container in the middle of the eggs. When you get the omelet you have to open it up, spread the ingredients out, and then refold it. There the omelet is fried on a flat top and therefore the eggs are really, really thin.

Here on the Sapphire there is a very short list of ingredients to choose from and they decide the amount to put in your omelet. It’s okay though. Because here they use an omelet pan and blend all the ingredients together throughout the omelet, resulting in a light and fluffy omelet with everything incorporated together.

Even though they have limited filling choices,
they taste 1000% better than the omelets on Royal Princess.

Since the buffet is relatively empty I usually wait for my omelet near the cereal section. As we don’t have boxes like these in the US they put a smile on my face as it reminds me we’re far from home.

No regular sugar packets but still plenty of single use cereal boxes.

I sometimes (okay, almost every day) check out the muffin section, too. The muffins on this ship are heavenly. Moist and chock full of yumminess, a very welcome change from the flavorless and dry muffins we’ve seen on the Princess ships over the last couple years.

Just look at all those blueberries!

After breakfast we head to the Promenade deck to sit and watch the waves. About 8:30 we head back to the cabin to watch a movie. Sapphire Princess has the on demand TV system which is great for as many sea days as we have on this cruise. (The satellite does go out several times a day, and our TV completely went out for a couple days. A new modem solved the black screen issue but the satellite reception continues to be a pain.) After the movie comes pool time for a few hours.

Then back to the cabin so E can have his nap and since I’m done swimming for the day, I have my shower then start a bit of work on the blog. Despite being a non-napper, the combination of the sun and swimming and writing makes me a bit sleepy. I wind up falling asleep at some point and then wake up in a panic when I look at the time. (5:30? Yikes!) I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in a start in takes me a while to get the adrenaline calmed back down. By then it’s 6:30 and neither of us really care about dinner. I read, he watches sports-news-sports-news, I tell him to turn the TV down, I get tired of the junk he’s watching and I make a run to the buffet. Decide I’m not really hungry and usually come back to the cabin empty handed. (Other than the occasional chocolate chip cookie in hand.)

My night ends there and in the morning another very relaxing day begins.

So if you're wanting to know about the shows or the dining room menu or the dress code on formal night, I can't help. At home I work all day long (way too much if you ask E) so this cruise, with my limited Internet minutes and an iffy connection, has been my time to relax. Really relax. It feels so good.

Tomorrow we have one more very relaxing sea day before we get to our next port, Abu Dhabi.

Tonight I think I took one of my best sunset at sea photos.

Sea Day, November 22

Our first cruise ever was on the Diamond Princess, the sister ship to the Sapphire Princess. Our second cruise ever? It was right here on the Sapphire Princess. This ship is one of the reasons we fell in love with cruising and it taught us what cruising was all about. Obviously it worked out well because here we are, some 85 cruises later, flying thousands of miles to sail on her again.

Today's sunrise from the Gulf  of Aden. Somalia is to the right of the sunrise.

There is so much to love about this ship. She’s reminded us of some things we’ve missed by sailing so much on the Royal Class ships. Here on the Sapphire Princess we are reminded:

• The Promenade deck is great for both walking and sitting.
• 
• The atrium is a great place to listen to music without the noise level being way too loud.
• You don’t need to have 50 crew members being robotic in their serving of drinks in the buffet. Since there are fewer passengers, you can have fewer crew members who can also be more engaged with passengers.
• Covered pools are downright awesome in rainy and cool weather and the uncovered pools, at least on this itinerary, are relatively empty.
• Riding an elevator doesn’t have to be a bad experience. The elevators here are empty, with me only once having to step into a full elevator. Think about how the Royal holds 1,000 more passengers than the Sapphire Princess - with the same number of elevators. Actually, the aft elevators here hold more than the Royal Princess' aft elevators. No wonder the elevators on the Royal are so crazily jam packed!

We’ve even seen a huge difference with the passengers. First of all, this itinerary has attracted a different kind of passenger than what we see in our 7-14 day Alaska, Mexico, and Caribbean cruises. It takes a special kind of person looking for a special kind of experience (with plenty of time on their hands) to visit places like Jordan, Dubai, and Oman, and also be okay with 15 sea days (actually 17 if you count our two days in the Suez Canal). It seems most of the passengers are in their mid-60s, adventurous, and so far, kind, polite, friendly, and relaxed.

When E found out the nationality make-up today, the numbers confirm what we've felt. Only 915 are Americans with the friendly and kind Aussies and New Zealanders, Brits, and Canadians totaling 1,511. This cruise is like a breath of fresh air and makes us so happy we ventured away from the US. (Jeannie, you were right about this ship, and Vickie I wish you and Bernie were here to feel the difference.)

No one seems to be bothered by the Promenade Deck being closed at night because of the crew on watch or the very high winds we are experiencing. (Gale force winds plus the ship having to travel at maximum speed through these risky waters make for very, very, very windy decks.) I haven't heard one person complain once about all the sea days and no one seems bored. And like I said, the elevators really are heavenly. 

I do love this ship. What don't I love? We have yet another time change tonight. Yep, another hour forward and another challenge to getting up before 6 AM on our way to another sea day tomorrow.