Places You'll Go: Days at Sea

Today I'm continuing my trip report for the Princess Cruise on Caribbean Princess that I just returned from. Since the ship left Houston a little late, our itinerary had to be altered slightly. Now, don't ask me what the original itinerary was, because I cannot tell you. Even the Princess Cruise Atlas shows the itinerary to be exactly the same as the one we sailed leaving Houston on Saturday, spending 2 days at sea and arriving in Roatan on Tuesday, Belize on Wednesday and Cozumel on Thursday followed by Friday at sea and returning to Houston on Saturday. But during muster the captain announced that since we were leaving late, we were going to move Cozumel to our last stop (I thought all along it was the last stop) and make Roatan the first stop after 2 days at sea. Again, color me confused because I thought that was what we were supposed to do. So, as you might guess, this news did not effect me in any way.

Waking up the first morning at sea, I went to breakfast a little late and discovered that most of the other 2,999 people on board had the same plan. Since the previous week's cruise had a Norovirus outbreak, you were not allowed to serve yourself in the Horizon buffet. So, they had workers standing in front of each station to serve you. But that made it difficult to get around because you would have to walk around the workers. So it took me about 30 minutes just to get my food. Now I'm not a fan of a buffet in the first place. But there has never been any buffet food worth waiting 30 minutes for and the scrambled eggs on this cruise probably weren't worth waiting 30 seconds for. After breakfast, I found a fruit carving exhibition in my Princess Patter that I was interested in attending so I went to that.

If it hadn't taken so long to get my breakfast I would have called Mom and had her meet me at the fruit carving. She would have really enjoyed it. But there was no time before it began since I was running so late. When I did catch up with Mom and Dad they told me that there were no lines in Horizon before 9 AM so I made plans to get to the buffet earlier for the rest of the cruise. In fact for the rest of the week, I met Mom, Dad, Doris and Don for breakfast each day.

After the fruit carving I caught up with Mom and we went to the Lobby Bar where we met Joseph. I will tell you that any hard feelings caused by spending 30 minutes in a buffet line were totally erased by meeting Joseph. He became our bartender of the cruise. To begin with Mom and I went to the Lobby Bar and I ordered a Bloody Mary and asked him to make it spicy. It was still a little less spicy than I like so I asked if he could make it spicier. He did and then he knew exactly how I liked my Bloody Mary's. So we called Dad to let him know that we had found a good Bloody Mary and he came down to try it for himself. Joseph was from the Philippines and was just a really friendly person. He told Dad and I about the Princess drink punch cards. It's a program where each time you buy a drink you receive punches on a card based on what type of drink it is, beer gets 1 punch, wine and cocktails get 2, premium drinks get 3 or 4 and buckets of beer get 5 punches. A card holds 30 punches. When you get a card all punched out, they drop it in a box for a drawing that is held the last day at sea of each cruise. The winner of the drawing has their bar tab comp'd. But here's the thing. If you are friendly with the bartenders.... they'll give you extra punches. If you're rude, they don't. When it comes to a free bar tab, I can be very friendly. I got 3 cards filled during my cruise. Of course, I didn't win. But c'est la vie. Joseph worked from 9 AM to 11 PM each day at the Lobby Bar with breaks for lunch and dinner. So he was always easy to find. He became our very own Issac. But I will tell you that it's a little sad when the bartender doesn't need your card to charge your drinks because he has memorized your folio number.... Just sayin'....

Mom, Alex, Hope and Doris

So, anyway a couple of Bloody Mary's later, I went back up to my room and relaxed on my balcony until time to get ready for dinner. Apparently that last polar vortex even effected the Caribbean so it was kind of chilly on the first day at sea and the last day at sea. Even in Cozumel the high temperature on the day we were there was only in the 70's. So I saw no pool time on Sunday. Below are a couple of photos of the sunset on Sunday night. Sweet, huh?

Hey wait! How did that wine glass get in there?

Sunday night was one of the two formal nights on this cruise. Doris and Don didn't make it to dinner on Sunday since Doris was still recovering from a bout of bronchitis that she had before we left. So Mom, Dad and I met our waiter Alex and our assistant waiter Hope. Alex was from Mexico and Hope was from the Philippines. They were both very nice throughout the cruise. The photo of them with Mom and Doris was taken on the last night of the cruise.

The view of empty chairs from where I was sitting.

On the second day at sea, I spent several hours out by a pool. One of the things that I love about Princess is that they have multiple small pools rather than just one or two large ones. I found a spot on deck 16 near a pool with less than 20 people in the area. And the weather couldn't have been more perfect for laying around drinking a few beers and reading a trashy romance novel.

Yeah.... Places You'll Go was represented on the ship

This was the view 10 feet behind where I was sitting. That pool is on deck 14 and is adults only.

My chair!

The pool area that I was at actually had a small regular pool, a kiddie pool and a hot tub. I know what you are thinking. What was Susan doing at a kiddie pool????!?!?!! But there were only about 10 kids on the entire ship. So, it was just about the quietest place around! While I was there only 1 kid showed up at the pool and she was traveling with her grandparents who weren't taking any flack from her. It was pretty great!

The one and only "kiddie" in the kiddie pool!

While sitting at the pool I got a bucket of beer and could only drink two of them so I took the rest of them to my room where they lasted me most of the rest of the week. That's just another perk of having a fridge in the room. Upon returning to my room, my mission became to get the best possible pictures of sunset from my balcony. So that's what I worked on until dinner that night. I must say, I kind of liked a few of them. All in all, it was a very relaxing day. Tomorrow we'll touch on Roatan and maybe even Belize if there's time.