April 10, Second Full Sea Day

Slept well last night. Discovered that the chain of my locket broke so I will have to see if I can have it repaired here. It seems strange to not wear it. I got it 23 years ago and have worn it continually since then.

The sun is shining and the sea is calm today. I got 2 ducks ready to hide and left a treat for our room steward.

Back to our dining room for breakfast. We were seated with 2 American couples. Fortunately they we very friendly and Politics was not discussed. One couple from Texas and one from South Carolina

That made for a very pleasant breakfast. I checked out the 10 dollar day sale and it was just one small table of scarves and hats, It has come a long way from the full dining room of goodies that it used to be. Not a jacket or a sweater or a hoodie in sight. I guess I will have to continue wearing my jacket for another day until we get into tropical waters.

The met and greet was at Skywalkers at 10:30. The group had 165 people so it was sort of overwhelming but we did meet one couple and had a good visit.

We went to a dining room for lunch. At first  I thought we made a mistake say ing we would share.. One couple seemed very rude and the other two seemed very quiet. But after a while people began to chat, we were correct about the rude couple but the others were friendly.

After lunch we each took a nap and then I showered and got ready for dinner. Our canapes arrived and they were very nice. They we got dressed and headed to the dining room. There were lots of people dressed up and it was so nice to see everyone in their finery. I love formal nights. Usually we get a bottle of wine on formal nights and we have a glass each night. Well I think Princess is trying to get people to purchase their packages and they have just about doubled their prices. I bottle of  white wine, a Pino for example was priced at around 60 dollars US. So that would be around 100 dollars CDN. We did not buy wine tonight.

Our service is usually quite slow. We enjoy the visiting but it means we are slow getting to shows. The show tonight was Do You Wanna Dance? We have seen versions of it before but we wanted to go. There were no seats so we returned to our room. It was great to turn up the heat and get into my cozy robe. 

The second sea day has come to a close... I don't know what we will decide to do tomorrow.

April 9th, First full Sea Day,

We did not do a lot today, just got the lay of the ship.

We returned to our same dining room for breakfast, I am finding that the area is quite cold. Of course I only brought clothes for warm tropical weather. I checked the shops and there is nothing suitable. The fact that these shops are no longer Princess shops certainly shows. The merchandise is of lower quality, there is very little selection and the prices are high. No longer are there nice special things to tempt the shopper.

Our same table mated returned at dinner time. There were still 2 empty chairs so  I quess we will be a group of 6. I brought ducks for them and they were very well received. None of them had known anything about the ducks. They are a very pleasant group so it will be fun to get to know them better during the next month.

The evening show featured Carlos Oscar and as usual he was sensational. Some of the routine was the same but it was even funnier when you knew what was coming. He will be on board one more time before he disembarks so we will be sure to go to that .

When we returned to our cabin we discovered that Kim had sent us strawberries. So we have gotten spending money, flowers and strawberries from her. She is amazing and she always makes you feel appreciated.

The time of the Cruise critic meet and greet was changed to tomorrow. 

We slept well. The ocean was moving but only a slight roll which is perfect for sleeping.

April 8th First Evening.

We are booked to eat at the International Dining Room

The group we are seated with seem to be very nice.A single gentleman from Germany originally, now lives in .California., name was Gary, There was a single lady named Julia, from Ohio, Next was Verna and Gordon from Lethbridge, Alberta . These names may be wrong we will see how good our memories are when we get there tonight

I told them about the ducks and promised to bring them one tonight..

When we returned to the cabin our luggage had arrived and we also had a wonderful gift of flowers from Kim. She certainly is good to us

As soon as that was done we were off to bed. We both slept well.

Lots of Visiting and Reminiscing.

 Ken and Ken got the luggage and soon we were on our way. The drive from the airport was about 45 minutes and Wendy and I sat in the back and we didn't stop chatting.

When we arrived at the house we were greeted by the family dog, CHESTER. what a wonderful dog he is, so friendly and he loves attention. We really enjoyed him while we were there.

We nibbled and visited and caught up on the years. Before we knew it it was ten o'clock and after such a long day we were ready to call it a night. 

Ken and Wendy are such gracious hosts. As usual our room was ready for us and before long we were asleep. It felt great to not be stressed out about what might be awaiting us.

I woke early as is usual for me. Chester greeted me right away. He needed his belly rubbed.

Then Ken appeared and made the coffee. The 4 of us visited until it was time to leave for the port. We are supposed to board between noon and 2:30 . It is about a fifteen minute drive and when we arrived we were greeted by hundreds of people coming and going it all directions. It really was a mad house. There were people embarking and people disembarking. We had never seen this confusion at the port before. 

We learned later that because this was a return to the US after a longer absence out of the country everything and everyone had to be inspected.

I heard that many people missed their connections. It was a mad house for sure. It took over 3 hours of creeping along before we made it to the ship. Both Ken and I were exhausted. He does not do well walking on pavement at the best of times. But the temperature was good and there was a cooling breeze. We saw others with wheel chairs and wished we had one too.

We finally boarded and we are very pleased with our room and of course the large balcony.

I went topside and got us a lunch , it had been a while since we had eaten.

The next thing to do was to see if I could get the internet bought and set up. We managed to do that before it was time for dinner. 

The food was great as usual and the table guests seem to be very nice. It is a nice group and I will tell you more about it next time.

Finally after dinner we had our luggage and we could begin to unpack.

It was not long before we were sound asleep.

Along day and a cruise begins.

We are on our way.

 It has been a very event filled couple of days

When we checked in in Abby the West Jet rep asked if we wanted to be flagged and given a wheel chair..

We had not thought of that but because of Ken"s balance problem we said yes.She asked if I wanted one too but I declined. We discovered that because of her suggestion we were boarded before all of the other passengers, even the first class. So we decided that this was a good idea. When we arrived in Calgary we were met by an attendant who was there to push the wheelchair. We did not realize at the time what a good thing that was. We learned that there was a gate change and we now had to go the the opposite end of the airport. We were short on time so the attendant was moving quickly. I soon was huffing and puffing and questioning my decision to have a wheelchair. To shorten the story this attendant was fabulous. She even took us through immigration. When we arrived at gate 95 I was exhausted from all of the almost running and they were about to call us over the airways. But we did get there in time. We would never have made it on our own. That attendant in Abbotsford saved our trip, The flight was smooth and leaving the plane the same thing happened. We were taken right to the luggage carousel. Much to our surprise Ken and Wendy were right there waiting for us.

We had arrived safely without meeting an ICE agent. No one dug my phone or computer out of my suitcase and we were not interrogated or tortured in any way. I guess Ice was not interested in 2 seniors with gray hair, valid passports and No tattoo. Let the trip begin..

Almost Ready

In the morning Dave will deliver us to the air port here in Abbotsford. Hopefully we will get checked in without a problem and then at 8:45 we will take off to Calgary and then LA as a destination.

 We will be met by my niece and her husband, spend the night with them and then on Tuesday morning we will head for the Sapphire Princess for a 32 day cruise of the South Pacific. 

 We sailed on this ship before and we really enjoy her. She is one of the Royal class ships. We have a balcony on deck 10 which is our favorite deck. We are at the front of the ship and our dining room is at the back so we will have a lot of walking to do. That is a good thing, hopefully that will use up some of the calories. LOL

 My plan is to blog after we board but if I get the chance I will drop a note and let you know how the flight went and if we arrived safely sometime tomorrow evening.

Glad to be cruising But  sad to leave my beautiful daffodils behind.

Home; Is that happy or sad?

We had put in a wake up call with Princess but as is usual for us we woke early. I actually saw the shipp travel under the Lions Gate Bridge. We quickly got everything done and gathered together and headed out. We never did get that wake up call. We met Renaldo outside of our cabin and said our thank yous and good bye. We had left our note and extra tip the day before just in case we did not see him this morning. We headed to the Allegro dining room because we had breakfast dates with Ann and Ken. They were a little late because they had slept in. They are continuing on to Australia so their morning will be very different from ours. They have to change rooms but it is the only change planned. They will have the same room for 42 days. We had a great visit but it was soon time to head to "Princess Live" because that is where we have to wait for our group ( gold 5) to disembark. We actually had never visited Princess Live and we were surprised to see how large it is. The call came early and we were soon on our way. I was travelling with one of the suitcases that I painted so it was easy to find in that sea of luggage. We made our way out with barely a pause at customs. We waited at the underground pick up spot under Canada Place and we were able to sit and relax as we waited for Dave. He arrived and said that traffic was chaos on the nunmber one so we headed home using the 99 and number 7. It was a beautiful sunny drive. We stopped so I could pick up milk and eggs. We are home and we are feeling a little better. Both Ken and I got the usual Cruise ship CRUD. We wear masks we wash our hands and almost swim in hand sanitizer and we still get it. I felt so ill that I for a brief second considered ending our cruising. But it was only short and now that both of us are feeling almost back to normal and all of the luggage is unpacked I am beginning to think about the next cruise. In fact I went on line and booked shore excursions last evening. We made new friends, had fun hiding ducks, brought home 12 new ducks, discovered a new cocktail ( Dark and Stormy), lived like a queen with no household responsibilities for the entire 2 weeks and have welcomed 3 new pounds which I shall work hard to get rid of. Conclusion: There is no such thing as a bad cruise.!! I am off to have a cup of coffee which I had to make myself.:-( Our next foray is one we have done before...a 32 day south Pacific cruise aboard the Saphire Princess in April of 2025' Thanks for following us and we will meet again in April

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