Sea Day 1 – Heading to Hawaii

This morning, once again, we were up much too early, we were still adjusting to the time change, and what does the ship do, but move the clocks back an additional hour to help us out!! Now, we are 4 hours earlier than the East Coast. Just to add insult to injury, we get to adjust the clock an additional hour each of the next two nights to get us to Hawaii time, a total of 6 hours ahead of Eastern time. Maybe when we get there, we will finally be adjusted to all of the time changes.

I woke up about 4:00 AM, which to my body was a late 8:00 AM eastern time. Trying to “sleep in” I was able to extend that until 6:00 AM, and then got up to get coffee. Stephanie did a little better, sleeping until I woke her up with my scurrying about to get dressed to make my coffee run. I guess we could use room service for the coffee, but we don’t know what time to tell them to deliver the coffee, and surely as our luck would have it, we will tell them early, they will knock on the door, and it will be the day we finally sleep longer. Maybe later in the cruise.

It was not as foggy this morning, but it was still overcast. The wind was calm, but there was about a 6 ft. side swell from the north. Perfect conditions for the initial day at sea to get used to the movement. We got dressed and headed to breakfast at the buffet around 9:00 AM current ship’s time.

Afterward, we went to look around at the shops, and purchased a coffee card at the coffee bar. The coffee card is good for 15 different cups of specialty coffees, unlimited servings of fresh brewed coffee, and also came with a free stainless coffee mug. We were not able to find an inexpensive coffee mug during our excursion to the Von’s grocery store Friday night, so this was an added bonus, and helped defer the cost of the card.

There was a florist arrangement demonstration that was being held in the Atrium area, and that was interesting to learn how long they can store the fresh cut flowers in their special refrigerators on the ship. Most of the flowers they used were from Hawaii, picked up on the previous cruise. We then went to exercise at the gym, we both did the elliptical machine for about 30 minutes. I had never done one before, and found it was a little different, but certainly did get your heart rate up.

We then went to a free ukulele class.  The shipboard music director brought 16 ukulele’s to lend out for the lessons, plus a book showing the chords and some songs. It was a lot of fun, not too different from playing a guitar, except much smaller, and of course, there are only 4 strings. There are lessons every day for the next several days, and apparently, a concert  for all of the students to play in after we leave from Hawaii, a cruise ukulele recital of sorts.

Then it was off to lunch in the buffet.

The sun never did come out today, and it only got to about 65 degrees, which we had expected the first day out of Los Angeles. Tomorrow’s forecast is for sunny skies, and 75 degrees. However, the winds and seas are forecast to increase over the next couple of days.

One of the interesting things was that NFL football came on so early in the day for the adjusted ship’s time, the first games were on at 9:00 AM. Sunday Night Football will come on in the afternoon at 4:30 PM, so  it should be called Sunday Afternoon Football out here.

We played some cards in the room, sipping on some wine and watching Sunday Night (Afternoon) Football on the TV. It seemed to be warming up a little outside, although the sun never came out. At least the water temperature is rising, it is about 67 degrees now as we head south westward.

Tomorrow night is the first of the four formal nights, so the first thing we did yesterday after the luggage came was to give our Cabin Steward, Edgardo, my Tux and two formal shirts for dry cleaning and pressing. These were delivered this afternoon, so no worries waiting on them to show up at the last minute tomorrow, been there, done that on a previous cruise, and it is not fun going down to the atrium area to visit the Purser’s Desk when everyone else is all dressed up and you are in shorts looking for your tux 30 minutes before needing to put it on for dinner.

We went to dinner tonight in the dining room, the dress was smart casual. We went to the Pacific Fusion Dining Room, one of four themed dining rooms for Anytime Dining. We thought that each of the themed dining rooms was going to have some specialty items on the menu, but they are all serving exactly the same thing. Maybe this was a Princess trial or test of specialty dining in the past, but it has transitioned into just four ordinary dining rooms with different names. I am not sure that they are decorated differently inside since we have only been to the one. Maybe when this ship was built they tried to see if having different types of dining rooms, or specialty foods, was a better idea.   Apparently not, since they have been converted back into normal dining spaces with no differences in the types of food served.

The dining experience was slow for the amount of passengers eating at that time, but the food was good. We resisted eating any bread, and split a desert. We both had the Tenderloin, which was very tender and cooked to our request. We also ordered a side dish of another entrée, which was shrimp in a bisque sauce. It was also good. We split a cheesecake for dessert. Overall, it was a good meal, but the service was a little slow, so we were not able to finish dinner before the comedy show started that we had planned to attend.

We did hear from a couple sitting at the table next to us that the weather forecast for tomorrow was worse than had been previously stated, so we are not sure if we will see sunshine tomorrow either. One good thing was that we do not change the clocks again tonight, so I guess we will change them the following two nights, which seems like it would cause confusion for the night right before we stop at the first port in Maui. Surely, someone will forget to switch their clock and be early for their shore excursion.  At least that is better than being late.

It was a restful day, which we needed after all of the traveling and changes in time.