Sea Day 5 – Heading to American Samoa

It was nice to be able to sleep in this morning after having gone for four straight days of getting up at 5:15 AM for the port stops in Hawaii. It is enjoyable to be able to see so many things, but four days in a row of constantly being on the go does wear you out. We were also finally getting used to the time, having been on the same time zone now for the last four days.

The weather this morning is sunny, so we hope to relax on deck in the lounge chairs, and then spend some of the day catching up on the blog (which we did as you can see from the posts that have been added). We decided not to go and exercise in the gym this morning, thinking that we had exercised sufficiently with all of the walking we did during the last four port days. Also, I have apparently transferred my head cold to Stephanie, she actually was not feeling that well yesterday when we woke up in Kauai.

Today is Halloween, so the ship’s crew decorated a lot of the areas with Halloween decorations during the night, and there was a large display of carved pumpkins in the Atrium. All of the dining staff will be in costumes tonight and they are encouraging the passengers to wear costumes to dinner in the dining rooms. We will be wearing our Fred and Wilma Flintstones costumes that we brought from home. There is also a Halloween Party later tonight that we also plan to attend.

We went to breakfast about 9:00 AM, heading up to the Horizon Court buffet. We started back eating our “sea day” breakfast menu (oatmeal, fruit, yogurt, etc) since we knew we would not be burning away the calories like we did walking in the ports the previous four days. After breakfast, it started to get very cloudy, so we opted not to apply sunscreen and head up to the sun deck, deciding instead to spend the morning going to the Ukulele class, and blog writing. I hate getting so far behind with the postings, it seems to take a long time to catch up. Thankfully, with four straight sea days ahead, I should have more time to catch up over the next couple of days.

Stephanie did a lot of sleeping today, mostly due to the cold medicines she took, while I spent time in the cabin writing the posts, and uploading the pictures for the blog. Later in the afternoon, Stephanie attended a class to make Orchid Lei’s. We both were signed up, but there did not appear to be a lot of males attending, so I opted out to continue on the blogs.

After the Lei Class, Stephanie caught up to me in the Fusion Lounge, where I was continuing to write the posts. There was a beginner’s Merengue Dance Class starting in that lounge, so we decided we would join in. It turned out to be a lot of fun. After that we headed to get a late afternoon snack. We had skipped lunch after going to breakfast so late, we just were not hungry at lunch time.

I continued to work on the blog in our cabin afterward, while Stephanie napped. We then enjoyed some refreshments on the balcony, watching the ocean pass by. It never was really that sunny today, just overcast, but no rain other than a few intermittent showers.

We headed to dinner in our Halloween costumes about 7:45 PM, once again going to the Sante Fe Dining Room to be served by our favorite waiter Georgiana. All of the wait staff were dressed up for Halloween, and they had some really good costumes. Some of the passengers were in costume, but most were not. It was interesting that by the time we finished our dinner at about 9:00 PM we were the only passengers left in the dining room. On this cruise, as we had already seen, there are mostly early eaters.

On a side note, we did find out that Princess had changed the times for the early and late seating’s for dinner on this cruise. Early seating is at 5:15 PM. Normally, it has been at 6:15 PM on Princess Cruises. They apparently did the same for the late seating, moving it up from the normal time of 8:15 PM to 7:45 PM. That might have a lot to do with why there was no one in the dining room when we were finishing, everyone eats early even in the Personal Choice dining rooms.

After dinner, we went to the Halloween Costume Party in the Club Fusion Lounge. The party was very well attended, and a lot of passengers were in some type of costume, with some just wearing Halloween accessories. There was a band playing, and the party was a lot of fun. Later in the evening, there was a parade of all of the passengers who were in costume, and the cruise staff picked winners of the “best costume” and “worst costume” award.

One of the two sisters we had met earlier in the cruise at the hot tub, Mary Jo, won with her costume of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She was the person who is one of the voices on Sponge Bob, Square Pants. The clincher seemed to be her red converse tennis shoes that were decorated with red sequins. Mary Jo is probably about 65 years old or better, but she pulled off her Dorothy impersonation pretty well.

As the party wound down, the ship became a deserted ghost ship, so to speak, pun intended. It was about midnight, and everyone just seemed to vanish.

We went to the Atrium area and took pictures of the carved pumpkins that were still out on display, and since we were the only ones there, we had no issues with getting pictures without photo “friends”, no one was there to block the views.

It was a fun evening, and a good day catching up on our sleep, relaxation, and postings.