The skies were clear this morning when we woke up, so we are planning to spend most of the day lounging in the sun and relaxing. We are almost caught up with the posts, but it has been a relatively painful experience because of the ship’s extremely slow satellite internet service.
Add to that the change in months, and we are having some difficulty with getting the photos to load up. The photos are stored on the blog’s web server by date, so when we changed from October to November, while I was loading up the postings, some went in as October, some as November, due to the difference in time from our local time and the server time. While I was making the posts, we were transitioning from one month to the next, the “computer” saw the time as midnight, it was noon here while I was loading the pictures.
Anyway, as soon as we can, we will get it straightened out, the main issue we are experiencing is how slow the internet is to load the real pages to see if the changes I make have worked. The internet is especially slow in the morning, everyone wants to be online, I guess to check their email. It seems to be the fastest during the time period where the majority of folks are at the early dinner. However, yesterday, even that was extra slow, maybe due to our location, in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean. I tried again late last night, thinking everyone was asleep, but even at midnight, the internet connection would not work at all. We wonder if this is from the crew using the internet after getting off from work.
Anyway, we did spend the morning out on deck in the sun, but only after we passed through a pretty heavy rain shower. After that, it was clear skies.
After lunch, we went to another Ukulele Class, we are having one each day while we are at sea, rehearsing for the big production on the day after we leave Papeete.
Rougher Seas Today
The wind was stronger today, the weather report at noon indicated the wind to be blowing at around 30 mph. This resulted in a little bit more bumpy ride through the ocean, but luckily, the wind is still mostly from behind our heading, so the relative winds up on deck are not too bad, the wind and ship are generally heading in the same direction.
Tonight is the second formal night, and we are planning to dress up for dinner. This will be the first formal night we attend since we had elected not to participate in the first one earlier in the cruise. The menu for tonight includes lobster, so we certainly do not want to miss that.
After getting dressed, we headed to dinner once again in the Sante Fe Dining Room with Georgiana as out waiter. We were in a bit of a rush to finish dinner as we had planned to attend the ballroom dancing lessons at 8:15 PM. We ordered some wine with dinner, and of course ordered the lobster tails. It is funny to look back to the days when I was first cruising, and the lobster dinner was the most special meal that was served during the cruise. Back then, the lobster tails were large, generally being normal warm water Florida Lobster Tails, and you usually got more than one with the initial serving, plus you could order more, and they would bring you only the tails. Then Princess started to use the cold water lobster tails, similar to the small ones you can usually buy in the grocery store. You typically still got two tails with dinner, and again, they would bring only the lobster tails if you requested additional servings.
Then there was a change made to serving a single small lobster tail with prawns. Last night, the serving was one really small lobster tail, with a crab cake. The crab cake was good, but nowhere near the quality of a lobster tail. Princess also now brings you another entire dinner, including all of the side servings if you ask for more lobster, I guess it in an attempt to either fill you up, or embarrass you if you only eat the lobster tail and leave the rest. I think this is just a general indication of some of the cutbacks in the quality of the food on cruises today. I do have to say that is was still a good dinner, just not the special and extravagant lobster dinner of the past.
Once we were finished with our dinner, we headed to the ballroom dance lesson, they were teaching the waltz, and we just wanted a refresher to brush up on the steps we had learned in our lessons before the cruise. We were about 15 minutes late, and when we arrived, they were teaching different steps than we had learned, so we just watched. We were also planning on attending the show afterward in the same lounge, so we got a table and watched the lesson for about 10 minutes before they were done. We have still not been able to get to a lounge for any ballroom dancing, it always seems like they have ballroom dancing scheduled around the early dinner completion and we are always still at dinner since we go later than most passengers.
We stayed for the show, which was a marriage game show similar to the Newlywed Game. These are usually very entertaining, but this one was laborious to watch. In picking the three couples, they chose one couple that had been married 65 years, which is usually very funny to watch them answer the questions. Unfortunately, as the game progressed, we learned that the wife in this particular couple had suffered a stroke in the recent past, and her mental abilities seemed to be limited, she could just not process the questions, either from nerves from being on stage, or some other medical condition, or both. In addition to that, the other two couples were just not good at answering the questions. For about the first 6 questions out of 8, no one had any score at all. The Cruise Director and Assistant Cruise Director were more entertaining than the couples, trying to get them to answer something correctly, giving them hints at times. When the show was finished, I think even the audience was ready for it to be over based on the lack of enthusiasm in the applause.
Probably more funny to us was what happened to my dress shoes that I brought and use with my tuxedo. We had about 20 minutes before the show started, so I was heading back to the room for a refreshment refill, and I noticed that my shoes were making some clunking noises when I walked. It seemed to be only on the left shoe, so I stopped, and discovered that the sole was separating from the shoe. Apparently, it was only glued on, no stitching. As I continued to walk, it seemed to get worse. I was thinking the entire time about what we might have in the room to glue it back on. The only thing I could come up with was chewing gum, it certainly seems to stick well to your shoes when you step on a piece in a parking lot or on a sidewalk.
When I got to our room, I found Stephanie’s gum and started to chew one piece, thinking this was enough to hold on the heel of the left shoe, which was all that had separated. I made our refreshments and headed out the door, only to now discover the right shoe was also separating, and was even worse. I had only gotten a few doors down from our room, so I headed back for another piece of gum to chew, I now needed enough for two repairs. My plan was to chew the gum while heading back to meet Stephanie at the show, but the right heel was so bad, I needed to attempt to gum glue it back on in the room. Of course, the gum would not stick, I guess it only works with a reaction between gum, shoes and a sidewalk, where it always sticks to your shoes, but not the third element, the sidewalk, it just did not stick. So, my only choice was to put on my brown casual shoes, which were not at all complimentary to my black tux, and head back to meet Stephanie.
Of course by this time the show was starting, and Stephanie had become worried on the delay in my return. I told her what had happened, that ended up being much more entertaining than the show. Now, I will have to see if I can rent some formal shoes for the two remaining formal nights later in the cruise. If this had happened on the first formal night, the one we had not attended on a sea days before we got to Hawaii, I could have gotten some “shoe goo” glue from one of our trips to Walmart, and made the repairs myself. The irony is that we looked into renting shoes for the cruise anyway, to help with space in the luggage, but thought it was a little pricey, so I took my own. I guess those cheap shoes I bought from Ebay several years ago are exactly that, cheap. I do have to say they were abused over time, having been folded in two, and smashed in my luggage on past cruises.
Needless to say, we called it an early night, I did not want to stay out wearing my brown casual shoes and my black tuxedo.
Tomorrow, we cross the equator around 10:00 AM, so there is a special celebration for that at 2:00 PM. We also have our Chef’s Dinner tomorrow evening, so it will be an eventful day at sea.