After two days of port calls in American Samoa and Western Samoa, we are once again at sea, relaxing from our consecutive port days. I do need to note that we are now only 5 hours different from Eastern Time, daylight savings time ended on November 4 in the USA. This is always a sad time for us, it means that the days are getting shorter and the temperatures will be falling. Although it has been an extremely hot summer at home, the thought of cold weather and short days is always depressing. However, we will celebrate the warmth for a couple of more weeks since it is in the mid to upper eighties here at sea, and the sea water temperature is about 85 degrees.
We will miss some of the fall days at home, more than likely we will have much cooler weather by the time we head home on November 19th. However, that is still 13 days away, and we will enjoy the warm weather as long as we can.
We did get up and exercise this morning in the gym, it had been a while since we were there, and it shows on my waistline. I will not speak for Stephanie, but since we had done a couple of ship tours, we were not walking as much as we normally do when we are on our own, and we needed to go back to the exercise regime while we are at sea. Once again, we were back to our typical sea day breakfast in the buffet, lots of fruit and oatmeal and no eggs, bacon, sausage or sweet rolls.
It was a nice day at sea, the winds were moderate, and we had just one rain shower while we were exercising in the gym. The remainder of the day was sunny and warm. I had a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s big Ukulele concert at 2:00 PM today. We will be playing in the atrium tomorrow for the real concert. There are probably about 25-30 people participating. It will be fun, the singing part is the hardest for me, the Ukulele playing is easy.
We did report the issue with the tour from yesterday, and we were told we would each need to fill out a form stating what happened so they could independently collaborate the stories. We do not know what will be done, they implied that they thought the tour group was at fault, hence the need to explain what happened on the forms. My personal thought is that Princess did not do a good job of coordinating with the local tour groups, but being the heavy, I think they will try and blame the local tour group, as they have the leverage being a big company, and can influence the locals via leveraging a return cruise for the future. I will have to say that Princess does seem to be heavy handed at times, but some of that is probably just inherent in the cruise business.
We went out on the sun deck for a while, then went to lunch. Then it was back out in the sun for a bit more before we headed to the room to play some cards out on the balcony in the shade. We enjoyed some refreshments and watched the sunset.
We then got ready for dinner, and headed to the Sante Fe Dining room once again, and enjoyed a good dinner consisting of Prime Rib for me and a Shrimp and Scallop dish for Stephanie.
After dinner, we went to the Explorer’s Lounge to watch a comedy show by a gentleman named Uber Rossie. The show was OK, funny at times, but not as good as some of the others that we have seen.
After that, we called it a night and headed back to the cabin.
Tomorrow will be another day at sea as we maintain our heading toward Bora Bora, arriving on Tuesday morning.
Dear Chuck & Stephanie,
Sounds you are having a good time even with the snafus. I don’t know how I would feel about so many days at sea, but it is wonderful that you are seeing the part of the Pacific that most won’t ever do in their life time, including me. Everything at home is o.k.. Writing about the fall. I have already run the mower 3 times to pick up leaves. The boys came last Thursday and Friday we had a big blow. Oh well! The weather has been cool but nice for a change. We did have a little rain storm last week, but the mornings have been in the 50’s; warming up to the 70’s during the day.
Stay safe and well.
Love,
Mom