Days 6, 7 & 8 - More Sea days - and formal night #1

Sea days tend to blur into each other, particularly so when the weather is such that it is far too windy and cold to sit outside.  This run across the south of Australia as opposed to straightaway heading north, effectively has us trapped in the early winter temperatures.  The choppy seas have also been a surprise so the combination has kept us indoors. There is of course plenty we could have done but we have taken the easy route and relaxed, committing ourselves to morning and afternoon trivia; an occasional dance class (just 1 so far…); plus shows and of course, eating.

Relaxation time has been pretty good though, relaxing with books, crosswords, codewords, computer games and the TV – plus for me, the blog.  Overall though, we have spent a phenomenal amount of time chatting to people we have never met before and occasionally, to those we have met before.

On Monday, we did have our first “Seafarer’s” meeting in the nightclub.  Although Sandie said she’d sent details to the ship’s staff, rather strangely, no staff members appeared at all.  Whether this was a Captain’s instruction or not, we really don’t know, but we do believe that this Captain is one who was not impressed with a previous CC group, who were brazenly touting private tours and collecting money at the initial meeting – in front of the senior staff.  Rather dumb.

However, the microphone was passed around and people were able to put faces to names and this achieved the main purpose of an ice-breaker.

Over the three days, with different morning and afternoon trivia teams, out of five contests, we didn’t win any.  No surprises there then.  We even managed a decent score one afternoon with just two of us, just two marks short of our morning team +2 afternooners!

We went to our first dance class with John Graham – “Pride of Erin”, a New Vogue dance – which I seem to have forgotten already…  Unlike Alana, who spent the whole hour – or most of it, learning the new dance or steps, John insists on a progressive dance “The Madison” to open each session, which does nothing more than waste time which would be better spent repeating the steps.  Moving on to the next section of a dance too quickly before it is in muscle memory, just makes it more difficult to learn, (fir some of us!) something which Alana really understood.

The early show on Monday was Steve McKinney, but it was no surprise that it wasn’t as good as show number 1.

The Captain’s welcome was underway by the time we got to the atrium and getting a free drink wasn’t so easy – and we totally missed out on the chocolate on a stick concoction.  Captain William Kent has a dry sense of humour and mentioned that he’d never been to our next stop  (Busselton), so if anyone knew the way, maybe they could make themselves known to the officers?  Apparently there are about 1850 people on board and 1500 are Australian and only about 150 Kiwis this time, almost outnumbered by Mexicans, who all seem to be on an insurance company jolly and are getting off in Perth.

This year, Princess is celebrating its 50^th year so on this formal night, the menu was a mix of dishes from different decades.  Very nice too, with a melt in the mouth steak and for once, I even indulged in a dessert, which looked as good as it tasted.

We nearly always go to the production shows and at lunch, we’d sat next to one of the four singers.  A delightful young lady from the UK.  From her we gained a bit of very useful information.  We have in the past seen a fair number of Princess shows – some of them several times – but on this cruise the dancers do not work for Princess at all. They are from an agency (Linda King?) and that means that they are doing 12 shows on the whole voyage, meaning we will probably see six, that we haven’t seen before.

That augurs well for those doing the whole cruise or even those following this blog who join after we depart.

The show was “Latino Mundo”.  The dancing (as expected from the title!)  was all Latin, but this show was a substitute from the planned one, due to an injury to one of the female dancers.  With just 2 girls and 3 boys, with two male and two female singers, this was a small cast.  With all recorded music the scenery/backdrop  was non-existent.  Just the curtains with coloured lights.  The show was enjoyable enough but was a bit cheapskate and it would have lifted it had there been even a painted backdrop.

Tuesday’s addition to the routine was a short chocolate demonstration in the atrium, other than that, it was down to the Vista lounge after dinner (only 6 of us…)  for an Elvis impersonator, Mark Antony, with the orchestra (led by Paulo on bass).  He was reasonably good and was fighting the ship’s movement and a 8/10 from us.

Tuesday night was another rock’n’ roll night. So not the best of sleeps.

Day 8 – a week into our trip already, Wednesday’s routine was nothing special and it was blowing a fair breeze, so the afternoon movie on deck wasn’t well supported – though we did succumb to the aroma of hot chips and scoffed a portion each.  The avid moviegoers down below on deck 12 were well wrapped up (see pic) as they watched Indiana Jones suffering the searing heat.

At dinner, our lovely head waiter Oana from Romania was most upset to hear that we didn’t get the chocolate on formal night.  Two minutes later she was back with a plate of white and dark chocolate buttons! (see pic).

The evening show was Nathan Foley again and another very professional show and he certainly has a great voice.

No late coffee as an early start in the morning – LAND!

We had an email querying whether or not you still got free hot chocolate on the coffee card.  So far, the answer is yes, we do. One of the changes from our last cruise on the sister ship, the Dawn, is that on deck 12, there are now a load of wooden tables and chairs plus a deck chess set. (see pic)

We have a ships’ morning tour of Busselton and the meet time is 7:15.  I wonder if the pre-dawn deck 12 heavy footed walker will wake us up early again?  The clock is set for 6:15am.