2025 Canary Islands & Bermuda Cruise

 I woke up at 4am to take a bio break and noted that we were already docked in Port Canaveral.  I couldn't see any other ships, but that was about to change.  I went back to sleep and woke up at 7:30am. And there were now two ships beside us: a Norwegian ship and an MSC ship.  We went up to the LIDO for breakfast and ate with the winner of the Voice of The Ocean and his wife.  We got to know them a bit better and the conversation was very interesting and wide ranging. I then returned to the stateroom and packed up my electronics.  With everything now packed, we went down to the Vista Lounge that was our designated waiting area.  It was pretty crowded but we were able to find a couple of seats.  Because we were self assisted departure passengers, we were told that we could disembark, but our group instructions were to not disembark before 9am.  So we waited until 9am before attempting to scan off the ship. We were about 20 people from scanning...

 The end of our cruise was finally here.  It's our last day at sea before reaching Port Canaveral.  This port is a new one for us.  As is normal for us, we let the light peering through our window wake us up.  We ate our normal breakfast and then attended William Kramer's final space enrichment talk in the Princess Theater.  His topic was Colors in Space, and it was a really good presentation. After a quick lunch we secured seats for the Voice of the Ocean final show in the Princess Theater. It turned out that at least 3 of the singers in the finals of the Voice of the Ocean were professional singers.  One was a world renowned opera singer and voice teacher/coach, another was a singer with his own band, and a third was a music technician of some type.  The opera singer won it handily with over 60% of the vote.  Most of the audience were unaware of the singers' credentials.  For us, it's sort of a disappointment that the competition is no...

 We're now on our home stretch sailing to Orlando, Florida.  The weather was slightly overcast the whole day, and many activities were scheduled for the day. Keeping to our usual pattern, we allowed the sunlight to wake us up just before 9am.  After breakfast, William Kramer presented his 7th space topic.  This one was on how light & other pollution affects viewing the night sky.  It was another good presentation.   We enjoyed another nice lunch with S chatting about our visit to West End, Bermuda and other topics.  The conversation was so good I missed the 1pm Behind the Seas interview with the Medical Staff.  But I was certain not to miss the 2pm performance of the Pop Choir in the Princess Theater to a packed house.  Angela was a participant. The choir of way over a hundred was the largest we have seen on a Princess ship.    I spent the rest of the afternoon lounging. After dinner we watched the production show Spotlight Bar ...

 Today we reached the last port on this cruise:  West End, Bermuda.  This port was the one of the reasons that we booked this cruise along with the Canary Islands. The Sky Princess came alongside the wharf and we were cleared to leave the ship just after 9am.  For this port we had an accompanying tugboat because of the gusty winds.  Those winds continued throughout the day.  However, it was nicely warm with temperatures being just over 70°. Based upon my research, I had determined that due to our short port stop time, it would not be possible to see much more of the island than the area around the port area unless one wanted the travel around like a chicken with its head cut off.  So after breakfast we gathered our things and scanned off the ship and walked to the nearby National Museum of Bermuda. After crossing the real moat, the entry fee for seniors to this museum was $15 for seniors and $18 for those under 65.  The museum is housed on the gro...

 Today was our final sea day.  The seas calmed substantially overnight and it got warmer outside.  Once again we allowed the light to wake us up around 8am.  After a nice breakfast, Veni gave a nice lecture on Frozen History about Pompeii, Herculaneum, the galleon in Vasa, and other objects frozen in time. William Kramer gave his  space talk on Learning to Live in Space which was about training facilities on earth used to train astronauts. We had an amazing lunch with another guest that we had met last week.  I'll call her S to guard her privacy. She was born in Taiwan, educated in the western United States, has written a historical novel in Chinese, and has just completed another novel concerning a historical event involving England and China.  It's in final editing.  We chatted about writing, history, cruising, and more.  It was fun conversation.  We got so wrapped up in this conversation that I missed the first contestant on Deal or N...

 As seems to be typical on these long trans oceanic cruises, more and more activities are packed into each day.  And today was a prime example.  We allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit before getting some breakfast.  Our first event was the "Meet the Captain" event in the Princess Theater.  This was a one on one interview between Matt, our cruise director, and Captain Tony Draper. Captain Draper is a life long mariner who initially had an interest in being a pilot.  He's been at seas for 40 years, a Captain for 20 and met his wife on a cruise ship.  He's got an engaging personality and I love hearing his voice when he gives the noon position and weather announcement.  This was followed in the next hour by a canned presentation by Matt about what it's like to be a crew member at sea.  It was very interesting and we've seen this presentation several times previously, but he added lots of personal details to flesh out the talk. We had time for a ...