Day 24 - Tue - 11/25/2025 - At Sea to Bermuda - Day 3

 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 quick lunch before Veni Shykin gave his port talk on West End, Bermuda.  It was very good and afterwards, the Beard's and I chatted about potential plans for our visit on Thursday.  We concluded that we simply did not have enough time in the port (we're scheduled to arrive at 9am and onboard time is probably 3:30pm.  There are public buses, taxies, and cute electric rental cars, but it's about an hour and a half to drive to St. George's at the other end of the island.  And that's not allowing for any scenic stops and traffic.  So our plan is to stay in the Dockyard area and get to know that area well and if we ever return, we'll try to explore more of the island.  After seeing the port talk and doing my research, I can now see why Bermuda is an attractive destination.


William Kramer continued his space topics series with a catchy title of "I Was Bitten by an Astronaut.  It was a talk about all of the animimals that were sent into space before humans were sent there.  I rather enjoyed it and remember some of it as it actually happened.  Just before dinner, at 4:30pm we were invited to the Captain's Circle cocktail party in which they honor all of the higher status guests.  The top two guest couples had 1900+ sea days on Princess.  The future cruise consultant gave some statistics about our cruise:  3,498 guests, 592 first time cruisers on Princess, 968 Platinum Medallion holders, and 865 Elite medallion holders.  There are also 1,350 crew.  Cocktails and light odeorves were served.  After 3 bottles of Champaign were given out as door prizes, the crowd immediately disbursed.  There was to be a second similar party tonight for another group of the frequent cruisers.


We ate a quick dinner and there was a special show time of 7pm featuring Peter Cutler, a singer and "comedian".  I'd call him more of a singer, and he starred in Les Mis on the West End for 2 years and sand a song from that play.  Immediately following that show was the Marriage Match game show which is always funny and interesting.  We then dashed off to the other end of the ship to the Vista Lounge to catch the second set of the Womacks.  They were once again really good and we had front row seats.  I then joined Angela for the late karaoke time.  

Peter Cutler


Afterwards, I needed some more steps so I went down to deck 5 forward to submit some dad jokes.  On the way back I encountered the Beards chatting with Derrick Womack.  I joined the chat before returning to the room to get ready for bed.  Tonight we gain another hour (which I like).  All day long the seas have been a bit choppy and there's definitely been some "motion to the ocean" being felt onboard.  It was nothing that bothered me, but other guests definitely commented on it.


Tomorrow is our last sea day before West End, and it's packed as well.  We hope to have lunch with a lady we met a few days ago.  We're looking forward to it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day -03 & -02 - Thu/Fri - Home to London

Image
 After a very brief less than 72 hours at home following our last trip out of England, we found ourselves back at SeaTac airport for a direct flight to London on Delta.  Our flight was scheduled for 5:40pm and we arrived at the airport around 3:15pm.  The ticketing agent didn't put our TSA PreCheck on our tickets so we had to return to the ticketing counter to get that fixed.  But I didn't notice another problem until we reached the gate:  we were assigned seats on opposite sides of the airplane.  Fortunately a gate agent was able to fix it and we had seats 47a&b (near the back of the airplane in economy). The A330-200 took off close to on time and we had a little bit longer takeoff roll (yes, I always count the number of seconds for takeoff). Typically it's 31 or 32 seconds; today's was 39 seconds.  The flight was smooth and we were served beverages first (tip: order two as it's a long time until the next one) so we ordered sparkling water and a C...
Read more

Day 01 - Embarkation & Revelations

Image
 Today's blog is a long one.  And what a surprise to start our day!  We started listening to game 7 of the World Series midnight when around 1am there was a sudden noise from the bathroom.  By the time Angela was able to reach the bathroom, the floor was totally covered in water as the bidet hose had exploded under the water pressure as someone else had not turned off the water at the nearby valve. We don't use or even know how to use the bidet.  She was able to turn off the valve and I got up and mopped up the bulk of the water.  I then called the front desk and a workman was sent up immediately who diagnosed the problem and fetched a replacement hose.  The original hose was split at the nozzle and he said that it happens quite frequently.  When he was finished, a housekeeping attendant came with a stack of towels and completed the mopping of the floor.  He also left us 3 extra towels just in case.   With all of that excitement behind u...
Read more

Day -01 - London Walk

Image
 Because we did the city tour yesterday, we had all day Saturday free to do what we desired.  We ended up listening to game 6 of the World Series from midnight until 3am so we weren't in much of a hurry to get up early.  Our only deadline was the 11am cutoff for the hotel buffet breakfast that was included with our tour.  We were able to enjoy breakfast and then headed out to walk to Trafalgar Square which is about 4 miles from the hotel in the Kensington District.  We learned that the Kensington district is one of the most expensive places to own property in greater London.  A small one bedroom 1,000 square foot apartment sells for over the equivalent of $1.5 million dollars or more! Our first stop was a little hardware store across the street from the hotel.  Jack's Hardware has a small storefront, but once inside, the store is deep and has a basement.  I was looking for another latch for our daughter and the clerk quickly found it after I showe...
Read more