More Sea days

Valentines day, February 14th, on board was a big occasion with heart shaped decorations in all the public spaces. Most of the activities were Valentines day related and, no surprise, we didn’t do too well in Valentines trivia. Captain Lubrano hosted a FREE ‘Renewal of Wedding Vows’ ceremony in the Cabaret Lounge, each of the 27 participating couples (of 654 passengers on board) received a certificate. In the afternoon we watched the ships’ version of the ‘Newly Wed and Nearly Dead’ game, we’ve seen this game on many ships and it’s always very funny as participants try to match their partners answer. June and Jim from our table were the most recently wed at 3 years married compared to longest wed couple at 54 years.


We lost February 16th, we go from today, Sunday February 15th to Tuesday February 17th since we crossed the international dateline today. The seas were quite rough last night and this morning barf bags were sprinkled about the public areas. We went to the weekly Sunday brunch with Harry and Bob, it was nice and was about a 2 hour affair as we sat talking for a while, I tried my first eggs benedict and my first Canolli, very nice. We spoke to the Captains Circle representative about our status for this cruise. We’d been told by Princess head office that we would not qualify for the top level status ‘til the end of the cruise, but since boarding we’ve been told that we’ll be billed at the end of each segment. After raising this with the CC rep, she agreed that we would be moved to the higher level for the last segment of the cruise, Izzy just missed the required numbers to qualify for the 3rd segment by one day. Reaching the top level status means free laundry, free in cabin mini bar and a variety of other perks. The longer we’re on this ship, the more impressed we are by the staff, they are really very helpful and always seem happy, being on for a long time we’ve got to know a few of them quite well.


There was a special laundry promotion today, February 17th, everything you can fit into the laundry bag for $20, it saves us the bother of doing the laundry at the onboard self service machines. There is only one laundry centre with 4 machines and we constantly hear of arguments and harsh words between passengers when someone decides they will remove someone else’s laundry in order to put in their own laundry. This morning, there was an interesting lecture “My day in the office at 60,000 feet” following a typical British Airways Concorde flight as seen through the eyes of Captain Les Evans, former Concorde pilot. This evening we watched ‘Duo Yalba’ in their second show since coming on board, they play over 40 different musical instruments (not at the same time) and were quite entertaining. Tomorrow we are scheduled to arrive in Auckland at 07.00am, so it’s early to bed tonight for an early morning rise.

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