arctickitty

Alaska and Princess are both lovely and combined you should be in for a wonderful treat. I’ve only done Alaska cruises on the “budget” lines, treating them as my personal hiking ferry. Princess does a lot of Alaska-specific programming.

Crew we talked to who would be on for the summer all talked about Alaska. Go meet Josy in Adagio!!

Digital MDR breakfast menu (standard menu only) I did not find the daily specials posted anywhere other than outside Da Vinci dining room.

Digital Sabatini’s menu For suite passengers and the curious. A few days into the cruise I figured out that in the Medallion app you could click “Dine My Way” and then find menus in various ways. You could view Sabatini’s and Crown Grill by selecting specialty dining. You could view breakfast and only that day’s lunch and dinner menus by clicking on Da Vinci. We learned that if you clicked on other dining rooms (that didn’t serve lunch) they might post random lunch menus that didn’t correlate to what was actually served. To view MDR dinner menus for future nights, click on view/edit reservations and then click on each night and then view menu. Once I figured this out, I looked at them all and surprised Special Someone with a Sabatini’s booking for the night with the least exciting MDR menu.

Sample of a standard paper bar menu If you asked to see a print menu at any bar, even somewhere like Adagio or Crown Grill, they handed you a standard printed beverage menu. I took these sample photos but didn’t shoot the whole thing because it doesn’t have much relation to what drinks you can actually get where.

Sabatini’s Print Bar Menu I apologize for the lack of completeness here but I think the lack of reds is because there weren’t any Princess Plus reds I wanted to try. I didn’t always remember to take pictures for you all and not just myself! We liked the Planeta la Segreta Il Bianca from Siciliy that we did not try all the Plus wines as we’d intended. We tried the Sella & Mosca La Caia Vermentino from Sardinia and it was between “meh” and “yum” so we just went right back to Siciliy. We drank this wine before dinner or took it in hand to dinner several times. I had been excited to try the walnut and mandarin liqueurs but they didn’t have them. If I’d known there was to be a ship-wide disappearance of limoncello, I would have ordered it early in the cruise but we were too stuffed the night we went to Sabatini’s and after that, they were out. Or maybe they weren’t out. We heard if you were seated in Sabatini’s and not just begging at the door, you might get some.

My level of wine snobbery consists of “yuck” and “yum” and sometimes “meh” and it went from somewhere between “meh” and “yum” to a solid “yuck.”

Ukelele class with Tiki Dave It was nice to do something different and to take music from such a relaxed teacher, but having 3 classes per sea day changed the sea day experience and made me feel “busy.” Definitely had less time for MDR meals between my classes and the time we spent working out and wandering. Oh, and drinking. Working our way through coffee and cocktail menus took time, too. It reminded me a bit of how at home when I started spending more time on fitness, I quit baking, which was something I did several times a week and sometimes all day or night long on my days off, because I didn’t have time for both. I frequently felt like I just didn’t have enough time on this cruise, which is kind of a crazy way to feel with all those sea days. Anyway, I had fun in the classes and learned a lot, but I did not practice in between classes. I did tune my uke before class each day. My sister and BIL suggested I look up finger picking music to see if I like that better than playing the backing track. Despite this, we might buy some ukes at work and see if I can teach the kids what Tiki Dave taught me. Wish me luck! After uke class, since I was already in Wheelhouse, I tried the Sandra en Fuego and Special Someone began his quest to drink all the beers all the way around the world. While we were there, we took pictures of the Salty Dog Gastropub menu.

We were just in time for MDR lunch. The days we went, we tried to get in line at 11:45 or 11:50 am to ensure we got a table for 2 so I could try to make it to ukelele class on time at 1pm. Spoiler Alert: I was late almost every day. This was the one and only day we got a window seat for MDR lunch. Caprese salad Shrimp Cobb Salad I was adventurous this cruise and let them bring salads with whatever dressing they intended rather than subbing ranch for everything. I found that I really liked their compositions and since we’ve gotten home, I tried making a salad recipe with a cumin & bacon vinaigrette and we both really liked it. Chicken Korma It was good but super mild. I was bummed they didn’t bring the toppings. London mixed broil. The people at the table next to us were UK residents of Nigerian descent and they kept asking for Hollandaise sauce that they said this dish should be served with. The waiter said they didn’t have any and brought them brown gravy. That doesn’t make sense since they have Eggs Benedict on the lunch menu…anyway…. These ladies didn’t think it was authentic or proper but we thought it was tasty and I got to eat kidney. We both got ice cream. The great sacrifice that I made for ukelele class was that I skipped the MDR lunch ice cream most days, sob. That’s the best dessert on board IMHO. They used to have the fancy flavors at dinner (maybe you could ask for them??) but only have chocolate and vanilla now.

Next it was time for the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet. Despite being on Cruise Critic for a decade, this was my first time going to the meet & greet. I started with a shot of Tia Maria. This was before I realized the bartenders and bar stewards didn’t charge $ for doubles so I resisted the bar steward’s attempts to offer me a double. I don’t have a picture, but Special Someone had a cappuccino. We tried to keep track of our drinks for reporting purposes, but batted maybe 80-90% in that department.

After Dance Fitness with Hannah, I got an iced americano and went for a walk on the Promenade deck to cool off. Yes, I brought my own straws. I started with two. I don’t know when or where I lost the first one, but I left the second one in the MDR one night. My straws worked so much better than the paper straws that got soggy partway through a drink of any kind.

First sea day was the one of only two days I made it to MDR breakfast this cruise. On previous cruises, I went to MDR breakfast almost every day. When I arrived they were saying shared tables only and a lot of people walked away because of this. I wanted MDR breakfast bad enough I said OK and was seated with 4 black cards and I called them my breakfast friends the rest of the cruise. This was the one and only time this cruise I got a latte served in a proper cup. It was wonderful. The daily specials this day were my favorites of all the daily specials but I didn’t have time to digest all that yummy spinach before Zumba/Dance fitness so I recalculated and ordered a pancake and a banana instead and it powered me perfectly. Special Someone ate breakfast in the buffet.

First Sea Day: since we were up on deck 14 now, I decided to try ordering coffee from Ocean Now. This was really nice for me to have our included fancy coffees before I changed from my nighttime compression stockings into my daytime gear. Overall the specialty coffees were good, never bitter, and almost always properly made in terms of crema for espresso or froth for milk, but like the cocktails being very low alcohol, the coffee was very low on caffeine. We started the day with a Butter Pecan Latte and an Americano with an extra shot and I will be honest that was our smallest coffee order the rest of the cruise. (Our waiter in Crown Grill the final night recognized us from brining us room service coffee and we asked him how many other people order ridiculous amounts of coffee like we did and he said “Oh you wouldn’t believe how much people order. We’d get 40-60 drink orders per minute at times.” He told us that Ensenada day, in which almost everyone stayed on board after so many sea days was particularly busy. He said they usually line up dozens of trays across the counter and that day they ran out of room.) This was one of the days I started my day with yoga! I used the sugar packet dish as my phone prop.

After dinner we…that’s right…you guessed it…went wandering. Special Someone got Second Dessert from the International Cafe, a chocolate mousse. I opted for a liquid Second Dessert, the Baked Alaska Martini. I didn’t like it as it seemed thin and watery to me. I discovered the music channels on the TV and meant to screenshot some of the TV info for you all but I don’t think I ever did. This must have been the night we found the beer under our bed.

Interesting observations @XBGuy Public Service Announcements are always welcome. We did eventually find some favorite wines; spoiler alert: they did not come from the MDR. We found that it was also unreliable what they brought you in the MDR. We ordered the same wine several times in one dinner between us and got two different wines.