arctickitty

@EllieinNJ welcome ashore!

@mitzieleanor hope you don’t get a sore throat from it 😉

@LouChamp welcome aboard!

We brought our lighter rain/wind jackets but not our full rain suits as I’d die of the heat inside my rain pants and actual rain jacket so we will take the weather as it comes. Thank you!

@santi1015 I think how one feels on the seas is very subjective. I’ve not ever gotten motion sick on a cruise ship but I got motion sick on an overnight train in Morocco once! The beginning days of this cruise were described by others as rough but it was not a big of movements as the transatlantic that I did before. What I do always do, and we did at the beginning of this sailing, is fetch a few green apples and a modest supply of crackers to have in the cabin in case someone does begin to feel unwell. I also travel with Fisherman’s Friend cough drops which have some herbs that I find effective if I do feel motion sick (they worked on that train in Morocco and they’ve also work on bush planes in Alaska). For those wondering about crackers, on our embarkation day scavenger hunt we found them at Vines, not the International Cafe. We later found some on the buffet, with the salad, not the soup. Buffet had Saltines and Vines had Club. My brain is always full of useful tangents so while we are talking about crackers, they are also a useful rehydration therapy for dehydration. We both just took Wilderness First Aid and the instructor said over and over that if you or your patient can keep it down the best treatment is a ton of water and a saltine cracker. The crackers have the electrolytes you need to get balanced back out.

@Bettyboop66 There will be soooooo many more when I do the full write up later….

@Level six the yum yum was duck liver pâté. Liver was another favorite food growing up. There hasn’t been any mention of covid testing at any point. They did ask at the port one question about if we had any Covid symptoms.

I think Special Someone is a little bummed the smoker wearing a cancer charity T-shirt story hasn’t gotten any direct comments (hint hint). In the meantime, this was my favorite food find from Saturday: I ordered a second one for dessert.

Hi @Kolleen! The menus have all been 2 pages. I haven’t been consistent with taking pictures of the physical menus as I can screenshot the online menus in OceanNow with better readability. I looked back and found at least this one I photographed on the wall. This was the first night.

Day 2 complete Princess Patter Pics

@Familycruzer11: The Zumba and the Zumba That Shall Not Be Called Zumba has all been in Club Fusion at 9am. As far as I can tell, it’s all Zumba. Cardio dancing to peppy songs. They haven’t said this but in the past, if someone knows how to teach Zumba but doesn’t have a current certification they call it dance fitness or something like that. There are also fitness classes on the stateroom TV. I haven’t tried them yet but I intend to and will let you know. We have found ourselves much too busy to need to try the paid classes in the gym but we saw this sign yesterday: The Patter doesn’t list any of the fitness center classes, paid or free and I have been forgetting to look in the Medallion app.

My hilarity of the day was found about 6/8 of the way through running a 5K on the promenade deck. Yes, I was that person, but I was super careful and polite about it. That other social media site relentlessly shows me ads for virtual races and fitness challenges and one day I caved and bought the Stand Up 2 Cancer virtual 5K or 10K. I’m a 2 time survivor so it’s personally meaningful to me. And then I justified the purchase because the shirt and medal both say “5K * 10K” that I therefore have to do both a 5K and a 10K in order to earn the medal. So I did the 5K today and wore the race shirt and pinned the race bib on my water pack and hit the decks. 1) stairs are a challenge in a run 2) two at a time is more functional 3) some Princess-aged passengers can walk faster than I can run. And then I saw him. Tapped him on the shoulder. His wife or presumably female companion looked confused. I pointed to his shirt and pointed to mine and we shared a “heyyyy” and I gave him a high 5 and kept going. Yeah, that was in the smoking section.

@southpawsdakota

I think I’m going to do this today instead of Zumba/Dancersize/ Dance Fitness: For the Zumba fans out there, there has been some sort of Zumba-like class each day at 9am so far. The first day was “Dance Fitness” with Hannah who is a production dancer. She had fantastic energy and an indefatigable smile. Her dance training showed as she preferred to teach us the steps before each song. This was fine because it alternated higher and lower intensity workouts. Yesterday was Zumba with Kristoff the Cruise Director and he also had amazing energy and a stellar smile that lit up the whole Club Fusion. Today is to be Dancersize with Hannah. We currently don’t have any dance fitness classes offered in our area at home so they’ve been fun to do. I also realized a nice thing about them onboard is the quality sound system—makes it such a fun experience and really showcases the music. I do have to confess that I may have scandalized the crowd yesterday and/or inspired the others. Hannah taught the first day in her sports bra and no shirt and I thought oh ok, so it is OK to work out in a sports bra or crop top on Princess. Good to know! (It’s not allowed in our gym at home). So yesterday I was brave and wore a matching tie dye shorts & crop top set my sister had given me (she sends me all sorts of interesting clothes in the mail) and I was the only person showing so much skin. Then I looked behind me and this more typical for Princess-aged woman took her shirt off and continued dancing in her bra. So then I thought maybe my ridiculous outfit inspired her to feel more free and I had to laugh so much inside because it wasn’t a sports bra. At all.

Two of the display cases at the International Cafe this fine Saturday morning: Since our room was moved from deck 5 to deck 14, and since Ocean Now works really well early in the morning, I haven’t been peeking at the IC as much as I thought I would. I have to wear 3-5 layers of compression stockings in order to function in life, so it’s really nice to have specialty coffee delivered while I’m getting all that junk on. But I think that on days that I have the time, it’s worth doing a morning staircase lap in order to go look at the food.

It was the eggplant Parmesan from Sabatini’s. When I woke up, I discovered how to look at menus on the medallion app and wasn’t impressed with the dinner menu so I booked Sabatini’s to use some of our OBC. Eggplant 🍆 is one of my favorite vegetables and is hard to find in Alaska. Eggplant Parmesan was my favorite food growing up (aka eggplant Farmer John when I was so little I couldn’t pronounce it) and my mom made it for my birthday every year. I wasn’t sure what they’d do with it on board but this one completely exceeded my expectations. They knocked it out of the park. The textures were perfect and it was bursting with flavor. If we go to Sabatini’s again towards the end of the cruise, I would probably order it again.

@arizonaperson. You are welcome!

I will try to post more princess patter pics as time allows (I tend to post on cc when I’m waiting for something). This should be a direct link to day 1.

Complete Day 1 Princess Patter

Friday’s best food find:

During dinner last night, this photo popped up from my cat sitter and warmed my heart that we were all eating at the same time. Special Someone said, “She must be doing it right because they’re all in the right spots.” (I feed them in the same order every time but the first time Special Someone fed them when I wasn’t home, he’d just gotten home from being away for a long time and didn’t remember the order and described dinner as “chaotic.”)

Good morning, @Yehootu the pizzeria on Crown is called Slice and I did see pizza as an up charge item on Ocean Now (anywhere room service). Looks like it’s available 11-11 (the in person Slice is open 11-9) and is $3 for cheese or pepperoni. At the in person slice they’ve also been having a daily special. We haven’t tried it yet but yesterday I said I hadn’t even seen Slice so we went and looked for it.

Good Morning @Lady Meer! This was in the MDR. It was a lamb shank. Before I cruised on Princess the first time I learned a trick on here to ask for “steamed vegetables” with my dinner and they bring a bowl of veggies. In this case, to make space on the table I scooted them onto the plate with the lamb (which came with 2 Brussels sprouts and 2 pieces of potato—excellent morsels but not enough veg for me). The texture of the steamed veggies they bring always wows me- soft yet firm at the same time and full of flavor. I don’t know how they do it. The purple and yellow cauliflower varieties here were especially surprising to me—I haven’t been served varietals before!

We are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Thanks for coming along!