LIVE: Crown Princess Transatlantic Cruise, 9/22/19 - 10/8/19

[geoherb]

My second load of laundry came back this evening. It was just a few pieces. I'll send out more tomorrow morning.

 

In addition to the internet being super slow, our television isn't working right now. It turns on, but the remote doesn't select anything. The volume button works, so I don't think it's the battery. Passengers services said it has to be reset. We'll wait until morning if I don't figure it out.

[geoherb]

17 minutes ago, Cruise2End said:

 

Are  you using google maps on iPhone?   Or is this some type of app you downloaded?   Does it require WiFi??    

 

I'm using Google Maps on an Android phone. My carrier (Sprint) gives me limited data for free (at 2G speeds) as well as free texts. The last couple of years, I downloaded the maps for use offline, so I did the same this year. I'm not sure if the phone is pulling the map from the downloaded version or if the 2G speed is good enough for it to create a route from one place to another. The route showed ups as a blue dotted line. Our position was indicated by a larger blue triangle along the route. It was very easy.

[Cruise2End]

7 minutes ago, geoherb said:

 

I'm using Google Maps on an Android phone. My carrier (Sprint) gives me limited data for free (at 2G speeds) as well as free texts. The last couple of years, I downloaded the maps for use offline, so I did the same this year. I'm not sure if the phone is pulling the map from the downloaded version or if the 2G speed is good enough for it to create a route from one place to another. The route showed ups as a blue dotted line. Our position was indicated by a larger blue triangle along the route. It was very easy.

Thanks, will definitely try this!

[brewcrew]

Enjoying your trip report.  We will be sailing Princess for the first time next year and someday (post-retirement) we will also sail some transatlantic cruises.  Just wondering, do you always sail inside cabins?  Do you prefer them?  Enjoy the rest of your trip!

[geoherb]

2 hours ago, brewcrew said:

Enjoying your trip report.  We will be sailing Princess for the first time next year and someday (post-retirement) we will also sail some transatlantic cruises.  Just wondering, do you always sail inside cabins?  Do you prefer them?  Enjoy the rest of your trip!

 

No, we don't always sail in inside cabins. Our preference would be for a balcony cabin. On this cruise, though, the difference in price between an inside cabin and a balcony was over $1,300 per person. We received an upsell offer after we booked. It was $1,099 to move from our inside cabin to a balcony. That amount of money is more than enough to cover our airfare, hotel in London, all of our spending on excursions, including our short stay in London before the cruise, and the onboard spending we'll do in excess of the onboard credit we received.

 

Some people who are doing the 28-day cruise (12-day British Isle cruise before our 16-day transatlantic) reported receiving a more reasonable upsell offer of $699 per person to go from an obstructed view to a balcony. That works out to $25 per person per day--a figure that would have me considering it but probably still not taking it.  By the time I booked our cruise, there were not any ocean-view cabins available.

 

[brewcrew]

7 hours ago, geoherb said:

 

No, we don't always sail in inside cabins. Our preference would be for a balcony cabin. On this cruise, though, the difference in price between an inside cabin and a balcony was over $1,300 per person. We received an upsell offer after we booked. It was $1,099 to move from our inside cabin to a balcony. That amount of money is more than enough to cover our airfare, hotel in London, all of our spending on excursions, including our short stay in London before the cruise, and the onboard spending we'll do in excess of the onboard credit we received.

 

Some people who are doing the 28-day cruise (12-day British Isle cruise before our 16-day transatlantic) reported receiving a more reasonable upsell offer of $699 per person to go from an obstructed view to a balcony. That works out to $25 per person per day--a figure that would have me considering it but probably still not taking it.  By the time I booked our cruise, there were not any ocean-view cabins available.

 

Thanks geoherb!  I know some people like the dark, some people think there might be less rocking but yeah... big $$$ difference!  Enjoy the rest of the trip!

[geoherb]

Thanks. We had breakfast in the dining room as we almost always do. I had smoked salmon on rye toast with avocado. It may be my new favorite way to order smoked salmon. We played the morning trivia. We missed five. Two teams had perfect scores. Someone told me both had members who had been on the previous cruise and that it was a repeated trivia. The host even asked if anyone had sailed on the previous cruise, and no one spoke up. It did seem suspicious that there would be two perfect scores on some tough questions. At least one team lost the tiebreaker and went back empty handed. We caught the tail end of a culinary demo in the atrium after trivia then hit the yard sale in the dining room. It was the same old stuff. We did not find any port tees for $4.99 in our size. I already have enough.

 

Here's the menu from lunch in the dining room. We always try to eat there on sea days. The cruise-long trivia has been scheduled for 12:30. Our priority is eating lunch. We made paper planes for the afternoon contest of throwing it through a hula hoop. Our planes missed, as did everyone else's. 

[KCSungirl]

Hi Geoherb! Glad I found your “live”. Have a great trip. Remember the golden rule - 

 

FIGHT FOR YOUR ANSWER!

 

❤️P

[geoherb]

15 minutes ago, KCSungirl said:

Hi Geoherb! Glad I found your “live”. Have a great trip. Remember the golden rule - 

 

FIGHT FOR YOUR ANSWER!

 

❤️P

 

And your golden rule--order the chicken pot pie whenever it's available.

[geoherb]

And I reset the TV without having someone come up. I unplugged the set and the data line for a few minutes. I plugged the data line back a minute or so ahead of plugging the TV back in.

[geoherb]

Controversy in afternoon trivia. The host had a wrong answer for the most densely populated country. We said Monaco. He said it was Japan. He also had a couple of poorly worded questions and typos. It's a good thing we're not taking it too seriously on this cruise. (As the old radio show "Whad'Ya Know" said, "All questions … have been painstakingly researched, although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly worded questions are par for the course."

 

We enjoyed the marinated goat cheese at the evening cocktail event after trivia. DH is now resting up. I may go to another martini demonstration before dinner.

 

[SandG]

Wow, thanks for mentioning the goat cheese event! I wanted to catch that, but forgot it was tonight. Just arrived, and it's good!

[BarbinMich]

59 minutes ago, geoherb said:

Controversy in afternoon trivia. The host had a wrong answer for the most densely populated country. We said Monaco. He said it was Japan. He also had a couple of poorly worded questions and typos. It's a good thing we're not taking it too seriously on this cruise. (As the old radio show "Whad'Ya Know" said, "All questions … have been painstakingly researched, although the answers have not. Ambiguous, misleading, or poorly worded questions are par for the course."

. . .

Just googled this question and you were right.  Macao is the most densely populated region.  However, it's not a country, but a Special Administrative Region of the Republic of China.

[donswife]

24 minutes ago, BarbinMich said:

Just googled this question and you were right.  Macao is the most densely populated region.  However, it's not a country, but a Special Administrative Region of the Republic of China.

Monaco is the most densely populated country. On the list I found, Japan was a measly #39! 

[hpeabody]

I was there too, yes a bit of controversy.  Yes this morning was a repeat, William should have been more careful about that knowing this was a popular B2B. Funny, I recognized the questions right away, but I do not make any effort at trying to remember all the answers, so we did not have a perfect score.  We missed 3 I think.  I knew there would be a perfect score or 2.   I would love to say Hi to you.  If you see a very short, chubby lady with long gray hair, please come say Hi. 🙂

[whatcruiseisnext]

That’s for the great postings on your cruise. I will be interested in your weather on the crossing since the Atlantic seems to be a mess right now.  

[geoherb]

3 hours ago, hpeabody said:

I was there too, yes a bit of controversy.  Yes this morning was a repeat, William should have been more careful about that knowing this was a popular B2B. Funny, I recognized the questions right away, but I do not make any effort at trying to remember all the answers, so we did not have a perfect score.  We missed 3 I think.  I knew there would be a perfect score or 2.   I would love to say Hi to you.  If you see a very short, chubby lady with long gray hair, please come say Hi. 🙂

 

Look for the tall guy under 60. There are fewer of folks like me on board. I'm planning on going to both book club discussions.
 

A fun evening. I went to the martini demo in the atrium. This time, I decided to try to throw away my dignity and dance and shake to get one of the drinks. It was tasty: a chocolanut martini (or something like that), with vodka, crème de cacao and Fra Angelico. I enjoyed it with two couples from our table who were enjoying wine at Vines. It's hard to see the liquid in the martini glass in the photo.

 

Speaking of wine, we received our invitation to the Grapevine Wine Tasting. It's October 4 at 3 p.m. We might go or not, depending on what else is going on that afternoon. 

 

I posted the dinner menu below. I had the mushroom tart, appetizer portion of the pasta, prime rib, and black forest cake. Everything was very good.

 

Tonight's entertainment was excellent. Rebecca Lisewski presented a show featuring the songs of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. She's great. Afterward we went to hear the comedian Tom Drake in Explorers. He's one of the best comedians we've ever heard on a ship.

 

The ship is still rocking and rolling. When I was walking on the Promenade Deck, I felt like I was going uphill half the time and downhill the other half. Add that to the side to side motion and it was difficult at times. There's talk on board about possibly missing Ponta Delgada in the Azores due to Hurricane Lorenzo. Whatever the captain and Princess decide is fine with us.

 

The internet is going very slowly tonight. My speed test shows an upload speed of 0.13 Mbps. At least we gain an hour back tonight.

 

Edited September 28, 2019 by geoherb

[Colo Cruiser]

I am hungry!    😎

[whatcruiseisnext]

1 hour ago, geoherb said:

 

Look for the tall guy under 60. There are fewer of folks like me on board. I'm planning on going to both book club discussions.
 

A fun evening. I went to the martini demo in the atrium. This time, I decided to try to throw away my dignity and dance and shake to get one of the drinks. It was tasty: a chocolanut martini (or something like that), with vodka, crème de cacao and Fra Angelico. I enjoyed it with two couples from our table who were enjoying wine at Vines. It's hard to see the liquid in the martini glass in the photo.

 

Speaking of wine, we received our invitation to the Grapevine Wine Tasting. It's October 4 at 3 p.m. We might go or not, depending on what else is going on that afternoon. 

 

I posted the dinner menu below. I had the mushroom tart, appetizer portion of the pasta, prime rib, and black forest cake. Everything was very good.

 

Tonight's entertainment was excellent. Rebecca Lisewski presented a show featuring the songs of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. She's great. Afterward we went to hear the comedian Tom Drake in Explorers. He's one of the best comedians we've ever heard on a ship.

 

The ship is still rocking and rolling. When I was walking on the Promenade Deck, I felt like I was going uphill half the time and downhill the other half. Add that to the side to side motion and it was difficult at times. There's talk on board about possibly missing Ponta Delgada in the Azores due to Hurricane Lorenzo. Whatever the captain and Princess decide is fine with us.

 

The internet is going very slowly tonight. My speed test shows an upload speed of 0.13 Mbps. At least we gain an hour back tonight.

 

I think that it is more than a possibility that you’ll miss the stop in the Azores.  They are expected to take a direct hit from the hurricane as reported on the news just now. 

[Belle2416]

Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us all.   I am having fun traveling along!

[geoherb]

I finally got today's Patter pages to load. The internet is still disappointingly slow. Today's newspaper may not be happening.

[geoherb]

We had a beautiful day in Lisbon. We walked to the National Pantheon. Admission was free since it was Sunday morning. DH stayed downstairs while I walked up to the terrace and upper gallery. It was a lot of steps. We walked through the small park near the pantheon and then through a vegan market. We split a piece of pineapple cake. It was delicious. From there, we walked to the Monastery of Saint Vincent de Fora. The church attached to the monastery was free. There was a 5 euro admission fee for the monastery. It was well worth the price. They have nice displays of liturgical items in the museum section. Most of the signs are in Portuguese and English. I noticed some in French as well. I loved the tiles on the buildings throughout the city. Here's a photo of some of them. The monastery had a great display of tiles as well, including a series based on fables.

 

For this one, DH walked upstairs to the rooftop viewing area. Once again, we had great views of the city from up there including our ship. We walked back to the ship through the touristy area. We ate a cheese pastry from a food truck. It was also delicious. There were lots of little shops along the way. Some were full of tourist items made elsewhere. I enjoyed looking in the shops that had locally made pieces. We stopped to buy a bottle of wine in a mercado. I also bought a bar of soap made for men (and made in Portugal).

 

There was a long line of people waiting to go through the terminal but it moved quickly. I disliked the fact that crew members were cutting in line going up the ramp to get on the ship because they were running late. 

 

The security screening was done in the terminal. After passing through the screening, there was a shop with liquors, wines, cigarettes, and souvenirs. I bought another bottle of Portuguese wine there. I successfully spent down the euros I had. We started the day with 25 in bills and some change. It was 10 for admission to the monastery, 2 for the pineapple cake, 1.7 for the cheese pastry, around 8 for the wine and soap at the first shop, and 7 at the port. The ship's security was not examining bags since we had gone through security in the terminal. We ate a quick lunch at the International Café then played trivia. We were second place with 19 out of 21 points. The winning team had 20.

 

The captain made an announcement shortly before we sailed to let us know that we would be skipping Ponta Delgada due to the hurricane. He's going to sail the ship south of the storm and predicted an on-time arrival in Fort Lauderdale. They also made an announcement for five missing passengers. I wonder if they made it on board. I don't remember the cabin numbers.

 

We sailed around a half hour later than anticipated. The ship sailed under Europe's longest suspension bridge (Ponte 25 de Abril). It is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge since it is the same color, although it was built by the company that built the other famous San Francisco bridge to Oakland.

 

The internet is still painfully slow. It's taken 45 minutes to load these six photos. I haven't been able to download my newspaper, but I can read individual articles and the headlines.

 

 

 

 

[geoherb]

We had a nice dinner. Here are the menus. Afterward, we went to "Disco: Blame It on the Boogie." DH liked it more than I did. He said it's because he grew up in the disco era. I thought they relied too much on the recorded track, so much so that the supposedly featured singers couldn't be heard.

 

Our cabin steward delivered a letter from the captain along with tomorrow's Patter. It says the same thing he said in his announcement: we're skipping Ponta Delgada and sailing south of the hurricane, we'll arrive in Fort Lauderdale on schedule, and passengers who had Princess shore excursions booked don't need to do anything since they'll be automatically refunded to their accounts.

 

I talked with the Medallion help folks about the slow internet. They said it's ship wide. One suggested reading my newspaper on one of the terminals in the internet café since it should work better on a computer connected to the internet by a cable than over Wi-Fi. For this post, it has taken 30 minutes for one photo to load. There was a second one, but that one failed to load. 

[geoherb]

The photo that failed to load was the dessert menu. The options were a banana tart with chocolate ice cream, cherries jubilee with vanilla ice cream, and sugar-free mango and macadamia nut samosas with coconut-mint dip. The ice creams were fudge brownie, cookies and cream, and blueberry sorbet. Plus all the always available desserts. I had the crème brulee. 

[geoherb]

Here are the activity pages from today's Patter. I thought I had them uploaded before, but apparently it did not work.