Day 18 Thursday 26th October Pacific Ocean
At 7.30 am the sun was starting to rise. In the middle of the horizon there was one bright star.
By the time I made it to the International Cafe the shifts had changed and I don’t think the lady at the counter had had the memo that it was OK to use a coffee card from another Princess ship.
Back on the balcony the sun was now up and looking spectacular.
The air temperature was now really down on a few days ago and we had lost all that humidity of earlier too. Going outside no longer misted up glasses or camera lenses alike.
Breakfast muddles
Breakfast was again in the Bordeaux and we were joined by a couple from Essex and two more from the US. The meal started off interesting as we had the same server from the previous evening who was as unhappy with the world as he was then. Our table companions had already ordered coffees and teas and were waiting for the two remaining seats to be filled so they could get on with breakfast. All our orders were taken for breakfast along with the extra two orders (ours).
After ten minutes the coffees had not yet appeared. Then one of our American table companions asked a passing manager if we could have some coffee – very very politely.
The coffee appeared, the tea appeared all served by one of the managers. After repeatedly assuring them that we were all fine, the breakfasts started to appear. Some were wrong orders but we passed the food around and shared what was extra on the plates. But our American colleagues did have to wait for their ham. When it did come we all shared the extra pieces plus the extra hash browns that we were included on these extra plates.
We eventually did get our server to smile once he relaised that no-one had complained.
Earlier in the week we had heard about the two ladies who had come across at breakfast. Now we heard first hand about about their antics earlier in the cruise. One of the evenings, after ordering chilled soup one of the ladies left the table and went shopping as she’d decided she needed an umbrella. Later on her return, after 15 minutes or so had passed, she complained that the soup was now warm!
We were late leaving breakfast as we all had been chatting so much.
Late morning
In the Atrium the last sale of destination T-shirts of the the cruise was taking place. This was less frenetic than the earlier sales as the T-shirts were all $20 for two rather the great bargains of the earlier sales.
Back on our balcony I returned to my whale watch for over an hour with yet again no joy. By 11 am we were passing Los Angeles and the temperature seemed to have dropped even more. Our balcony was firmly in the shade which did not help the temperature.
Our lunch was in the International Cafe. After my large breakfast of an omelette, with added bacon, ham and hash browns eating a lunch in the restaurant did not seem a good idea. Keeping things simple I had a chicken sandwich and a Greek salad washed down with a glass of iced water. Dessert was a sugar-free Mille-Feuille – definitely good enough to eat every day.
On the way back to our cabin (sorry stateroom) we called again into the theatre to listen to the last minutes of the lecturer. He was explaining about Mr Ponzi and his schemes in the USA and then South America. He had started by promising profits on the arbitrage on international reply coupons of all things!
I spent another hour or so out on the balcony even adding layers and my down jacket to keep warm. I had gone into the cabin and put my big lens away when two whales (or more) appeared. My images were shot with a 50mm lens so not so great.
Once I put my big lens back on the camera the whales were all gone.
Last Happy Hour!
We went early to the Wheelhouse Bar and joined our friends from Belgium and the USA at 2.30pm. We were early for the last Happy Hour that was scheduled to start at 3 pm.
At 3pm promptly the bar opened, the loud music from the live band started and the waiters buzzed around to take orders. My order was simple with two Grolsch beers. Our table companions were were having cocktails or wine and this seems to have slowed down the delivery of our orders. My beers came at 3.10pm but the rest of the order didn’t turn up until 3.40 pm by which time everyone else were getting agitated for their drinks!
The bar’s rules about only serving seated passengers were being completely ignored as there it was standing room only after 3 pm. Lots of passengers were getting their drinks and leaving the bar, Happy Hour was now definitely a big draw.
At 4 pm the band stopped and Miranda, the Cruise Director, appeared to make the draw of the raffle tickets that we’d been collecting all the cruise. There were so many tickets that they wouldn’t fit into a single wine cooler so a Pauliner beer box was filled instead. We were all ready on the table with our tickets
but the bottles of wine and expensive (over $99) champagne all went to other passengers. We asked a waiter to take our picture using Els’ camera.
Once the draw was over we all went to the trivia quiz to try our luck again. We took our drinks with us and once the quiz started it as competitive as before. We managed 15 right out of 20 questions but we’d have needed 18 to be in the knockout round. I did get the the knock out question correct though (the year of the first iPhone was indeed 2007).
Packing . . .
We took one of our finds in the cabin off the top shelf and left it on a table for our cabin steward.
Now we had the hardest part of our day or even the whole cruise, we had to pack. One suitcase for San Francisco, one for clean clothes and one for everything else. Two suitcases went out into the corridor and the third we kept to add our clothes from the rest of the day and the evening to later.
After packing we rewarded ourselves a beer and went to sit outside on the rather chilly balcony to watch the sea pass by.
Last evening meal
Dinner started off a strange affair as we were on a table for eight by ourselves. The good news was that we had our friendly server from Thailand who we had had lots of times as a server earlier in the week. Even better was the news that we had avoided joining the next table with the two rude Californian ladies AND the talking Australians who had done it all before many times.
We ordered a bottle of wine and suggested to our server that we’d be happy to wait for a while. We were joined by a couple for Sacramento and a couple from the Bay Area – all of whom we’d eaten with before. Worth the wait.
The Sacramento couple’s house was very old (circa 1870s) and had been built on stilts to avoid getting flooded. The area below the house had been stables. Recently they had had the house ‘jacked-up’ and the lower part’s walls and the stilts replaced with new foundations and brick walls. Sacramento no longer floods because of levees along the river banks so the lower part of the house was no longer at risk. These old houses do get moved in their entirety too and vacant lots on their street had had houses moved into them!
This being the last night we had the parade of the baked Alaska along with the chef’s parade and we all waved our napkins as they passed.
Dinner was a Caesar salad, honey smoked ribs, New York Strip steak with a pepper dressing followed inevitably by baked Alaska. This did have a soggy meringue and Neapolitan ice cream – wasn’t the best one I’ve ever had.
Last show
By 9.30 pm we said our goodbyes and went to the stern of the ship to watch the comedian again. As usual I chose to sit at the front and hoped that we weren’t picked upon. The lounge had more passengers in than last time we had seen a comedy show in there. Mike Wilson was an impressionist as well as a comedian and he soon had us all laughing.
Dangerously we challenged him about voices in UK SatNavs which lead to the inevitable backwards and forwards of questions and jokes. The surprise of the evening was the duet between him and Miranda, the Cruise Director. Her voice was amazing and clearly she could sing.
Back in the cabin after our last bout of packing we were now passing Big Sur moving ever closer to San Francisco. The ship’s fog horn was sounding as we settled down for the night after we had put our last suitcase out in the corridor.
The clocks on board were changing for the last time and this time they went back an hour.
