So what happens on sea days, of which there are many?

 Greetings. Today is our 14th sea day. A sea day is one in which we don’t spend any time in a port. The stretch between Los Angeles and Honolulu is 5 days, the longest so far. I have been told by some people that they would go crazy with nothing to do. The thing is there is so much available to do, it is hard to pick out which activities I want to do that day. I need to make time to do nothing after multiple days full of activities. 

Here is a list of the official activities for today on the ship, and this doesn’t include the informal activities which for me include a daily sea day gathering to play Mahjong. (sorry for the quality of the photo, darker than it should be) 

I have just enough time to get to Mahjong, luckily is in the same large dining room, after I’ve finished my daily beginner’s bridge lesson. Here is a sample of one of our worksheets from bridge. Really I had no idea there was so much math involved in bridge. I have been known to say you’re never too old to learn a new skill, but I have found it sure gets harder as I age. 

And, both of those conflict with the time the informal group of hand-crafters meet. I brought the needlepoint project I started, no kidding, 40 years ago, hoping I get to work on it because I’d like to finish it before I die. Decisions, decisions. This is just in the morning. 

Gary says he is having a wonderful time, because he doesn’t participate in any group activity. He sleeps late, scrolls through the news on his phone when he gets up enjoying his morning juice I bring back to him from my early breakfast before my daily activities. At some point he goes for a leisurely breakfast at which he chats up random shipmates so he tells them me about them when we meet for lunch together. He usually finds a relatively quiet place to read for awhile after his breakfast so that the cabin is empty long enough to have it cleaned and resupplied. 

One day this week we attended a cooking presentation and galley tour which was hysterically funny with an interesting behind the scenes look in the galley. 

Here is Gary showing his appreciation with the Head Chef, and Head of restaurant services. Both of these men have been with Princess for over 25 years, and they are still smiling. 

I was surprised to see 2 sets of escalators that run between the 2 main dining rooms. I can’t imagine carrying one huge tray loaded with food up a moving escalator, repeatedly each shift. 

In the afternoon we usually end up back in our cabin for a bit. Both of us read and many days we have a nap, because we can. I often go to pool or hot tubs for a few minutes before dinner. I had planned on keeping up with my aqua aerobics but I have been unexpectedly thwarted. There are 2 pools on the ship, and both of them are deep enough that I can’t stand to do my exercises. I have tried to do some deep water exercises but with the motion of the ship I become slightly nauseous within a few minutes. But luckily, no problem in the hot tubs. 

I have been unexpectedly pleasantly surprised and relieved to find I’m haven’t been bothered by motion sickness at all on the trip, at least so far. I have plenty of my motion sickness meds on hand if things change or get more challenging, but so far, only issue is just if I’m being tossed around in the pool. Very unexpected but thankful. Maybe I’m developing sea stomach or inner ear, rather than sea legs. 

We usually go to an early dinner, but they do run long. Many nights we sit at a “share” table and visit with other passengers. Boy, have we heard some wild stories and met some interesting characters! There may be a few of those stories at some point. After dinner some nights we might go to one of the evening entertainment shows which are only 45 minutes long, quite varied in content and style, and which we have mostly enjoyed. Some very talented entertainers actually. Or, we might stop and have a nightcap before retiring for the night. If it is early, I might go up for a short soak in a hot tub before returning to read for a few minutes before lights out. 

The days go by very quickly and I am actually finding time to be pretty distorted, something I’ll talk about more later. 

Thanks for joining me (us) on our travels.