Day 2 - At Sea

We both slept well – we’re in 3-6 foot swells, so the ship rolls gently from side to side – but we were a little chilly. I woke up a little after 7 and went to see if anyone had turned in my camera – no dice. We headed over to breakfast and had a nice table. I was wearing my Red Sox sweatshirt – it just has a big ‘B’ on the front. One of the couples at the table were from Mystic, CT, and when I got up to leave they commented on the sweatshirt – apparently they’re fans too.

Off to Zumba! Zumba is always a blast, but out on the Lido deck with the wind blowing and the ship rolling it was a whole new ballgame! We had 9 stalwarts zumboids, and I enjoyed it very much. It’s only a half hour class, and she spent about 10 minutes of it going over the moves, so it wasn’t quite as much of a workout as I’d hoped, but I still managed to get pretty sweaty. One interesting thing is it’s not called a Zumba class – it’s called latin dance class, or some such. Apparently Princess cruises are doing a big promotion with Zumba, and since they are part of the same cruiseline the decision was made not to call it Zumba. But it is.

Then I had half an hour until body sculpting class, so I went to the shop and checked out various warm things. Unfortunately the weather is not good – it’s cloudy and in the low 60s – and I just didn’t bring the right clothes for that (come on – we’re going to Hawaii!). I was too sweaty to try anything on, but I made some mental notes.

Then it was time for body sculpting class. There are only 4 of us in the class, all women. Two of the women are named Susan and are very thin. They have tiny little tushes and tiny little senses of humor. The other lady is named Stephanie and has a normal body and a normal sense of humor. I’m going to put my mat next to hers tomorrow. It’s basically aerobics with weights – we did a set of 4 exercises (upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body) with diminishing reps but increased speed (16 to 6 reps, descending by 2s). Mark the instructor and his assistant Matthew are both British, which is more fun to listen to. After the sets we did a descending set of crunches, then cooldown. I was good and tired by then. We used some leg muscles I don’t usually use, and I can tell I’m going to be pretty sore tomorrow.

Then I had ½ hour to get cleaned up and ready for the Pinnacle/le Cirque cooking demo with our executive chef Pablo. He is from Columbia (the only Colombian on board, so he’s special, as he told us). He demonstrated crème brulee and lobster salad, and was very funny. For the lobster salad he laid a bunch of lettuce leaves in a pile and cut out a big circle, then wondered out loud what to do with the scraps. He told us at home he keeps a bunny to eat all the leftover vegetables. Then when the bunny is nice and fat… it got a good laugh. We had samples of the crème brulee end it was fantastic.

Then it was time for lunch. We tried to find Mama and Merna but couldn’t, so we headed to the dining room without them. But when we were being seated we saw them waving, so we were able to join them. We ended up at the same table as we’d had for dinner last night. Overall the food was continuing to be very good, but I did have a very strange appetizer of oranges and sliced bananas seasoned with mint and red chili flakes. I’m not sure it was entirely successful. One thing I’ve noticed is about how the shape of the table affects conversation. When the four of us we’ve been seated at the standard rectangular 8 person table, we usually great the other folks but don’t talk with them much. At the oval 8 person table, there’s much more cross chatter. The oval tables can’t be squished in as much, though, so there aren’t as many of them.

After lunch it was time for more go go go. First we stopped at the shop to buy some warm things – we each got a sweatshirt and I got a very nice gray/silver/gold dressy jacket. Our saleslady was VERY determined – there was no way we were getting out of there without a sweatshirt for each of us. She was also very nice and very homesick, coming to the end of her first six month assignment and missing her family in Jamaica. Would she come back? She wasn’t sure. We took our purchases back to our room and headed out for our next adventure, but on the way we stopped at the front desk to ask about my camera. The woman we asked looked through her book and shook her head, but then she said she’d go in the back to double check. I thought that meant no but when she came out she had found it! I have to say I got a little teary-eyed, and my faith in HAL cruisers was restored.

Then it was time for our first wine tasting – the Navigator wine tasting, a tasting of 4 of the wines available in the navigator package. We had two whites - a Riesling that was crisp and acidic and barely sweet that we both liked, and a chardonnay that was bitter and oaky that neither of us liked. Bernie, the cellar master on board and a certified master sommelier, led the tasting and was funny and informative at once, although we are not sure about his assertion that Rieslings aren’t meant to age. Not all, surely, but as Dave says, what about the great Mosels? We finished with two reds – a simple pinot noir from Burgundy and a simple Cab Sauv from California. Both nice enough wines, but we preferred the Willamette Valley Vineyards Pinot we’d had with dinner the night before.

We had to rush off from the wine tasting to get to our next event, the High Tea. We’re not doing too well with following our mantra of “the ship goes so we don’t have to”! This was probably the first thing we’ve done on the ship that we could have skipped – there was a long, slow-moving line, and although the pastries were yummy I wasn’t particularly hungry, and also the thought that dinner was only 2 hours away was a little quelling. It’s done in the vista dining room and just isn’t that much fun, so I don’t think it’s something I’ll need to do again. But it was worth going because of what happened as we were leaving. A man looked at Dave, then stopped him and said, “excuse me, did you lose a camera?” He was the one who had found it, and he’d turned it on to see whose it was – and the picture he saw was Dave about to board the ship. Out of the almost 2,000 passengers on the ship, he’d recognized him! Now there’s a memory for faces.

Then it was time for a little relaxing before our first formal dinner. We’d made reservations for dinner at the Pinnacle Grill, but found out there was a special Le Cirque dinner at the Pinnacle later in the cruise, so we’d changed our reservation to that night. Also, beside the happy event of getting my camera back, we also got a card in our mailbox that we’d been assigned a table for first seating. Yay! So we thought it would be a good idea to go there and start getting to know our tablemates. And they turned out to be fun people – all “orphans” – people who’d been waitlisted for first seating. There were two other couples at one of the conversation-encouraging oval tables – John and Carol, from southern California, and Gus and Rita, from Florida (although Gus is originally from Holland). They’re very nice, and they all love to dance.

After dinner it was time to head up to listen to Chris play guitar in the Crow’s Nest – our favorite after dinner spot. Dave discovered that asking for a club soda gets you the can of fizzy water that he’s been trying to get, and we spent an enjoyable hour listening to Chris play. He came over and chatted for a while, and is the first employee we’ve met who actually enjoys his job. The Crow’s nest is not a very hopping joint, so it was pretty much just us – very relaxing. At 9 he took another break, and we figured we’d head down and listen to the Neptunes do Elvis Hour in the Ocean Bar. Well, it turns out Elvis hour was totally the “in” spot that night, and we couldn’t even get a seat! We stood and watched the dancers for most of the hour, enjoying the music and the sight of the piano player in hi elvis wig and sunglasses.

We finished up the night listening to Vivienne and the HALcats in the queen’s lounge. There was good dancing and the HALcats were really swinging, but Vivienne was having an off night and Dave said she was about a quarter tone flat all the time. I didn’t mind because there was a couple who were just fantastic to watch on the dance floor – he was wearing a red vest and she was wearing a floor length sequined red dress. When the musicians took their break at 10:45, we decided to take our break too and headed to our cabin. Tonight’s towel animal: stingray.