Another Sea Day

Today was a very special sea day since I got to do the Ultimate Ship Tour!  There is a fee for this (paid for by my retirement gift cards), but I'd heard many reviews that it was well worth it, and having experienced it, I heartily agree.  It started at 8 am which was quite early since we had to move the clocks forward 1 hour again last night. The group was limited to just 16 people and we toured many crew-only areas.  Unfortunately no cameras or personal pictures were allowed due to being in secure areas of the ship.
Here's what we saw:

1. Medical Center - a 7 bed hospital with full lab and x-ray
2. Princess Theater - backstage for a talk by the stage manager, got our picture taken on the stage, then visited the dressing room to see the costumes and talk to two of the performers.
3. Main Galley - place where nearly all food is prepared for the ship. Saw many areas including the soup & sauces, breads, vegetable, pastry, and meat preparation stations.
4. Store Rooms - Stores Manager talked about what it takes to order supplies and store them, especially for this 14-day cruise.
5. Photography Studio - where all pictures are color-balanced and printed.
6. Print Shop - Where all the paper items are printed.
7. Engineering Control Station - where all ship systems are monitored and managed
8. Forward mooring station - place where all the forward lines are managed to tie the ship up to the dock. This included seeing the anchor and anchor chain.  Very cool!
9. Bridge - Met the captain who talked about the challenges involved in docking the ship as well as how they keep the ship stable to give the passengers the smoothest ride.   A group photo was taken here.

Overall the tour was scheduled to take 2 1/2 hours, but ended up taking nearly 4 hours!  

After lunch I played bridge and Mary watched some movies.  Dinner tonight featured prime rib.  When the waiter delivered mine he said "Who do you know in the kitchen?", based on the huge size. No, I was not able to finish it!

When we got back to our cabin I found that my gifts from the Tour had arrived.  I was amazed at what was included:

• A Princess Robe
• A Princess apron
• A framed 8x10 picture with the captain on the bridge
• A personalized pad of note paper
• Three 5x7 photos from other locations on the tour.

Quite the haul!

On to France tomorrow for our Normandy tour.