Cruise Day 2

We had a restful day. The seas got rather rough last night but were calmer today.  Mary went to the first of a series of lectures on Classic Comedians in the morning.  This first one was on Bob Hope.  I went to Zumba followed by an organizing session for bridge play.  Zumba was supposed to be on an open deck but with the rain they moved it into the central atrium.
I played duplicate bridge in the afternoon.  We have a volunteer bridge director which is very nice since Princess does not sponsor one anymore.  Mary went to the movies and saw "Murder on the Orient Express" which she enjoyed.  Dinner was one of our favorites, spaghetti carbonara, bon appetit!

Princess congratulated me on my retirement with door decorations and a coupon for a special dessert.  Gee, I wonder how they knew.....

This evening the ship's dancers did a special show in the atrium.  We watched from an upper level and enjoyed.


One change from past cruises is how the internet works on the ship.  Princess used to only offer various per-minute plans, but now they offer individual device plans with unlimited connectivity.  As Elite members Mary and I each get one device for free which makes things much easier since we do not need to do a lot of writing offline to minimize the online minutes.  Another sea day tomorrow.

Cruise Day 1 at Sea

We had a good first day today: our hotel shuttle got us to the ship by 11:15, we sailed through the embarkation process, stopped off in our room, then headed to lunch.  We were surprised to check our watches while at our table and find it was only noon! That was amazingly fast, thanks to priority boarding.  After touring the ship with its very large central atrium, we spent most of the afternoon on our balcony enjoying the warmth and scenery.  Our luggage arrived right after the guest safety drill, so we easily got unpacked before the ship left the port at 4:30.  It was very windy so the ship had tugboats there to be sure it could make it out the narrow channel OK.

Dinner tonight was the traditional embarkation menu, with chilled Pina Colada soup, spring rolls, prime rib and roast pork. We enjoyed our meals as well as dessert.  YUM!
We heard about major power outages back in Michigan due to a large ice storm.  Fortunately our house has power. 

This evening was a production show called Soul Time.  We had not seen this show before and it was excellent.  Being on a larger ship the dance company was also larger than usual, with 4 singers and 12 dancers. They sang a lot of familiar Motown tunes mixed in with other songs. 
So that was our day.  The ship is riding fairly smooth in spite of the strong winds. Perhaps our cabin being low (deck 9) and just forward of the midship section helps keep the ride fairly smooth.

Florida - Pre Cruise

Today we flew to Florida a day ahead of our 14-day transatlantic cruise. We depart Fort Lauderdale tomorrow on the Regal Princess followed by six days at sea, a visit to the Azores, then on to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, before ending at Copenhagen.  After all the work of clearing 40 years of accumulation from our basement as well as clearing Mary's mom's storage unit over the last two weeks, it will be great to be back on a ship for many relaxing sea days.

The Regal is one of the newest ships in the Princess fleet, being the second ship in the Royal class (Royal, Regal, and Majestic). 

So the daily posts have started.  The next six might not be too exciting due to being sea days, but I will be sure to post about what we did each day.

Last Florida Post

Tomorrow we say good-bye to the Plaza Beach Hotel and St Pete Beach.  Walking down the hallway this afternoon I realized that tomorrow at this time we'll be back in Michigan where it will be cold and snowy.  B-r-r-r-r!  We had one more beautiful sunset tonight before we packed while watching the Winter Olympics Opening ceremony. 
I had seen that parasailing was offered here (one more bucket list item) and I called a company to sign up, but the company did not go our either yesterday or today.  Oh well,  have to keep on the lookout for that opportunity.  Instead Mary and I took a nice beach walk with our feet in the waves of the Gulf of Mexico
So tomorrow we head to the airport for our flight home. It's been a great week with lots of good memories.  At least I don't have to go back to a job on Monday!

Florida - Day 5

We did not have any major activities planned for today. In the morning we did some shopping, then stopped by a favorite restaurant for lunch, The Frog Pond. It's a breakfast/lunch place with great omelets.  Mary and I both ordered a monte cristo and it was huge! We ate half and saved the rest for supper.

After we got back, Mary headed for the pool where she enjoyed listening to Mack Bailey on her iPhone, while I played some corn hole against myself. If you care, red beat blue 21-19   8-)

Later we headed out to relax in beach chairs and watch the sunset.  The clouds cooperated and gave us a very nice sunset as you can see.  Looking forward to one more Florida day before heading home Saturday.

Florida - Day 4

Today was a rather quiet day that started with our drive back to St Pete Beach from Titusville.  We used a slower route, taking highway 50 all the way to Orlando then the interstate the rest of the way.  The lobby at the Fairfield Inn we stayed at had this astronaut/space suit model in it so who could resist this photo opportunity?

The afternoon was quiet, with me walking the beach and Mary catching some rays.  We enjoyed dinner at PJs Oyster Bar, a local seafood place we remembered from a prior visit. The rolls of paper towels hanging over each table are one very unique feature (besides the 50's chairs)  The clam chowder was delicious!

Florida - Falcon Heavy Day!

For those of you who are not into space stuff, here's a quick primer. Launching rockets into space has been the job of governments, i.e. USA, Russia, China, etc.  Around 2004, a guy name Elon Musk, decided to start a company called SpaceX to develop rockets with a vision of going to Mars.  His single engine Falcon 1 rockets did not do well, but the company learned a lot from them and developed the highly successful, nine engine, Falcon 9 rocket which as a very good safety record.  But it was not big enough to go to Mars, so Elan envisioned strapping three of them together to lift the heavy payloads into space that would be needed for a mission to Mars.

Today that rocket flew for the first time.

I wish we had more and better pictures, but we were so captivated by the launch that taking pictures was secondary.  I tried to take a video of it (and of the landing of the two side rockets) but that also failed. So you'll have to do with these two pictures that Mary managed to take, and view one of the many Youtube videos about this historic launch.
Both of use have wanted to see a rocket launch for a long time. This one just worked out perfectly for us, even though it meant leaving St Pete Beach by 7 am, passing through two traffic jams to arrive at the Max Brewer causeway east of Titusville around 10:15 am, grabbing an available parking place and then waiting for 5 1/2 hours for the three-time delayed launch at 3:45 pm, just 15 minutes before the end of the launch window.
It's been quite a day, but overall a very successful one!

Go SpaceX!!!