Jay’s Internet Log

Throughout the night, Royal Princess is following southwesterly courses along the Canadian coast of Graham Island.  In the early hours of the afternoon, we will continue on a southwesterly course with Vancouver Island on our port side.

Heather and I just witnessed what is probably our last sunset aboard Royal Princess, our favorite ship.  Princess is selling this ship to P&O early next year, and the probability of us being able to travel on her again is extremely low.  My whole family enjoys vacations on smaller ships much more than on larger ones, because we feel cramped and stressed out on the large ships.  Small ships are very personal, have larger rooms and showers, and are usually accompanied with the best itineraries.  I hope that Princess plans on keeping Royal’s sisters, Pacific and Ocean Princess.  We will always try to book our vacations on sub 1000 person ships for as long as they are available.  Anyways, so far this post has been written out of emotion, so let’s get back to what we did today.  This morning, we woke up at 8:00AM, partly because we were tired, and partly because we had to set our clocks forward an hour last night.  We forwent breakfast (I know, it’s blastphemous) and instead went to the gym.  After working out and sitting in the steam room for a few minutes, we met up with Mom who was waiting for us in the culinary demonstration.  We watched as the head chef, Maitre’d, and head pastry chef cooked up a few dishes and joked with one another.  It’s something that we always attend on the last day of the cruise, though today’s not the last day.  Afterwards, we toured the galley.  This ship has a most interesting galley.  Since it’s a very small ship, the galley is set on two floors, with an escalator between them, so junior waiters can walk downstairs, grab the prepared food, and then have a ride up the escalator into the dining room.  After the tour we had lunch, and then I took a few hours to have a couple of beers and a cigar on the balcony.  It was quite warm and I was comfortable in a short-sleeved shirt. We then played Bingo and lost as we always do, then got dressed up for our final formal dinner.  Tonight I had Pheasant and Heather had Lobster.  After dinner, all the junior waiters paraded around the dining room, each holding a Baked Alaska, which is a tradition with Princess.  I don’t know if other cruise lines also do this, and honestly for the longest time, I thought it was only done in Alaska, as my first cruise ever was up here, but they do it on every cruise.  It’s Dad’s favorite dessert, and mine too!  After dinner, we quickly changed out of our formal wear, lost $20 in Roulette, and walked a few laps around the track.  As the time for the sunset neared, Heather and I went to the stern of the ship and watched the sun go down one last time.  We’ll see it again tomorrow, but the ship will be in port, so it probably won’t have the same effect as it did tonight.  That’s about it…it’s bedtime now.