Day 14: At Sea

First off, a big shout out to the divers of Underworld Scuba & Sport who braved -26C weather today for the 17th annual Die Hard at West Hawk Lake. Yes, scuba diving. In the dead of winter. At least nine people attended. Hardy souls indeed. Well done folks! 

Today began as usual with me sneaking down to the International Cafe and getting our morning coffees:

A Machiato Latte for Dona and a high-test coffee for Brian. Mmmmmm!

We attended two more of Gary Shahan's lectures today. Since it's December 7th - the anniversary of the Pearl Harbour raid - he continued with his World War II series. The first talk was on the battle of Iwo Jima, and the second was on the fights at the other islands of Tarawa, Saipan, the Battle of the Phillipine Sea, and Okinawa. What was particularly interesting we're the present-day photos he took of these islands. Vegetation has pretty much covered some of the airfields and a lot of the features seen in World War II-era pictures. Japanese forces dug extensive underground tunnels and caves on these islands, so unlike Europe there are very few above-ground bunkers or gun emplacements. The island of Iwo Jima rises four inches each year due to volcanic forces beneath the surface, so the beaches where the U.S. Marines landed is now 23 feet above the original shoreline. Wow.

We stopped by the Piazza amidships and listed Princess Pop Choir give an encore performance:

Much like our Ukelele class, the choir consists entirely of passengers who have been practicing over the past few days.

After a few minutes at the Piazza on Deck 5 to enjoy some lunch, we headed for our last Ukelele rehearsal.

Today's weather was +17C, with 19 knot winds giving 5 foot waves. The funny part was even though the temperature was cooler than yesterday's +21, sitting out on deck felt much warmer:

Yeah, not too many people were up there on Deck 15 with us. Most were down one level where there's more protection from the wind.

Tonight was the third and final formal evening for dinner. 

We both had the lobster tail with scampi. We asked for and got a small piece of chateaubriand to go with it to create our own surf-n-turf. Scrumptious!

We wandered over to the Wheelhouse pub to have a drink with our tablemate Fred and his friend Joy who is the Captain's Circle Director on the Grand Princess. A very charming lady. While we were there, Captain Lawes and the Maitre'd (Ricardo) walked in and began chatting us up. They are very nice people. A few minutes later Captain Lawes bought us a round of drinks. We were honored, and made sure we expressed our gratitude to him.

Regular readers of this blog will wonder what happened to Captain Maresca. He left us when we were ashore in Honolulu to go home to Italy for his Christmas holidays. Captain Lawes will takes us to Ensenada and on to San Francisco.

We just finished filling out our breakfast order for tomorrow morning. We usually opt for a continental breakfast in our stateroom. We fill out a card our steward left for us to indicate our food choose and preferred time of delivery (we chose 8:00 to 8:30). We hang it on the outside of our door, and the order appears tomorrow morning.

Other breakfast options on board the Grand Princess are sit-down dining in the da Vinci and Michelangelo dining rooms, and the buffet in the Horizon Court.

It was a late night last night as we watched Star Trek Into Darkness on our stateroom TV, and we lost an hour as we moved from the Alaskan to the Pacific timezone.

Check out this beautiful moonlit night off the stern of our ship:

Tomorrow is our big Ukelele recital in the Princess Theatre at 1:30PM. We arrive in Ensenada, Mexico at 4:00PM, then leave three and a half hours later for San Francisco.

Good night all.