Day 28 - Mon 06May2024 - At Sea to Vancouver, BC - Day 4

 Today I made the transition to long pants to accompany the sweatshirt I'm generally wearing during the day around the ship.  It's 5-6 degrees colder this morning with an outside temperature of 56ºf at wake-up time.  We attended our normal Bible study session this morning and it was the first of two days of sharing as many of the people are getting off in Vancouver in a few days.  3 men shared.  One was a former federal agent severely burned in a helicopter training accident; the second shared about becoming a Christian on his way back from a second tour in Vietnam, and the 3rd fellow shared about his volunteer work in disaster relief around the world.  Ron will continue with a Revelation study for the following 3 days starting on Wednesday.

Our first enrichment lecture this morning was all about bears and Mark Harris had a really concise presentation about the 3 types of bears: black, grizzly, & polar. Lewis Lucke followed up with a great presentation on Petra.  Petra is a place we have wanted to visit for some time and have had cruises cancelled on us that would have taken us there.  We might just have to make a special trip there. He stated this should be on everyone's bucket list.  He's been there at least 42 times escorting dignitaries while he was on diplomatic staff in Jordan for 5 years.

We had a specialty lunch credit available so we decided to use it today in Rudy's for a sushi lunch.  We both like sushi so we were looking forward to it.  The location is on deck 7 next to the Piazza with much of the venue having wonderful water views.  The standard package was a sushi sampler, edamame beans, seaweed salad and pickled vegetables.  The food and the presentation was excellent.  The one drawback to the restaurant is the noise from the Piazza area.  That noise made it difficult for me to hear and when we commented to our server, she agreed.  I don't think I would spend a premium price to eat there because of the poor acoustics.  The menus look fabulous, however.

After lunch we were walking back to the room when we walked by the Princess Live theatre and Allwyn was hosting a game show called Word Tennis.  We ended up playing the game which involves being presented a topic such as Automobile Brands.  The first person says "Ford" and swings the table tennis paddle.  The other player then responds with another brand name.  The person who fails to answer in a very short amount of time loses.  It was a fun little game with not many people playing or watching it.

A Welsh comedian, Mike Sealey, did two shows today at 1 & 3pm.  We chose to attend the 3pm show due to our special lunch.  His specialty was one-liner jokes, but with his accent and his propensity to drop the mike from his mouth, it was challenging to hear.  Afterwards I took a short nap before dinner on this last formal night of the cruise.  We ate with JoAnn & Gary once again in the Lido  and compared notes about our various activities.

Our evening entertainment were Brent & Sarah who are a married couple.  Most of their magic was pretty cool, but I struggled with the cheesy nature of their banter.  Afterwards we watched the Survivor Game: Alaska.  There were great Alaska questions and I wish I could have made a team.  The activities the teams had to perform were the best of this series of game shows.  We stayed on to watch the Neil Diamond trivia just to be able to hear some of his hits.  3 teams scored 19 out of 20 points.  While Angela stayed on for 10:30 karaoke, I returned to our stateroom to test my medallion which got reset after having been failing to recognize me at the door unless I put the medallion up to the display screen.  It failed the test and I need to get a new medallion as the battery is depleted which is what I thought all along, but the front desk person didn't agree with me.  I'll do that tomorrow as the front desk is at the other end of the ship.

Tonight we received our INTRANSIT cards for use in the Vancouver Port.  These cards allow us to skip the immigration lines since we are visiting Victoria the next day and that will be our final Canadian stop before reaching Seattle on Sunday.  I've not learned how many are getting off in Vancouver, but I expect it to be a large number.  Then a number of new passengers will embark on a 3 day cruise to Seattle before the Majestic Princess begins its Alaska cruise season.  After that season.  After that it will reposition to the Caribbean via a transit around South America which might be a nice cruise except that it doesn't go up the Amazon River like we did last fall on the Zaandam.

Tomorrow is our next to last sea day of this segment of the voyage and there continues to be a full range of activities.