Sea Day, November 23

My billionth attempt to get this posted...the Internet has sucked these last couple days...

My days have pretty much fallen into a routine.

This morning's sunrise comes way of the covered Calypso Pool.

 

Up and at the buffet before 6 where plenty of seating is available.

The buffet is where I get my caffeine for the day in the form of a glass of ice tea. As I’m at the counter putting sweetener in my tea, I can’t help but think how Princess is only halfheartedly trying to show they care about the planet. Thanks to some bad environmental practices, they are now on a get-rid-of-single-use-items kick to prove their commitment. They’ve done away with sugar packets and gone with these weird, hard-to-use glass containers.

But with the sweeteners? Are they worried about the single use packets those come in? By the looks of the pile of sweeteners I get to choose from every morning, I think not. You can’t convince me the new practices aren’t more about cost-saving measures than anything else.

After my tea glass is empty, I grab the same thing every single morning - an omelet and bacon. On the Royal Princess and Caribbean Princess you can fill a container with your omelet ingredients. It was nice because you could pick from a wide range of fillings and could choose exactly how much you’d like in the omelet. But from our experience on the Royal, the person making the omelet dumps the container in the middle of the eggs. When you get the omelet you have to open it up, spread the ingredients out, and then refold it. There the omelet is fried on a flat top and therefore the eggs are really, really thin.

Here on the Sapphire there is a very short list of ingredients to choose from and they decide the amount to put in your omelet. It’s okay though. Because here they use an omelet pan and blend all the ingredients together throughout the omelet, resulting in a light and fluffy omelet with everything incorporated together.

Even though they have limited filling choices,
they taste 1000% better than the omelets on Royal Princess.

Since the buffet is relatively empty I usually wait for my omelet near the cereal section. As we don’t have boxes like these in the US they put a smile on my face as it reminds me we’re far from home.

No regular sugar packets but still plenty of single use cereal boxes.

I sometimes (okay, almost every day) check out the muffin section, too. The muffins on this ship are heavenly. Moist and chock full of yumminess, a very welcome change from the flavorless and dry muffins we’ve seen on the Princess ships over the last couple years.

Just look at all those blueberries!

After breakfast we head to the Promenade deck to sit and watch the waves. About 8:30 we head back to the cabin to watch a movie. Sapphire Princess has the on demand TV system which is great for as many sea days as we have on this cruise. (The satellite does go out several times a day, and our TV completely went out for a couple days. A new modem solved the black screen issue but the satellite reception continues to be a pain.) After the movie comes pool time for a few hours.

Then back to the cabin so E can have his nap and since I’m done swimming for the day, I have my shower then start a bit of work on the blog. Despite being a non-napper, the combination of the sun and swimming and writing makes me a bit sleepy. I wind up falling asleep at some point and then wake up in a panic when I look at the time. (5:30? Yikes!) I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in a start in takes me a while to get the adrenaline calmed back down. By then it’s 6:30 and neither of us really care about dinner. I read, he watches sports-news-sports-news, I tell him to turn the TV down, I get tired of the junk he’s watching and I make a run to the buffet. Decide I’m not really hungry and usually come back to the cabin empty handed. (Other than the occasional chocolate chip cookie in hand.)

My night ends there and in the morning another very relaxing day begins.

So if you're wanting to know about the shows or the dining room menu or the dress code on formal night, I can't help. At home I work all day long (way too much if you ask E) so this cruise, with my limited Internet minutes and an iffy connection, has been my time to relax. Really relax. It feels so good.

Tomorrow we have one more very relaxing sea day before we get to our next port, Abu Dhabi.

Tonight I think I took one of my best sunset at sea photos.