Bob:

The ship was moving around quite a bit during the night, but aside from occasionally waking up to get used to some new motion or sound, I had a good night's sleep. Of course, if I had known or even suspected that the roof over the exercise room topside had collapsed, I might have started to question the structural integrity of The Good Ship Lollipop and not slept quite so easily. But as it was, I was rested and ready for breakfast rather early, which was good because it gave us a spare hour or so between breakfast and the line dance class we wanted to attend at 9:30 a.m.

We used that hour to wander around the ship and take photographs. Along the way I spotted a whale blowing about 1/4 mile abeam of us, but he was way too far away to get any kind of decent picture. One reason for our photographic expedition was that I wanted to try out the "panoramic" feature on my new SLR and try to capture the broad view of some of the public areas on the ship. Someone had put a lot of time and effort in furnishing the Crown Princess's public areas, and the bars and lounges were very pleasant, cozy spaces. They were deserted in the early morning, of course, but that made it easier for us to take pictures without offending or irritating anybody.

Each area of the ship was furnished with a different focus. The atrium, for example, was a high, open space amidships that was used more for chamber music or piano, guitar, or other types of instrumental solos, usually of classical music or show tunes. The sides of the atrium were adorned with columns that gave it a vaguely Greek temple look and the domed stained glass skylight at the top and mosaic-tiled floor at the bottom fit nicely into that decor.

The casino, of course, was entirely a different matter. It was designed to be loud, garish, and exciting. I don't spend much time in casinos unless I have the odds in my favor while betting, as in our last ocean crossing on Royal Caribbean (Wanderung 17), and since Princess didn't give me gambling coupons like Royal Caribbean I never actually did any betting. However, the one time I passed through when the casino was filled with people it seemed to be suitably raucous.

Monika:

Bob:

A bonus of wandering around the ship with our cameras at the ready was that we were prepared to take pictures when the sun finally came out. We were on the afterdeck at the time, and since the sun was rising pretty much directly astern, we could frame some nice shots of it. The warm, yellow light of the morning sun cast a kind of golden glow on the after superstructure, which I also thought was rather pretty.

I was surprised to see that the crew had not drained the pools despite the ships rather noticeable swaying and pitching. They had stretched nets above the pools, of course, so no one could accidentally fall into them or anything, but the water was still sloshing around inside. And when I say "sloshing", I mean it was careening from one end of the pools to the other and then crashing into the side and spouting up into the air. It was quite a spectacle and since the pools were sheltered from the wind I could back off a bit and take pictures without worrying about getting the salt water on the camera lens.

Monika:

Bob:

Returning to our cabin, I quickly downloaded the panoramic sections to the computer and use the Olympus software to stitch them together. It seemed to do a great job most of the time, which was very gratifying. Then it was time for the line dance class, but this time I anticipated (correctly) how hot I would get after bouncing around on the dance floor for 45 minutes and wore shorts, T-shirt, and sweat band around my head.

We could have attended a ballroom dance review of the merengue and salsa after the line dancing, but we wanted to hear Captain Wells' presentation on "The World's Ocean Floor & Their Inhabitants", so off we went to the Princess Theater in the bow of the ship. He did a good job with the material and we enjoyed learning about the ocean seabeds and seeing the curious denizens of the deep. Captain Wells was firmly against the bottom trawling methods that are destroying so much of the ocean floor, a practice eerily similar to lopping off the tops of mountains in West Virginia to get at the coal, which, since the debris is simply pushed into the adjoining valley, also creates a vaste wasteland. The marine museum in Barcelona that we visited during Wanderung 15 had already presented the case against bottom trawling, so he was preaching to the choir in my case.

After lunch we returned to the Princess Theater to listen to Marlene Solender sing songs composed by Harold Arlen (e.g. "Over The Rainbow") while accompanied by her husband Chet. I was very impressed that she was giving us a completely new 45-minute performance focused on the songs of different composers every two days. What a repertoire! Of course, the ship was rocking enough that she almost pitched forward into the front row of seats at one point, but otherwise her voice seemed to be recovered from the cold and she sang very well.

Although there were many activities to choose from in the afternoon (spelling bee, travel trivia, bridge, scrapbooking, "Kung Fu Panda", golf, wooden horse racing, and some game called "Gift of the Gab"), we decided to just relax with writing in our journals and working on acrostics in our typical tag-team fashion. Part of the reason I like cruising with other folks is that they often try some of the things I'm just too tired to venture, and I can still get a sense of vicarious enjoyment from the accounts of their participation. Len, Mary Ellen, Susan and Richard at our table, for example, all played trivia and they would recount the various posers and brain teasers to the rest of us while waiting to be served our evening meal, which was a lot of fun.

Monika: