You may notice a considerable time gap between the date I blogged about our final port in Norway, traveling through the beautiful countryside near Aalesund, to this one.
I've been busy enjoying family fun in Philly, being Best Man for my old buddy Pete who married his lovely bride Shari in Spokane, spending precious time with our new grandson, Owen Westley, and his fortunate parents in Santa Monica, and luxuriating in a fabulous stay with my sister's family in Point Loma, where we celebrated the Fourth of July capped by spectacular fireworks.
All were wonderful times which I may write about later, but my family increasingly desires to be less present on social media, so we'll see.
Back to our May cruise, when we returned to the ship in Aalesund, we resumed our regular activities, including afternoon coffee, happy hour with snacks in the Elite Lounge, delicious dining room dinner and a great evening show featuring British singer Andy Abraham, who belted out classic Motown songs as well as originals, ending with a Broadway song from his multi-Platinum first album. His best song to me was a cover of "Me and Mrs. Jones," which he had performed on the British version of X-Factor in the season that he finished second.
The open ocean certainly proved rougher than the smooth waters of the fjords of Norway, but Sky Princess easily cruised through the bouncy waters, combining state-of-the-art ship stabilizing technology and very capable seamanship, as we've come to expect from Princess. Still, we were happy our balcony room was mid-ship, which is usually worth the marginally insignificant upsell price.
We enjoyed usual activities like onboard enrichment lectures, live musical entertainment, tasty meals and coffee breaks, walking laps around the ship and other pleasurable exercise. There are always books to read and movies to watch.
The port presentations by Julio Delgado-Corredor were always humorous and inciteful.
Julio reminded me to some extent of Mr. Stone, my Physics teacher in high school who had a similar silly mentality with which he infused more serious topics.
On this day, he presented information about our upcoming four ports in Iceland, which as it turned out included three stops we subsequently missed because of rough sea conditions.
Two days later, when Julio returned on what should have been a port day in Akureri to talk about our next previously unscheduled port of Isafjordur, he started with a slide for Barcelona, saying, "This is another port we're not going to visit."
When evening rolled around, we savored happy hour before heading to the dining room for our second formal night meal of the cruise. That happened to be when waves began to rock the ship more intensely. When we sat at our table at the very back of the ship, Julie shook her head and said no.
We made brief apologies and left, heading for Alfredo's Pizzeria, which is mid-ship, where there is always less ship movement. When we passed the Crown Grill, I wondered aloud if we might be able to move our pre-paid reservation from later in the cruise to this night.
Happily, the hostess had openings, so we enjoyed a sensational meal of our favorites, centered by thick Filet Mignons. Great decision!
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| Julie in Vines Wine Bar Aboard Sky Princess |
After dinner, we attended our nightly jazz in Take Five before going to the Princess Theater to watch Michelle Joly accompanied by the excellent Princess Orchestra put on a tribute to Adele.
The second of three all-new production shows for Sky Princess had to be postponed due to the rougher seas making the choreography too risky. By the way, all three of those productions shows were markedly different from other shows we've seen on ships. Each was original and outstanding, and the cast was second to none.
While seas had been a bit rough, we loved our entire time cruising from Norway to Iceland on Sky Princess.
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