Combining Iceland within a British Isles cruise comes with sea days.
Sea days can be welcome opportunities to enjoy life on board.
There's always great entertainment on Princess Cruises, including production shows, but of course we enjoy all of that talent when we return from ports, too.
I'll give special kudos to guest entertainer David Meyer, a true virtuoso who joined the Princess Orchestra for an amazing performance. With our son Jay having shared a video of our grandson Owen playing his new steel drum with drumsticks earlier that day, we were primed to appreciate Meyer's showmanship.
If you find yourself bored on a cruise ship, wake up. Or take a nap on your balcony or poolside. In any case, you must not be trying to enjoy your cruise.
For everything we did, there were dozens of activities we missed. I won't try to cover them all.
We watched a couple of flicks at Movies Under the Stars, finding lounge chairs a deck above the pool where our view of the screen had no potential obstructions and the chatter of fellow guests enjoying pool life was muted. This allowed us to see and hear the movies better than on some prior cruises.
We watched a Mark Wahlberg's modern-day pirate adventure, Uncharted. It's the kind of action adventure with humor that is perfect entertainment for travelers.
Another we enjoyed was at Movie's Under the Stars was one we've seen before.
The stunts in a movie like the newest Mission: Impossible movie makes re-watching a pleasure for us.
Part of the fun of sea days is learning about ports we will be visiting.
Once again, the port specialist told us what to expect in Iceland, including Reykjavik, a port of call that had been cancelled on our last cruise to Iceland.
Spoiler alert, we loved our guided tour from Reykjavik this time around.
The only stop in Iceland scheduled for this cruise that we had visited last time was Seydisfjordur, which made the slide projected before the presentation very funny to us.
Seydisfjordur might be a city like that in the future, but that picture at the top of this post was far from what we saw with our own eyes last time.
Ironically, two of only five photos I took on these first three sea days were of that presentation about Seydisfjordur, which our cruise subsequently skipped due to inclement weather.
My other two photos were of breakfast fruit.
I just realized this strawberry looks to be wearing a cowboy hat.
Ordering a banana in the dining room resulted in a beautifully sliced presentation.
On sea days, we take time for leisurely breakfasts in the dining room. I would get whatever the special egg-dish of the day happened to be, whether Eggs Florentine, Huevos Rancheros or Eggs Benedict, with fresh cut fruit, juice and coffee. Julie stuck with her usual melon plate, OJ and omelet.
Lunches in the dining room can be special occasions too, but when the weather is nice, we like dining out by the pool.
Fine dining in the Palms Dining Room was a given almost every evening for us throughout the cruise, whether in port or not. On the second sea day, Julie and I made our obligatory Crown Grill check, just to be certain the quality of the meal and service will be perfect as usual for anyone who asks about it.
Crown Grill remains a nice treat.
With all of those great meals, we needed to exercise, so I went to the gym in the morning to do my obligatory workout.
Julie and I walked laps around the ship, taking in sea views all around us. An important point is that we take stairs rather than ride elevators when we have time and Julie isn't wearing high heels.
Nonetheless, I returned home from this cruise a little heavier than I started. I think I enjoyed a few too many freshly baked soft pretzels and other snacks at happy hour...and probably a few too many happy hours.
Despite eating all that delicious food, Julie and I missed an event that would have put us in the Guinness Book of World Records.
To be clear, we did have pizza on the cruise at least once that I can remember, so I guess we weren't total party poopers so much as fashionably late.
If you aren't having fun or are going hungry on a cruise, then you definitely are not paying attention.
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