Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands US
Tuesday, March 18th
Princess Cay
Princess Cay is, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, owned by Princess Cruises – it is actually part of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. We are looking forward to a fun day and have rented a little pop-up cabana to shade us when we’re done snorkeling. We had decided last night to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast and then catch the tender to shore.
We were awakened at 7 by an announcement from the bridge. The captain said because of high surf, the tenders would not be running so we’re going to have an unexpected sea day. Jeff said “He woke us up to tell us there’s no reason to wake up early!” Bummer! We were looking forward to snorkeling again.
We check the “Princess Patter” which is the ship’s daily newsletter (you don’t think I just know all that navigation stuff, do you??) which lists the day’s activities. Not much there as they planned on almost everyone going ashore. Soon the announcement came that there would be another edition put out very soon. They must have quite the printing operation on board. Yep, about 45 minutes later new daily schedules were delivered…it’s a testament to their organizational skills that they could quickly pull together a multitude of daily activities on the fly like that.
Jeff and I went to the Princess Theater to watch the movie “August, Osage County.” Unfortunately when they started the movie the audio was for a travelogue for New Hampshire. What a riot! Now we have a broken movie! Hahaha. Eventually they got it straightened out. The movie was powerful (in an incredibly dysfunctional way). Not exactly vacation fare, but it was good.
We walked our 5 miles around the Promenade Deck, changed clothes (I swear we change clothes 3-4 times a day!) and met Al and Nancy for drinks and hors du’voeres. Jeff and Al became co-conspirators in bootlegging! You can buy bottles of hard liquor (tax and duty free) on the boat, but you can’t take it back to your cabin unless it is the last night of the cruise and you’re getting off the next day. Al and Jeff go to the store – Al buys us a bottle AND he got a 20% discount because he’s an elite member, then we follow Al and Nancy back to their room. Jeff pays Al and we get our bottle. Because they are Elite members, Al and Nancy also get a free minibar setup. Al says that Nancy always packs up those 8 little bottles and takes them home. Apparently they have a big cardboard box filled with little booze bottles because she doesn’t want them to go to waste! So, Nancy grabs those 8 mini bottles, we put them in our pockets, all four of us laughing like naughty kids, and head back to our room. We did exchange email and snail mail addresses. I’m going to send them a postcard on our next 10 days.
After dropping our booty off in the cabin, we changed (AGAIN) and went up to “Movies Under the Stars” to watch the second Hunger Games movie. We’ve seen it before, and thought it would be a good one to watch outside. We had popcorn and a cookie, shared a hot dog and an order of fries for a decidedly not healthy dinner!
After the movie, we wandered back to the Princess Theater to hear Antonio Salci, a pianist. His show didn’t start until 10:30…way past my bedtime. He was good – very high energy and appreciative of those in the theatre. This is the last night of our first 10 day cruise and most of the passengers have to have their luggage outside their doors, so events tonight are less crowded than normal.
Before we turn in we set our alarm for very early – we want to be on our balcony as the ship sails into Ft. Lauderdale…