Day 45 – Wednesday, February 19, 2025 – At Sea
I'm going to call this “koala testing” day. I slept horribly. I'm not exactly sure I slept at all. So that's how I started my day. We get up normal. We were to breakfast by about 9:15 or so. I was doing OK. I was tired but doing OK. I had eggs Benedict. I tried a double espresso. I'm still trying to find the right coffee solution here. Their straight up coffee is terrible. They have something called americano which is a little better but it's very inconsistent. When one place it tastes good and the next place it's lousy. So next on the list is double espresso. I thought the caffeine might help too.
I made it through breakfast without any real issues. We came upstairs and I decided to close my eyes for a few minutes. Worst case, I thought it might be 30 minutes. It ended up being almost two hours with a couple of waking moments in there. And then I worked on the puzzles and the log, before falling asleep again for almost 2 hours. I just could not turn the corner. This is why I said it was our koala testing day. Could I sleep the day away without issues? Turns out, I can.
It was a formal night so we had to get dressed up. I already had dark pants on so Mary just said to put a button shirt and tie on. Thankfully, the shirt fit at the neck so there was no issue with the tie. I clean up pretty easily. Mary had to curl her hair. Because she thinks she looks pale in some of the pictures she's been putting makeup on. I call this her war paint. She tried on one dress, but it was too long. She didn't want to run the risk of tripping because the ship was still rocking pretty good. She tried on the second outfit and it looked good too. She was happy. We made our way out the door then headed to the picture taking stations, of course. There were five picture stations and we hit them all. Actually, the fifth one Mary did by herself because it was up a set of stairs. I did not do an exact count, but I believe we've added somewhere near 30 pictures to our stack. Some of them are turning out pretty nice. I have shared a few of them here.
After pictures, we went to dinner. We learned a lot about the wine that is brought onto the ship. Mary was talking to one of the sommeliers. The discussion started because I ordered a Silverado Cabernet. The waiter said they do not have that, but they would get me something close that is also on the premium list. When I finally got the wine, it was not that good. I asked the waiter what it was and I don't remember the answer, but it was not that good. We've gotten to know several of the sommeliers. One happened to be walking by, so we snagged him. We asked them about the process for picking a recommended replacement. It boils down to what does the Princess have a lot of that it needs to push. I don't know if I recorded it or not but about a week ago or so, we talked to our executive chef friend, and he told us the process for building the menus. It starts a year or more out. And the chefs drive the menu which drives what is purchased. That doesn't seem to be the case with wine. Princess corporate makes deals with different wine makers and this is what ends up on the ships. Obviously, this is what one person says. He may not know for sure. But if it's true, it is interesting. Most importantly, I learned that I'm not going to take their recommended replacement. I'm going to find something else on the menu. Because we have so many days at sea coming up, we might ask a different sommelier. Anyway, that's about 200 words on just picking the wine tonight. I imagine you're sitting there thinking come on get to the food.
Now that I was awake, I was in the mood to try something different. I noticed on the menu they had two duck entries. The first was a smoked duck breast which was a pretty good appetizer. For my second appetizer I had this sunchoke cream soup. Sunchokes are basically flowers, as I understand it. It was pretty good too. For my entree I had duck L’orange. I don't know if I've ever had this before, it was OK. They say duck tastes like chicken. I guess that's true. There was not a whole lot of orange flavors to it either. It seemed a little heavier than chicken, but not that different. If it comes up on the menu again, I'm not sure I will eat it, but I can put it in the “Yes, I've tried it” category.
Mary had a double house salad. She had beef tenderloin for her entree. Honestly, it looked better than some of the steaks she ate. She said it was really good. For dessert I had strawberry on vanilla ice cream. It was a different kind of dinner. It was good though. We went up to the room and called it a night for the most part. I ended up watching a couple of episodes of “On The Wrong Side Of The Tracks” on Netflix. So besides sleeping 1/3 of the day away, it was a good day. I still think I could be a good koala.