Day 07 - Friday - 3/21/25 - At Sea to Fort Lauderdale - Day 2

 This final sea day on the Sun Princess was slated to be a relaxing day and it did not disappoint. We woke up around 9 AM and prepared for our day. I ate my normal congee for breakfast and had some good conversation with a couple from Colorado Springs. I then made my way to the Princess Live venue where we listen to Captain Craig Street being interviewed by Justin our cruise Director. He's been at sea since he was 17 and has been on the ocean for 35 years and has reached the pinnacle of his career. He described what it took to become captain of the first LNG powered ship in Princess's fleet along with it being an azipod equipped ship, which is new to Princess. He lives in Scotland what his wife and two cats. He met her about 19 years ago on another Princess ship where she was the scuba instructor. He's also a licensed helicopter pilot in both United States and England.

Afterwards, I positioned myself in Alfredo's on deck nine. We had one final specialty restaurant to visit and we chose Alfredo's for pizza for an early lunch. We have found that Alfredo's has the best pizza on the high seas, and today was no exception. I went a little bit out of my comfort zone in the pizza department and had a marine themed pizza with clams and mussels and scallops and squid on it. While it was good, I probably would not get it again. I much prefer what I would call a garbage pizza that has everything on it.  I highly recommend eating at Alfredo's pizza.

Angela wanted to do some shopping and collect some more of the pendant charms that were being given away in the shops so she went her way and I chilled out back again in the aft part of the ship on deck nine. Eventually, she found me and we walked around the ship before she found a music venue to attend. I watched a music trivia game, where a computer voice said lyrics and you had to guess what the song was without any tune. I found it extremely hard and only got one song: Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water. I then made my way up to deck 17 which is the pool deck and found a seat in the adults only area upfront where I watched a few videos and the ocean ahead of us. Of course we're only going about 10 knots or 11 miles an hour so things don't pass by very fast. Angela eventually found me and we made our way back and up to the aft area of deck 19 and we walked a mile on the jogging/walking track. And it had finally warmed up and it was quite pleasant to do that walk.

Found a hammock

We made our way down to our state room and packed our belongings as we will be disembarking tomorrow. We've elected to simply walk off the ship with our suitcases and backpacks so that we do not have to claim any luggage in the terminal. Our hotel provides a shuttle from the cruise terminal to the hotel where we'll be spending the night before we board another ship on Sunday.

A couple days ago we were able to secure a reservation in the specialty restaurant called Love by Britto. We had heard great things about it and with its heart theme I knew that it would be a special time for Angela as hearts are her favorite object. And we were not disappointed. It's expensive at $79 a person but we had some shipboard credit ti use. The five course meal was absolutely superb. There were all sorts of heart shaped objects and food items and our food items were cooked to perfection. I had the beef tenderloin and Wagyu beef and they were probably the best beef cuts that I've had anywhere and were perfectly cooked medium rare. Angela had the lobster and she enjoyed that. We were also treated to a spectacular sunset as the restaurant is located in the aft of the ship on deck 17.

With our 7 PM dinner reservation we were not able to take in the early arena stage presentation of Fiero but we were able to make the 930 show. We've now seen it three times and I am finally starting to understand it. It's essentially a play about a circus and a ringmaster who has a daughter who falls in love with one of the circus workers.  He doesn't like their relationship, but in the end, realizes that she has to make the choice and he gives his OK. We sat with a couple that are in our group cruise group that we have seen many times throughout the voyage. In fact, they're the one couple that we've seen the most of anybody on a consistent basis throughout the week. So we enjoyed a lot of good conversation before and after the performance.

Angela stayed for the last karaoke session and I elected to come back to the room and update my blog. I expect that we're going to have to get up around 6:30 tomorrow morning and I didn't feel like spending time in another venue. 

As a short summary, I'm really glad that we chose to sail on this brand new Sun Princess ship.  It's not normally our itinerary style nor size of ship style. But I can see why people would choose to sail on it. There's an abundance of activities for all ages, there are 40 some drinking or eating venues throughout the ship, there are multiple entertainment activities in the Piazza, Princess Live, the Arena, or the Dome and the various bars. With the sheer size of the ship, the ride has been quite comfortable and especially these last two days sailing it around 11 miles an hour. The ship has been rock solid stable.  I do think, however, that the entertainment venues, and even some of the food venues are far too small for the sheer number of passengers on board. Also the existence of the Premier plus package, which gives those participants the ability to eat in the specialty restaurants every night eliminates the possibility for others to enjoy those restaurants. I know with our platinum status we could make our reservations in advance before getting on the ship and that's what I would do next time if I were to sail on the ship. I wouldn't choose to just sail on the Sun Princess for sailings sake, but if it had an interesting itinerary, I certainly would consider it. Doing a transatlantic cruise would be an excellent use for this ship.

That's about all for now for this leg of our adventure. I'll put together another more general summary of my observations after we board the Nieuw Amsterdam on Sunday.