Day 21: 15th cruise day - Day at Sea

15th cruise day: Day at Sea

We had such a late night New Year's Eve that we slept in until after 9:30am. I quickly got Hunter up so we could grab breakfast in the buffet (where we met Jim who was seriously hurting from the night before) before the culinary demonstration and galley tour began at 10am. That was fun, and we saw a working escalator in the kitchen, to transport workers from the 4th floor prepping area to the 5th floor food serving area. The head pastry chef demonstrated the preparation of a delicious looking tiramisu and the Executive Chef made some salmon cream cheese thing. He was preparing for the Executive Chefs dinner tonight, a 6-course meal without the everyday options. Both chefs and the maitre 'd were selling the Princess cookbook. After the tour, we went to the Tahitian Lounge in time for morning trivia with Anna, who looked like she was seriously hurting from late night partying the night before. She sat in a bar stool facing the mirrored bar the whole time and couldn't even look at the passengers as she read off the trivia questions. This was our 3rd trivia session and it had the hardest questions yet, but somehow we tied our top score of 8/20!

After trivia, from 12-2pm, we went back to the stateroom to write the Singapore debrief email and do some programming. CNN had the Anderson Cooper/Kathy Griffith New Year's Eve Special live from NYC so we got to see the ball drop in our hometown time zone and celebrate another turning of the New Year! At 2pm, we ate a big lunch in the buffet and then attended the passenger talent show at 2:45pm where we heard 4 singers (2 good, 2 bad), a 12-year old excellent violinist, and the Princess Choir (sang 4 songs). 3:15pm brought origami for Hunter and 3:30pm snowball Jackpot ($950) Bingo for me. I didn't win but needed just two more numbers on the big jackpot. I got back to the room at 4:30pm and quickly changed for the 5:30pm Captain's Farewell cocktail party. However, we then decided to stay in the room until 7:15pm (reading and programming) as we decided to skip the Executive Chef's sit-down dinner because the food was too fancy and weird and we wouldn't enjoy it. Finally, as an alternative dining option tonight there was a full dinner buffet on the 9th deck, which suited us just fine. We ate and then attended the 2nd seating's cocktail party at 7:45pm where we finally got served drinks. We wound up getting 2 drinks each, which made up for getting stiffed the first party! After that, Hunter and I used our buy 1 tournament entry slot, get one free coupon and entered the Blackjack tournament. I played first and played horribly, before retiring to the cabin to get a jump start on our packing. I watched a Harry Potter movie while packing and then worked on my journal, while Hunter prowled about on the ship, watching karaoke with Alan, John and Jim. Hopefully tomorrow the clouds will disappear and we can get one final day of sun!

written by  mohicanfan on January 1, 2010 from Singapore, Singapore
from the travel blog: Beijing/Shanghai and a Princess Southeast Asia Cruise - Dec 2009
tagged Asia and Cruise
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