At Sea

April 4^th, 2024

Packing day. Luckily this didn’t take too long. It is so much easier to pack at the end of a cruise than it is to pack for the start of a cruise. Although this is fun – we are packing for the end and the start of the next cruise.

It has become increasingly cold as we have been moving ever further north. Southern California is looking like it will be cold and rainy. Not what we expect at all. Better not pack my cardigan and rain jacket!

There was a lot going on around the ship today. Talks, quizzes, games, bingo, dancing, but there was a definite feeling that people weren’t quite ready to get off the ship just yet. It had been a wonderful month and everyone I spoke with didn’t want to return to reality just yet. I was so glad we are transferring to the Emerald tomorrow. The parade of suitcases in the corridor is always depressing

There was a parade of kitchen and wait staff at lunch.

Then at dinner there was the parade of chefs. This involved the waving of napkins once more. The napkin waving had been discontinued during the COVID pandemic, and I am not sure I’m happy about it being reinstated again. I really don’t want the napkin, in all its germy glory, from the person sitting next to me to be waved in my face. Still, everyone else was having a good time, so I wondered if I was alone in this this respect.

Then after dinner there was another parade in the Atrium, and my favorite bar tender, Linzee, gave an impromptu dance performance.

We were finally all packed up and ready to make our move to the Emerald Princess..

When I had first inquired at Guest Relations about transferring to the Emerald I was told that we would be on our own. We would have to carry our bags from one ship to the other and no assistance could be provided. We were not happy about this, but they seemed to be immovable, and that was the way it had to be.

Out of the blue, or maybe because the 20 of us making the transfer had been less than happy about this arrangement, I found out indirectly that in fact our luggage would be transferred from Sapphire to Emerald. After we disembarked we would need to pick up our luggage in the luggage hall with everyone else, take it through immigration with us, and then we would hand it over once we left the terminal, and it would then be dropped off at the ship. We were told to attach our new cabin information labels to the bags as we hand them over, when we left the terminal, not before. This all sounded very civilized, and so much better than struggling with all of our bags ourselves. Problem solved.

When we returned to our cabin after dinner our bags had gone, but so had Llu Llu, the llama. No doubt by now our little companion has been dismantled, and she is off to get a thorough wash with all the other towels. I do think it was so thoughtful of our wonderful cabin steward to have her there waiting for us on our return from Machu Picchu. He has been great, and we really appreciate how all of his hard work has made this great cruise even better.

The closer we got to Los Angeles the colder and cloudier it became. No chance of a sunset today, and going out on deck you risked being blown overboard. We are really out of the tropics now, but isn’t Southern California meant to be hot and sunny? We will see what tomorrow brings.