A City That Never Sleeps

Like the famous Sinatra song "New York, New York", the Island Princess is a floating city that never sleeps. We gained another hour last night which means that this morning-loving, disciplined, early "waker-upper" is getting too much of a good thing. But as is typical for me, I will view it through my rose-colored glasses. I get the opportunity to walk around the ship at 4:45 am ship-time, though my body clock vehemently disagrees that it's really that early. The staff is working feverishly scrubbing the decks, vacuuming the carpets, and breakfast is being set out for the 6am "feeding on the farm", if you catch my drift. It occurred to me that while this ship is not new by any means, it is spotless. It's a floating city always in salt water. Let that sink in for a minute. Poor choice of words perhaps but you catch my "drift"....woops, I did it again. Thanks Brittany for the tag line. But I digress.

Have you spent time at the shore or beach? Most wood deteriorates quickly from the Salt water as does anything metal. Rust is the enemy to a ship. There's not so much as a speck of rust on this ship. That's only possible with constant cleaning, scrubbing and painting. The passengers are mostly unaware of all the invisible maintenance that goes on by the 1100 staff on board. We have a 2:1 ratio of staff to passengers which is pretty amazing. As I recline here on the Lido deck watching the bengals/bills at 10am ship time, I can't help but be grateful for all the invisible heros that make this possible. It's truly remarkable.

I consulted for 2 hours this morning. I discovered an issue with something I'd reported on Friday and thankfully caught it and re-ran everything. But that 2 hrs was supposed to be spent on something due Monday morning so I'll work on that later. I had a large breakfast for me, which is fine if I could skip lunch. The food gods unfortunately set out some wonderful options at the lunch buffet that squashed my dietary goals but it will be ok. Tonight is a formal night and the food is never very good on formal nights......said no one ever!!!!. So I'm resigned to a losing day....or is that a gaining day? Either way, you know what I mean.

After work and breakfast, I watched the Bills get crushed by the Bengals. But remember, I was watching from the hot tub in 70 degree Hawaiian breezy weather, so this fair-weather professional football fan was totally into it, though the weather was far better than fair.

At halftime I went to the gym for an hour. At this point it's still only about 11am ship time. I could watch the game on my individual elliptical monitor, so I thought that was a good way to mix business with pleasure. I finished my 1hr workout 5.3 miles around lunch so grabbed a bite at the buffet and headed back out to the pool deck to finish watching the game, which was essentially over.

I then headed down to the casino where I had another "double my money" day. The tables have really been good and I hope it continues. I have a few dealers I avoid like the plague, and I always appease the exercise gods before I challenge the card gods to a duel. And then there are the alcohol gods always giving me encouragement.

Back to lunch for a moment.....I miss cooking. I'm a good cook based on the number of friends who say I should open a restaurant. So today, I assembled my own unique concoction that felt a lot like cooking. There was an Asian glassy noodle chicken salad, to which I added various accoutrements found elsewhere on the buffet like blue cheese, fried chicken filet, peas, corn, tempura veggies and balsamic vinegar. It was OURSTANDING, if I say so myself. So I not only fed my belly, but also fed my need to "cook".

After the casino, I ran into a woodworking friend, Gary, at a bar on deck 5. We drank and discussed life. I realized that in the 17 days thus far, this was just the second impromptu, unscheduled get together I'd had. I've been so busy. And to think I was worried about 60 🌊 days 😅.

Tonight was formal night as mentioned above. Everyone gets dressed to the 9's. By the mere fact that everyone on this ship is spending more than the cost of a nice, new luxury car to live in this floating city for 4 months, they are, as we say, a "well-healed" group. There is no shortage of diamonds, and other precious gems dangling from ears and wrists and necks. The women are not just in dresses, but evening gowns. Men are in tuxes or dinner jackets. The ship's photographers have various mobile studios set up all around the atrium, so flashes of light "echo" in the background. It's like being on the red carpet at the academy awards. Ironically the carpet in the main lobby is red, so it's more realistic than you might think.

Dinner was again wonderful. A crab cake appetizer was followed by parmesan gnocchi. The main course was filet with a grand Marnier glaze. I added salmon as I always do. Dessert was a scaled down version of crepes Suzette. Suzy wouldn't have been happy but I was.

As we left the dining room, they were doing a champagne fountain which was fun to watch. I'm not a champagne fan, so we didn't stick around. Off to the 7:30 show which was oddly a repeat of about a week ago. The group that got on in LA hadn't seen it so that's OK. It was a repeat nap for me too, amazingly in the same spot.

For the next few days, we stay in the same time zone so I'm hoping my body catches up to it. Tomorrow is our last sea day before 2 glorious days in Hawaii. Hasta manana.