Our Last Sea Day

Friday, January 8, 2016

Our last full sea day….a day to simply enjoy the ship, its offerings and the beautiful ocean around us that is especially blue today giving us, of course, gorgeous blue but extremely calm waters.  There is nary a white cap in site so it is easy to just be lulled into a calm restful time.

Yet that isn’t what we’ve totally experienced because of all days, today there were several things we wanted to do and some overlapped others.  Thus breakfast was a bit rushed as we still wanted to get some walking in before heading off to a Thomas Kinkade Seminar with many of his paintings – beautifully framed – on display.  He has a fascinating history rising out of a very poor background but blessed to be taken under the wing of a painter who lived across the street. Because of all he learned from this man including his insistence that all painting should bring forth positive feelings, Kinkade was an excellent painter by the time he was 16.  He found a close friend, also a painter and they rode the rails make quick sketches for a dollar or two or a meal or whatever else they needed but seeing much of the country as a result leaving many sketches behind.  His admiration for Norman Rockwell was so strong that he often appears in his paintings even though they never met.  His wife can often be seen in his paintings as well as his four girls and one of signatures is the number of “n’s” that can be found in a painting – N being the first letter of his wife’s name.

From there we headed to the Piazza where Ken and I had time to chat with a couple of the dancers about their costumes, dancing and experiences on the Princess ships.  The dancer we spent the most time dancing with confirmed what we've heard often that Princess is an outstanding company to work with - better than most of the other ship lines.  He has been doing this now for seven years and is loving it.  It really shows in the performances especially the one we saw last night.  They all agreed it was a very tough show to do because of the very elaborate and often heavy and involved costumes but really used their skills and challenged them.

We had time to return to our room so I could finish off my exercises before heading to the Horizon buffet for a quick bite of lunch and then we were off to our last Pop Choir rehearsal prior to or performance in the Piazza this afternoon.  It has been fun singing the wonderful music from The Sound of Music and Tobi has been a great easy going director to work with.  I think we’ve finally ended up with close to 30 singers including a strong group of men.  Three college age guys and one of their sisters were among our group giving us a nice balance of old and young.  Dan agreed to come and see us sing and take a few pictures.  It was nice to finally have a “recording” of our participation in one of these choirs as this was probably our 5^th or 6^th experience with little evidence except our memories.  Following the performance the choir was treated to a glass of champagne so following Dan taking  a couple of shots of us with our drinks I treated him to my glass.

Our dress for the performance was black and white – the best I had for a top was my I LOVE RVing in “bling” which certainly has attracted a fair amount of comments as I’ve moved around the ship.  It is kind of fun to wear something like that which opens conversation so easily on elevators, stairs and just generally walking around.

Following the performance, Ken was off for a lecture about the Bermuda Triangle while I scurried down to the Lounge hoping to catch the tail end of the Art Auction.  Alas it was over with a Bingo was about to begin so I simply returned to our room to veg a bit, download the pictures, write a bit and then play some games on the computer.  Dan was out on our balcony enjoying the sea breezes and working his way through yet another book.

Once we dressed to the nines again, we were off to dinner stopping to take a couple of pictures along the way.  This was lobster night – escargot too.  So we ate well….but then we always do when on the ship. 

Following dinner Dan was off to do what he wished – we did give him our invite to the captains cocktail party should he wish to go – while we headed to the Princess Theater for the Spectacular show that involved loads of scenery and costume changes and some interesting uses of props.  We’d seen it before but sure enjoyed it again.

From there we were off to the Art Gallery where we had made arrangements to spend time studying on two different Thomas Kinkade pictures we had fallen in love.  Ultimately we ended up buying one of them that will be delivered to our new place at Hillcrest framed and ready to hang in a couple of months.  There is a wall in the living room that will be an absolutely perfect spot for it.  I guess we’ve really committed to staying there for the present. J

So ended the day for us though I have taken time to review all the pictures Dan took and weed them down a bit.  Once this is posted that will be it for this beautiful day in the Caribbean.