World Cruise - Day 4 - Jan 16 - Aruba

Last night the entertainment for the evening was supposed to be the first production show (Princess singers and dancers), but they decided to postpone the show due to the rough seas.  We are out in open water and there are pretty large swells.  It’s pretty amusing watching the entire crowd walking down the hallway and weaving back and forth in unison with the movement of the ship.  Apparently there are quite a few people who got seasick, although that’s not something that affects me and Krissie.  So the entertainer who stepped in on short notice was a comedian, Carlos Oscar (“OK, so you’re worried about the dancers falling and getting hurt, but you don’t care if the comedian falls of his stool, I get it…”).  He was pretty funny and had a show where he kept everything clean.  He’s performed on Comedy Central and The Tonight Show.  Funny guy.

Today we actually had to turn the clocks forward for the first time on the cruise.  Most of our cruise will be going in the other direction, turning our clocks back at night.  But Aruba is far enough to the east that it’s on Atlantic time, which is one hour earlier than Eastern time.

Our dinner table assignments have switched around a bit during the cruise.  We started at a table for 6, but had originally requested a table for 8 or 10, so the second night we ended up being moved (along with Ken and Sara) to a table for 10.  The other 6 people moved to the table were only with us for one night, they decided to move to second seating, so we combined with a different table for 6 to fill our table again tonight at dinner.  It will be interesting to see how things go with regard to moving around to different tables throughout the cruise.  107 nights is a long time.  The only rule we have at our table is that there is no assigned seating.  So we all move around each night to get to know others at the table.

Thanks, Sonia, for the info about the pics coming thru OK on the e-mail and also the nautical mile conversion (=1.15 miles, 1.85 Km).  I’m sure several people on the walking track will be happy to hear that 11.3 laps equals a mile rather than 13 (and 7 laps per Km for those on metric).  Speaking of metric, there are very few Europeans onboard, which is surprising, since most of the more exotic itineraries tend to attract a greater % of Europeans.  But I did find out that Krissie and I are not the youngest world cruisers onboard.  That would be a European.  There is a woman from France onboard who is in a wheelchair and I am guessing somewhere in her 30s.  Someone pointed her out to me yesterday and said that she is doing the world cruise.  Apparently, she has worked for the last 10 years without taking a vacation to save up enough vacation to go on the world cruise.  I look forward to meeting her in person.  I didn’t want to interrupt her yesterday when she was pointed out to me, since she was part of a drawing class onboard.  Hopefully we will get a chance to meet her soon.

We have a port lecturer who makes a presentation for each port.  Her name is Deborah and she will be with us through the entire world cruise.  She gives the presentation live a day or two before the port and then they play the presentation on the TV in the room the day before and morning of arrival for each port.  Deborah is very knowledgeable and excellent in her presentation skills.  On many cruise lines, the port presentation ends up being a recommendation of the shopping venues in the port (that have paid a sponsorship fee to the cruise line) or a recommendation of the cruise line excursions.  Deborah spends time to explain the history of the ports, logistics (getting around the area, how much taxis cost, whether local currency is needed, where ATMs are located, etc.) and also spends a large amount of time talking about independent tours for each port.  I did a lot of research about the different ports (including our first stop, Aruba, which we have visited before), yet learned a lot listening to Deborah’s presentation.  I look forward to hearing more from her throughout the cruise.

In general, I’ve been very impressed with the entire staff on Princess.  There are quite a few people onboard who cruise almost exclusively with Princess and I understand why.

We came into the port at Aruba and were escorted in by four tugboats, one at each corner of the ship.  I love this pic and the colors:

We were in port with both the Cunard Queen Victoria (which we had taken through the Panama Canal in March 2011) and the Pullmantur Horizon, which used to be part of the Celebrity fleet:

They were conducting a lifeboat drill with the staff on the Pullmantur, check out all of the staff on the outer deck with their lifejackets:

We went walking into Oranjestad, the capital city of Aruba, with Lorraine and Chuck:

I liked this photo that I snapped while walking out of the jewelry store as Krissie and Lorraine were leaving.  Note all of the guys sitting near the entrance waiting for their respective spouses:

This guy was hacking at coconuts with a machete to make a koko shake:

Krissie and I posed in traditional Dutch attire outside a restaurant in Oranjestad (Aruba is a Dutch protectorate and former Dutch colony):

I thought this was pretty cool how they brought a boat into the shopping mall to pick up passengers, then took the small river out to the ocean and across to a private island:

Lorraine and Chuck took us to their timeshare on the northwest beaches of Aruba where we had a great day having a beach day with them:

When we were eating our lunch, these iguanas showed up looking for handouts.  It turns out that they like french fries.

We did some walking up and down the beach.  You can see in the distance the high rises at the north end of the beach as well as the far northeast end of the island just to the left of Chuck:

Lorraine and Chuck are from the Philadelphia area.  Chuck just retired as a ChemEng professor at Drexel University this past September and Lorraine is a retired doctor.  They are two of our tablemates at dinner in our new table configuration.  Here are pics of our tablemates at dinner:

Sara and Ken are our original tablemates and we’ve been with them since the start of the cruise.  We met on Cruise Critic.  They are from Bradenton, Florida and they are on their third world cruise in a row on Pacific Princess.

Sheila and Brian are from Scottsdale, Arizona, although originally from England.

Veryl (rhymes with Merl) and Lu.

Chuck and Lorraine.  You can also see behind them what the rest of the dining room looks like during the busy time at dinner.

The entertainment this evening was Ventriloquist Dan Horn.  He was recently featured in the movie and had a great act, mainly revolving around the dummy on the left:

For the closing part of his performance, he picked a lady out of the audience (named Diane) and outfitted her with both a mechanical mouth and poles for controlling the movements of her arms.  She was a great sport:

And that is why we don’t sit up front at the show.  Tomorrow is another sea day, then Wednesday we are visiting Cartagena (after Santa Marta got canceled due to the recent drug violence there).