World Cruise - Day 108 - Apr 29 - Koper, Slovenia

It took 107+ days, it finally happened—I accidentally deleted a photo I wanted to use.  It was my sunrise pic from this morning.  I normally have a set process where I copy the pic to two different directories on my laptop before deleting it off the SD card, then I crop and compress the pic for the blog in the one directory and, if I make any mistakes, I can go back to the original in the “All” directory that I use as the secondary backup.  Anyway, not a huge loss, since the sunrise pic wasn’t really at sunrise, it was later and not one of my best.  I went into Picasa to modify it first (I often use the Picasa tool to straighten the pic to align in correctly first before copying over to the laptop).  Anyway, after saving it in Picasa, I forgot to copy it over to my laptop before deleting off the SD card.  Poof.

As a side note, if you ever accidentally delete a pic (or pics) from your SD card, you can still recover them.  Just don’t take any additional photos on that card and take it to a camera shop, they will be able to recover the pics for you.  In this case, no big deal, just one less sunrise pic.

Today is all about packing and getting rid of stuff.  I gave away a lot of my freebies (stuff I won at ping pong, trivia, etc.) at the swap meet.  Today we have more stuff to give away.  Everyone is finishing their packing this morning, since we don’t get into Koper until noon.  One more time to play ping pong this morning.

Lynn Grant (from our Cruise Critic group) won the photo competition onboard with this sunset photo in the Tasman Sea:

She won a camera.  Yay for Lynn!

Surprise!  There was one more Sunday brunch this morning:

I forgot to mention what happened at sailaway yesterday.  Apparently there was some excitement on the spa deck forward by the Thelassospa.  As Pacific Princess was pulling out of the port, we were passing the Holland America New Amsterdam which was still docked.  People on the Holland America ship were waving, so we were waving back.  Then one of the guys yelled out, “C’mon, let’s moon them” and got one of the other guys to go over to the edge of the ship.  The younger guy of the two then kinda faked mooning by putting his read end (albeit fully clothed) up against the glass wall facing the Holland America ship.  Then the older guy of the two actually dropped his swimsuit and did a full moon, right up against the glass!  So the younger guy figured he had to as well (kind of a guy’s code of honor), so he dropped his swimsuit as well and mooned the Holland America ship.  So I don’t think those two guys will be welcome on Holland America anytime soon, now that they have buttock recognition software.  No names here in this blog, though.  Although I did verify that it was the first time for the older guy of the two to moon anyone (even though he looked like a pro, like he really knew what he was doing).  Only on Princess.

We went into Koper and got caught in a flash mob in the street:

They were all dancing along, unicycles, just a real party atmosphere, so we joined in:

Then they were down at the fountain splashing each other:

Fun time.  I always wanted to be part of a flash mob.  I got a couple of good videos of it, I’ll post them to Facebook when we get home.

It was pretty quiet in town today, since it’s a Sunday.  They have a nice bell tower in the center of town:

Krissie posed in front of the castle at the main square:

Just outside of the town walls, they were having an olive festival with olives, olive oil and massage oil available from about 15 different vendors.

I love this photo where I got this little boy throwing a ball to the dog, which is eagerly anticipating it with its eyes:

There was a community fountain where people could come to fill up their water jugs:

Krissie and I found a cute little sidewalk café and sat down to try out the local beer and malt (NA beer):

There was a local museum across the street:

Then we went for about an hour ride on a bicycle carriage built for two people, but then we saw Terry and Jackie, so we picked them up along the way.  We went ripping through the old town ringing our bell, yelling out “No brakes!  No brakes!” and running the tourists off the streets.  Then we went down some steps, out another step out of the city, then back up another step back into the city.  Rip roaring fun:

We stopped along the way for me to play some hopscotch.  The mother seems to be amused, but the little girl was waiting for that old guy to stop using her hopscotch. 

Then we found a cool seaside bar where we hung out for awhile with Jackie and Terry:

And what would Europe be without the obligatory speedo.  The guy probably thought I was a little creepy when I came out on the pier and asked if I could take his pic:

But he did some jumps off the dock, including this one (we used to call this type of dive a “suicide” because you have your arms at your side):

I bought some gelato (actually three different cones, spread out throughout the day, welcome to Europe), while waiting in line took this pic of this little girl savoring her cone:

Back near the ship we had a local folk band serenading us while we sipped wine:

The local mascot is apparently Koper the Goat.  Dennis got his pic with him:

Krissie, Jackie and Terry did some wine flights with others:

This little guy was heading too close toward the water, Dad had to step in:

The guy on the left played several different instruments, including flute…

…and accordion (why is it that multi instrumentalists always have an accordion as part of their repertoire?):

Back onboard, they had the farewell dinner for us in the dining room:

The evening entertainment was “The Rat Pack & Co.” including Dean Martin:

…Sammy Davis Jr.:

…and Frank Sinatra:

They were quite good, very entertaining.

And then the Pacific Princess Singers and Dancers did a final farewell salute, singing the song (We Are Family) that opened the world cruise 107 days ago:

Tomorrow is Venice and the last day of our cruise.  We said our goodbyes, as we will be getting off the ship early.  We get off at 7:30a, then meet up with Sonia, then we get to haul our luggage through the streets of Venice to our hotel.  I’m sure we’ll be quite the site with all of our luggage and extra stuff.