Tuesday,  Feb 05 - Day 16 of holiday and Day 14 on board Island Princess

The day started slowly as it was pretty ugly outside.  It had rained all night and everything was wet.  I started my day in the usual manner and Freddi returned our books to the ship's library.  We had breakfast and decided to have a last round of mini-putt out of the wind.  The course was soggy and slow and we managed to move a few "bolders" around to make the course a bit more friendly.  We then settled in at the indoor pool and slept and read most of the day.  Nice feeling that!

We did spend some time packing as we had to have our bags in the hall for 10 pm so they could be unloaded to certain areas in the terminal in preparation for dismemberment in Fort Lauderdale.  The packing exercise at the end of a trip is always a fun event.  Where to put the small purchases is the game and expandable suitcases are the answer.

In the evening we went to the Bayou for dinner.  We had a great deal of attention as there were only 3 tables booked.  It surprised me that the specialty restaurants were not popular on this trip.  We have been on ships where they are on "wait list" status.  None-the-less we had Goran as our waiter and he lingered with us for almost the whole time.  We also had Mario, the Sommelier, drop by a couple of times to check on us and to help us complete our wine selections.  Plural as we had a couple of wines left on our card and he wanted to make sure we got some value from our investment.  He returned with another Paraduxx bottle and Sancerre for us to take away with us.  After a nice dinner where we made an effort not to eat too much we said our good-byes and returned to our stateroom. 

Wednesday,  Feb 06 - Day 17 of holiday and Last Morning on board Island Princess

The morning came early as the banging and clattering of the docking process started at about 5:30 am.  I started my day as usual and finished my Internet time in the games room.  That allowed Freddi to sleep a little longer.  But we had to be out of our stateroom at 8 am so we went to breakfast and packed up our last few things pretty efficiently.  Once at our designated place we sat and read for a half hour until it was our turn to disembark.  That process was easy as we filed off the ship and were escorted to an area of the terminal where our group's bags were stored.  We picked up our bags and went through Customs with relative ease.  We then grabbed a cab to the airport where we found the shuttle to the car rental area.  We picked up a car and were on our way to Redington Beach (4 hour drive) where we were to meet up with our friends from Lake Bernard.  The time was 9:15 am and we were on the highway.

PS:  as a note we drove across Alligator Alley in the everglades and Freddi counted 91 alligators visible from the highway.  There were some pretty big ones out sunning for the morning.

All in alla  good tour.

Monday,  Feb 04 - Day 15 of holiday and Day 13 on board Island Princess

The day started as planned after a relatively good sleep.  I went down for my hot chocolate and some writing time and returned to the stateroom to go for breakfast.  The Horizon was very busy as it was a sea day.  We decided to go to the stern of the ship and rent space in the Sanctuary for the day.  It is an area with very comfortable lounges and a private pool.  It was not too busy in the morning but the afternoon proved to be a challenge to get near the pool.  However, being served afternoon tea and fresh orange water all day made up for that.  We read most of the day and enjoy the warm weather and sun.  It rained for 90 seconds at one point as we passed Cuba.  Other than that is was very peaceful and enjoyable away from the crowds.

Later in the day we retired to our rooms to ready ourselves for the Captain's gathering of the Princess  Members to give out appies and free drinks while they gave away some prizes to some long term floaters.  One couple had over 780 days at sea with Princess - as passengers!

We then went to Sabatini's for dinner where we encountered a less than effective server for the first time.   Our dinner was simply shrimp appy and duck with fava beans for me and salad and steak for Freddi.  The food was very good and the environment was quiet as this cruise had clients that would not invest the extra money for their food.  Apparently the Bordeaux dining room was crazy after the Captains cocktail party.  It was a formal night to boot.  We met Mario on our way out of the restaurant and he concurred that we had made a good choice.  We then went to the comedy act in the lounge and enjoyed the view of the world through the eyes of Scott Wyler.

Sunday,  Feb 03 - Day 14 of holiday and Day 12 on board Island Princess

View of main street form the ship

I woke up feeling somewhat punk this day.  Not sure what it was or where it came from but I decided to give the day a try.  We had some time as the "shore leave" was not until 1 pm when we settled into Aruba.  I started my day as everyday with a hot chocolate and doing some writing down in the games room.  Freddi came by at one point and we decided that breakfast could be stalled for an hour so I could finish what I was doing.  Breakfast was the usual in the Horizon and the day was bright and sunny.

Yacht Club and Island Princess

Around noon we approached the island of Aruba and saw the beautiful white beaches along the shore.  the island is not very big so we could see the northern lighthouse fairly easily as we slid into the port dock.  We descended onto the streets as we had no plans for Aruba.  Unfortunately, the cruise shore Director had missed on this stop as about 90% of the stores were closed because it was Sunday and there was a parade scheduled for the afternoon which caused most of the streets to be closed.  There had been no mention of these facts as a matter of fact we had been advised that there was good shopping on the main street.  Perhaps there was the day before we arrived.  Freddi and I found a little bar/grill where we sat and had a drink.  I did not feel up to food and shortly thereafter bowed out and returned to the ship to sleep for 4 or 5 hours.  Freddi ventured forward and found some shops, a beach, the yacht club and some things to keep her busy for the better part of the afternoon.  When I woke up there was this blasting music sound coming from the parade on the main street.  It ran parallel to the ship so the sounds echoed across the open yard.



Street Vendors

At about 7 pm we pulled out of Aruba and set sail for Fort Lauderdale.  That was two days away and therefore there were two sea days ahead of us.  Not much interested in "dining" I asked Freddi if the buffet would do for her.  She agreed and we had some food before stepping into the football pandemonium in the Lido deck.  The Super Bowl was on.  I retired and watched some inane TV for an hour or so and returned to bed.  Not much of a day!

Hotel Beach - leaving Aruba

Saturday,  Feb 02 - Day 13 of holiday and Day 11 on board Island Princess

The Ladies met as we disembarked the ship

The morning started a little late and therefore there was little time to do my Internet and writing.  We breakfasted as usual and set out for our walking tour of the Old City of Cartagena as we pulled into the port in the early morning.  Out tour was guided by a tall Columbian who spoke English very well.  Our comfortable little 25 seater bus was filled and off we went.  Herbert, the guide, talked all the way downtown about the history and used some very long Spanish sounding names of people who did great things for the city.  We did a drive-by of the fortress that had been built over a number of years and at a huge cost.  It was probably 150 feet tall on the hillside and many people over the years were involved in its construction.  It was also pretty impressive.

Main Square Cartagena

We arrived at the start point of our walking tour.  It was the entrance to the old town where there is a gate and a clock tower.  This entrance is the "symbol" of Cartagena in all of the photo spreads.  There is an abundant use of colour in the old town with bold yellows, pinks, blues and other variations throughout the town.  It was originally built in the 16 C and some of the building were from that era.  Others were newer but old none-the-less.  There were signs of improvement and construction but nothing like the work we saw in Panama.   Owners of buildings were doing maintenance but not full scale re-construction.



Original Coffee Shop

The streets we walked were bordered by businesses on the first floor and residences on the second and above.  There were many open balconies with beautiful flowers on them which made the area very bright and appealing.  The most significant thing one notices when one arrives in this area are the merchants or street vendors.  They flock to every arriving person offering everything from hats, to jewellery, to sunglasses, to watches, to T shirts, to silk scarves etc.   They are thick as flies and they do not take no for an answer until you ignore them and walk away.  This continued all through the area.  we did the official walking tour and were pointed to certain buildings of interest and some churches etc.  We were then walked into a emerald jewellers shop where we were offered mango drink to cool us and the opportunity to discuss purchases of their products.  The juice was great and after a price inquiry on a bobble for Freddi I headed out of the store.  The necklace I was looking at cost $5300 but today it was $4350.  That was not the range I had in my head.

Cartagena Streetscape

We were given 1.5 hours to stroll around and Freddi and I walked about and made some purchases and took some photos.  It was relaxing but it was hot in the 30+ temperature with humidity.  The breeze through the village was very much appreciated.  At the designated time we all piled into the bus and returned to the ship. It was a bit of a thin tour but Herbert made everyone happy and collected his tips at the exit door of the bus. 

We returned to our staterooms and prepared to go to the indoor pool area as we had had enough sun.  I did the hot tub for my knee and then relaxed for a while.

Square in Cartagena

At around 7 PM we ventured out for dinner  in the dining room where we were seated with 8 others.  We were all Canadian with the exception of one couple.  3 provinces were represented and the other couple were form California. We all shared stories of travel and cruising and introduced new things to each other.  It was an interesting time.  The US couple were wine purchasers and liked to travel a fair bit.  They told of some of their investment purchases in wine and they were doing well drinking and selling off their valuable wines.  At another table nearby, the Chef's Table was being enjoyed by a second group of 10 people.  I asked the maitre-d about their menu and he said it was the same one we had.  They were a quiet group in comparison to our group of last week.  Our dinners were pretty straight forward as I enjoyed pasta in a parmesan dish followed by scallops and no dessert.  Freddi had salad, the pasta appie and veal scaloppini also with no dessert.  It was a nice dinner with nice folks.    With another day behind us we set off for bed without consideration of the evening entertainment that was going on.

Street vendors doing business

 

Friday,  Feb 01 - Day 12 of holiday and Day 10 on board Island Princess

Happy Anniversary Freddi!

Ships awaiting the Canal

 

Panama and Containers

This day commenced at about 6:45 am and was to be marked by our trip through the Panama Canal.  Naturally we wanted to get up early enough to see the Bridge of the Americas as we passed under that.  Opps ....  missed that as our timing was off.  However we did get to view the bridge after the fact.  We did get to the bow deck on our floor in time to see the approach to the Miraflores two step locks to Miraflores Lake which runs up to the Pedro Miguel locks.  These three steps raise the ship by 85 feet (26 m)  from the Pacific Ocean.  The current lock length is 1000' and 106' across.  That makes it a tight fit for most of the ocean going ships today.  Some of the container ships hold up to 4000 containers and can still fit into these locks.  Some of the larger container ships that now hold up to 12,000 containers cannot go through the current locks.  There is a huge project going on at both the south and north entrances to the canal to allow larger ships to pass.  That will also increase the number of lanes available from 2 to 4 and they expect this monstrous project to be complete late in 2015.  There was evidence of this work at the entrance from the Pacific side as well as where we exited later in the day.  The increased capacity will double revenues for the canal and will allow ships that are up to 1200' and 160' wide to go through the canal.

Two lanes - two ships

The canal is an amazing engineering project that was completed at the beginning of the 20th century (opened in 1914).  A failed attempt by the French to build a sea level canal was rescued by the Americans and re-designed to construct a higher route (+85' - 26 m) that still required a huge effort.  The French lost some 20k people due to malaria and other mosquito born disease.  This was a very dense rain forest so there were tons of mosquitoes.  The Americans waged war on the mosquitoes and then built the 80 km canal after the French abandoned their efforts when their allocated money ran out.



Rowboat guys.....

As we left the southern entrance locks we sailed past the 12+km of sheer cut granite and limestone through the Continental Divide.  This is called Culebra Cut.   It was very impressive and one wonders how they accomplished this at the turn of the century.  That part gave way to the more open man-made lake called Gutan Lake that is the second largest man-made lake in the world. In that lake we passed some freighters filled with containers and the Pacific Princess cruise ship.  That was the name of the ship on "The Love Boat" television program.  There was much tooting of horns and waving when we passed the sister ship.



Centennial Bridge past the first locks

As the day wore (the whole process was a 8.5 hour event) on we approached the set of three locks that drops us the requisite 85' down to the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. As in the other locks we watched the men row out to secure the ship to the "Mules" which guide the ship through the locks.  Each ship has 8 mules (4 on each side)  that regulate the speed, stopping capacity and distance from the concrete sides as they enter the locks.  Their key role is to keep the ship centred in the lock as the side space is sometime measured in inches.  The mules are 2.9 million dollar diesel engines that run on a track on the shore and are attached to the ship by heavy cables.  These mules are built by Mitsubishi and are very important to the successful transfer through the locks.

Freddi and The Love Boat

 

Mules at work

Once we arrived at the exiting locks we were delayed as the largest crane (Titan Crane) on the canal was dredging one of the locks and only one was usable.  That delayed us by 1.5 hours but also gave a good view of this huge crane as they pulled it out of the lock.  We filled its vacated space and our process of descending started.  It took almost 2 hours and we were standing in different parts of the ship taking photographs.  There were many good photo opportunities and we both clicked off quite a few pictures.  Once free of the third lock we sailed past the town of Colon which is one of the largest container shipping piers in the world.  It is run by the Chinese thereby fueling the myth that the Chinese control the canal.  The Panamanians control the canal and generate some 5 billion dollars a year.  Our ship pays somewhere close to $400k for the transit in one day.  However, the Chinese do control the large sea ports in the world and this one actually allows assembly of product for final shipping without charging any duty to thee shippers.  This industry supports this industrial town.

We had been outside on the sun and the wind pretty much all day and were both feeling the effects of the sun.  My face was burned and even Freddi got a sunburn on her nose and cheek bones.  It hurt and we were brilliant at our evening dinner.

As it was the date of our anniversary we had reserved at Bayou for dinner.  Goran was back in the right restaurant for him and we were joined by Mario as he decanted a fine wine for the occasion.  I enjoyed oysters with baked parmesan followed by a small servings of seafood gumbo while Freddi enjoyed  creole spicy shrimp followed by a small servings of chicken and sausage jambalaya as appetizers.  The main course was the Carpet Baggers Filet dinner with a lobster tail added to mine.  The dinner was superb and the selection of Don Melchor wine was a perfect match.  This wine can be seen on www.concheytoro.com.  Our waiter made it a special evening and we rolled out of there close to 10 pm.

Ships waiting on Atlantic/Caribbean side

Thursday, Jan 31 - Day 11 of holiday and Day 9 on board Island Princess

We awoke to the sounds of the chains rattling as we dropped anchor at Fuerte Amador.  That is an unmistakeable sound as it rattles the whole ship.  We were just off shore of the island that is at the west end of the causeway that leads to the main roads into Panama City and other destinations in Panama.  The tall skyscrapers in the down town area came as a bit of a surprise to me.  They were all tall, close together and light in colour.  It reminded me of New York City in the financial district.  I later learned that there are more than 65 building that are greater than 60 storeys.  That makes for an impressive skyline.

Panama City from Old Town

Our day started with a quick breakfast and a stroll to the designated dining room where we were to gather at "outliers" who did not purchase Princess tours.  The organized tours were tendered to the shore ahead of us.  Our tender was the first of the outliers and we made good progress in the choppy sea.  The distinct small of diesel and splashing of sea water make these trips memorable.

Contrasts

We disembarked the tender and walked up the ramp and spotted Paul (Swinwood) and Adele waiting for us as previously arranged.  It was good to see them and our intent was to see a bit of the old town, have a nice lunch and share some stories as we had not seen them for some time.  They had recently returned from a cruise in South America and were quite happy to relax at their rental unit about 70 km west of Panama.  They had agreed to spend the day with us and we decided to drive into the old town instead of waiting for a bus for 45 minutes.  The driving in the city is crazy and the taxis make lanes that do not exist just to get to the next fare.  Our drive was narrated by Paul as we drove through the area that had been occupied by the Americans and only recently been made accessible to the Panamanians.  There were some pretty rough structures with lots of hanging laundry on the balconies.  In the old town we saw lots of re-construction underway.  That included road repair and expansion, buildings being built/rebuilt/ renovated, new highways and in one part the new subway construction interfered with the local transportation.  Basically everywhere there was construction.  This is funded by the revenues form the canal which sum up to billions each year.  We surprisingly found a parking space were we snuggled the car into an impossible spot.  We paid some kid for the spot and he was happy.  Made me wonder....

The old before re-construction

We then walked the sea wall where there was lots of local trade selling all kinds of souvenirs.  The ladies were dressed in colourful  local wear reflecting their significant interest in bright colour and handmade clothing.  We continued our walk through the streets and check out the old buildings as we wandered towards the palace where we ran into many armed guards who made sure we did not trespass.  We found a nice little cafe in the shade that offered some relief from the heat where we enjoyed a cold beer and some lunch. WE sat there chatting for a couple of hours and enjoyed the time immensely.   The food was good and it took some time to be prepared.  We chatted about their life style in Panama and their plans for the rest of the winter before they return to Ottawa. Some time in Florida with their friends was the next big thing after a month in Panama.  Both of them seemed to be very happy in their retirement and they looked very well and healthy.

We then continued to walk for a while and found the car completely blocked by other cars.  After a few minutes the same young lad found a way for us to get out.  The owner of one car moved his car and Paul got us on the road again.  WE drove the Allbrook mall as there was a "Mac Store" and we thought I might be able to get my iPad looked at and maybe fixed.  Well with the combination of some English, Spanish and lots of hand waving we found out that the other huge mall is where their technicians are located.  WE all agreed that the drive through the city was not worth it and we wandered the "huge" mall just looking around.  This mall is about a km long, and has five major bays of stores.  There are over 350 stores in this single mall.  Anything you need - you could find it there.  We forgot that I was looking for a tripod for the canal event.   We had Hagen das instead of waking too far and that was a delight.

Re-constructed area

We returned to the car and Paul suggested that we should head toward the causeway and the dock as traffic the other way would be very congested.  We drove there in slow traffic and got there around 3 PM or so.  WE said our goodbyes after a tour of the duty free and caught the tender back to the ship.  The water was much rougher and the return was a lot quieter that the ride to the city. 

Once back in our stateroom we crashed for a while and had a cocktail before dinner.  At around 7 PM we went to the dining room and settled for a table by ourselves but beside another couple.  We chatted intermittently with the folks at the next table only to discover that he was a part time Pastor and she was a volunteer coordinator in a hospice.  Our dinner was simple and we enjoyed a nice white wine with it.  Freddi had a great chilled celery and apple soup followed by a small serving of Fettuccine Alfredo and prime rib.  I had a 4 mushroom tart, the pasta and a fine orange roughy dinner.  All was delicious and just enough.  Note the exclusion of dessert.  The day ended shortly after dinner.....

Wednesday, Jan 30 - Day 10 of holiday and Day 8 on board Island Princess

The morning started off as usual with my hot chocolate and some time in the games room.  We then had breakfast up on the Lido deck and enjoyed an omelette and the sun coming in the bow of the ship.  That was followed by a couple of rounds of mini-putt and some chatting with other active golfers.  From there it was a pretty lazy day of cat napping, reading, time in the hot tub and pool and that was about it.  This sedentary lifestyle will take its toll I am certain.

Somewhere through the afternoon my iPad decided it would lose its marbles.  I thought it was because of the humidity but was sadly corrected after it sat in our stateroom for a while and continued to "not work".  I will seek out some help in Panama as that is our next stop.

For dinner we decided to go to Sabitini's as it was a formal night.  Our dinner was served by Goran (from Macedonia) as he had been called to make up for a staff shortage.  His normal restaurant is Bayou.  He made our dinner interesting and arranged for a calamari appetizer, pasta course of ribs and lobster 3 way for me.  Freddi had some grilled veggies, pasta with ribs and enjoyed a chicken and polenta dinner.   Freddi secured her white wine and I ordered a Brunello.  All great. 

On our way back to the stateroom we stopped in to watch another comedian who had been in the business for 25 years.  He was entertaining but less topical that the younger comedian we saw early in the cruise.  That brought our lazy day to an end.