June 20, at sea in the morning and at Gibraltar for the afternoon and evening.
I've never given any thought to what's at Gibraltar besides The Rock and its apes, other than I once saw a tv show about how difficult the airport is for pilots due to crosswinds and a major road that crosses the middle of the runway. Now I've seen that runway, and seen planes land and take off, and I plan to never fly into Gibraltar. Past the runway is what appears to be an isthmus connecting the area around the rock to the Spanish mainland. The coastline curves around in a huge bay. There's a lot of ship and boat traffic in the bay, and there's about to be more. A ship docked next to us carrying at least a dozen gleaming new pleasure boats. They were in the cabin cruiser to small yacht size range. By afternoon, it had off-loaded its cargo and sailed away. I didn't see where the pleasure boats went.
I didn't go ashore because to get off the dock area is about a mile hike, and there weren't any excursions that would accommodate my wheels. Even to get to the buses was over a quarter mile, and I really didn't want to try that without the walker. But the weather was really lovely, so I enjoyed the view and the sunshine on the open deck. I talked to one woman who came back from a tour most disappointed, so I figure I didn't miss much except a look at the famous Barbary Apes (actually tailless monkeys) about 60 of which still live there and, by legend, keep it a British territory. Mark took a tour that went to some WWII tunnels.
I did win at trivia this afternoon, but only because just 6 of us showed up, so we played as a single team. We had fun with some fiendish questions like "How many flowers are on one side of an Oreo cookie?" (no fair peeking).and "What is the second-most widely spoken language in the world?" I then decided to splurge at the spa with a pedicure today and a manicure tomorrow.
Since Mark's tour was a late one, we had a nice quiet dinner without the rest of the group. However, after dinner, we went up on the Sports Deck to get a good spot to watch the big, loud, Latin-themed Sail Away Party that began about 10:30 p.m. and met the group there. There was supposed to be a big fountain and light show on the Lido Deck. The previous night it didn't happen because of some problem with a pump. Last night it happened, but was somewhat less than spectacular. After that, I went back to the cabin and watched us actually sail through the Straits of Gibraltar. As we turned eastward, I could see lights on the coast of Africa, and sea gulls swooping past the ship's lights made white shadows in the night against the faint silhouette of The Rock. It was really neat.
June 21, Malaga, Spain. I had originally planned to go ashore here, but when I found out that the process would involve at least two and maybe three shuttle buses just to get from the ship off the pier area and to town, I decided to give that experience a miss. After a late breakfast, Mark and I spent the morning at the back of Lido Deck with the best view of the city. Mark wrote postcards, and I chatted with a couple from the Hill Country of Texas. The weather was pleasant, temperature-wise, but there was a heavy mist, almost a fog, that obscured much of the view from our port side.
This afternoon Mark and I were invited to tour the Bridge! Mark has been on bridge tours before, but I hadn't, and this _is_ a maiden voyage, after all, so we were reasonably excited about the prospect. It was a great tour with only 8 of us passengers. This ship, brand new as she is, is totally state of the art, and the tiniest joy-stick on the bridge is the one that steers the ship when the computer isn't doing it. There is redundancy upon redundancy upon back-up upon back-up for every system. Every zone of the ship has all services needed in an emergency like a galley, water, vacuum system for toilets, etc. No Carnival debacles for this ship! They had the bell from the original Royal Princess which was christened by Princess Diana in 1984, and which my mother and I sailed on in the mid-1990s. That will eventually be displayed in a case downstairs in the public area. It was a really neat tour.
Right after that I went off to get a manicure before formal night. While I was gone, Mark received a lovely arrangement of roses and other flowers in honor of this being his 50th cruise on Princess. We figure that is why we've been getting a number of extra little perks all along. It certainly wasn't because we have so many days on Princess, as the winners in that category are a couple with over 2,000 days, and together Marl and I have about 600. Formal night began with the Captain's Circle cocktail party where we met up with Janet, Roy, Mike and Jeff. Next came dinner, followed by a very high energy show by a group reprising the Beatles and their music ... just the right thing for the demographic on board. A fun end to a good day.
June 22, at sea. It's the last day of the last cruise. A quiet day getting organized and packing. Mark and I had a nice lunch in the dining room with the couple I met yesterday morning and two men from Toronto. Lots of lively conversation. I plan to go to Trivia with our group one last time, then, of course, our final dinner.
It's been an excellent trip, even though I had various health problems. But this time I am looking forward to being home again. See y'all next cruise!
(The answers to the above trivia items are 12 and French.)
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