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Friday, February 21, 2014

2013 Royal Princess Christmas Cruise - Day 7 - At Sea

This post is a chapter of my 2013 Royal Princess Christmas Cruise Photo Review.

This cruise review was originally published on Cruise Critic beginning January 3, 2014.  You can read the original review here.

December 28, 2013 - At Sea

Today, we got up early and sat in the pool chairs which are on risers. We were able to watch The Proposal on the movie screen.

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I couldn't get close to the ice carving demonstration, and I never figured out what they were making.



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I'm fairly certain it was that giant family of 23 whose children were playing The Quest. Rachel said they had two family t-shirts made for this cruise. The other looked like a Scrabble board. I'm really hoping that those numbers are for the entire group together which would mean that each of them average about 6.5 days per cruise... perhaps the young ones didn't go on all? The math is funny. Anyway, a day didn't go by when I didn't see this t-shirt.

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In the afternoon, our shares became shaded. We were relaxing and reading on the deck when there was an announcement from the captain that we were approaching storms and should take cover. That's all I needed to hear to get up and take my camera bag under cover. We got burgers and hot dogs from outside but had to take them into Horizon Bistro to eat for lack of tables outside due to everyone taking cover from the rain.

We were sitting at a table inside when a large group of teenagers comes and sits at the table right beside ours. Horizon Bistro was practically empty, and they choose the table right beside us - WHY? Well, one of the boys (clearly their leader) pulls a chair from another table and places it at the end, with its back to our table and completely blocking the way of traffic. "That's not going to work," my dad said, "you're blocking the traffic and the wait staff isn't going to be able to move through here." The boy turns around and says something to us in another language. It was probably dirty. "Oh, that's really funny," Rachel told him. This guy proceeds to carry on conversations loudly in English with his new friends.

Groups of teenagers on cruises are quite typical. There is a group of them (sometimes several groups), anywhere from 5 to 9 teens. They're all loud and obnoxious, but there is one who is more loud and obnoxious than the rest, and he or she is their leader. They follow this person around and laugh at his jokes because he is nice to them and makes them feel good about themselves. And because the leader makes them feel awesome, they think that they are awesome and that everyone cares about what they are saying and thinks that they're really funny. So they talk really loud so that everyone can know what they're saying because everyone cares about what they're saying and wants to be them. And they do disrespectful things like block the staircases and sit down in the elevator and sing as they ride for fun and not to get somewhere because they're really cool and everyone thinks they're hilarious.

I don't know this type of teenager because I used to be one of them. No. Quite the opposite, actually. I was the shy, nerdy teen who would rather hang out with her sister and parents than meet new friends. Or maybe I just really wasn't good at making friends. I remember walking into the teen club once on the second day and realizing that everyone had already separated into cliques on the first day and that I was out of luck. And then our next cruise, I was sure to go to the teen club on the first day, and I still didn't make any friends. Teenage years were very bad for me, but that's okay. Because I don't think many people look back to when they were 17 and say, "Dang, I was awesome. I wish I could redo high school all over again."

After our terrible encounter with the obnoxious teens, the rain had stopped, so Rachel and I managed to squeeze ourselves into a hot tub... which more people managed to squeeze into. The guy beside me was way too close for comfort (like we were shoulder to shoulder... when his arm accidentally grazed my leg, I had had enough). We went back to our room and read on the balcony. Dad came over around 6:00 and told me that he just got some really great photographs of the fountains. That's when I remembered that I never got the long exposure photos I wanted of the blasted fountains.

I assembled my tripod and raced to the top deck.... to catch the very last seconds of the fountain show. Not on camera.

For a while, I was super annoyed. But then I figured that I might as well take some shots while I was up there and had my tripod out. Enough people had seen me with my tripod that I didn't care that they thought I was a complete freak (this is why I never had friends).

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And I'm really glad that I came up there because I had so much fun with the Skywalk.

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Here is Horizon Court set for dinner -

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We packed as much as we could before dinner. Rachel put out her suitcase, but I wasn't quite finished with mine.

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Watermelon and Feta... I really just wanted the Feta

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Princess's Baked Alaska is the best I've seen. They do the parade with cakes that have fake flames and then torch the cake in the kitchen before serving. Angelika said that they used to do real flames for the parade until it became a safety concern.

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Another thing that I love that Princess does - they give you a copy of the log of the cruise. It includes the time arrived and departed from each port, the weather, and more. It's a really unique souvenir.

NEXT: Day 8 - Disembarkation

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