Our first full day on the ship was ahead of us, and it was to be spent all at sea, stopping at no ports. I can’t remember who on the ship we spoke to about this, but someone commented that we chose well when we decided to do this Mexican coast tour with Princess, as we’re allowed a total of three days at sea and three days at port. They had additionally remarked that other cruises might pack in ports of call on every single day of the cruise. So, big tip for this post: make sure to choose a cruise itinerary where there are as many days at sea as there are at port, as the at-sea days really allow you to unwind. And unwind we did!
We started our morning slowly—although we were still on Minnesota time, so we woke up at 7am which was really 9am for us—and made our way to the Skagway Dining Hall, one of three dining halls on the ship. One other concern I had about going on a cruise was having to dine with—gasp!—STRANGERS! I really wasn’t into this at all, as it’s not uncommon for some cruise lines to pack their guests into the halls like cattle in steerage, making you sit wherever there’s space. On Princess, however, they’ve really refined the space-to-people ratio, so we never had a hard time getting a table to ourselves. Additionally, the ambiance of the main dining halls on the Discovery Princess was all quite elegant, and—indeed—their food actually was frequently much better than the disappointing mediocrity we had at the Crown Grill, one of their “specialty” restaurants, just the previous night.
Matt and I elected to have a fruit plate, eggs florentine, and poached eggs on toast. As we enjoyed the breakfast—an elaborate, golden ceiling framing our space, a ceiling affixed with a giant, extravagant chandelier created with countless, shimmering tubes lit in a calming, amber hue, hanging from the ceiling like futuristic stalactites—smartly dressed waiters also circled and hovered to make sure you had a choice of pastry from a large platter while they attended to your coffee, refilling your cup before the bottom could appear.
Following breakfast, we desperately wanted to check out the Enclave, using the spa package that we purchased while exploring the ship on embarkation day. While the spa on the ship has additional services like massages, facials, and, er, acupuncture (for those of us who think that actually does anything), the Enclave is a separate section of the spa that is accessible only by a special key given to you at check-in, and the space is somewhat like a modern day thermae (a Roman bath house, except without the nudity), complete with a hydrotherapy pool, three heated chambers (“saunas,” if you will, but more on that later), heated and tiled lounge chairs, and showers with special settings to control the flow and temperature of the water, including “siberian” and “tropical rain,” among other settings.
Before we could enter the spa, the staff seemed somewhat confused about the package we bought. Once we mentioned Mich and that we purchased something on embarkation day, they suddenly seemed to understand (but it seemed strange nonetheless that they just didn’t know what we were talking about right away). Anyway, we were first led into a separate room for a taste of their massage services. While it was nice to get a quick, one-minute feel of what to expect, they were actually trying aggressively to get us to buy more of their products. And it took some doing to tell them we weren’t interested. It eventually got to the point where I said to the associate, “I’m sorry. I’m confused. How do we do what we came here to do? To do what we paid for?” (Matt similarly felt awkward and was grateful I just got to the point.) The spa associate, while ultimately friendly if not overly and annoyingly persistent, eventually realized she wasn’t going to get more money out of us, surrendered, and led us to the Enclave.
We didn’t really know what to expect in the Enclave (a symptom of all the associates seemingly incapable of providing answers to simple questions), so we came ill prepared. My advice on your first visit: make sure to pack a swimsuit (or just wear your suit to the spa) otherwise you won’t be able to enjoy the showers or the whirlpool. That said, we still made the best of it, stripping to our underwear and modestly covering ourselves with robesthe spa provided as we explored the thermae.
Each of the three heated chambers provided a different experience. I think we first went into the caldarium, an ancient Roman-style heated chamber with enough comfortable space for 8 people or so, steamy and vaguely scented with some kind of aromatic wood, large, cylindrical, stone platforms to sit upright on, anachronistic handheld shower heads affixed to the wall to provide a cooling stream of water to awaken the senses in contrast to the invitingly balmy air. Following the caldarium, I believe we went into the laconia, a dry-heated chamber also inspired by ancient Rome. This actually was our least favorite of the chambers, the lack of steam a deficit in the experience, the stone platforms for sitting unbearably hot, but the air temperature quite uninspiringly tepid. We didn’t really go into this room very much after that.
Our favorite room, however, was the hamman, a Turkish-inspired heated chamber similar to the caldarium. However, instead of raised, cylindrical platforms to sit on as we experienced in the caldarium, there were deep, smooth, stone benches lining the perimeter of the room, comfortably fitting possibly 15 people or so. But my favorite aspect of this room was a raised, stone platform as big as a queen-sized bed tucked away in a darker part of the room. It was my favorite place to visit, lying supine, breathing in the steamy vapors, serenely sweating, calmly meditating, all worries in the world evaporating into a listless cloud, gently blowing away, leaving my mind free and clear. Indeed, we will return to the Enclave over and over again, but next time better prepared to enjoy the therapy pool, showers, and heated tile lounge chairs, which I’ll fill you in more for a later post.
Much of the rest of our day and afternoon was spent exploring the ship and taking things so, so easy. We stopped quickly to grab some coffees at the International Cafe, a “Starbucks” style counter located on the perimeter of the Piazza, the main “grand staircase” area of the ship I described in the last post. The International Cafe also had various juice and vegetable drinks as well as sandwiches and baked goods that we would partake in later on our voyage.
Following coffees, we flitted about the ship, round and round, watching people, grabbing a slice of pizza at Slice by the Sky Deck pool, going back to our cabin to put on swim trunks, returning to the Retreat Bar by the retreat pool (the adult-only pool), where we were curious to do a blind taste test of the two rosé wines the ship had available: one that was simply called Rosé and the other that was much more alluringly called Château d’Esclans ‘Whispering Angel’ Rosé. The angel won the blind taste contest, unsurprisingly: it was lighter in color, brighter, layered in flavors whereas the other rosé was darker, heavier, and one step removed from grape juice. The fact the Whispering Angel was $5 more didn’t matter (at least for Matt and me), since we bought a drinks package that included 15 “free” drinks per day, as long as the price of the drink was under $20.
For lunch we decided to just go to the Marketplace, which is just a buffet-style eatery. My opinions of buffets are so linked to my childhood and how my family spoke of them, referring to buffets, specifically a chain you may remember called Old Country Buffet, as “The Trough”: pay whatever few cents it took to get in; serve yourself mounds of food over and over again using spatulas and serving spoons touched by too many people who probably didn’t wash their hands after using the toilet; giant, metal trays filled with colorless, uninspiring food, beige-tasting mashed potatoes, fried chicken under heat lamps baking to a dried, tasteless suggestion of the genuine article; cubes of red jello reclining lazily in clumps next to a giant ooze of chocolate pudding, shapeless in form like some kind of Doctor Who alien.
While the Marketplace on the ship was markedly better than Old Country Buffet without a single Doctor Who alien in sight, it’s hard for me not to recall these childhood memories to inform all my current and future buffet experiences. So, the Marketplace is fine and functional. Go if you need easy access to whatever food, but it is in the Marketplace where you might find grotesque men eating at the table in only their swim trunks and no shirt or wandering about station to station in a towel, immodest and rude. (These two things really did happen across the visits we made to the Marketplace.) So please don’t be those people, and thank you very much to those self-important men for reaffirming my low opinions of buffets in general.
Our afternoon continued with a game of Bingo in the Vista Lounge in the aft of the ship (an expansive space with a long bar, terraced seating with tables facing a modest dance floor area with a small stage), and our Bingo host worked so hard to provide a light, fun atmosphere, dancing bubblingly to tinny game show music, calling numbers in a sing-songy voice with charmingly adorable lilts, her voice rising and falling melodiously and engagingly: “O72. Ooooh! Seven and… two!”
Following Bingo, we returned to the pool in the very aft, spending some time reclining in the sun. And this moment was one of Matt’s and my favorite moments during the whole cruise… just the two of us reclining in the very back of the ship, nothing but sea around us, the wake of the ship a blue-white trail, impressively and majestically interrupting the expansive sea surrounding us, the sun shining pleasantly and brightly but not blindingly, the wind embracingly invigorating, a special, special moment of absolute happiness, a memory we’ll share forever.
Time flies when enjoying delicate moments suspended in time, relaxing immovably idle, and before we knew it, it was time for dinner. We decided to dress up for the evening, jackets and ties and all. I really highly recommend bringing along fancy clothes to wear throughout your cruise, as it’s super fun to enjoy a meal all dressed up, adding delight to the occasion, parading around the ship to fanciful aplomb as strutting peacocks. And strutted we did to the second of three dining halls on the ship, this time the Ketchikan Dining Hall. We enjoyed shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, duck l’orange, and red snapper. My memory is quite hazy of this meal, writing this so many weeks out, so I don’t really remember this dinner very clearly. But my overall impression of all the dining halls in general is that they can be just as good if not better than the specialty dining restaurants: smart waiters with enchanting accents, diverse and exciting menus making it difficult to decide on any one thing, elegant ambiance.
Following dinner, we made our way to the LGBTQ meetup that happened every night at 7:00 (or 7:30, I can’t remember) in the jazz lounge, Take Five. It was really lovely to connect with a bunch of gays on the ship, including our new friends Sonny and Mike, but I was a little disappointed that there was no LBTQ in the LGBTQ, instead the group turned into a meetup of old, gay queens, Matt and me the youngest in the group despite being in our 40s. These gays felt very much like gays in the mold of retirees living in Florida or California, but many of them had amazing stories to tell of their times in the military in the 70s, for example, the generational divide keenly felt but nonetheless engaging to bridge the gap.
Our packed day continued with attending a show in the main theatre imaginatively called the Princess Theatre. We went to a production called Rock Opera, but we arrived nearly at show time, so seats were difficult to find, sitting way in the front row, stage right, providing sharply angled views of the production. As a part of our package, we were supposed to get priority, reserved seating, but these seats are only marked by special covers on the backs of seats, and are first-come, first-served. So arrive early if you want to actually see the show.
The show itself was, well, fine. It might be hard for me to comment thoroughly since it was hard to see the stage as a talented cast sang and danced to a medley of such memorable numbers by Queen like “Barcelona” and “The Show Must Go On,” and such hits like Bonnie Tyler’s epic, “Turn Around,” the performers dressed in a shimmering palette of shiny silvers and glittering blacks, the lighting exciting and engaging, the sets similarly beaming in similar hues. But at the same time, it occurred to Matt and me that these shows need to cater to a really wide range of audience: for those who have attended experimental theatre off off Broadway in New York to those who don’t even know what a play is. So these shows need to cater to the “least common denominator,” as Matt described it, so that anyone and everyone may enjoy a quick 45-minute, inoffensive, not particularly smart or pioneering or inventive show that isn’t especially good but also isn’t necessarily particularly bad, where there really is nothing to write home about except that the show tastes like nothing you would possibly care to remember.
We finished our evening with a formal night photo shoot (part of our premiere package, me having difficulty shaking the feeling that we were taking photos for our high school prom, but still having a great time doing it all the same); a visit back to the High Five jazz lounge where we enjoyed some more cocktails, the lounge on the ship we came to quickly adore, as it seemed to be tucked away near the Piazza, but passengers were either unaware it was there or didn’t care it was there, so it allowed Matt and me to get some much needed time away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the busier parts of the ship; a quick nighttime snack at the Marketplace (yes, despite all my protestations about buffets, it was a nice feature of the ship to have when feeling peckish during the off hours); and one more visit to the aft pool followed by a harmlessly fun game of ping-pong on the deck of the ship.
All in all, a really, really great day filled with so much to do yet also filled with ample time to lounge and relax and just enjoy moments with a very special person indeed. Our next day aboard will take us ashore to Cabo, our first port of call, where Matt and I will do something quite ridiculous and fun indeed!
Stray tips:
As promised, what follows is a bunch of tips about how to use and enjoy your cabin, much courtesy to Matt who did a lot of research to prepare for this trip. For some reason I thought there’d be a longer list of tips for how to pack and use your room, but I guess this is it for now. I’m sure I’ll think of other things later.
- As soon as you arrive and have your bags delivered to your room, unpack. Get it over with right away. Don’t live out of your suitcase. Space is tight even in more deluxe rooms with a balcony. You’ll feel more organized, and you’ll come back to a cabin that feels like your home away from home. Use the hangers, use the drawers, use the shelves, use every little bit of organizing space to help you feel sane.
- Buy magnetic hooks. All the rooms are magnetic, and you’ll enjoy having the extra hooks to hang up hats, ties, and so on.
- Buy an over-the-door shoe organizer to put things in the pockets like medication, combs and brushes, hair products, and any other little things to help maximize space so that your bathroom countertop doesn’t become a mishmash of bric-a-brac where it’s impossible to find anything.
- I wrote about this in a previous post, but Princess allows you to bid on a room upgrade. We initially had an internal cabin with no windows, but we won a bid on an “obstructed balcony” cabin by bidding an extra $305 per person. I’m so glad we did this, as it was really nice to wake up to the sun and to enjoy views of the sea and the sunsets from our balcony. It’s considered “obstructed” because there was a lifeboat immediately parallel to our balcony, but Matt and I really didn’t care as we could still see the sea and the horizon. We’re also such geeks about big ships that we thought it really cool to be able to study the lifeboat so up close.