OzKiwiJJ

We've been carrying them for some years now, both a broad spectrum antibiotic plus the ones I need for bronchitis. This is the first time I've had to use any of them though - they've usually ended up getting chucked out when they are past their use by date. Still, it's worth having them. I wish I could get anti-virals as well but you have to test positive to Covid to get those in NSW.

We're only about 120-150kms from there as the crow flies at the moment.

We've moved into the Gulf of St Lawrence, in heavy fog. I'd wondered why we were tracking so far west. I'd expected we would be going down the eastern side of Newfoundland. We've had a fair bit of fog on various parts of the cruise but, so far, we've had very light seas, just 3-4 bouncy bits since we started and they only lasted a few hours.

I had the right antibiotics in my medical kit, plus cough syrup and Panadol, so have managed to avoid going anywhere near the medical centre so far. But from past experience it's going to take me longer than I'd like to recover, damn it! I used to get bronchitis quite a bit in the past but hadn't had it at all in the past 8-9 years. It takes a fairly powerful antibiotic to knock it out. My GP has been good about ensuring I have some when we travel.

We had a similar issue one morning on our Regent cruise last year. We also will not cruise Regent again.

It's 4 sea days, not 5. I wish it was 5 though as I've been battling bronchitis for the last 6 days. I missed all the Iceland ports 😭. I'm just hoping I'll be well enough to go ashore at the Sydney port stop. It will be touch and go!

The regular service in Princess MDRs is usually better than Regent!

Yes, they are currently allowing one bottle per person at all port stops. We have a few interesting wines that we have discovered along the way. Make friends with one of the sommeliers, give them a price limit and see what they come up with. You might be pleasantly surprised. 😊

Not really compared with some of the other teams onboard who regularly get high scores - 17, 18, 19 and even the odd 20. We do OK in regular trivia but not so well in the harder progressive trivia.

I just had a lovely chat with Carole (Sewgood). Our team were sitting next to hers at trivia so swapped papers for marking. She recognised me from the Escape article. It was really lovely to meet her.

Since they moved the cruise dock after an earthquake (it's now at the Hutt Rd end of the wharf) you aren't allowed to walk off.

I think it was officially the second leg as Capetown was considered the first leg. This is based on mini-bar setups - we just received the third one today.

If you're cruising on a Princess US$ ship booked in Australia you pay gratuities whether you have a Plus/Premier fare or not. Note: the US Plus fare is US$60, around AU$90, against the AU Plus fare of AU$65. It works out about the same in AU$ give or take a few dollars.

It certainly does. I'll try to do a summary of the rest of the trip to date in a couple of days time. I caught the cough that was going around the ship just as we arrived at Gran Canaria. Luckily the symptoms didn't ramp up until we were heading back to the ship after our half day excursion. I stayed in the cabin that evening and the whole of the next day and, thank goodness, felt well enough to do our Tangier excursion (wearing a mask) although it knocked me back a bit so I haven't felt like posting much. Luckily I was fully over it by the time we reached Belgium as the last couple of weeks have been full on.

Nah, there is still plenty of room on the current one.

Mocktails are $10.50. There are only a couple listed on the app but I'm sure the bartenders could make other ones. Smoothies aren't listed on the app so I'll have to check at Good Spirits later.

It's exactly half way through the cruise for us. We've collected a lot of fridge magnets!

Small bottles of spring water are $3.50. Small bottles of sparkling mineral water are $4.50 for Perrier or $5.50 for San Pellegrino. Cans of soft drink are $4.00. These are all covered under the Plus package. There is a limit of four bottles of water at a time but no limit for how many you can get in a day. We order some on the app to our cabin and also pick up some when we pass a bar. Larger bottles of water are available but not covered by the Plus package. They are $7.49 for a 1.5 litre bottle of spring water. Let me know if you need any more prices. I'm on Coral Princess at the moment and for another 55 days.

They're serving more than that on Coral now. I had a big bowlful the other night - almost too many cherries. I always ask for the chocolate ice cream which I think goes better with cherries than vanilla. Mind you we have excellent waiter teams at the moment. We're very spoilt.

The Crepes Suzette we had on Cunard in January were delicious but Princess seems to think that a small reheated crepe served in a nondescript sauce is Crepes Suzette. Not!

We've just had the special buffet brunch in the Bordeaux MDR. It runs 10am to 1pm. There was a vast array of foods, even lobster. Sorry no photos as it was total chaos with people getting food and too many other people taking photos and not looking where/what they were doing! I nearly lost my plate of food twice from photographers not knowing/caring who was around them. So I wasn't going to add to the chaos.

Up until the pandemic Carnival Corp was paying around US$50 per quarter in dividends. 😊 It will be interesting to see when/if they resume paying dividends.

They may not have realised you were the same person. At one stage Rolf ended up with a different number for one cruise - it took a couple of phone calls to sort that out.

Our loyalty number is the same on Princess, Carnival, and Cunard. We haven't cruised P&O.

Princess have three new production shows on this cruise. We missed the first one, Disco, as we were too tired that night. However we went to "Do you wanna dance" last night. It was amazing. It showcased the dancers with numbers covering rock and roll, Spanish dancing, some sort of Asian dance, and the most amazing Irish dancing. It was an excellent show and we'll go to it again if we can. We don't know what the third one is yet.