June 18, sailing through the Nordfjorden fjord back to the Norwegian Sea, about an hour after leaving Olden.

Scotland and Norway, 2025

June 14th - At Sea

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5:01 AM, up with the sun and ready for a day at sea.

Being a sea day, we didn't have much planned for the day, so we walked around to familiarize ourselves with the ship a bit. I didn't take too many pictures around the ship; there'd be plenty of time for that.

Eventually we ended up on Deck 16 for breakfast in the World Fresh Marketplace, the buffet. And I was overjoyed when I found they had smoked salmon and smoked whitefish there, two of my favorite breakfast items. I couldn't find any bagels (I found out later they kept them under napkins to keep them moist), so I took two of these little rolls to make lox, sliced red onion, and sliced tomato sandwiches (no cream cheese!), and they were so good - except one was really enough. So for most of the remainder of the trip, this is what I had for breakfast, forgoing fat and greasy sausages, salty bacon, creamed gravy on a biscuit (items that pretty much made up all my breakfasts on our March Hawaii cruise), and other unhealthy crap like that. Later I occasionally added or substituted some scrambled eggs and/or baked beans just to change it up, but basically, my breakfasts were simple and sane.

Mei-O and I play ping pong at our athletic club two or three times a week, so we were pleased to find three ping pong tables on Deck 16 between the buffet and the pool. And because our ship was so big, it was really stable and we could actually play without the ball deflecting every which way due to wave motion. (And it was, as you can see, also shielded from the wind.) There were a lot of other players (mostly Chinese, who also play a lot of ping pong at home), so we had to share, but we still got some pretty good sessions in.

At 10:30, we headed down to the Princess Theater to hear a lecture on some of our upcoming ports. This was basically just a marketing gimmick to sell some of Princess's own shore excursions that had not sold out yet, but it also provided some good information about Trondheim and Honningsvåg. And it helped pass the time on this sea day.

The Piazza located on Deck 5 mid-ship was quite often buzzing with activity when we walked by. As we passed by on Deck 7, we could watch a chipping contest going on between the ship's officers and guests. There were many such competitions of different types all during the cruise (putting, ring toss, cornhole, etc.), and a running score was kept (though we seldom paid attention to it). The Piazza would also be where Mei-O and Teresa did a lot of their dancing classes.

As we continued our walk around the ship after the shore excursion lecture, we came across an already in progress napkin folding class which Mei-O and Teresa joined. Here's a look at the finished product.

I don't remember why we stopped at the Guest Services Desk, but we had some issue they could help us with. This gentleman came by as we were standing in line and helped us out. I was quite taken by his name (and he with mine), which prompted this selfie with him. Next     Top