Cruises of this sort of duration are all about the port stops and experiences, not about the ship, so for these final two days it was mostly just a chance for us to sit out on the balcony, read our books, have the odd drink or two (maybe more), and enjoy those moments when there’d be not another thing on the horizon in any direction, feeling like you’re the only people on a world of water, rocking from side-to-side and bobbing gently up and down.

Actually, there was far more of that rocking from side-to-side and bobbing up and down than a lot of people aboard liked – not us; we love the motion of the ocean – and that extended to putting the nets across the swimming pools for safety reasons. It’s the only annoyance when the ship hits nice swells like this because we love being in pools when in these conditions but the cruise lines increasingly stop people like us from enjoying it.

For this penultimate post from this Ruby Princess cruise travelogue series I’ll simply post some photos of a couple of events we did actually attend and the meals we had for the final two nights on the ship. People like looking at pictures of cruise ship food.

First up was the ship’s Tug of War competition contested between different teams of crew members aboard the ship. There were deck staff, dining room staff, bridge staff, room stewards, reception staff, bar staff, and others, and due to a little bit of rain and the need to not injure or disadvantage any team members this all took place on an area of the top deck where there was some artificial turf down in place.

It was all good fun and we were pleased to see that the bar staff who’d largely been in Crooner’s throughout this cruise and who we’d got to know very well during this time were ultimately victorious. Even better, a year later on Caribbean Princess we’d run into a lot of the same guys again and it was great to share photos and videos with them and say hello once more.

The second of the events took place on the final night and it was a Flag Parade featuring someone from each of the nations represented on board walking through the piazza to wave their flags and receive applause from the passengers aboard for doing such sterling work. Not the DJ, of course; he was a dick. But everyone else. At the end of the parade everyone was encouraged to come down and have a dance with some of the entertainments staff and no, no we didn’t.

Time to show the dinners we ate across these last two days. As I mentioned, people do like to see pictures of the food and menus on cruise ships and we like taking photos of the food because they add completeness to the cruise memories. People like what they like and those who sneer at these sorts of things are beneath contempt. And just think, if I never took photos of food then I wouldn’t have a picture of oil and vinegar that looks like a Japanese cartoon character.

On the first of the two sea days we dined in Sabatini’s for the second time on this Ruby Princess cruise, having already had a lovely meal on the first of four sea days in a row after our visit to Mexico. We mostly went for different courses this time around and all the food was equally lovely for this return visit to Princess Cruises‘ Italian speciality restaurant. We typically order the same food every time if we hit Crown Grill but there are more options to choose between at Sabatini’s so if we do visit a speciality restaurant on Princess ship twice then it’s most like to be the Italian.

And the final meal on Ruby Princess was the Farewell Dinner. There was nothing particularly special about it but everything was to a high standard as it had generally been throughout the cruise. It’s always sad to know that it’s the last meal aboard the ship, though.

So, a few events to round off this cruise but mostly lazing about for a couple of days, reading and drinking in the sunshine, and catching another American Football game on the Movies Under The Stars big screen out on deck too.

The final post in this series will see us arrive at Fort Lauderdale, Florida – a first visit to this American state for us – where the airboat ride disembarkation tour doesn’t quite go as advertised and there are some not-very-happy passengers around us.

We stepped through the security checkpoint at the exterior of the port and found ourselves face-to-face (well, if we crouched) with a peacock. You could see everyone from our tour group immediately whipping out phones and cameras for this because generally speaking you don’t often find peacocks inside cruise port security zones.

The single peacock, though, was nothing compared to what we saw when we rounded the corner and found ourselves in what we later learned was called the Port Oasis Eco Park. I’ve described it as an aviary in the title of this post but it actually contains more than just birds; it’s simply that we didn’t see anything else during our short but very pleasant walk through the grounds. The park was part of the land given over to the port authority when they were tasked with building cruise ship infrastructure, using this buffer zone for security but also as a wildlife habitat. Falling within the security zone of the port it’s a place that’s therefore only accessible to cruise visitors to Cartagena. In addition to more-than-seventy different species of animals there, you will also find a gift shop, somewhere to eat, and toilets.

A lovely surprising end to our time in Colombia but it really was approaching all-aboard time about now so we didn’t dawdle long and headed through to where Ruby Princess was tied up.

Our usual routine when we get back on board a Princess Cruises ship, thanks to the Ocean Medallion system, is to head to our room then order some drinks and maybe snacks to be delivered so that we can cool off, freshen up, and take advantage of our balcony for some last views of wherever we happen to be or to see the sail away. This was no exception.

The sun, getting lower on the horizon, was both producing some lovely colour changes in the sky and bringing with it a drop in overall temperature, and you could see heavy clouds starting to form in the distance as that humidity in the atmosphere started to to condense. We had a feeling that Cartagena might be in for another night of rain and flooding such as that we’d been told had preceded our visit earlier in the day at the start of our tour.

The skyline of the Bocagrande area of Cartagena looked absolutely stunning in silhouette against the darkening sky. As Ruby Princess slowly made her way out and away from the final port of call on our cruise the quiet of the late evening was occasionally punctuated by small party boats heading out on sunset cruises, music thumping across the still water. We couldn’t complain: the ship’s daily activities had us down to do something similar a little later in the day.

But first, dinner, and a drink or several. The Ruby Princess main dining room menu and the food we selected for the evening are below for your perusal if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

The Ruby Princess equivalent of a sunset party boat cruise was an 80s Deck Party, quite some time after the sun had actually set. Not the first deck party we’d had on this cruise, and only really differentiated from the others by the selection of music performed by the house band and the neon outfits worn by the entertainments crew, but still enjoyable to get out, get some air, and think how much more preferable all of this was to being at home.

The next post in this Ruby Princess 2023 cruise travelogues series will be the penultimate one and the last spent aboard the ship herself as we relax for two sea days on the way to the departure point at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

So we had another sea day effectively, and there had already been a fair few of them which doesn’t make for the most thrilling of updates here. What was new and exciting to share? Not a lot. There was an event right at the end of the night that raised eyebrows (and tempers) so scroll to the bottom for details of that, but otherwise prepare yourself mostly for some photos of the top deck of Ruby Princess.

The morning view from our balcony reminded us of departing Singapore on our very first cruise and being mesmerised by the huge numbers of oil and cargo containers just lined up at anchor. Here at the entrance to the Panama Canal (which we’d be heading through the following day) was a similar sight.

The day’s weather was one of intense periods of rain followed by searing heat that almost immediately dried everything out but surrounded the ship in an invisible cloud of dense humidity, none of which were things my wife wanted to be out in so I left her in the air conditioned interior of the cruise ship after breakfast while I took a quick look around the top deck.

The miniature golf course on Ruby Princess was a huge upgrade to the equivalent spaces we’d seen on other Princess Cruises ships over the years, with those areas more-or-less accurately described as green surfaces with holes in them. Here there were actual obstacles and proper layouts, and if it hadn’t been quite so hot and my wife had been there while I was shooting the photos then I might even have persuaded her to join me for a round.

The sports court area looked like it had also benefitted from the dry dock changes on Ruby Princess that had immediately preceded our cruise.

The afternoon was spent back in our cabin when we needed to cool down or out on the balcony when we wanted to brave the heat and humidity. We make it a point to always try to book these deck 10 balcony cabins on Grand-class ships because of these double-depth, half-covered balconies. The deck below has equally large balconies but the rooms are larger so the balconies there are fully exposed to the elements and have no privacy (not that that’s really an issue), whereas our deck’s balconies offer protection from the sun, rain, and anyone looking down from above (again, not an issue, and I pity anyone looking down on us) while also giving better night views of stars. If the people around turn their balcony lights off, that is. Many don’t. A big annoyance.

In the early evening Ruby Princess started to move away from her anchorage spot near Panama City to a more distant location and the reason for this was so limit the city’s exposure to any noise from the deck party that had suddenly been arranged to make up for the change in cruise plans.

The Ruby Princess deck party featured the resident party band belting out tracks people could sing along and dance to, the staff dancing and encouraging others to join them, everyone having a generally good time, and us loving the ambience but keeping out of the way of most it. It was wonderful to have it all take place in cooler evening temperatures and the almost exclusive use of blue and purple lighting gave the occasion a pleasing look to accompany the happy atmosphere.

For the rest of the evening on the ship it was mostly business as usual with some pre-dinner cocktails, then food in the main dining room – it was Italian Night on Ruby Princess and the dinner menu is below for you to look at – then a little lounge-hopping until hitting the nightclub.

In Skywalkers it was nice to see some of the ship’s officers make an appearance to dance for a few tracks. They were, of course, treated to the DJ’s standard, small selection of music, but as they’d not heard them every night of the cruise they seemed to enjoy themselves before leaving.

Now to that incident I mentioned at the start of this write-up.

A couple of people we’d not seen before were standing by the dance floor when we decided we’d had enough and were going to head off to bed. Just as we were passing them there was a lull in the music volume enough for me to hear the man tell his wife “I wish he’d play some Led Zeppelin.”

“Good luck with that,” I felt compelled to say to him. “He won’t play anything anyone asks for. We’ve tried.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that!” he said, and headed off to the booth. We stood there and spoke to his wife for a couple of minutes on the off-chance that he’d have some success where we hadn’t, then glanced back. What we could see was the man who’d gone to talk to the DJ leaning across and jabbing his finger towards the dick with the discs. The next second the music stopped, the lights came up, and the DJ shouted into his microphone “No, no that’s it! No more! Security!”

The man returned to us. “That guy is a fucking prick!” he said, gestured to his wife, then left.

I headed to the DJ with the intention of smoothing things over. “Hey, I don’t know what was said and I hope you’re okay but I’m sure whatever was said was just in the heat of the moment,” I said. “I won’t take that from anyone,” the DJ said to me. “Someone else threatened me and yesterday someone punched me and they’re being kicked off the ship so I won’t be told what to do!”

I told the DJ I was sorry to hear that, explained what had happened to some bar staff who’d come across by now to see what was happening, then nodded to my wife and we left.

People who say that violence is never the answer haven’t paid attention to history where it’s been shown many times that it’s precisely the answer and is often very effective. No, I don’t advocate passengers hitting staff members, of course, but it was not difficult to guess what had probably led to someone else doing it given the experiences we’d had with this godawful DJ to this point too.

Who says sea days can’t be exciting!?

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series Ruby Princess, with us aboard, will make a full transit of the Panama Canal.

Halloween: a day for horrors. And the day started with one when the captain announced over the speakers that the following day’s stop at Panama City along with all its excursions had been cancelled as there was political unrest in the country that wasn’t considered to be dangerous to foreigners but would likely cause disruption that could have knock-on effects for our subsequent transit through the canal. This was the port of call we’d most been looking forward to as we’d not only booked a great trip to visit local tribespeople, we’d even had to get Yellow Fever vaccinations beforehand. Gutted, of course, but we understood the decision.

That meant we’d be getting another, unplanned sea day on the following day but for this one right now we got over the disappointment and decided to treat the day as we were going to anyway, only now we could stay up later and make more use of the drinks package. There’s always a small upside to these things.

To start with we headed off for a walk around the ship after breakfast and following is a selection of photos of some of the various Halloween decorations put up by passengers on their doors or by the cruise ship’s staff across the various venues.

At Crooner’s they’d prepared a display of Halloween-themed cocktails. By all accounts we were the first people to try some of them (because we’re nosey, and borderline functional alcoholics (well, we’re British, so the same thing)) because as soon as the first ones were delivered to our table the bar staff asked if they could take some photos of us for their corporate marketing or social media or something. People who know us know that we don’t like our photos being used or our faces shown (we have our reasons) but we said yes because the likelihood of anyone seeing the pictures should they be published anywhere or recognising us especially as we wouldn’t be named was ridiculously low.

As I was waiting for one of the drinks to be made I nipped along the deck from Crooner’s just to grab a few more photos of Halloween decorations we’d missed. At the photo centre the guys there switched on a skeleton with flashing eyes so I could take a shot of it, while in the entrance to Club Fusion a giant spider with motion detectors would rise sharply from the ground and let out a screaming roar much to everyone’s amusement.

To the main Halloween events on the Ruby Princess cruise ship then, and if you’re hoping to see photos of me and my wife in our Halloween costumes then you really, really don’t know us at all. However, I will let you see what we wore. I went with a monk’s robe and hood, adding a plague doctor-style mask to it. My wife wore an Alice in Wonderland Queen of Hearts costume. I really wish I’d taken up the hem of my outfit and had it altered to give more room to walk as it proved very awkward to do much more than shuffle, but both costumes proved very popular. On three occasions – one in a lift, which was the funniest – women passengers flinched when they saw me, and two crossed themselves afterwards. My wife, on the other hand, added to the day’s earlier unexpected photography session by the bar staff with additional poses between groups of Asian women on the cruise who wanted shots taken with this sort-of-Disney-queen look, I guess. This happened many times. Several Asian women bowed to her too.

There was some music taking place in the piazza as we passed by but our main source of entertainment to start the evening – and it features in most evenings on a cruise ship for us – was some Halloween trivia. It was one where you need to guess the Halloween-related music based on a small clip and we did pretty average on this.

Then it was back to the piazza for the Halloween Costume Parade. We observed but didn’t take part, primarily because my shuffling through the central hub of the ship while being stared at from three levels was too much for my introverted self to contemplate. I’d often take some photos here then look around to find my wife had been cornered by more Asian cruisers wanting a photo taken with her.

From the parade it was along to Club Fusion and the Halloween Disco, first with music from the resident band, then the DJ. As we tend to get along with and get to know the bar staff quite well when we cruise with Princess – it just happens – it was nice to bump into some here who were dressed up too and it was good to see their own reaction to our costumes.

Knowing we didn’t have to get up super-early any longer because of the Panamanian disruption ashore, we headed to Skywalkers for a bit afterwards and it was lovely to see the place with a few more people in it than normal, even if the absolutely bloody awful DJ was there playing the same old songs he always played without any concern for the passengers.

In the next post in this travelogue series we get another quiet, relaxing day aboard Ruby Princess before a deck party in the evening to make up for us not being able to go ashore in Panama.

If you’ve ever wondered just what there is to do on a cruise ship for four sea days then I hope you’re sitting down and are fully braced for disappointment. What you’ve got to remember is that sea day activities may contain some core elements that you can usually count upon – trivia, dance class, some attempt to persuade you that a good foot massage will reverse the signs of ageing – but they can also spring some surprises so while you could look at what’s presented here and think either “Huh? Is that all?” or “Oh! So that’s what to expect!”, in both cases you’d be wrong. Basically, anything could happen.

Your staff aboard will do their best to entertain the largest amount of people possible, but there’s an added complication in that I’m recounting this cruise on Ruby Princess from my and my wife’s perspectives only. There are things we like to do on relaxing sea days and they don’t often include many scheduled activities. They’re also not that thing if that’s what you’re thinking, you dirty person. We’ve been together way too long now.

We tend to eat, drink, read, take part in quizzes, and swim, although not in that order because our mums always used to warn us about not going swimming after eating and drinking. Photos of books or our blubbery masses floating in the water are not going to appeal to anyone (well, not strictly true, but perverts need to contact me separately for those images), everyone thinks you’re cheating if you use your phone during a quiz, and so that largely just leaves food and drink to make up the bulk of this post; and if you have found this page because you want to see photos of main dining room food on a Princess Cruises ship then you should be adequately satisfied. But we did see and do some things.

On the first day at sea Ruby Princess had angled her course so that our balcony got an awful lot of sunshine on it which we thought would be nice to sit out on, read, and take in the sea views for a while. That wasn’t the case because it was furiously hot there and we’re delicate little flowers. We didn’t last very long before taking ourselves off for an hour in the pool, then after lunch happening upon the end of some artistic fruit-carving that was on display in the Piazza.

In the early part of the evening we watched some more American Football on the movie screen on the top deck, seeing the Bills and Buccaneers compete, with a surprisingly high number of fans of the former team proudly showing their support.

We’d booked Sabatini’s, the Italian speciality restaurant on Princess Cruises ships, and were pleased that despite it being a new menu with all the worry that entails, everything was still very good. We’ve still not forgiven them for getting rid of the superb Grana Padano Fondue, though.

An Italian meal requires a Limoncello shot and so we picked up some of the customary shot glasses that you get to keep when you pay the small charge for this (payable whether you’re on a drinks package or not). We have loads of these glasses already anyway, but we decided it would be nice to see if we could complete the collection of coloured ones we were missing. A great idea if we could have remembered what colours we didn’t already have.

Speciality dining on a Princess ship really fills you up so we made the sensible decision to have a relatively early night for us and spotted some early signs of Halloween decorations appearing outside cabins as we made our way to ours. This cruise took place at the end of October and into the beginning of November.

The outside air temperature was thirty degrees on the second sea day which actually meant it was cooler than the day before and without the direct searing sunshine that had kept us off our balcony then. A chance then for more reading in our own little private sanctuary on the cruise which we also enjoyed with one of the free bottles of wine we’d received (see the previous post about what happened when we got back on board the ship at Cabo if you don’t know why that was) and the sight of some dolphins occasionally keeping the ship company.

During the evening trivia on board Ruby Princess we ended up with a haul of prizes in the form of a bottle of “ship champagne”, Princess-branded notebook, and the much coveted ship-specific coasters. Since this cruise and prior to this write-up the company that manufactured those prizes for Princess went out of business so our quest to get coasters from all the ships has now come to a disappointing end, but we’ve got a few of them and that’s probably more than most people.

The third sea day hit rockier waters, which we like for the feeling but which we don’t like because the ship invariably ends up closing off pools, and particularly the more shallow ones such as the one we tend to use. So no swimming for us on this day.

After a morning trivia win we ended up on fizz for a large part of the day as it was one of the gala nights on the ship. Early in the evening there was the Captain’s Circle event for returning guests, during which one of the bridge officers received a promotion, making it slightly different from usual. More typical, though, was that because we’d become well-known with the bar staff at the nightclub and many of them were on duty for the Captain’s Circle event we got looked after well and ended up with a few of our regular late evening drinks appearing out of nowhere in addition to the general freebies they tend to make up and hand around.

Later in the evening, after dinner, we headed to the top deck for some night views of the largely empty space following a bit of a rain shower. The swimming pools always sparkle at night. Coming back inside we happened upon some music and dancing with many of the entertainments staff in the Piazza.

The evening finished on a bit of a sour note in Skywalkers when I asked the DJ to play some music for us and was simply told “No.” No apology for not having it, no offer of something else, just a no and then he ignored me. And he continued to ignore me when I asked what he had; absolutely blanked me and refused to even acknowledge I was there. And he continued to play his own music which was the same set of tracks he’d played every night to this point, concentrating on mixing tracks and not giving any concern to anyone in the club. This was a shock to be treated like this and it wouldn’t be the last or even worst interaction with this incredibly rude member of staff on this cruise.

The last of the four sea days was the quietest one yet, but there was another NFL game to watch, we caught a movie too, the day featured a swim, there was the usual bit of reading, and another trivia win in the evening. We won quite a few on this cruise.

During dinner we added to our collection of shot glasses, managing to acquire one of each available colour on board through some chatting and swapping with staff members.

In the next post in this Ruby Princess cruise travelogue series we dock at Puntarenas, Costa Rica where we head off on an excursion into the rainforest.

Sea days on cruise ships for us follow a fairly standardised pattern now which involves getting up, taking reading material and camera with us, grabbing some breakfast, then making ourselves comfortable somewhere to give our cabin steward enough time to get our room cleaned. I might head off to take some photos and we might take a peek at any activities going on if they’re nearby and sound sufficiently entertaining. We’ll hit all the trivia quizzes if we can, we’ll swim if the conditions are good enough, and we’ll probably start drinking by mid-afternoon.

One thing that Princess Cruises do on sea days is hold an afternoon tea. It’s free – not the more fancy, paid-for event you can get on other ships – but the variety of savoury and sweet snacks is good and the tea itself is a marked improvement on most of the other hot beverage options on the ship. On this sea day aboard Ruby Princess we were seated at a table of eight with a group of American women.

Something we had been looking forward to on this cruise was getting to watch some American Football games on the main deck. This isn’t something we’d been able to do before as all our other cruises prior to this sailed in the wrong time zone or at the wrong time of the year to enjoy this experience. What was even better on this occasion was that my wife’s team, the Vikings, was taking on San Francisco, of whom there were a lot of fans aboard. And what was even better than that was that the Vikings won.

We decided on this first sea day to treat ourselves to a meal at the Salty Dog gastropub. There was nothing wrong with anything we ate or drank but neither of us were blown away with the food.

To the second sea day now and a source of general entertainment was provided by way of the egg drop challenge in the piazza. The goal of this, if you’re unfamiliar with the event, is to construct an apparatus that will allow an egg to survive a drop from the upper tier of the atrium space, and to get as close as possible to a target below. Some people go for cushioning systems and others try to float the egg down by way of a parachute, and you can usually count on a few disasters.

A general rule on Princess ships is that when you reach Elite status (fifteen cruises or one hundred and fifty days at sea) you must mention that you’re Elite at every opportunity. We’re Elite – see – and one of the perks – if it can really be called that – is a free wine-tasting event on one of the sea days. This took place on this second sea day on Ruby and while these things have wines that vary in quality from terrible to just about sippable, they are often fun if you can sit by people similarly criticising the wine, and that was the case here.

It was formal night on Princess – they’re not a cruise line that clamps down on you and shoves you out of venues if you don’t dress formally (cough, P&O, cough) – so that meant an obligatory Vodka Martini for me, and I did actually don the tuxedo for the night. We’d also booked the Crown Grill for dinner and they never disappoint although this meal was memorable for the clouds of smoke that came billowing into the restaurant towards the end necessitating some windows getting opened to let it all escape outside. Something burning somewhere but none of the staff seemed too concerned so we weren’t either.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at the first port of call and a new one for us, Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, where we head off on an excursion to Todos Santos.