The BobLog, Saturday, January 17th.

Well, this is the last day, things are winding down.  Today we are at sea all day, so it's just activities on the boat, and packing.  The latter is what occupied most of our evening.

Around noon, we went to see how they make ice sculptures.  These two guys carved out these things in slightly under 20 minutes.  Amazing!  Here are some progress shots:





I took the Princess Theatre backstage tour, which showed us the dressing rooms, audio and lighting, and stage equipment.  Here are some shots from that:


(Audio processing and wireless gear, and the lighting and other automation equipment)

Looking up from on stage, there was a lot of lighting:


That night, we had the Last Supper.  Our last dinner with our friends.  Here's Marty, being rather descriptive with his hands:


They served Baked Alaska for dessert, and had quite the presentation.  They turned off all the lights, and then all the waiters marched in with the light of the flaming dessert they were carrying.



We went to see the last show, which was a combination of the comedian and the magician.  Pretty funny stuff!


The hit of the evening was when I was selected as one of four guys to participate in an act.  Yes ladies and gentlemen, the Puffdaddy was on the stage!



No chairs!!!


We sat down on chairs, overlapped each other, then he removed the chairs, and we stayed in position.  He was "supporting" us.  End of the trick!  Thank you, thank you very much!

And that concludes the pictorial part of the BobLog.  We packed the rest of the night, and I took one more look around the ship.  Got to bed just after midnight,

We had to get up REAL early on Sunday morning - 6:30AM.  We both had a bit of a time sleeping.  We ate in the DaVinci dining room for Breakfast, which was the first time we had be in there.  Really looked the same as our normal dining room, except that it had a lot of DaVinci's artwork.  Had a leisurely breakfast, then waited for a few minutes out in the 7th floor lobby.  Oh, we went to find our pictures that were taken by the ship photographers during the one of the evenings at dinner.  They had one huge pile of  pictures to look through, but our pic was right on the top!

When our luggage group was called, we proceeded down to the 5th deck, where the exit was.  There were a TON of people there!  It was a bit slow going there, and also once we got to the mainland.  There was a huge room full of luggage (like the size of a small Wegmans store), but I was able to spot our bags quickly.  There was a man with a cart who collected it for us, and transported it to the bus waiting outside to take us to the airport.

Unfortunately once we arrived at the airport, the assistance stopped.  We were dropped off quite a ways from the US Air terminal, so I rented a cart to transport our baggage.  More lines, but the skycap checked us in, and got us our ticket.  We didn't have too much of a problem at security, except they did search my bag, and they had to check mom's shoes. 

The first flight to Philadelphia was a little bumpy, but not too bad.  We arrived in good time to find that our last leg to Buffalo is delayed by at least 30 minutes.  The plane has not yet arrived, as there was some maintenance they needed to do in Norfolk.  Hopefully we'll be home soon.  Time for some sleep! :-)

Arrived safely in chilly Buffalo.  Had to wait out in the cold for the Days Inn transport to take us to our car.  Warmed up a little in their lobby, then proceeded to take the "scenic" route of RTE 33 back to Rochester.  We stopped at a restaurant close to Batavia to eat dinner (as it was 8PM), and had a good meal at a little diner.  We then headed home.

And thus ends the BobLog.  This was an absolutely wonderful vacation.  Would definitely recommend a cruise such as this one to anyone.

God bless!

Bob