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For this cruise Princess will be holding onto our passports.
We always make sure both Barbara and I have Wi-Fi on every cruise. We purchased the Princess Plus upgrade as it comes with one device Wi-Fi connection for each of us. Princess Plus also includes the gratuities for the crew and a Drinks Package of up to fifteen $15 alcoholic or specialty coffee drinks per day for each of us (way more than we could ever consume). The Princess Plus upgrade costs only a little more than buying the Wi-Fi package and paying for the gratuities separately, so we figure we might as well purchase the Princess Plus upgrade and get a free Drinks Package thrown in for just a little more.
Princess Plus also has a Princess Premier upgrage that is not work it for us. It offers a few more benefits that we really don't need and costs way more than the Princess Plus upgrade. One thing it offers is 4 devices connect to Wi-Fi per person rather than just 1 device per person. When cruising, we are able to connect as many devices to the Wi-Fi as we want without paying extra. Windows has a built in "hotspot" features that allows my computer to be turned into a virtual hotspot. While in our cabin, I turn that on, and I'm able to connect my mobile phone to that and Barbara can connect her Chromebook to that. If I needed to, I could connect several more devices to it.
My wife, Barbara, as her one allowed Wi-Fi device provided free with the Princess Plus upgrade is her mobile phone. When we leave our cabin, I really don't like switching back and forth between my notebook computer and my mobile phone as my one free allowed Wi-Fi device. Instead, Barbara turns on "bluetooth tethering" on her mobile phone so that I can connect my mobile phone to it via Bluetooth and remain connected to the internet for free when we are outside the range of my Windows notebook computer mobile hotspot! In that way, we are just fine with the free 2 Wi-Fi device connections provided free with the Princess Plus upgrade.
Meat, any type of meat, especially BBQ meat, is extremely popular in Argentina. We rarely ever eat red meat, but since that is the most popular dish in Argentina, we ate plenty of it since we arrived in Buenos Aires. Especiall at the 6 course meal at "The Argentine Experience" last night. So today we decided to lighten up a bit. We didn't eat anything all day but had an early dinner at the buffet on the Lido Deck about 5:30 PM. We filled our plates with the many hot and cold vegetable dishes offered, including a couple of Indian dishes. Beyond a few small cubes of cooked chicken in one of the cold salads, there was no meat in our meal. The amount of different selections and the quality of the salad bar was quite good.
Above are views from the Lido Deck of the shipyard where we were docked and the Buenos Aires skyline. The actual passenger terminal where we were supposed to have boarded our ship was heavily damaged by a recent storm. So we could not board our ship at the passenger terminal. Instead we still had to go to the passenger terminal to have our luggage screened and then had to bussed a few miles away to where we boarded our ship at a freight shipyard. It was quite an ordeal just getting onto the ship.
Usually on most cruises of a month long duration there will be 2 or 3 different wine or spirit events. Often the exact same events will be repeated a second time, which most people will not attend if they already attended the exact same event previously. But on this cruise, Princess is offering a DOZEN different wine or spirit events just for the first half of this cruise! We have another group of passengers joining us for the second half of this cruise and I have no doubt they will probably repeat all 12 events again for a total of 24 wine or spirit events!
Those wine and spirit events are shown above. We weren't much interested in the big wine dinner events, but we did sign up for the following wine & spirit events (Prices are Per Person and in US Dollars):
After new passengers board on March 18th, we may give a though to signing up for some of the other wine or spirit events if they repeat them on the second half of this cruise.
Included in our Princess Plus upgrade are up to 15 alcoholic drinks per day for each of us (way more than we could ever drink in a day!) so long as each drink is $15 or under. As you can see from the above wine list, Princess has raised the price of wine by the glass such that NONE of the named brand wines are at or under that $15 limit. I could just pay the difference, but I wanted to see the quality of the wines by the glass that are included in my Princess Plus upgrade. So instead I just order the generic house Malbec listed at $10. Later at a different bar I ordered the generic house Red Blend listed at $12. Both were acceptable. Nothing to write home about, but at least they have some red wines that are included in our Princess Plus upgrade. Most cocktails and beers are well within the limits of our Princess Plus upgrade, but we aren't big on either cocktails or beer. We like mostly wine or just straight spirits neat or on the rocks. The rare times I'll order a beer, I like IPAs, but neither of the IPAs they offer are to my liking. One is Lagunitas IPA which I think is one of the worst IPAs in the world. The other is a "grapefruit" IPA and I hate any beer that has a lot of citrus taste. So no IPAs for me on this cruise!
I went to the Vines Wine Bar which is right off "The Piazza" where we had found a table to listen to the live jazz band. I ordered a glass of the "Raymond 'R Collection' Cabernet Sauvignon" from California which at $12 per glass was within the Princess Plus upgrade $15 limit. Unfortunately, the bartender told me that was the only wine in the entire list that he did not have in stock. Instead I ordered a glass of the Babic Black Label Pinot Noir from Marlborough, New Zealand, which at $15 per glass was still within the Premier Plus upgrade. The bartender poured me a glass of the Pinot Noir. However, when I looked at the label, I saw that it was a 2021 Sea Sun California Pinot Noir from Fairfield, California. It was still a Pinot Noir, but from an entirely different continent! I guess the Vino Wine Bar server doesn't know one brand, or even one wine growing region, from another! It was a good Pinot Noir, maybe even better than the New Zealand one would have been. But if I hadn't looked at the bottle, I would have assumed he was serving me the Pinot Noir from New Zealand.
As you can see from the above there is a lot of live music entertainment on this ship, which is one of the main reasons we love cruising on Princess. I just looked at the schedule from tomorrow and there will also be live music from about 5pm until midnight or so, even in many different venues simultaneously. I hope it is like this for the rest of the cruise. Gavin Burke, the piano and vocal entertainer, really got the crowd going with many sing-alongs.
At this bar I tried to order a Dewar's 12 Year Scotch which at $15 per shot was within my Princess Plus upgrade free drink limit. Again, unfortunately, the server said they don't have the "12 Year", just the regular Dewar's, which isn't even on the spirits list! I have a feeling that their wine and spirit lists are not up to date and it is going to be like this for much of the cruise. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother to put wine and spirit lists out on the tables if their inventory doesn't match what they are listing. I went ahead and got the regular Dewar's Scotch on the rocks and it was pretty good anyway.
That was it for us! It had been a long day with little sleep the prior night. We went back to our cabin and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow around 11 pm. However, still being a bit jet lagged, I have been waking up about 4am every morning. I usually just get up and do a little computer work like I'm doing right now, and then head back to bed for a few more hours sleep. But I do have to get up about 9:30am as we have ordered breakfast to be delivered to our cabin at 10am and they do sometimes show up as much as 30 minutes early. Till tomorrow when I'll be posting more photos and commentary of this cruise...
Click on each photo on this page for a larger and clearer image or click on the first photo for a slide show.
If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
Please include the web address (URL) of the report in which you found the error. Thank you! Send your email to:
