Tahitian Princess Review part 3

Sunday, September 14- Rarotonga

We booked the Muri Lagoon Tour with Lunch through Princess. The weather wasn’t great when we started off on this excursion. It was windy and cool, and the water was pretty choppy. We arrived at the tender dock at the appointed time and were then transferred in vans to the lagoon. We were told there that the tour didn’t start until 9:30, it was only about 8:45. So we all just stood around and waited until 9:30 when the boats arrived. The snorkel spot was choppy, so only a few people decided to get in. It looked like it would be a nice reef, if it had been nicer weather.

This was the only day that the weather affected any tours. Otherwise the weather was perfect the rest of the time, except a couple of evenings.

After the non-snorkel, they took us to a little motu, where we had the lunch and the coconut and pareo demonstrations. By this time, the sun was out and it turned out to be a nice afternoon. I was hoping to shop after this, but most everything was closed, since it was Sunday. When we first arrived, there was a lady there from Bergman and Sons, and said they were open and had complimentary transportation to their store. When we returned from the tour, we couldn’t find them anywhere.

Talked to Peter at the future cruise desk and booked the Coral Princess Grand Canal trip for next Sept. from San Francisco to Ft Lauderdale.

We joined Carol, Jim, Allison and Kathy tonight at the Sterling Steakhouse for dinner. This was definitely worth the $8 charge. The steaks were wonderful. They had much better flavor than the beef in the dining room. We did attend the comedy show again, which was fairly good.

Monday, September 15- Sea day

This morning I went to the spa and had the “Lime and Ginger salt glow.”
We had received a spa credit, a casino credit, and a bottle of wine from our very wonderful travel agent. After lunch, the nap of the day was in order. We did spend some time reading on our balcony when the pool deck was full. When we came back from our tour on Rarotonga, we went to the pool that afternoon and there was no one there.

The show was the “Anything Goes Night” which was entertaining.

Tuesday, September 16-Raiatea

Here, Steve and I booked our only other Princess excursion. It was the classic sailing excursion. This was great. It was very relaxing. There were only 6 of us the sailboat. It was definitely not a brisk sail, but enjoyable. We sailed up around the coast of Tahaa, opposite of the way the ship would sail in the am.

When we got back to the ship for lunch, we ran in to the gang, and discovered that Allison and Carol wanted to go back to the dock to shop. Steve was ecstatic that he didn’t have to shop. So we left the guys to their napping and checked out the shops at the dock.

I did finally find my pearls at a shop there. I bought some stud earrings and a pendant (actually a slide for my omega). They call them enhancers. Also found some Hinano t-shirts for my sons. That was the bulk of the shopping that I had to do, besides a few things in the ship shop. However I still not found any pareos that I wanted.

We did make sure that we were back for “The Children of Raiatea” show. I did purchase flowers early in the day, for the Island night. This show was really good. Definitely make sure to see this. We went to dinner in our Island night attire, and during dinner it started pouring rain. Chris, the CD announced that the Island night would be postponed until tomorrow night. The entertainment was held in the Cabaret Lounge instead of on deck. We actually didn’t make it to this one. We were too tired.

Wednesday, September 17-Bora Bora

We did get up early to see the Tahaa scenic cruising. You could only see it on the starboard side though. I thought I read that the ship turned and went back. Obviously didn’t this time. This was quite a bit shorter than I expected, only about 30 minutes. If you overslept you would have missed it. We arrived in Bora Bora by 11:00 am. We tendered in about 11:30 to see what was what.

We did not book any excursions for this port. We decided that we would see what we felt like doing. The main thing was parasailing. When we got to the dock, we found out that it was completely booked for the whole day and a half. People must have booked in advance with top dive. There were two other ships there also, the Clipper Odyssey and the Paul Gauguin.

We wanted to snorkel, so we signed up with TopExcursions for a 1pm trip, but then they didn’t have enough people to go so she had us go with another group, with a different company. So there were 12 of us on a huge boat for the afternoon. The cost was only $35 for 3 hours. We went to a deep area where there were sharks, then to the stingray area, then another spot to snorkel. It was really a nice afternoon. The Crabbychessies joined us on this trip.

The Island night was held, but was sprinkling on the folks dancing on deck. We joined our CC friends at Sabatini’s for dinner. This was a tremendous amount of food. We were silly enough to ask if they would bring us some crab legs from the dining room, so we wouldn’t miss them. The service was great. We haven’t decided if we would do this again. It was just too much food. My favorite was the ice cream dessert.

Thursday September 18-Bora Bora

We had signed up the previous day for the shark feeding trip at 9:30. This ended up being similar to the previous day’s trip, but at $55 though TopExcursions. The shark feeding was interesting. The sting ray spot was very choppy and deeper than the day before, so it was harder to see them. The snorkel spot was a shallow coral garden which I did not go. Steve said it was good, but very shallow in spots.

We ended up relaxing the rest of the afternoon, in preparation for the 2nd formal night. This was the lobster and Baked Alaska night. The lobster was actually pretty good.
We ventured to the casino for awhile before retiring.