Chris and I hadn’t planned any special off-ship excursions for this our first Port of Call, Newport, Rhode Island, we just hadn’t seen anything that interested us too much when we perused around the different options online before our trip.  But, it turned out to be a God send that we didn’t have anything special planned as I woke up with a stupid migraine–yep, I’m a migraine sufferer, stupid headaches.  Thankfully, I do not get them as frequently now-a-days, and they are not nearly as intense as they were when I was younger…I can thank my ‘friend’ menopause for that.  Regardless, I took some Advil (I refuse to take prescription medication for my headaches–Advil works in a cumulative fashion for me, so I will definitely stick with what works) and went out onto the balcony to see what Newport looked like from a distance because we were anchored off shore. 🙂  Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t a very pretty day in Newport on that day, it was a bit windy and rainy and a smidge foggy–NOT that that bothered me that much, I was just so happy to be where I was in that moment in time; nothing, and I mean nothing, not a threatening hurricane, not a migraine, and certainly not a little rain was going to ruin my good spirits and positive attitude. 🙂  This is what I saw when I walked out onto the balcony…

What a cool schooner huh?! 🙂  I just love looking at old ships like that! 🙂  The next thing I did was to check our little mailbox for our Princess Patter, here is what it had to offer up on this day:

Princess also provides you with a map of the Port that also includes a list of shopping venues. This came tucked in with the Patter…

The day before, Chris had picked up some Excursion information just in case we wanted to sign up for something.  Yes, there was still room on many of the excursions (we are used to needing to book online when going to Alaska, those Excursions can fill up rather quickly).  We normally do take Princess Excursions, that said, we will and did this time venture out on our own as well.

Next up…Breakfast in the Horizon…Yum Yum!!  I chose to go to the Omelet making center on this morning…

It is obvious that I did not worry about my diet during this week—Nope, I truly didn’t—And honestly, that is something that is usually rather prominent on my mind on a daily basis, but, I wasn’t going to allow the thought of gaining a few pounds keep me from indulging in some great food on this cruise.

Before we left the Horizon Court, I stopped by one of their self-serve drink centers and clicked off some pictures of what they offer for free all day, every day.  They have several of these stations set up throughout the Horizon Court and Bistro. 🙂  This is where Chris came every morning with one of our thermos cups to gather hot water, tea bags, and Splenda for my cup of tea.  Bless his heart, he’d always have it back in the Stateroom for me to drink when I woke up every morning.

OH yeah, btw, this was my outfit for the day…And I ended up wearing my red jacket with it, it was quite chilly, windy, and wet in the morning and the weather worsened as the day moved on along. 🙂

We took some more time to walk around the ship and explore, I’ve got so many pictures of the ship and I am planning to share them all with y’all, here are just some…

We headed back to our Stateroom to hang out in there for a bit and here are some of the sights we saw as we looked off of our balcony.

We also had a bit of business to attend to…We needed to fill out our “Disembarkation Questionnaire”–Hated doing that honestly, after-all, we had just embarked on our journey…but, business is business, and Princess runs like a well-oiled machine, they are very organized in just about every aspect. 🙂  For the first time ever, we checked the box to say that we’d be “Walking Off”. 🙂  

Next up, well, guess what? It was time to eat again! YaY! LOL  This time we chose to go to the Italian restaurant that is located right of off the Piazza called Alfredo’s.  Boy oh boy was it ever good!!!! We greatly enjoyed our little pizzas.

Chris got “Pizza Capricciosa”—And he loved it! 

I got Pizza Regal Princess, and I ate every last bite, it was delicious!

They prepare the food right there on site (instead of carrying from one of the other kitchens on board).

And of course, as always, the staff was so cordial and nice. 🙂

Next up, a bit more exploring…

We climbed aboard an elevator and headed on up to 16 to take a look outside from there…

It was just a tad windy…lol…

Then we headed to the very aft of the ship so that we could take some pictures, we passed the Outrigger Bar on our way…Check out the cute fella behind the bar…LOL. 😉 

We took these few pictures while we were fighting the windstorm, it truly was like a wind tunnel back there.

This was Fort Adam’s State Park–It has been in existence since July 4, 1799.  It was named after President John Adams.

We headed back to our Stateroom and had a little bit more business to attend to, we had this Custom’s form and letter waiting for us in our mailbox.  We needed to fill it out and hand it to our Steward (or leave it on the desk for him to retrieve), by that evening.

We then walked out onto our balcony and we noticed that there were several of the Tender boats bobbing around near the ship–it appeared that they were having some trouble navigating back to the ship.  It was quite the show and Princess as always was being extremely careful and they were ever mindful of the people on those Tenders.

The weather was definitely deteriorating as the hours were passing by, here are some of the other sights we saw while watching those Tenders and other boats maneuver through some waters that were getting quite kicked up…

And here is a little video that I took spanning the afternoon into the evening–It took them hours and hours to safely get all of those Tenders back on board.  But, in the end there were no injuries and all was well. Thank goodness…:) 🙂  The Captain came on often and kept us up-t0-date as to the happenings…

And that was our day in Newport, Rhode Island, we spoke to some folks who had been on those Tenders and they said that it was quite the harrowing experience, but, they always felt safe and well cared for. We ended up watching a couple of movies on the tv in our Stateroom and turning in a bit early (a ton of stuff is available on the Regal’s tvs…I’ll put up a little demonstration video that I made in another post–this one is long enough..haha).

As I said in my video up there…”And the saga continues”…Those seas didn’t let up and actually got much worse through the night, but, I will tell you all about that in my next post.  Here is a little sneak peek & link:  Canada & New England: Boston, Massachusetts

Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***

~Arlynn ❤