From the Sea to French Quarter Festival

Our last day at sea was pretty uneventful. The thought of no more towel animals on our bed every night or the 24 hour ice cream machine and pizza parlor made us a little sad. Greg put in a few more hours of sun time to even out his tan while I just napped and ate a little more.


Mongolian grill!!


We also explored the areas we haven't even been to on the ship, like the mini golf course,


and the water slide,



We still didn't manage to locate the gym. To be honest, we didn't look that hard.

At dinner our servers sang their version of "leaving on a jet plane (ship)" to us. We exchanged information with our dinner mates Timothy and Renasha. They were a lot of fun.

Our cabin guy left a seal tonight. Greg thought it looked something else...


When we woke up the next morning, the ship had already docked in New Orleans. Since we didn't have a lot of stuff we opted not to put our luggage out last night to be checked straight through. Immigration was smooth and since we didn't have to wait for our luggage we were in the French Quarter ready for the festival before 11AM.

It was actually the last day of the French Quarter festival. How lucky were we! There was live music everywhere in the quarter, but mostly concentrated in the Old US Mint, Jackson Square and along the water front.











It was a hot day. The solution: strawberry snowball with condensed milk!


Aftermath of the snowball.


Live latin band + crawfish boil = awesomeness! By the way, the big box of crawfish was only 8 bucks. For 25 bucks you can get the family size which came in an aluminum pan that you normally oven roast a turkey in. Can't lie I was very tempted.


Sugar, sugar, sugar!!!!


At the end of the day and before night fall, we made our way to Congo Square and Louie Armstrong park located on the north edge of the quarter. The square was where slaves gathered and played music. It is the birth place of jazz. It was a very serene little square with a giant oak tree hovering over it.





The Louie Armstrong Park has a canal that snaked around it. There are little bridges and bronze sculptures all through out the park. A few people were on the green lawn enjoying the sun.





We were told the park and square were not safe after dark. It is really sad to me that people would commit crimes in a such historically significant part of the city and in a park that honors the guy who wrote the song "It's a Wonderful World". Oh, the irony.

It was time for dinner. At Old Coffee Pot restaurant Greg ordered the Fleur De Lis Chicken which was a dish featured on the Food Channel. It consisted of a chicken breast paired with crabmeat and Louisiana crawfish stuffing topped with Buerre Blanc with Andouille sweet potato hash and green bean casserole.



I ordered a Crawfish Étouffée which had Louisiana crawfish tails, Creole tomato, onion, bell pepper, and celery shimmered and seasoned with Cajun spices and thickened with a roux served with white rice. I could've licked the bowl clean.



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Location:Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans

Finally, Hola Mexico

Cozumel, Mexico was our last port call on this cruise. We were again not too ambitious and took our time getting off the ship. The pier we docked at was full of shops and restaurants. Almost felt like we didn't even need to leave it to have access to everything.




But we did anyways. When we made it to the street people shouted at us for tours and scooter rentals, but they weren't as persistent or annoying as the hustlers in Jamaica. A friend recommended to us a beach park called Chankanaab. We caught a taxi for $10 USD (for 1 to 4 passengers) for the five minute ride to the park.




The standard entrance fee was $21 USD. For extra $2 USD, you can get a souvenir T-shirt and free drink or extra $27 for a 30 minute massage.
The park is a beach resort with different sea animal shows but to swim with the dolphins was extra.




We caught the sea lion show. They were cute and impressive, good for a few giggles.




We hit the beach after the show. The sand wasn't as white and soft and the water wasn't as calm or blue as the 7 Mile Beach in Grand Cayman but we could snorkel right off the beach. There were reefs, a lot of fishes, even a statue and tombstone.




We ordered lunch (pollo tacos, of course) and drinks right from our beach chairs.




On our way out of the park, we walk through its lagoon and the archeological garden. With everyone on the beach the garden was deserted, which was a shame. The path was full of tropical greenery, Mayan artifact replicas, and a small waterfall with three turtles just hanging out.




















I was a little disappointed that we had no time to check out rest of Cozumel. We picked up a few sample tequilas from the pier duty free shop which had to be checked when we re-broad the ship. They will be returned to us the night before we disembark.

The ship left the dock promptly at 5PM and we started our 7 hours of non-stop eating. Sushi bar first, followed by the dinner buffet, then our actual dinner (with dessert) and finished with a Mexican buffet at midnight!!! In between we took a break to watch a comedy show and 6 lap walk on the jogging track.

Can someone tell me what in the world this thing is?




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Location:Cozumel, Mexico

Day 2 at Sea

After breakfast we hung out on our balcony instead of fighting for a deck chair on the sun deck. It also kept me out of reaching distance of the yogurt/ice cream machine. I think it worked out well!




But of course we couldn't sit still for too long. We decided to join the trivia games by the casino. We did pretty bad. Who knew the most popular cat name in America is "Kitty" (our guess was Chairman Meow). We faired a bit better in movie trivia and got 17 out of 22 correct.
After another gut busting lunch, we headed to the sun deck. We were surprised we didn't have to fight for a chair, so more vegging around.
The best part of a sea day is always dinner. I had sushi to start. The tuna seaweed salad roll was very tasty and different.




I ordered Indian Vegetarian for dinner. The spinach paneer, curry and chutney were surprisingly delicious and very authentic. It even came with fried papad and yogurt.








Our cabin crew left this creature. We think it was a rabbit in a rather compromising position.




Tomorrow is a shore day in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We have no excursion planned, just going to wing it.
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Location:Gulf of Mexico

Day 1 at Sea

The major difference between travel and vacation is I can sleep in until whenever I want and still make it in time for breakfast. We headed to dining room and were sat at a long table by the window with three other couples. Half way through, I really noticed the familiar mid-west accent from the couple next to us. Turns out they were from Detroit. Being originally from Windsor, across the Detroit River, that accent was especially endearing to us.

The couple was very sweet, but almost predictably American. They like to drive six hours to vacation at their cottage up north and thought there was no need to travel anywhere else since America has everything in her back yard. I agreed partially that America is a very diverse country with unique and interesting culture from coast to coast. But you just can't get Ethiopia in Idaho or Vietnam in Texas. The husband then went on to say we should explore "our country" more. I nodded and said "in our case, our neighbour's country.". He laughed and said "we are the same."

We finished our breakfast at this point and said see you around to our American friends. It was time to get some much needed sun.

We made our way to the top deck and walked around twice looking for free deck chairs. But I guess there were disadvantages of waking up late. People were very protective of their deck chairs. We finally found a couple of chairs, the relaxation was on!






There are always photographers running around taking photos as you walk by. These photos then are posted in the photo gallery for purchase. We browsed through them looking for the really funny ones. But I must admit most were very cheesy, especially the ones with the fake backgrounds. Why didn't people just go to a Sears portrait studio.



The sunset on the ocean was again a pretty sight that I never get sick of.


Today's dinner was LOBSTER! I could've had two (which my husband did). I wanted to save room for desert. Our dinner conversation with our dinner mates Timothy and Reneesia mostly involved food and weird food. Reneesia and I bonded over the fact that heads of crawfish, fish and lobster were the best part and most tasty of the animal. The husbands were not impressed.


After dinner we went to see the adult only comedy shows. We were joined by a couple from Alabama. They were very seasoned cruisers with 16 cruises under their belt. They even recognized a few of the staff. They are going on an Alaskan cruise in September with an overnight stop in Vancouver. We gave them some tips of must sees and generously bought Greg really really big Foster beers.

It was a beautiful night on the ocean and I was again hungry after the comedy shows. Thank God for the 24 hour pizzeria and late night grill. We ended up grabbing popcorn (and fries) and watched Dances with Wolves on the pool deck.


Time for bed. Our cabin server left this on our bed. I had no idea what sort of animal this was suppose to be...


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Location:Gulf of Mexico

Carnival Easter

Today was our big Carnival cruise day! We slept in and took our time checking out of the hotel. We decided to drop off the luggage at the Carnival terminal first. The taxi there was again a flat rate of $7 per person. The drop off was a bit chaotic. It took us awhile to figure out we needed to grab hold of the men in flower Hawaiian shirt to check in our bags.

We didn't want to check in and board to the ship already. Instead we headed back to Bourbon street for the Easter parade and lunch.

Easter parade starts at Canal and Bourbon street so we picked a restaurant with a good street view for lunch and people watching, Le Bayou. For appies, it was Boudin Balls. It was a lot of different things like pork, shrimp, cheese etc. rolled into a ball form and fried. It was pretty tasty. But what isn't when it is in a ball form and fried.



Since i can't have raw oyster, we had them cooked: Charcoal oyster ya-ya. They weren't as good as the raw ones.




For the main, we shared the Taste of New Orleans which consisted a sample of three cajun food signature dishes: Gumbo, Étouffée, and Jambalaya. Étouffée was my favourite.



The Easter parade started as soon as we finished our meal. We headed onto the street to watch it and maybe catch some beads.

I think New Orleans is single handedly keeping China alive. I can't believe how crazy people got over 50 cent plastic necklaces and trinkets.









We scrolled back to the terminal around 2PM to embark on our 7 day fun in the sun. As we boarded, we were given a card that served as our room key and on board credit card with our dining info. It was very handy, but also potentially very expensive.


Lobby of the Carnival Conquest.


Beautiful sunset.


Towel Easter bunny with chocolates.



First cruise dinner: sweet and sour shrimp with noodles.


Lava cake with vanilla ice cream. Yummy!


I have a feeling future posts are going to be full of food photos. Our tables mates were a couple of grandparents from Lafayette, two hour drive from New Orleans. They looked way too young to be grandparents.

After dinner, we finished off the night with going to the Welcome Aboard show at the main theatre. The opening song and dance was very cheesy and felt like they were shoving "fun" down my throat. They brought on a couple of comedians for a preview of their upcoming shows on the ship. They were pretty entertaining.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day to get some sun, catch up on some reading and of course, more eating.

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Location:New Orleans