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