Sunday, March 17, 2019 ~ New Orleans, Louisiana

May 20, 2019 deladane Leave a comment

And just like that, our Western Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Dream came to an end. Gary provided an early wake up call for us at 7am when he started making announcements that we had docked but they were not ready to start debarkation yet. When I peaked out the window, I could see that we were indeed docked back in New Orleans, with a view of the bridge.

One last photo of our towel animal gang!

We got dressed and finished packing up our belongings, making sure to check every shelf, drawer, and closet for anything left behind. At 7:30am, Gary made another announcement that Deck 12 was cleared for self-assist debarkation, and he cleared one more deck at a time every 10 minutes or so. We were on Deck 1, so had we opted to do self-assist debarkation, it would have been a slow process to wait our turn!

We had to be out of the cabin by 8:30am, which was the same time they stopped seating people at the MDR for breakfast. We made sure to leave the cabin by 8:15am to allow a few minutes to wait for an elevator so we wouldn’t have to carry our rolling carry on bags up two flights of stairs. We always try to eat breakfast in the MDR on the last morning of our cruises because the Lido buffet is such a madhouse with people and luggage everywhere and rarely any tables available. This cruise may have been different because I think many more people did the self-assist debarkation to get back to their cars in the garage and start their long drives home, but I wasn’t curious enough to go upstairs to find out for sure! When we arrived at the hostess stand, there was no wait and hardly any one else eating in the dining room. I’m not sure if people had already finished eating and left before we arrived, or if it just never got crowded to begin with, but either way, the hostess walked us to a booth towards the back of the room, with space to leave our bags nearby. This was our first time eating a regular breakfast in the MDR during this cruise (brunch has a different menu on sea days). There were a few options on the menu that looked good, so I was glad we had a chance to try it out.

Short Stack Pancakes

Broken Egg Sandwich (this was REALLY good!)

Vanilla French Toast and a side of Corned Beef Hash for DH

We finished breakfast by a little after 9am. The FTTF instructions said to meet in the mid-ship MDR by 8:15am (I think?), so we knew we weren’t going to arrive that early since that’s when we were first leaving our cabin to head to breakfast. We figured we would just go there now, and if they had stopped providing priority debarkation already, so be it. Of course, it’s no easy feat to get from the aft MDR on Deck 3 to the mid-ship MDR on Deck 3 because the galley sits between them and blocks your path. There happened to be an empty elevator waiting with the doors open when we left breakfast, so we were lazy and rode it down one deck so we could walk all the way forward on deck 2. When we got back up to the lobby, there were hundreds of people on a huge line that wound all the way around the spiral staircase, the lobby bar, and back towards guest services. I left DH on that line with our bags and I made my way over to the MDR to ask about where we should go for FTTF debarkation. The guy there said that they had already opened up debarkation to the higher luggage tag numbers, so we could just wait in line and get off with everyone else. Good thing I left DH on line! The line moved surprisingly fast, and DH was already close to the exit by the time I got back to him.

We did one final scan of our sea pass cards, stepped off the ship onto the bridge walkway, and frowned knowing that we were officially done with our cruise. It was a slow process to walk down the zig-zagging walkway, back into the port terminal, down the escalator, down another hallway, and finally into the room with all the checked luggage. We had followed the crowds ahead of us to this point, but then realized that we were led into the section with higher luggage tag numbers, so we asked an employee to point us towards where our zone was. I wish I took a photo of it, but our big blue suitcase looked so lonely with only two or three other bags around it. Part of me was relieved because it just occurred to me that someone could have taken our suitcase by mistake, and they’d be long gone by the time we got there to realize it!

Luggage in tow, we quickly passed through customs and immigration (the guy barely glanced at our passports and waved us on our way), and out to the sidewalk where we had been dropped off by our Uber driver just one short week earlier. We were jealous seeing the handful of people lined up and waiting for their turn to board the Dream for the next cruise. By now, it was around 9:30am, and our flight home didn’t leave until 4:30pm, so we had a few hours to spare. Before the cruise, I did some research about places we could store our luggage for a few hours. The Port of New Orleans offers a luggage storage service that will transport your luggage to the airport, and you pick it up whenever you arrive at the airport. That idea sounded interesting, but they were charging $40 for our 3 bags, so I wanted to find a better option.

The Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel offers a luggage storage service, charging $2 per bag (any size), and it is even available to non-hotel guests! That was such a great bargain compared to the $40 that the port was charging! It wasn’t a big deal to take our own bags to the airport because we’d be using Uber and could easily fit our bags in the trunk, so the luggage transport part of it wasn’t necessary. The one issue was that we would have to get our bags from the port to the Hilton, which was about a half-mile away. We considered getting an Uber, but decided against it when we saw the massive amount of cars coming and going. It would have taken a long time for an Uber to get to the port, find us in the crowds of thousands of people, and then drive us over to the Hilton in all of that traffic, and we knew we could walk faster than that. Unfortunately, the area back there is not exactly pedestrian-friendly. There were sections with no sidewalk, and even no shoulder, so cars were driving by very close to us, plus we had 3 rolling suitcases with us so it’s not like we could move out of the way quickly. Luckily, there was enough traffic that the cars were moving slowly, and about halfway through our walk, we were directed up to another street that did have a sidewalk. The walk took us about 20 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad.

After we dropped off our bags with the porter at the Hilton, we doubled back to walk back towards where we started for our next activity: Mardi Gras World! A few weeks before the cruise, I saw a Groupon for discounted tickets to tour Mardi Gras World and thought it would be the perfect way to spend a few hours before going to the airport. The Groupon was good for any day in a 4 month window, so had it been very rainy during our days before the cruise, we could have used it then as an indoor activity. Mardi Gras World is located in a warehouse right next door to the cruise port, so it was very convenient! Had we checked our luggage at the port, we would have had about a 5 minute walk to Mardi Gras World, but now that we were at the Hilton, we were one mile away. We walked back along the road that goes in front of the two cruise terminals, so we had to pass all the people still getting of the Dream and the NCL Breakaway, but at least we didn’t have luggage in tow this time!

Finally, at 10:25am, we spotted this:

We actually had perfect timing because tours started every 30 minutes, so we were just on time for the 10:30am tour! I presented our two Groupon vouchers to the sales clerk, and she handed us each a strand of beads and said to wait by the theater entrance. They have a gift shop where you can browse the souvenirs if you have a wait before your tour starts. While I was getting us checked in, DH found this stuffed alligator puppet to play with haha

At 10:30, a guide named Meredith gathered us up and led us into the theater. There were only 10 people on the tour with us, but the theater had seats for at least 50 people so I guess sometimes they have large crowds or tour groups. Meredith said that first, we would watch a 15-minute video about the history of Mardi Gras, and how the floats and parades originated. It was really interesting to learn about it and I really had no idea about most of that information so I learned a lot!

When the video ended, Meredith explained the tradition behind a King Cake, and then handed out pieces of the cake for us to sample. Too bad I was still stuffed from my yummy breakfast on the Dream so I only tasted a bite of it and gave the rest to DH. As Meredith led us back out into the gift shop to start the rest of the tour, the sales clerk made an announcement for the people on the 11am tour to line up near the theater entrance. There was a huge group of elementary school-aged children lining up for that tour (Meredith said they were visiting New Orleans on a school trip), so we were really happy we made it in time for the 10:30am tour and only had 10 of us in our group and that we did not have to be on a tour with all of those kids!!

Meredith explained that there are 20 full time employees who work on all aspects of creating the Mardi Gras floats, all year long. They start working on the theme and creative ideas for next year’s parades right after Mardi Gras ends, and then a team of designers draws renderings of each float. The bigger features on the float are either made with Styrofoam and then covered in paper mache, or they are made with fiberglass. Meredith showed us these two examples of how you can identify the material used: Styrofoam pieces are always mounted on wood palates like the face with the flower crown, whereas fiberglass features are free-standing like the lion.

This is Meredith explaining how the big features on the floats can be repaired and reconfigured for parades year after year. They may keep the head and bust, but decorate it with a different hat or shirt depending on the theme.

Next, we entered a huge warehouse where all the features on the floats are created. Today was a Sunday, so I was surprised to see people working today. Apparently there was a big music festival the following weekend which would bring lots of traffic to the area and make it hard for these employees to get to the warehouse. Instead of dealing with that, they chose to flex their work days and come in today instead when it wasn’t so busy.

This lady is applying paper mache to the Styrofoam ape. When she finishes, a different team of people will paint it.

This queen was used in a parade that happened while it was raining so her paint washed off. Someone will need to touch-up that peeled paint before she can be used again in another parade. Also, note the wood palates underneath this statue- the base material was Styrofoam.

This warehouse was huge, and set up like a maze so there are lots of sections for people to work on different pieces.

Sorry for the slightly blurry photos… we were not allowed to use flash photography because it might distract the workers. Just look at the scale of the painter and this giant statue that is twice his height!

This was used on a float the year that Kiss performed in one of the parades

As we continued walking, the room opened up to an enormous space where they housed all of the floats. They were all lined up, one next to the other, being stored in a climate-controlled facility until next years parades. Meredith explained that the floats are all rented by the different krewes and each krewe has a different theme that they tend to use year after year, like flowers on these floats….

This float has a theme of musical instruments…

A pirate float

Next, we went outside to look at something in a different building. This photo is looking back towards the warehouse that we just walked through. It was really huge! You can see the bridge in the background, which is the same bridge next to where the Dream was docked on the other side.

Meredith took us into another building which was designed to be used for formal events, and I think it was also used as a casino, but then the city of New Orleans made it illegal to gamble on land, so the building stopped being used when they had to move the gambling out to boats on the river. Everything in these photos is manmade, even the trees and the stones in the walkway, and is located inside of a warehouse… it was all very impressive! They keep the lights dim so it feels like nighttime, so again I apologize for the quality of these photos as I could not use a flash.

The tour lasted about 2 hours, and at the end, we were allowed to stay in the warehouse as long as we wanted to walk around and look at all the floats. There were hundreds of statues and floats, so it was a lot to take in. We greatly enjoyed our time at Mardi Gras World, and thought it was the perfect activity for after the cruise and before a late flight home. Here are a few last photos as we walked back towards the exit after the tour.

When we got back outside, there were tons of cars and delivery trucks trying to get to the 2 cruise ships. This photo was taken at 12:45pm, so definitely plan to arrive early if you want to beat the traffic before your cruise from New Orleans!

Going no where fast!

I really wished I was getting back on the Dream right now instead of heading to the airport

We still had an hour or two before we needed to go to the airport, so we walked back to the Riverwalk Marketplace. Earlier this morning when we were walking to the Hilton, I really wanted to walk through the Marketplace with our luggage because it would have been easier than walking on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, I could not find an elevator (or even an escalator), and there was no chance we were going to climb all these stairs with 3 heavy suitcases! Now that we were empty-handed, we had no trouble walking up these stairs to access the Marketplace.

This walkway provided a great view of the Dream and all the activity loading supplies and luggage on the ship.

We thought they were going to put this giant crate through the hole in the ship to offload new supplies. The crane kept moving the crate up and down and couldn’t get it to line up to the hole. We finally figured out that they don’t need to fit the crate through the hole (which was good because it was barely too big to fit!), and the crew on the ship just unloaded the crate while it dangled in the air, and then the crane lowered the empty crate back to the ground.

One last photo of the Dream before we officially said goodbye…

As we kept walking, we got a great view of the NCL Breakaway docked behind the Dream.

We walked around the mall for a few minutes, with one destination in mind: Café du Monde! There is a smaller location of the famous café located inside the Riverside Marketplace, and it tends to have shorter lines as compared to the original location in the French Quarter. I still wasn’t hungry (wow, that breakfast in the MDR was very filling!), but I couldn’t resist the chance to eat just one beignet.

There were a lot of people on line when we arrived, but it moved quickly and took exactly 20 minutes from the time we got on line to the time we received and paid for our food.

They have a small seating area, but the turnover is fast enough that there was always at least one table available while we were waiting in line.

There are big windows into the kitchen area so you can watch them prepare the beignets while you wait in line

Look at all those little beignets bobbing in the pool of oil!

They have a full menu with lots of drink options in addition to the beignets

We got one order of beignets to share (they only sell them in sets of 3), and DH got a coffee.

Just look at all of that sugary powdery goodness!!

We found an empty table and tried our best not to get any powdered sugar on our clothes. I wish I took a photo of the floor… it was coated in a thin layer of sugar, and even though there were a few employees walking around and trying to clean up the tables as people left, they were fighting a losing battle against that messy sugar haha The last time I had a beignet was when I visited New Orleans for a conference for work in 2010, and they were just as delicious as I remembered!

By the time we finished eating, it was 1:45pm and we were kind of ready to wrap things up and head to the airport. We originally planned to walk around the French Quarter a little longer, but we were tired and decided to skip it. We walked through the food court in the mall looking for something we could buy to bring to the airport to eat for a late lunch, but none of the options looked like they would travel well. I used Google Maps to search the area for a better option, and saw that there was a Subway sandwich shop located across the street from the convention center just a few blocks away. Thanks to the construction on Convention Center Boulevard, it was a little tricky to get there, but we eventually found a place we could cross the street and get our sandwiches. It was very crowded when we arrived, and when we tried to order our sandwich, they said they only had the plain Italian bread available. I’ve never been to a Subway before when they only had one kind of bread! No biggie, we ordered our sandwiches to-go, and walked back to the Hilton to retrieve our luggage from the porters.

Another huge advantage to checking our bags here instead of at the cruise port was that it was really easy for an Uber to pick us up. Had the Uber needed to pick us up near the port, it would have taken forever to get through all the traffic of people being dropped off for their cruise, so it was much easier to direct the Uber to the front entrance of the Hilton where there was space for him to pull over and load our luggage in the circular driveway.

The Uber driver picked us up within minutes of submitting the request, and it took about 30 minutes to drive to the airport. There was virtually no line to check our bag, and luckily it weighed in at 48 pounds so no need to shift things around in the airport. There was a small line at security, but it moved fast and we had plenty of time to spare anyway so it wouldn’t be a big deal if we did have a long wait. We found seats near our gate and waited for an hour until it was time to board the plane. At the last minute, they changed us to a different gate on the other side of the terminal, so everyone marched down the hallway like a parade to reach the new gate.

The first thing I did when I got to my seat on the plane was to look at the airplane safety information pamphlet. I think this is the first time I have ever looked at it, but I just wanted to make sure that we were not on a 737-Max plane! Of course, by now, President Trump had announced he was grounding all 737-Maxs so it was highly unlikely that this was that style of plane, but I needed to double check for my own sanity.

While I was looking through the pamphlets in the seat back in front of me, I took a look at the drinks menu. Today was our lucky day… literally! It was St. Patrick’s Day and Southwest was offering free drinks on all flights today! They do this for random holidays throughout the year, but it was surprising that they picked this holiday as it fell on a Sunday which is a popular travel day. In the past, I have seen them pick Valentine’s Day and Halloween because they fell on random days mid-week when there were fewer people flying, so we were excited that they happened to pick today for the free drinks.

The flight attendants made no announcements or mentions of the free drinks, so I think they were hoping people wouldn’t notice as that would make way more work for them haha Luckily, DH and I have a radar to detect free drinks in any situation so they couldn’t hide this from us! In fact, we were able to order a second round later in the flight and that was free too!! Southwest really knows how to lessen the sadness of the last day of vacation.

The flight was nearly 5 hours long, but the time passed quickly as I spent the whole time sorting through photos on my iPad. We also had some beautiful views as we flew over the Rockies.

Our plane landed on time at around 7pm California time, so it was just in time for a beautiful sunset over the Bay.

Of course, our long day of travel wasn’t over just yet. After collecting our checked bag, we called the shuttle to bring us back to the off-site parking lot to get my car, and then had a one hour drive to get home. By the time we walked in the door, it was 11pm New Orleans time and we were exhausted after waking up at 7am to Gary’s announcements. We dropped our suitcases in the living room, unpacked just the essentials, and got ready for bed as we both had to wake up early on Monday to return to work.

Step Tracker Daily Total: 15,769 steps; 6.37 miles; 4 flights of stairs

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Saturday, March 16, 2019 ~ Fun Day at Sea

May 12, 2019 deladane Leave a comment

What is it about cruises that seem to make time move faster than regular days at home? Somehow it was already the last full day of our cruise and we were sailing back towards New Orleans. This is usually the time in my vacation when all of the action-packed port days and physically exerting excursions catch up with me, and all I want to do is plant my butt on a lounge chair, write in my trip journal, and eat (after all, I won’t have the excuse that “vacation calories don’t count” after the vacation is over!). Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’ll suddenly adjust to sleeping late, so I was wake around 7am. I quietly got dressed and tip-toed out of the cabin so I wouldn’t wake DH, and I found these fliers in our mailbox. The first was about the debarkation information, but it was a general form for all passengers on board. We were supposed to get a different form specific to FTTF but it wasn’t delivered until later this afternoon.

My first stop today was up to the Serenity Deck to stake out my claim on a lounge chair. It was around 7:40am by the time I got up there, but it was almost completely deserted and I had my pick of wherever I wanted to sit.

It was a little cloudy this morning, and also a little chilly, but the water was pretty smooth.

No need to worry about being a chair hog at this early hour, so I dropped off my tote bag on one of the clamshells, then headed down towards the Lido buffet to get a quick breakfast. On my way down, I caught the end of a beautiful sunrise!

Blue Iguana had just opened so I could have gotten a breakfast burrito, but I decided to change it up and see what other options were available.

In the end, I sampled a little bit of everything in the carbs department…

Unfortunately, most of these items were a let down. They were either stale, soggy, or a combination of both! The round cinnamon pastry was the best of the bunch (but I already knew it was something I liked because I tried it earlier in the cruise too). I will also say that the hard boiled egg was surprisingly good… it was still so hot that I was burning my fingertips as I tried to peel it (that is NOT a complaint, by the way!), but the shell peeled off easily in one big piece, and the yolk came out as one solid ball. I hate when the yolk crumbles and it’s hard to remove it, but the crew member in charge of boiling eggs has mastered the skill and I was pleasantly surprised.

I still had a few minutes before I needed to get back to my clamshell to be within the 40 minute limit, so I walked around taking some more photos of the ship. It was now a little after 8am, and there were still plenty of lounge chairs available at the aft pool.

The clouds broke up and it was turning into a beautiful morning at sea

hmm, or maybe not… lots of clouds out in the other direction!

The lounge chairs around the main Lido pool were filling in, but there were still plenty available at 8:10am.

Back up on Serenity Deck, I set up camp on one of the half-clam shells and spent about an hour jotting down notes in my trip journal. In that time, maybe 2 or 3 other couples came by and sat for a bit, but it was almost completely empty for most of the time.

At around 9am, I remembered that we could pick up luggage tags in the Ocean Plaza. Yesterday, I had stopped by at Guest Services to ask how the luggage tags were distributed for FTTF and they told me that we would get zone 2 tags. Based on the information on the debarkation flyer, that meant we would be called to leave the ship around 8:30am. DH and I had a few things planned for tomorrow, but we didn’t really need to be the first ones off the ship, and 8:30am was a bit too early for us. I was originally planning to just let our luggage sit in the collection room with the zone 2 tags, and we’d get it when we got there, but then it occurred to me that I could also go get a higher zone number. When I got downstairs, there were about 20 people on line ahead of me to pick up luggage tags, but the line moved fast and I had my pick of nearly any zone I wanted when I reached the front of the line (I think the zone 5 tags were already gone, but there were still tons of tags for all the other zones.)

I was getting a little hungry again since I didn’t eat much for breakfast, so after I took my luggage tags, I went back to the pizza place for a Quattro Formaggi pizza. Yes, it was 9:20am, but people eat cold pizza for breakfast all the time, so why can’t I eat hot pizza?! As I expected, there wasn’t anyone else on line when I arrived, and they didn’t have any pizzas pre-made and sitting there waiting to be taken, so they needed to make one fresh for me. The guy said it would take about 5 minutes. This was the photo I showed on the first sea day, but I’ll show it here again too since this was actually when I took it…

I took my pizza to-go and went back upstairs to Serenity Deck. When I got there, DH was sitting on one of the bigger clamshells and he had moved my bags so we wouldn’t hog 2 spots. By now, it was getting very windy and quite a bit colder, so the clamshell was helpful to block some of the wind, but we also needed to get towels to use as blankets. While DH was sitting there, he noticed the crew member walked around and put stickers on the chairs around him that had belongings on them.

Sure enough, at 9:55am, that same crew member came back and gathered up the belongings from our neighboring clamshell. We thanked him for taking care of that because even though it was not crowded due to the cold and the wind, the rules still remain that you can only reserve a chair for 40 minutes and people need to be more respectful of that. On other cruise lines, the staff is reluctant to enforce policies like that, so it was great to see that Carnival actually enforced their policies.

I stayed up there until around 11am when I just couldn’t tolerate the wind anymore. By now, I assumed Jennifer would have finished cleaning our cabin, so I left DH reading his book in the clamshell and I went back downstairs to start the grueling task of packing. On the bright side, this was only a 7-day cruise, so we didn’t have nearly as many things to pack up as we did on our last few cruises, but it still has to get done and it still eats away at time I should be out enjoying the ship. When I got back to the cabin, this little guy was hanging around, waiting to greet us…

I took him down and added him to our windowsill collection…

I spent about an hour putting a big dent in the packing process, then decided to take a break and find something to eat. I had been craving another lunch at Pasta Bella, so I went up there at around 12:15pm and OMG! It was crazy crowded! The hostess said it would take about 40 minutes to get my dish, and I immediately wished that I had this idea 30 minutes ago so I could have been there right when they opened at noon, and not now at the tail end of the initial rush. Oh well, I had my trip journal with me so I found a table, filled out my request paper, and passed the time by writing in my journal. Exactly 40 minutes later, a waiter came over with my pasta bowl, and it was totally worth the wait!

By the time I finished, it was a few minutes after 1pm, so I took a little walk around the ship to see what else was happening. It looked like the Hairy Chest Contest was in full swing at the Lido pool. I also didn’t see any vacant lounge chairs, so I guess you need to claim your spot before lunch if you want to spend time out here.

I went back upstairs to Serenity to find DH, and we went back downstairs to the cabin so he could pack up some of his stuff. At around 2pm, I remembered that I wanted to try the Mongolian Wok one last time since I only had it once on embarkation day. Yes, I fully acknowledge that I ate something every hour or two throughout the day, but I tried to keep the portions small to maximize how many venues I got to experience around the ship. It would be a shame to miss out on anything! Haha

I got to the line at Mongolian Wok at 2:10pm, knowing that there would be a line, but wanting to make sure I was served prior to their 2:30pm closing time. The line reached back to the doors from the elevator bank. While I waited on line, DH went around to the other line and came back to say that it was equally long. I wish they had a better system for the Mongolian Wok because this line moved incredibly slowly. Part of the problem was that nearly everyone on line ahead of me was making two bowls (one for the person in line, and one for someone else who was not physically standing there). This meant the line was twice as long as it seemed, and it took 45 minutes from when I got on line to when my food was ready. There is only one guy cooking on each side, and he cooks 3 woks at a time, so it is just a very slow process. At 2:30pm, one of the crew members stood at the end of the line with a sign saying “buffet closed”, so as long as you are in the line by 2:30pm, you will be served, even if you don’t get your food until long after the printed closing time.

It was fun that they had calamari as the seafood option today instead of shrimp, so I asked for that and the guy was extremely generous when he scooped it out of the bowl. I have a feeling not many people ordered it and since I was one of the last bowls he was cooking, he probably wanted to use it up. I also ordered my dish to be cooked with soy sauce instead of one of the 3 sauces on the menu, and that was no problem at all for him.

Although I didn’t love waiting in line this long, I must admit the food is always really yummy!

Unfortunately, this whole process took way longer than I was anticipating and I had to miss the Q and A session with Gary. I usually like going to those sessions because I like hearing about what it’s like to work on a cruise ship, and the cruise directors are usually entertaining and funny, but it just wasn’t meant to be today. The next event I wanted to attend was trivia about the TV show Friends in the Ocean Plaza at 3:15pm. DH isn’t a big fan of Friends, but I have seen every episode multiple times and wanted to put my knowledge to the test. The questions were very fair, and definitely the kinds of things you’d only know if you watch the show, so that meant I was completely on my own as DH had no clue about any of the questions haha In the end, I got 16 out of 20 correct, and I was kicking myself over the ones I missed because I knew them immediately when they announced the answers. There ended up being a tie with 2 people both getting all 20 questions correct, so they brought both those people up to the front of the room for a tie breaker. They had to take turns saying the name of a TV show (past or current were both okay), and the first person to not think of a reply or to repeat something already said lost. I think one of them was nervous standing up there because he only answered 2 TV show names and the other woman was announced the winner. DH and I could go back and forth for an hour listing TV shows, so I have a feeling that guy probably just got nervous in the moment.

Trivia ended at 3:45pm, just in time for us to walk down the hall to the Caliente Night Club for karaoke at 4pm. It seemed a little weird that they had karaoke in the middle of the afternoon, but there were no other activities that interested us at this time, and DH had yet to sing for karaoke, so this was our chance. It was already pretty crowded by the time we arrived (not sure if all these people were camped out here all afternoon in anticipation of karaoke, or if they were just ahead of us in the crowd leaving Ocean Plaza after trivia?), but we managed to find 2 seats together towards the back of the room.

When we first arrived, it was 3:50pm and DH approached the host to make his song request. The host said he wasn’t ready yet and he would make an announcement when it was time to come back up. DH was sitting at the edge of his seat, ready to go as soon as that announcement was made, so he ended up being the third person in line. That was a really good thing because there were about 50 people who ran up to request songs, and the host had to cut off any requests after that because we’d be here all night at that rate!

DH rocked out on air guitar while singing Sweet Child o’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses

Three or four songs later, they had a technical malfunction and the host had to call in help from a technician. It took them about 20 minutes to get things up and running again, and lots of people gave up and left at that time, so DH was really happy he got to sing before the machine broke. They did eventually fix it and we stuck around to listen to a few more people perform. Karaoke is always a fun time, and even if the person singing doesn’t necessarily have the greatest voice, it’s still fun to cheer them on.

While we were watching karaoke, I needed to check in for our flight home tomorrow. Luckily, the signal in the Caliente Nightclub was really good, so I was able to type in my information into the Southwest app, and DH’s information into the Southwest website, and I was ready to go the second it hit 24 hours prior to our flight. I ended up getting B-17 for me and B-30 for DH, so that was impressive considering those are the kinds of boarding numbers we get when we check in right on time at home too.

We stayed at karaoke until 5:30pm, but then we knew it was time to go because we wanted to get changed before dinner and we still had to finish packing. The debarkation flyer said our luggage had to be placed outside of our cabin before 11pm, so we wanted to do it before dinner. Otherwise we would need to interrupt our evening activities to return to the cabin and finish packing, and that’s not how we wanted to spend our last night on the ship! It wasn’t too hard to finish packing our big bag because we maxed out our weight limit before the bag was full haha That meant that everything else had to fit into our rolling carry on bags or backpacks, and if not, we could always rearrange as needed when we got to the airport tomorrow. It’s always a sad moment when you put your suitcase in the hallway…

At 6pm, we headed upstairs for our last dinner in the MDR. All week, I had been searching the menus for escargot but it had yet to make an appearance. I hoped it would show up tonight on the last night of the cruise, but it did not. That was a bit disappointing to me because I love ordering escargots on cruises and I know it is offered on other Carnival cruises, but for some reason, it was not offered on our cruise. Maybe it has something to do with New Orleans??

DH and I both ordered the baked onion soup appetizer. It was almost comical to compare this to the one DH had in the steakhouse on Sunday! You know the piece of bread/crouton they put in the bowl? It was literally a slice of sandwich bread, with the crust still on it! They folded the bread in half, then in half again, and crammed it into the little bowl before adding broth and cheese. Neither of us had any onions at all! We just had to laugh…

We ordered the BBQ Chicken flat bread to share, but we both loved it so much that we probably should have gotten our own!

I ordered the Penne, Shrimp, and Bacon dish for my entrée. DH had the Prime Rib, and I probably should have gone for that too just because it’s a fancier dish and we rarely eat steak at home, but I wasn’t in the mood for meat. DH said his Prime Rib was good, as was my pasta dish.

Dessert Menu… There were no cake options tonight aside from the Baked Alaska (which is ice cream, not really cake), so I wonder if today is the pastry chef’s day off?

I’m not a huge fan of Baked Alaska because I try to avoid ice cream (stupid lactose intolerance!), so I ordered the Carnival Melting Chocolate Cake with no ice cream (as I always order it, much to my waiter’s confusion haha) When my dessert arrived, it had the ice cream included, which isn’t a big deal because it is self-contained in its own ramekin, and DH doesn’t mind taking one for the team and eating it on his own so we don’t waste the food.

Just as I was about to start eating, our wait staff came over with a cake and to sing Happy Birthday to me! My birthday is not until the week after the cruise, but that was nice of them to acknowledge it on the last night. I just wish I had known because I did not need two heavy chocolate desserts at the same time and I wouldn’t have ordered the WCMC! The birthday cake was more of a fudgey mouse than a cake, and it was really good, so we ended up taking it back to the cabin to snack on later tonight. Luckily this plate was small enough to fit in our fridge!

After a quick stop at the cabin to drop off the cake, we went up to the Encore! Theatre for the Lip Sync Battle main event. Apparently they had multiple lip sync competitions that lead up to this event throughout the week, but I have no idea when or where those occurred because I never saw it! Haha We didn’t spent much time out by the Lido pool, so I have a hunch they did some events out there. This was the only show in the theatre tonight and it was at 7:30pm, so it’s a good thing we had a speedy wait staff in the MDR or we would have missed it.

The show is modeled after the Lip Sync Battle TV show on Paramount Network. They had two contestants and each performed two lip sync songs, the second of which included dancers from the production shows. The contestants get to dress up in crazy costumes and they really got into it.

Here is Gary explaining the rules, while one of the guys from the entertainment team displays the winner’s belt.

The two contestants were called on stage so Gary could introduce them

I forgot to write down which songs they sang, but I have a feeling they are heavily coached by the singers and dancers on board because the songs were all big crowd pleasers that everyone was familiar with. They had a little intermission after each contestant finished their first song, and they invited up children from the kids club to sing and dance on stage. I think they had practiced with each age group and this was like their final recital. After that, the lip sync contestants returned for round two, and this was when they went all out.

The first lady did a good job of getting the crowd pumped up, and she really owned the stage.

The second contestant “sang” Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. This guy was incredible! He’s a recently retried police officer, but wow did he have some great dance moves! The whole crowd was laughing and cheering him on, and you could tell he was having such a fun time up on stage.

And then, this happened:

The dancers helped him strip off the black shirt and pants, and they put on that wig, and bam! Nothing like a macho guy dressed in drag to get the crowd on their feet!

There was no question as to who should win this battle, but Gary still gave us a few minutes to think it over while he performed a lip sync routine with the dancers to a medley of 80’s songs.

I think the assistant from the entertainment team also did a medley, maybe to 70’s songs? I don’t remember and I forgot to take a photo to jog my memory. Anyway, after that, they brought the two main contestants back on stage for the final judging. By a deafening round of applause, the guy was announced the winner!

The lady did try hard and she was a good sport about it, but that guy just won everyone over. They awarded him to winner’s belt…

The show lasted about 45 minutes, but when it ended, there was a big gap in the activities schedule. Kudos Strings was performing in the lobby, but they were just about to finish their set, and the only other two options were country music with Machine Company or country music with the BlackJack Duo. Hey, wait a minute! I know what we can do now… I need to redeem my past guest coupon for a free cocktail! Carnival thought I would forget to use it, but I’ll prove them wrong! The coupon says it is good for a drink up to $9 in value, but I must say that is quite challenging because nearly every cocktail on the ship costs more than that, even if it’s just by a few cents. I stopped by the piano bar because it was empty since Zack didn’t start his set yet, and that meant the bartenders were sitting around just waiting for someone to order a drink. I asked the bartender if I could use the coupon towards a drink that costs more than $9 and I would just pay the difference, and he said that was fine. I looked through the menu and decided to order the Music, Sweet Music, with Bacardi Rum, Malibu Coconut Rum, Disaronno Amaretto, pineapple juice and orange juice.

When the bartender handed me the bill, it came out to zero dollars. I am not sure if he did something special to make that happen, or if the coupon really does work on more expensive drinks, but either way, I was happy. I would have paid the 50 cents (plus tip) difference, but I guess that was not necessary.

Just something to keep in mind for people sailing on cruises out of New Orleans… Once you re-enter the Mississippi River, they do start charging tax again. I asked about that at guest services and they told me that I would need to pay tax on this drink if I ordered it after we re-entered US water space, and he estimated that to be around 10pm tonight. I made sure to get my drink much earlier than that at about 8:30pm, just to be safe, but that means these “free” drink coupons for New Orleans-based cruises are extremely limited on the hours when the drink really will be free!

Cocktail in hand, we went over to The Song lounge to listen to BlackJack Duo. Neither of us really listens to country music, but there was nothing else to do at this time and we wanted to stay close to the Burgundy Lounge for the 9:30pm comedy show, so since this was right next door, it just made sense. The duo were pretty good, and there were two or three couples dancing on the small dance floor, so it made for an entertaining way to pass the time, even if we didn’t know any of the songs!

At 9:15pm, we went next door to get seats for the comedy show. Tonight’s adult show was with the forth comedian on our sailing, Caroline Picard. She is from the south, so I think she is a good fit for this cruise ship. She did a whole set about her experiences traveling the country as a comedian, and she had the whole room laughing. I especially enjoyed the part about her time in a blizzard in Michigan when all of the locals were unphased and came out to see her show despite the weather.

When that ended, we popped back into the piano bar for a few last songs with Zack. It wasn’t very crowded in there tonight, so maybe people were back in their cabins packing their luggage and going to sleep early?

We were both getting hungry again around 11pm, so we went upstairs to the deli for a late night snack. I ordered the meatball sandwich again, and it was just as good as when I had it for lunch yesterday!

We sat at a table by the windows, and it was so weird to see lights outside! We must have already entered the Mississippi River so we were seeing lights from the little towns and buildings along the shore, but that was so rare as I was used to seeing nothing but darkness on that last night of the cruise when returning to ports in Florida. On our way back to the cabin, we noticed that the casino was still open and there were lots of people taking advantage of it being legal to gamble on the Mississippi River. We got back to the cabin around 11:30pm and called it a night, knowing that the debarkation announcements would start bright an early tomorrow morning and we wanted to get a good night’s sleep before that!

Step Tracker Daily Total: 10,110 steps; 4.12 miles; 27 flights of stairs

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Friday, March 15, 2019 ~ Cozumel, Mexico

May 9, 2019 deladane Leave a comment

For our last few cruises, the idea has started to cross my mind that I want to try scuba diving. We did an underwater helmet walk in Moorea in 2017, and the perspective from being several feet under water let me see so much more than snorkeling and looking down from the surface above. When we booked this cruise, I knew this was the time to take to make it happen. Cozumel is the biggest of the 4 ports we visited, so there were tons of vendors to choose from, and I liked that this would be our last port, making our first scuba diving experience the grand finale of our cruise. We are not certified scuba divers, but luckily that isn’t a problem because there are discover scuba diving courses offered by many vendors where they teach you everything you need to know in the first 30-60 minutes of the tour, and then they closely supervise you during the dive. To be honest, as excited as I was about this experience, I was also a bit nervous and scared so I liked that I would be supervised by a certified guide just to make sure everything went safely.

I read a ton of reviews on Trip Advisor and Googled the websites of a bunch of different companies, trying to find one with the best fit for us. In the end, we booked with CozumelH2O for a 2 tank dive from their boat. I liked the idea of diving straight from the boat because that meant I wouldn’t have to carry the heavy tanks across the beach, and as soon as we dropped down into the water, we would be right at the reef (as opposed to having to swim to the reef from a beach). I was originally only going to book a one tank dive, just in case we didn’t like scuba diving or had some kind of problems that we needed to stop early, but they only offered a 1 tank dive if going from the shore, and I really wanted to go from a boat so that meant we had to do 2 tanks. Go big or go home, right? I emailed back and forth with CozumelH2O to ask them tons of questions, and they were always quick to reply and help me feel less anxious about the experience. We paid a deposit of $20 USD per person via paypal and we were all set for our tour. Here is a description of the tour from the CozumelH2O website:

Always wondered how it is to breath underwater, but you’re not scuba certified and not sure if you want to get certified? Or you are a snorkeler and just want to try it once? No problem! The Cozumel Discover Scuba Experience is a great introduction to scuba diving. Our professional dive instructors will teach you the basic theory, basic skills and safety rules you will need to know for a safe first dive, this will take around 45 minutes. After that it’s time for the fun part… your first dive to a maximum 40 ft.

The Discover Scuba Experience is a one or 2 tank dive. We do this course in the ocean where it’s very shallow, right before a beautiful reef, so after you learned the skills we will dive this reef.

We also offer this experience with a two tank boat dive. At the first spot El Cielo, we will practice the skills with you, after that your first dive will be at Colombia Shallow and your second dive at another beautiful reef, which one will decide your instructor based on your abilities. Expect to see beautiful colorful reefs and reef fishes, lobsters and big fish as barracudas, groupers, parrot fishes and probably even sting rays, turtles and so much more.

Can I do the Discover Scuba Experience?

Basically everybody who’s older the 10 is able to do this course. No experience needed. It will take a few minutes before you’re used to breathe underwater and get comfortable with it. But once you do, you’ll realize how easy and fun it is! If you like snorkeling then you will love diving as you will see so much more once you’re under water.

Price per person with 1 tank: $89 USD

Price per person with 2 tanks: $120 USD

Includes marine park fee, 1 or 2 tank from shore, weight belt and weights, fins, mask, wetsuit, bcd and regulator, no hidden cost!

Price per person with two tank boat dives: $140 USD per person

Includes marine park fee, tanks, weight belt and weights, fins, mask, wetsuit, bcd, regulator, fruit, snacks and purified water, no hidden cost!

Today’s Fun Times:

We had an extremely early wake up time today of 6:30am. We were due to dock at 7am, so after I finished getting dressed, I peaked outside to see where we were. I really wished the window was cleaner because this looked like an incredible sunrise over Cozumel!

It was our last port day which meant it was my last chance for a breakfast burrito and arepas! Tomorrow, we planned to go to brunch in the MDR.

After breakfast, we made our way off the ship, through the duty free store that you are forced to walk through on the way from/to the ship, passed all the stores and vendors in the port, and out to the taxi stand. By the way, at some point along that path, we had to go through an agricultural check point where they looked inside everyone’s bags to make sure we did not bring any food into the port. We had bottles of water in our bag, but either they didn’t see them or they didn’t care about water because they didn’t say anything about it to us.

Once we found the taxi stand, we asked for a taxi to the Fonatur Marina. The ride was probably only a mile and cost $8 total for the taxi, not per person. We probably could have just walked, but I didn’t know exactly which port we were docked at and had we been at the further cruise docks, the walk may have been longer. Also, I didn’t know if there was a sidewalk or if it was safe to walk from the port to the marina, so it was just easier to take a taxi. Our instructions said to wait at the ramp by the water for our guide, and when we got there, we saw lots of other people waiting for guides for their tours too. I guess this little marina is popular for tours for cruise ship passengers because it is so close to the port.

We checked in with one of the guides from another company and he showed us where we could sit and wait for our guide to arrive. Right on time, a representative from CozumelH2O arrived at 8:45am and gave us all the release forms to sign. After we signed away the right to sue them if we died while scuba diving, he walked us over to where our boat was docked and introduced us to Miguel, our instructor, and Lupe, who would be driving the boat. We ended up having a private tour because while one other woman was going to dive with us (her name was Chantal), she was a certified diver and was just tagging along on the boat. I love when it works out like that! Miguel did try to find others to join the tour, but lucky for us, everyone else at the marina either had another scuba tour booked or preferred to go snorkeling. I’m sure he would have liked to have more people on the tour so he could make some more money, but honestly, I was much more comfortable knowing that it was just DH and I on the tour so Miguel could focus on us and our safety. I’m not really sure how it would have worked out anyway if he recruited more people to take the tour because the boat was all set up with equipment for us (notice the name tags hanging from the vests?), so I don’t know where the equipment would have come from if there were more people added to the tour.

As Lupe drove the boat out of the marina and south along the coast of Cozumel, Miguel used the time to teach us our introductory lesson. I was kind of surprised that he was going to teach us this material while we were on a moving boat considering how loud it was from the motor of the boat. It was a really good thing that he was only speaking to the two of us because there’s no way we would have heard him if we were sitting further away, and this was important information! Miguel did a great job of explaining some basic concepts of how the lungs react to the pressure of being deep under water, and how to operate all of the equipment we would be using today. He showed us a few techniques to equalize our ears from the pressure under the water like blowing our nose or swallowing. He also suggested we could move our jaw up and down or yawn, but I’m not quite sure how that would have worked out without swallowing a bunch of salt water! After that, he taught us some of the important hand signals so we could communicate under water. This was something that really worried me because if there was a problem, it’s not like we could verbalize it to Miguel to get him to help us. Miguel explained that most of the time, people encountered the same problems so he taught us how to communicate those problems to him using hand signals.

After about 30 minutes, we arrived at our first stop: a shallow section of water that was about 5 feet deep with a soft, sandy bottom where we could practice some skills. Miguel taught us 4 skills that we needed to demonstrate for him before we could move on to diving in deeper water. First, he demonstrated them to us on the boat and showed us how he would cue us to do them on our own when we were in the water. Then we got suited up on the boat. This was my first time ever putting on a wet suit, and suddenly I regretted my choice to take this tour at the end of our cruise. Holy moly! It was so hard to get into that wet suit! Maybe it would have been easier at the start of the cruise before I ate all that food! Haha

After we were wearing our wet suits and fins, Lupe and Miguel helped us put on our weight belt and BCD (Buoyancy Control Device), inflate the BCD, and to sit up on the edge of the boat with the oxygen tanks supported on the edge. It was all so awkward and uncomfortable, but mostly because I was nervous and this was a totally new experience for me. Don’t I look happy to be scuba diving? Haha… maybe not!

On the count of 3, he told us to just fall backwards off the side of the boat. It seemed so weird to wear such a heavy tank on my back but still be able to float, but I guess that was just the BCD doing its job! We slowly lowered into position, kneeling on the sandy ocean floor, and went through all of our skills. First, I had to remove the regulator from my mouth, blow bubbles, put the regulator back in my mouth and clear it of the water that got inside. Next, I had to repeat that process and also show that I could retrieve the regulator in two different ways. The point was that if it somehow fell out of my mouth under water, I would know how to retrieve it so I could breathe again. Breathing is important! The final skill was to let some water get inside of my goggles and then to clear it out. While DH and I took turns demonstrating our skills, Chantal used the time to go snorkeling in the area, so I thought that was nice that she had something to do and it wasn’t like she was twiddling her thumbs on the boat, waiting for us to be ready.

After Miguel gave us both the thumbs up and high-five that we had passed our skills, we swam back to the boat and climbed on board. Miguel removed my BCD and handed it up to Lupe on the boat so I didn’t have to climb the ladder wearing the tank. That was much appreciated because DH didn’t get the same treatment and he said it was really hard to climb the ladder with all that equipment! Sometimes it’s awesome to be a girl! Haha

Lupe drove the boat a short distance away to the Palancar Reef, and Miguel said it was time for our first real dive! I just kept telling myself to stay calm and keep breathing. There was no turning back now! We dropped backwards into the water and all gathered together to slowly lower down to the reef. I actually did really well with it and was pacing with Chantal to get about halfway down to the ocean floor.

OMG! I’m scuba diving!!

When I looked around to see where DH was, I realized he was still close to the surface and Miguel was helping him with something. I thought maybe I had gone down faster than I was supposed to, so I went back up to see what was going on. Chantal kept going deeper and started to explore the reef on her own.

It looked like DH was having trouble clearing his ears, but it only took him a few seconds to work it out and then we were on our way. Miguel looped one arm around mine and his other arm around DH’s arm and led us down to the ocean floor. When he was explaining things on the boat, it sounded like we could swim independently, but once we were under water, he would not let us go off on our own. I was okay with that because I was still unsure and nervous about the whole thing, but DH kept trying to wiggle away and Miguel wouldn’t let him. Once again, I was glad that we only had two of us on the tour because I’m not sure how it would have played out with 2 more people… would we have made a big caravan of 5 of us all strung together?? That would have been a bit ridiculous! Lol

Luckily, Miguel looped under my left arm so I still had my right hand free to take photos!

Whenever I go snorkeling, I make sure to adjust my camera to the underwater setting so the colors will come out correctly. I knew that going deeper under water would cause the photos to turn blue, but since this was only my first time scuba diving, I wanted to test the abilities of my camera and see what I could capture without an extra filter. If I book a scuba excursion in the future, I will probably look into one of those red filters to neutralize the colors, but for now, here is just a small sampling of the hundreds of photos I took on this dive.

Thus far, we had seen a ton of coral but no fish at all. Miguel pointed at something to my left… there was a small school of fish swimming a few feet away. It almost made me laugh because that was so not exciting compared to the beautiful coral I was staring at on my right side! I took a quick photo of it to let him think I was impressed…

Ok, now back to the amazing coral…

One of the downsides to being looped under Miguel’s arm was that I couldn’t get closer to things I wanted to take photos of, and I couldn’t linger to take the perfect photo. I basically just snapped photos with one hand (which means the camera wasn’t very steady) and it was as I was floating past the subject so a lot of the photos came out blurry.

This was that spongy coral that I saw in St. Lucia between the pitons

If you look VERY carefully, there is a small turtle swimming just above the coral in the middle of this photo. I really wanted to chase after him but Miguel led us in a different direction.

Here we go… I zoomed in so you can see the turtle a little better, just to prove that I didn’t make it up that we saw him hehe

We must have been getting closer to the surface because all of a sudden, the color came back to my photos

Towards the end, we saw a few more fish swimming around

Just look at the amazing bright yellow color of that coral!

A whole lot of those round spongey things… I’m sure they have a more technical name than that, I just don’t know what it is lol

I just loved how everywhere I looked, there was SOOOO much to take in and see. This was a wonderful place to have my first scuba diving experience!

Hi Mr. Fish!

Oh look! There’s another fish poking out of the coral!

I wish we could have gone in between those rocks as I’m sure there was some amazing stuff in there.

Around this time, DH looked down at the meter monitoring the oxygen in his tank and saw it was in the red zone, so he pointed it out to Miguel. That was our cue to start heading towards the surface before DH ran out of oxygen, but afterwards, Miguel told us we were going to finish around that time anyway. I slowly kicked up towards the surface, equalizing my ears along the way. When I reached the surface, both of my calves started to cramp, but Chantal and Miguel were right there and each grabbed a leg to stretch me out while I floated in the water. They knew exactly what to do and they were amazing! The whole time we were diving, Miguel held a line attached to a flotation device that hovered on the surface of the water so Lupe could follow us with the boat. They purposely planned our route that we were drifting underwater with the current, so we really didn’t have to swim at all, especially since Lupe was just a few feet away when we came up to the surface at the end. Miguel had told us from the start that scuba diving is not a sport, it’s a leisure activity because if you do it right, it is not strenuous and can be very relaxing. He was right! When I reached the ladder for our boat, Miguel helped to remove my weights and BCD, and I slipped off my fins and climbed back on board.

In total, our first dive lasted 45 minutes and Miguel said we reached a depth of 32 feet, and I loved every minute of it! The one issue I had was that every time I tried to clear my ears, I pinched my nose to blow out as Miguel told me to do. When I did that, it let water get into my goggles because pinching my nose made a gap in the seal of the goggles, so then there was water in my eyes. I knew how to fix it, but it got really annoying to have to stop every few minutes and clear my goggles. While we were on the boat heading towards our second dive site, I asked Miguel what to do and he suggested I should try swallowing instead. Ok, that’s a good idea, I hope that works out!

I forgot to take photos of it, but Miguel passed around a container with cut up melon, papaya, and mango. It was a much-appreciated snack and helped to get rid of the salty flavor in my mouth. They also had bottles of water for us if we needed it, but we had brought our own from the ship.

Lupe drove the boat back to very close to the marina where we started the tour. At first I was a little confused and thought maybe that was the end of the tour? I thought we signed up for a 2-tank dive, but maybe I misunderstood something? Just as I was about to ask Miguel about it, Lupe stopped the boat. Our second dive was at the Paraiso Reef, located very close to the marina and where the cruise ships were docked. Time to suit up for round two!

Back in the water, I felt a lot more relaxed this time around

DH is getting his mouthpiece in place, and you can see the cruise ships in the background.

Miguel started to loop his arm around my right arm so DH and I would switch sides from the first dive. Nice try Miguel… that means I won’t be able to take photos because I need my right hand free for that! I let go, grabbed his other arm and looped my left arm through, then held up my camera in my right hand to show him why I needed to be on this side. I think he understood, or if not, then he just thought I was crazy!

As we dropped deeper and deeper into the water, I was a little skeptical about this reef because it seemed very sparse.

Where’s all the coral??

We drifted a little further and started to see some colorful coral.

And then… bam! A huge yellow spotted snake eel slipped right through the coral! So cool! Do you see him there in the middle at the bottom third of this photo?

That’s some funky looking red coral

This reef wasn’t as dense as the other one, so we’d see a whole lot of cool things, and then we’d see lots of sandy floor for a while.

Lots of little fish swimming around

We kept drifting a few minutes with nothing all that exciting happening, and then Chantal waved us over because she saw something hiding in the shadows… a HUGE lobster! This photo is horrible, but as I mentioned earlier, we didn’t really stop to look closely at anything so I couldn’t focus on the lobster, but I did my best. You can kind of make out one of his arms reaching up, and some of his smaller legs right in the middle of the photo…

A few seconds later, we came up on a huge crab hiding in one of the other cracks. Again, this photo is horrible, but you can kind of see him hiding back behind the coral in the middle of the photo…

I wished I could stay still for just one second to take a photo… this was definitely the downside to Miguel towing us through the water. Sure, he wanted to keep us safe, but it was hampering my chances for amazing photos! Doesn’t he know that’s the most important thing to me??? Here is a very blurry photo of the crab…

At least the photos came out better when I had the camera zoomed out all the way!

This was something I’ve never seen before… a yellow spotted stingray! So cool!!

Another first for me… a sea anemone!

A trumpetfish

I like how this one came out, with the trumpet fish swimming through the coral

a conch shell

After that, we entered an area with a whole lot of nothing. All we saw were thousands of these little things poking up from the sand that looked like poppy flowers.

We drifting along for at least 10 minutes (based on the time stamps of my photos), and it started to get a little boring because there was seriously nothing around us. I was kind of confused why we didn’t just loop around to spend more time back at that other section of the reef… surely this isn’t the first time Miguel dove this reef and he knew that there was nothing to see down here?

At some point, I looked at the screen of my camera and it showed a big warning sign that said “warning: depth”. Oh no! I forgot to mention it but my “waterproof” watch died during our first dive. I wore it snorkeling in Roatan and Belize without incident, but I guess the pressure from being so deep underwater was too much for it and when we emerged from our first dive, the screen was blank and there was a big black spot in the corner. Oops! Good thing today was our last port day and the watch cost less than $8 from Walmart so it’s easily replaceable. Anyway, I know my Olympus TG-5 camera has a waterproof rating for up to 50 feet, but I didn’t know exactly how deep we were right now. I would be so upset if my camera died because it cost quite a lot more than $8, but there really wasn’t anything I could do about it now. Spoiler alert: my camera survived the dive just fine! At the end, Miguel said we went down to 40 feet on this dive, so I wonder if the camera just gave me a warning that I was within 10 feet of my limit so I wouldn’t go any deeper? I really have no idea how that little camera knows my depth underwater, but that’s another story lol

Finally, we came along this small section of the reef. There were other scuba divers down here, so that was kind of fun to see them, but there really wasn’t a whole lot coral or fish in this area.

This coral looked kind of cool…

Funky pink spongey coral

A few sparse fish

Around this time, we had been in the water for 40 minutes so Miguel started leading us up towards the surface. On the way up, we saw this really cool spotted wing comb jellyfish. As it drifted in the water, it kept morphing into different shapes. It was so elegant and graceful!

Before we started this second dive, I asked Miguel if he could take my camera at some point to take photos of DH and I scuba diving. I had thoughts of beautiful photos of us with the reef in the background, showing us swimming along from head to the end of our fins, and really capturing the moment. Miguel said he would do it towards the end of the dive, but when the time came, he was so reluctant to let go of us that this is the best of the 4 photos he took. Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least it’s better than nothing lol

Right after he handed me back the camera, he looped his arms under ours and we continued our journey to the surface. Then he stopped! Why are we stopping? There’s nothing around us… or is there? If you look very closely in the middle of this photo, you can see a faint white line. It was another type of comb jellyfish, called a Venus Girdle.

A few seconds later, we reached the surface of the water, where once again, Lupe was waiting for us with the boat. This second dive lasted 45 minutes, and as I mentioned, we reached a maximum depth of 40 feet. I don’t know which dive I liked better because they were so different. Our first dive featured very dense and varied coral, nonstop for the entire dive, but hardly any fish or other creatures. Our second dive was much more sparse and had limited coral, but we saw the most amazing animals… lobster, crab, spotted stingray, sea anemone, spotted eel, and 2 kinds of jelly fish! I honestly think the combination of these two reefs made for the most perfect first scuba diving experience. We got to see a little bit of everything and it left me wanting more. I greatly regret not trying a discover scuba diving course sooner because I can only imagine what we would have seen had we done this in French Polynesia or Bonaire! Of course scuba diving is very expensive and costs a lot more money than the typical snorkeling tour, but I know for sure that we will want to repeat this experience if/when we take another cruise!

Oh, one last comment about my ears… On the second dive, I took Miguel’s advice and tried the swallowing technique to equalize my ears. It worked like a charm and I was able to clear my ears without getting any water in my goggles. When the tour ended, I felt great, and I continued to feel normal until about 36 hours later. We were on the ship on Saturday night and my ear started hurting whenever I sneezed or blew my nose. Uh oh! That’s not good! I woke up on Sunday morning and the pain was worse. I was worried that maybe I burst my ear drum or something, and we were flying home that night so I was really afraid that I would have problems during take off and landing. Luckily, the flight was uneventful (I just chewed gum during the take off and landing like I usually do), but my ear continued to hurt and I also felt dizzy. I showed up to work on Monday morning and felt so dizzy that I couldn’t stand in the hallway to talk to my manager and I needed to go find a chair to sit down. She sent me home because neither of us thought I was safe to treat patients when I felt like this. My hearing was fine, so I ruled out the idea of a burst ear drum, but the ear pain and dizziness were worrying me enough that I went to see my doctor. She said I had some congestion built up in my nasal passages and that was preventing the congestion in my ear from draining. She prescribed a nose spray to clear the congestion, and luckily, after 5 days of using it, the spray worked and my ears finally stopped hurting. I was fighting this problem for about a week after the dive, so that wasn’t exactly the souvenir I wanted to come home with, but I still think it was worth it for such an incredible experience. Next time, I will buy some Flonase and make sure all of my passages are cleared out before scuba diving!

Since the second dive site was so close to Fonatur Marina, we had a very short ride back at the end of the tour. We thanked Miguel and Lupe profusely for a wonderful experience, then went in search of the bathrooms at the marina. This map was posted on the wall of the waiting area at the marina. It was cool to find the reefs where we had been diving on the map. I marked them with arrows in the photo…

By now, it was around 1:30pm. DH found a convenience store at the marina and they were selling bottles of local beer for $1 each. Back in December, we had a few pesos left over from our trip to Puerto Vallarta. Rather than trying to exchange them back for USD and losing money in the process, I stashed them away with plans to spend them on this cruise, knowing we had 2 ports in Mexico. We hadn’t had a chance to spend them yet, and we knew that beer would cost more money if we bought it at the cruise port, so this seemed like a good way to spend our pesos. We bought a few bottles, and found a taxi to take us back to the port. DH wanted to walk back to save some money, but I was starving and wanted to get back ASAP to eat lunch (and we had to drink those beers before we could board the ship so if DH wants his beers, then I get my taxi!)

Back at the port area, we found a bench in the shade to drink our beers while people watching and using the free wifi. While I did have access to my social media sites on the ship, I couldn’t read my emails so I did still need to use this free wifi at the port, at least for a few minutes!

They really did a nice job at decorating this cruise port, with tons of palm trees and wide sidewalks to handle the thousands of cruise ship passengers who visit here every day.

I wish I had seen this sign when we first arrived this morning because it would have made for a great photo with us in it. By now, I looked like a drowned rat with my hair falling out of my braids and a slight sunburn on my face, so there was no chance I was posing for a photo! Haha

After we had our fill of beer and email, we made the long trek through the cruise port, through the duty free shops, and down the long pier to reboard the Dream for the final time on this cruise.

At some point after we had left for our tour, the Carnival Vista docked next to us, creating a cruise ship canyon. I wonder how many people accidentally tried to get on the wrong ship!

This whole week, I had been meaning to try out the meatball sandwich from the deli. Now was my chance, and OMG it was totally worth the wait! I’m not sure if it was because I was famished (it was now nearly 3pm) or because I still had salty ocean coating my mouth, but this sandwich was seriously delicious.

In case you were curious about what’s inside… there were 4 meatballs and a generous amount of provolone and ricotta cheese, with just the right amount of marina sauce to give it flavor but not make it all drippy and messy.

The buffet was closing soon, so I made sure to get to the desserts section before they cleared away all the yummy cakes. Today, I tried the chocolate vanilla marble cake. It was moist and sweet, with a good proportion of cake to frosting.

After lunch, I took a few minutes to walk around the outer decks and take photos of the port and the other cruise ships. It was such a beautiful day, with the sun shining on the water to light it up to a beautiful electric turquoise color, and bright white puffy clouds dotting the sky like cotton balls. We were incredibly lucky with our weather on this cruise, with bright sunny days in all 4 ports.

RCCL Harmony of the Seas docked at the other cruise port

Puerta Maya Cruise Terminal

Lido deck wasn’t too crowded at this hour

Checking out the Carnival Vista

The Regal Princess was also docked near us

Lots of people walking back towards the ships

After that, I met back up with DH because we had one more mission to accomplish today… riding the water slide! There have not been any water slides on my last 3 cruise ships, so I was very much looking forward to using the slide on the Dream. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to accomplish that mission, while I was already in a wet bathing suit and the ship was still docked so it wouldn’t be too windy when I climbed up all the stairs to the top of the slide.

Added perk: you get some great views from the top of the slide!

You can actually see parts of all 6 waterslides from this view (2 kiddie slides side by side, the giant twister slide, 2 medium racing slides side by side, and the drain pipe slide)

When we got up to the top, there were three or four kids on line ahead of us and a life guard watching to make sure the previous person exited the slide before the next person started. I can only imagine what would happen if someone got stuck in the slide for some reason and then a second person came shooting down the tube and slammed into them!

Here goes nothing!

DH had gone down the slide yesterday while I was in the shower so he warned me to hold my nose when it got lighter inside the tube because that meant I was almost at the end and there’s a lot of water down there that can go up your nose. He also gave me a pointer on technique that he figured out when he was a kid… if you minimize the amount of skin you have touching the tube then you will go faster. He told me to press my heels and shoulders down onto the tube and to lift my butt up, and that would make me go faster. Sure enough, that totally worked and I was flying when I went down the slide!

I sent him down the slide first with my camera so he could take a photo for me.

What a rush! I know these slides are more geared for children, but it was a lot of fun for me as an adult too! With that mission accomplished, I went back to the cabin to get ready for the evening while DH went to the casino bar for happy hour. I had read a few posts before the cruise with people asking about this elusive happy hour and wanting to know when it is held. Some people said it was only on embarkation day, but at least on our sailing, they had it on a few of the port days too! It always included the same list of drinks, and was always limited to the Casino Bar. If you read your Fun Times carefully, they mention it there so you can plan accordingly.

When I got back to the cabin, this little guy was hanging out off the foot of the bed…

Hmm, something looks a little funny here…

Oh, look! There is a notice on the bed…

Ooooh, okay, that’s what looked funny! I guess it’s a good thing they wash the dust ruffles, but we never saw it again so I guess they don’t put it back on the beds until turn around day in New Orleans. It seems a little weird that we only get our dust ruffle for 5 of the 7 days on our cruise. Does this happen on every cruise? Or do they just usually not clean them and we happened to be here for the random week that our cabin was due for a dust ruffle washing? Not a big deal, just something I never considered before.

Time for dinner!

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Seared Tuna (honestly, this was more like well-done tuna, but close enough!)

Veal Parmesan

Dessert Menu

Apple Pie

Funny side story… Remember the girl on our tender yesterday in Belize? The one who accidentally boarded the FTTF tender instead of meeting her Carnival excursion group in the theater as directed on her ticket? DH and I had been wondering what happened to her and if she was able to meet up with her group or not. Just as we were finishing dinner, I noticed that she was sitting two tables over from us! She was at one of the big tables in Prudence’s section who only showed up for dinner on the first formal night, but never again, so we didn’t realize who she was yesterday on the tender. After we finished eating, we went over to her and her friend (they were the only two people sitting at the large 10 or 12 person table, but I think they were traveling with a large group and everyone else skipped dinner tonight). They thought it was funny when we told her we were seated two tables over from her (what are the chances?!), and she said she did meet up with her group yesterday and enjoyed her ATV excursion. On a ship of nearly 4,000 passengers, sometimes it’s funny how small the ship can feel when you run into new friends randomly.

Prudence and her team did a wonderful job of getting us out of dinner in under an hour, so we were able to make the 7:30pm show in the Encore! Theater. We went into tonight’s final production show with trepidation considering how we felt about the prior 3 shows on this cruise. The show was called America Rocks, and featured rock and roll songs through the decades. Sometimes it is best to come in with low expectations because this was by far the best show of the whole cruise! In addition to the core cast of 8 singers and dancers that performed in the other shows, they brought in Machine Company, the band who performs around the ship at night. This meant we saw extremely talented musicians playing live on stage, and the lead singer sang for some of the songs alongside the Playlist Productions cast. I wish they could have incorporated these guys into all of the other shows because it made a huge difference!

Apologies again for the blurry photos, but blurry photos are better than no photos, right? We were happy to get our favorite seats with unobstructed views in the front row of the balcony.

I don’t remember what most of the songs were, but I do know that this was for Hotel California (we got a kick out of that song choice since we live there!)

They had everyone out on stage for the finale song, so you can tell there were a lot more people in this song compared to the other 3 shows.

The best part about seeing the earlier of the two production shows was that when it ended, it was only around 8:15pm so we had plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the nightlife on the ship. They were doing karaoke in The Song lounge so we headed back that way hoping that DH could participate. He loves karaoke and hadn’t gotten to try it out yet on this cruise, but when we got to the lounge, the host said it was over an hour wait. That wouldn’t work because we wanted to catch the 9:30pm comedy show, so we decided to just hang out and watch the other people perform. The Song lounge is kind of small for a popular event like karaoke, so it was standing room only by the time we arrived and we had to stand in the back. To be fair, the event did start at 8pm so I imagine people who weren’t watching America Rocks at 7:30 could come back here, get their names on the list to perform, and have their choice of seats.

At a little after 9pm, we went next door to the Burgundy Lounge to get seats for the 9:30pm adults-only comedy show. It was already quite crowded by then, but we were able to find seats together. The comedy club host came on the microphone around 9:15 to ask people not to save seats because it was already standing room only, but I don’t know how well she could enforce that if someone is saving a seat while their spouse/friend/etc. was in the restroom or at the bar or whatever. I can see not wanting people to save an entire row of seats but no one was really doing that, and you can’t expect people not to save one seat for the person they are watching the show with.

Tonight’s comedian was Jersey. I did not really care for his act because he was just shouting out profanities for shock value and hoping to get a reaction, but he didn’t really have much content and the content he did have was not very funny. Oh well, you can’t win them all!

After that, we finished out the night at the piano bar. We spent at least a few minutes in the piano bar every night, and we were almost always able to get a seat right at the bar. I need to make one complaint about Zack… he only played song requests when they included tip money! I understand that in a piano bar on land, the performers work for tips, but we are on a cruise ship and we are already paying a lot of money per night to be here, so it shouldn’t be required to tip him on every single song request just to get him to play our song. We submitted requests nearly every night and he did not even acknowledge them (except for one time when we requested a song and he just said he doesn’t know it and tossed our request paper aside. The song was We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel which is a fairly easy song since it just keeps repeating the same melody over and over again, and we even told him not to worry about the lyrics because we know them by heart and would help him out!) At the beginning of the week, we figured he gets tips from enough people that he doesn’t need to play requests that don’t include tips and we might have more luck at the end of the week. Nope! He didn’t play our requests then either. You might be thinking, “well why not tip him if you want to hear your song that badly?” and we did consider that, but it got to a point where we were doing an experiment to see if he would ever play our song without money attached. Sure enough, that never happened. On our other cruises with a piano bar, our requests were always played with or without a tip attached, and on Paul Gauguin, the performer (Alex) went so far as to learn a song overnight when DH requested something he didn’t know (City of Stars from La La Land). Now THAT was good service!

Ok, I’ll step down off my soap box now. I just wanted to share that with you.

Step Tracker Daily Total: 11,862 steps; 4.79 miles; 11 flights of stairs (I definitely climbed way more flights than that because I couldn’t wear my fitbit on the water slide and you need to climb A LOT of stairs to reach the top of the slide… oh well!)

Dana's Destination Diary

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Sunday, March 17, 2019 ~ New Orleans, Louisiana

Saturday, March 16, 2019 ~ Fun Day at Sea

Friday, March 15, 2019 ~ Cozumel, Mexico

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