Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 7

April 5, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Wednesday, March 18 ~ Boatyard Beach in Barbados

We woke up at 7:15am, got omelets for breakfast at the Lido buffet at 8am, and left the ship at 9am to grab a taxi to the Boatyard Beach on Carlisle Bay.

The taxi costs $5 per person, and we shared the taxi with 13 other people. The whole time we were in the taxi, the driver tried to convince us to go to Harbor Lights, saying that there would be a long wait for taxis at the Boatyard when we wanted to leave (spoiler alert: we had no wait at all). Anyway, no one in our taxi fell for his tricks and we arrived at the Boatyard by 9:30am. The driver then proceeded to escort us to the check in spot so he could collect his commission! Go figure! We paid a $15 per person entrance fee which included lounge chairs, an umbrella, a cup of rum punch, use of the rope swing and water toys, and the bathrooms/changing rooms. There were already a lot of people there when we arrived, but we were able to get front row seats on the right side of the pier (red umbrellas). By 11am, I heard the staff say they ran out of chairs, so plan to get there early if you want a chair at the Boatyard (and we were the only ship in port that day- I’m sure they fill up faster on days with more ships docked).

Within minutes of putting our bags down, the local vendors were asking if we wanted to rent jet skis or go swimming with the turtles. If you plan to swim with the turtles, it is a good idea to head out early in the day because a) more boats filled with tourists show up as the day progresses so it will get very crowded, and b) the guides feed the turtles to entice them, but as the day goes on, they fill up and don’t respond as well to the bait. There are many different vendors, and most charge $20 per person for the tour, which includes life vests, rum punch, and snorkel equipment if needed (the people on the lounge chairs next to us bargained it down to $15 per person!). We found it a bit annoying at how aggressive the vendors were. There are a bunch of guys on the beach soliciting tourists to take the tour, and they expect you to be loyal to them if they approach you first. Well, we noticed that some of our friends from Cruise Critic were going to snorkel at the same time so we joined up with them on their boat, and our original vendor got very upset and started harassing me about it. It was a stressful situation and I felt uncomfortable about it, but luckily the guy didn’t bother us once we got back from the tour. It’s just something to be aware of if you do go to the Boatyard- the water sports vendors are verrrry pushy!

Anyway, back to the story… We went out on a double-decker glass-bottom boat right away, and were gone for about an hour. We chose to bring our beach bags with us, but noticed many others leaving their bags on their lounge chairs later in the day. Here is the view looking back at the Boatyard as we sailed away…

First, we went snorkeling over a ship wreck. In my opinion, the snorkeling here was sub-par. There weren’t that many fish, there was a bit of a current that we had to swim against, and the water was too cloudy. It was my first time snorkeling in 2.5 years, so it was nice to have some practice time to get the hang of it again, but it was kind of hard to see the fish in the cloudy water. Oh well, it was still fun!

We stayed there for about 20 minutes, then the guide signaled for us to swim back to the boat. Next, we went over to an area where there were already a bunch of boats anchored. The water was very crowded, but our guide said this was where we could snorkel with the sea turtles so we jumped in the water and made our own space. Notice all the heads bobbing in the water…

Sure enough, there were 5 beautiful sea turtles swimming amongst all the tourists. It was definitely very crowded with 40-50 people trying to get close to the turtles, and everyone was getting kicked and hit by neighboring swimmers, but it was all part of the excitement. I was very surprised to see so many swimmers out there since the last time I did this on my cruise in 2012, there were just the 4 people on my boat, but we also went on a lot earlier in the morning so I guess there is a big difference between going at 9am and 10am!!

If you look closely, you can see 4 turtles in this photo:

Snorkel Selfie!

It was crowded!

We spent about 15 minutes snorkeling with the sea turtles, then got back on the boat. The guide gave us a cup of very strong rum punch to enjoy as he brought us back to the Boatyard. Overall, it was $20 well spent and I think everyone on our boat had fun, but I do think it was a bit too crowded to fully enjoy the experience. One thing to keep in mind is that many of the other boats near us were half- or full-day catamaran excursions that run up to $100 per person, yet we were all snorkeling at the same time, in the same water, with the same turtles! I am sure they had a great rest of their day on the boat whereas we only had 1 hour on the boat and spent the rest of our day on the beach, but I don’t think it is worth the difference in price if you are only going for the snorkel experience and don’t care about spending all day on their boat.

We spent the next few hours relaxing on our lounge chairs, drinking our free cup of rum punch, and chatting with the people on our neighboring lounge chairs. Everyone was so friendly and it is always fun to meet new people. J even met some people from his home town and their son went to J’s high school! What are the chances?! Less shocking was when I met a couple who live in the same apartment building where my brother used to live in NYC (it’s kind of an infamous building and once they mentioned the intersection, I knew the exact building they were talking about… they found it funny that they met someone in Barbados who could identify their apartment building by it’s nickname lol)

At some point, we heard a siren go off to signal that they were pouring free shots at the bar. Tons of people ran up to have the bartender pour liquor from the bottle right into their mouths! It felt like we were on spring break! Haha

Later in the afternoon, we decided to try out the water toys. J loved the rope swing and went on it a few times. Sadly, I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would, and it took me a while to recover from all that water that got in my ears upon landing haha oops! We also spent some time relaxing on the giant trampoline (btw, it is much harder to climb that ladder than it looks!! Haha), and J was able to climb to the top of the inflatable iceberg on his first attempt!

At 3pm, we packed up our belongings and caught a taxi back to the cruise ship. As I already mentioned, there was no wait for a taxi and they run continuously from noon until 5pm (but don’t wait until that last taxi or you will miss the 4:30 all aboard time!!)

Being silly tourists back at the port…

Once back on board, we spent a few hours relaxing in the cabin and getting ready for dinner. Luckily there was only a 5 minute wait for dinner tonight when we arrived at 7pm. I ordered the prosciutto with melon, the French onion soup, and the penne mariscos. I had the fig cinnamon cake for dessert.

I promise this tasted better than it looks in this photo!

After dinner, I suddenly became extremely tired. Tonight was the night of the Mexican buffet and the big deck party, but I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open so we just went back to the cabin. I was in bed and asleep by 9pm and J read his book out on the balcony for a while. I guess the sun got the better of me today (and it left me with the lovely souvenir of a terrible sunburn on my back!). I am disappointed in myself for not staying awake to go to the deck party, but I guess this falls under the category of “you can’t do EVERYTHING on a cruise” and “now I have an excuse to take another cruise!”

Good night Barbados!

Up next: zip lining in St. Lucia

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 6

April 2, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Tuesday, March 17 ~ St. Patrick’s Day at Sea

We woke up without an alarm at 8:30am… so much for sleeping in on
our one and only sea day! We went to brunch at 9:15am and ran into our new cabin steward Ali in the hallway. I was very impressed that he greeted us by name before I could even mention that we had just moved up here.

Brunch was in the aft Washington dining room, and we were seated immediately at a shared table for 6 people. Service was slow, but it was no different than on any other cruise and the meal took 1.5 hours total. I had the bagel with lox and cream cheese, fried eggs over hard, and turkey bacon. It was all very good and very filling! I did miss getting to order a free cocktail from being a past guest… that bottle of water just isn’t as exciting haha

We got back to the cabin by 11am after brunch, and spent the next 3.5 hours enjoying our balcony. Being a balcony virgin, I never really understood why people obsess over having a balcony and I always saw it as an unnecessary added expense when there is plenty of outdoor public space we could enjoy for free. Now I finally understand what the excitement is all about. It is so relaxing to sit outside in your own private space, drink a glass of wine, read a book, and listen to the waves pass by. No loud party music. No screaming children. No cruise entertainment staff talking about hairy chests. Just us. Oh, and the people who work on the bridge! As a warning to anyone looking to book cabin 7220, it is very close to the port side wing of the bridge. We can see them, and they can see us! In fact, when the all access ship tour got to the bridge, we waved at them and they waved back so we know they can see us. I guess that puts a slight limitation on the privacy offered by this cabin’s balcony, but it really wasn’t a big deal, and it was actually kind of fun to check out all the action up there!

No cruise is complete without sneaking a peak of the wake off the back of the ship!

Tea time was at 3pm and we were both looking forward to trying it as neither of us had gone before. We arrived at the aft Washington dining room as they opened the doors, and we were seated at a shared table for 10 people. Right away, they brought us each a mini kettle of hot water, and a waiter came around to let us pick out our flavor of tea.

Then the waiters came around with various desserts. I noticed they also had cucumber sandwiches and something with smoked salmon on top, but somehow they never brought the savory items to our table. In fact, there was one of the desserts that I really wanted to try, but the waiters kept skipping our table so eventually I had to ask someone to bring it over! I’m really not sure what their system is, but it all seemed rather random. My goal was to just try a taste of each item so I wouldn’t ruin my appetite for dinner. Sadly, that idea was quickly forgotten as everything was so yummy and I ended up eating more than planned.

After tea time, we went back to the cabin to enjoy some more balcony time, then we got ready for formal night at dinner.

We got down to the lobby at 6:35pm and noticed a long line of people waiting to enter the dining room. We waited for 15 minutes to reach the front of the line, and they took our cabin number and gave us a pager so we would know when our table was ready. Unsure of how long the wait would take, we decided to get a few drinks at the lobby bar.

We got seated at 7:30pm, but they were doing the show where the waiters sing and dance, so we had to wait 15 minutes before we could order our food. After 35 minutes, we still had no food so we complained to a manager when he came over to check on us, and then our appetizers came out 5 minutes later. Like magic, the service was much faster after we complained. We planned to go to the 8:15pm show in the main theater but missed it because dinner took so long. We left dinner at 9pm, 2.5 hrs after we originally got on line. In theory, any time dining should be a great option, but unfortunately, in reality, the hour-long wait and the slow service meant we had to miss out on several things we planned to do around the ship at night.

We made the best of it and enjoyed our formal night dinner. I had the stuffed white mushrooms, kale and beets carpaccio (a new appetizer I had never tried before), two orders of the lobster and shrimp entree, and the fresh fruit for dessert. These photos all look very dark to me… I took all my food porn pictures both with and without the flash, but the ones with the flash totally washed out the food and looked waaaay too light, so I had to use the non-flash photos. I’m sorry if they aren’t the best quality, but hopefully you get a good enough view!.

We didn’t have a ton of opportunities to acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day today, and I didn’t notice the corned beef and cabbage which was rumored to be on tonight’s dinner menu (perhaps because they didn’t want to alter the formal night dinner menu??), but J didn’t want to ignore the holiday. Despite the limited space in his 3-1-1 bag for TSA on the plane, he managed to squeeze in a tiny bottle of green food coloring! He brought it to dinner and used it to turn all of our liquids green. Both of our cocktails were green (you can see them on the sides of this photo… people actually asked us what we ordered because they wanted green drinks too!!), our waters were green, even J’s soup was green! Our waiters looked very confused when they walked passed our table because they knew they didn’t serve us green water or soup haha

After dinner, we went to the 10:15pm production show called Nightclub Express. It was ok but would have been better if it had more songs that we knew. The show featured a unique narrator… a giant talking sofa! It reminded me of an after school special or something haha A few times during the show, between singing and dancing numbers, the couch rolled out on stage to tell us about the next set of songs. Very strange! We thought it was kind of odd that the dancers wore thongs for most of their costumes… that’s not very family friendly!

After the show, we went to see the piano bar. There were maybe 20 people in there so it wasn’t very lively. We stayed for a few songs, then went up to Lido to grab a snack before bedtime. I loved how pretty the aft pool looked at night…

There are very few options for food this late at night… sometimes the grill was open, but not every night. The only other option was pizza, but it always had a looooong line. It was nice that they make each pizza fresh when you order it, but it takes 20 minutes to cook each pizza, and that creates a long line of people waiting for their food. Maybe it would work better if they continuously made pizzas at this late hour considering there was clearly a demand for it, but I guess it would get cold quickly since it’s such a thin crust. Here was the pizza place menu:

Up next: Boatyard Beach in Barbados

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 5

March 31, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Monday, March 16 ~ Sapphire Beach in St. Thomas

When we woke up at 7:15am, we were already docked in St. Thomas and we could see people getting off the ship out our window. We got ready and went to breakfast at the Lido buffet. It was very hectic and crowded, and we waited 15 minutes for an omelet!

The port area in St. Thomas is so beautiful with all the little white boats contrasting against the deep blue water and bright green hills…

We left the ship and walked through the little shopping area to the taxi stand. A taxi to Sapphire Beach cost $10 per person each way, plus tip. We ended up in a minivan with 7 passengers instead of a big open air taxi like most people. It was really nice to have the air conditioning, but it was a long ride and we had to drop some people at Coki Beach on the way so that took extra time. It took 35 minutes total and we arrived at Sapphire Beach a little after 10am. There was already a lot of people there, although I wouldn’t say it was crowded. We paid $9 each plus tip for lounge chairs, and the girl set them up where we requested under a tree for shade. Little did we know that it would be overcast and cloudy all day with occasional drizzle, so we didn’t really need the tree’s shade. There was a light breeze and it was slightly cool all day. I only took my cover-up off to take a few quick photos, and it was too cold and the water was too choppy to snorkel in the ocean.

We brought a few pouches of Gasolina to enjoy on the beach. I’m not sure if it was because they are only sold in Puerto Rico so the St. Thomas locals didn’t know what we were drinking, or just because they didn’t care, but no one said anything to us about drinking something we didn’t buy directly from them. In fact, there was a big group of college-aged kids sitting next to us who were on spring break and staying on the island all week, and they had a huge cooler filled with beers that we watched them carry onto the beach and no one said anything to them either.

We took advantage and took some photos when the sun eventually came out…

A few other things about Sapphire Beach: I know they had some construction for the past few months. As of when we were there, the bathrooms were open, but there was still a section of the property under construction. There was one vendor set up on the beach selling jewelry and dresses, but she did not bother us or pressure us to buy anything. If people approached her to browse her products, then she answered their questions, but she did not walk up and down the beach asking us to buy stuff. There were 2 runners from the restaurant who came around with drink and food menus and could take your orders from the beach so you didn’t have to get up if you were hungry. Other than that, it was a pleasant quiet day at the beach, even if it was too cold to do the water sports! I was able to snorkel here on my 2012 cruise, so if you are interested in that experience, please refer to that review.

There was a taxi waiting outside to bring us back to the ship when we were ready to leave at 1:45pm. It again cost $10 per person for a 30 minute ride, and the driver dropped us off near the stores outside the port. We got back on the ship by 2:30pm after a slow moving line at the gangway. First stop was to drop off our bags in the cabin (it came in handy that we could run up one flight of stairs to our cabin on deck 1 instead of waiting for the elevators), and then we went to the Lido buffet for lunch… another Mongolian Wok stir fry for me, and the burrito bar for J.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon relaxing on a sun bed on Serenity deck. I have seen photos of those sun beds having a clamshell to provide shade, but none of the sun beds on the Valor had that clamshell attachment. Today was a good day to use the sun beds because it was a bit overcast and cloudy, but I avoided the beds on bright sunny days for fear of getting a sunburn.

I got hungry again an hour later so I grabbed some cheese pizza (which involved a long walk all the way across the ship to the aft pizza station.) I really wanted to have the mushroom pizza but it would take them 20 minutes to cook it fresh for me and I didn’t want to wait that long so I just took the plain cheese slices that were already available.

I went back to the cabin to shower at 5pm and the clanging noise came back. I called guest services and they said they would send someone up to check it out. The maintenance guy finally arrived nearly an hour later, and of course the sound stopped by then. He said he thought it was the anchor settling after sail away. I explained that it happened last night over an hour before sail away too so I doubted it was the anchor. He said to call guest services if the noise came back. I’ll bet you can guess what happened next… 10 minutes after the maintenance guy left, the clanging noise started again. I called guest services again and the girl said she would come right away to hopefully arrive while the noise was still happening. She knocked on the door 5 minutes later and waited with us for about 5 minutes but sure enough, the noise remained quiet while she was there. And of course, a minute or two after she left, the clanging returned. By now, it was 6:45pm and we planned to go to dinner at 6:30pm so I didn’t want to call and wait for them to come again (especially since the noise seemed to be scared of the ship staff and it always stopped when they were around!). Instead, I took out my iPhone and recorded a 1 minute voice memo of the sound. It worked great and really captured how consistent and annoying the banging was. We then headed down to dinner and agreed to forget about the banging for a few hours and we could deal with it after we ate.

This was my first experience with any time dining. We got to the 3rd floor mid-ship Lincoln dining room and there were maybe 5 parties ahead of us lined up to be seated. It took just a few minutes until we were brought to a table for 2 towards the back of the dining room. I had read enough Cruise Critic reviews that complain about how close together the tables are, so I wasn’t surprised to see that our table had about a foot of space between our neighboring tables. No big deal! It was great to have the flexibility to eat when it was convenient for us, especially with all the clanging drama in our cabin.

I ordered the duck and the fried shrimp for my appetizers, the seafood newburg for my entree, and of course the warm chocolate melting cake for dessert. They brought everyone 2 ramekins of vanilla ice cream without having to request it. All of the food was served warm and it was delicious as always. I am not going to post the menus for each day since they were the same old menus that you can easily find in other reviews (plus all the ships will have new American Table menus soon anyway). I will post some food porn though!

We wore our green Mardi Gras beads in anticipation of St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow…

Walking through the lobby…

After dinner, we went to guest services to play them the sound recording of the clanging noise. We spoke with a lovely lady named Sylvia, and she was extremely helpful. She listened to the recording and excused herself for a few minutes to speak to her supervisor. When she returned, she explained that there was one unoccupied cabin left on the ship and she offered to take us to see it. I had spent a great deal of time and energy picking out the perfect cabin for our needs, so I was worried that this new cabin would be in a bad location. As it turned out, it was a balcony cabin all the way forward on deck 7. As I mentioned at the start of my review, I am a huge fan of deck 7, and I have never been in a balcony cabin before. Maybe everything would work out well for us after all! Sylvia took us up to see cabin 7220. On the way up there, she explained that it was only available because another couple missed the cruise due to flight cancellations during a blizzard in their home city. We felt really sorry for whoever that was- it must be awful to miss out on your vacation so last minute due to weather problems!

The new cabin was lovely… Not a single clanging noise to be heard! We were thrilled at the idea of a silent peaceful remainder to our vacation, and Sylvia said the cabin was ready immediately if we wanted to change cabins tonight. While it was less than ideal to miss out on an evening of fun on the ship, I wanted to make the room change ASAP to avoid another night in the noisy cabin and so we could get on with enjoying the rest of our cruise. We took 30 minutes to repack all of our belongings (and by repack, I mean take every plastic grocery bag we had in or cabin, plus our beach bags and other luggage, and throw everything in so it was portable… no need to cram it all tightly which would have taken way more time!), and we called for a porter to help move our bags. By 10:45pm, everything was unloaded in the new cabin and we decided to head down to the 11:15pm adult comedy show so at least we could do one fun thing tonight!

Tonight’s comedian was Lou Johnson and he did a whole set about cruising. I guess he really knows his audience! He didn’t waste any time making fun of people in the front row like most comedians do… The whole 30 minute act was filled with hilarious content about his experiences working on cruise ships. If you have a chance to go, I would definitely recommend seeing Lou Johnson’s act!

After that, we got back to the cabin at midnight, ordered some grilled cheese from room service, and spent an hour unpacking and getting settled in our new home for the rest of the week. Overall, the experience with the clanging noise was a hassle and it wasn’t ideal to waste time on our vacation dealing with it, but we thought Carnival handled the situation fairly and took care of us.

Mr. Monkey was waiting to say goodnight

Up next: our only day at sea, spent mostly outside on our new balcony!!

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 4, Part 2

March 30, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Later, we left the ship to go back to the duty free shop to buy some fancy champagne for my birthday. They made us exit down to the ground floor before reentering the terminal to get to the duty free shop. While we were downstairs, we decided to leave the port to go take a quick photo with the ship in the background…

After we got back into the terminal and bought a nice bottle of champagne, we went through the same security point as before. This time, when we got to the guard at the end of the tunnel on the outer deck of the ship, he did search our shopping bag from the duty free store because we didn’t have anywhere to hide it, but that was no big deal because everyone is allowed to bring 2 bottles of wine/champagne per cabin on board. This was our 3rd bottle of champagne for the cabin but no one was keeping track that we already brought 2 bottles on board haha

Tonight we had reservations for dinner at the steakhouse. The main dining room has open seating on the first night of cruises from San Juan because of the late all-aboard time and muster drill. I remember the service being sub-par on the first night of my 2012 cruise, so we wanted to avoid that experience tonight. I have never eaten at a steakhouse on a cruise before so I didn’t have anything to compare this experience to, but was excited to try something new.

We purposely booked our dinner on the first night of the cruise to take advantage of the free bottle of wine. When we arrived, our waitress said we could either order a bottle of the house red or white wine, or we could have 50% off the purchase of a different bottle if we preferred. We opted to upgrade to a bottle of Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Sauvignon Blanc since I had read reviews indicating that the free bottle of wine is not very good. Also, the dress code at the steakhouse is more relaxed on the first night… They would have allowed us to wear shorts, and I think it is considered ‘cruise casual’ like the regular dining room on the first night.

Here is our waitress showing us what each cut of meat looks like:

Ordering dinner at the steakhouse is different from in the main dining room- you are allowed to order one soup/salad and one appetizer, or two appetizers if you prefer, one entree, and one dessert. I ordered the escargots bourguignonne and beef carpaccio for my appetizers, the surf and turf for my entree, and the cheesecake for dessert. We could also order a side dish so I had the sautéed mushrooms. I thought the food was excellent, but I think I liked my dishes more than J did, as he said his filet mignon was bland.

First, they gave us a little something courtesy of the chef. I was given a tiny bowl of tomato soup but J was kind enough to trade with me because I don’t like tomatoes. Here is my teeny tiny hamburger. It was yummy!

I expected the food to be very good and I wanted to make sure I had enough space in my stomach to try everything, so I purposely ordered things that I knew came in smaller portions. I think that was a good decision because everything was delicious and I was able to enjoy it all without feeling overly stuffed! The downside to eating at the steakhouse was that the plague of very slow service struck again. It took 40 minutes to get bread on the table, let alone our appetizers. We had 6:30pm reservations and they had to rush us through dessert at 8:45pm because the muster drill was about to start.

After dinner, we ran back down to our cabin and waited for them to announce that it was time to go to our muster station. Our steward already got to our cabin for turn-down service and left this little guy on our bed…

While we were waiting for muster, we heard this strange clanging noise. We couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it sounded like it came from the closets or the bathroom. The noise sounded like pieces of metal banging together, and we heard a loud “clang” every 3-5 seconds. We didn’t know what it was but decided to ignore it and hoped it would stop soon.

They called for everyone to go to their muster stations at around 9:40pm. Luckily it was a cool night so it was comfortable to stand out on deck 4. The drill lasted about 15 minutes total, then they released one side at a time (port side went first… of course we were on the starboard side). We went straight up to deck 10 forward to the secret deck to wait for sail away. I was greatly looking forward to this as I have sailed from Puerto Rico twice before, but I have yet to watch the sail away. On my Celebrity cruise, my dinner time was during sail away (they have fixed dining times on embarkation day and sail away was at 8pm), and it was raining during sail away for my Victory cruise so they moved the party inside to the disco. I had my fingers crossed that the weather would hold out for us this time around so I could see the city and the forts as we sailed away, and I was not disappointed! We were the only ones out there for a while, but 5 or so people joined us by the time the ship sailed away. This made for a pretty amazing place for a mostly private view as we sailed past OSJ and the forts.

Once we got past El Morro, the view turned to total darkness as we sailed out into the ocean. We went back down to the Lido deck and joined the Cruise Critic meet and greet party for a few minutes, then went to guest services to let them know about the clanging noise. The girl at guest services came back to our cabin with us, but we didn’t hear the noise so we figured it had fixed itself. We thanked her and she left so we could get ready for bed, looking forward to a day in St. Thomas tomorrow!

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 4, Part 1

March 29, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Sunday, March 15 ~ The Tides of March

Nearly 8 months after booking our cruise, it was finally embarkation day!! We went to breakfast at Waffle-Era, a little restaurant 2 blocks from our hotel.

They had a huge menu with lots of regular or iced teas, and tons of sweet and savory waffles. The waitress spent a few minutes reviewing the menu with us and suggesting the most popular options. It was a bit overwhelming, but in a good way! They serve their waffles either as a half- or whole-portion, so we decided to get a whole Caneloide for me so I could give one quarter of it to J, and J ordered a half-portion of the Honey Almond Blues. We each had ¾ of a waffle and it was the perfect amount (we wanted to avoid over-eating, knowing how much food we’d eat for the next week!).

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and grabbed a taxi to the cruise port. We arrived at the terminal at 10am, and there were about 30 people already waiting to board. They were still debarking passengers from the previous cruise, but they opened the doors at 10:30am and we entered terminal by 10:40am. They directed us up the escalators where they first took our embarkation photos and then directed us to line up for check in. It took until 11:10am to get checked in because they only had 5 or 6 people working the counter. No worries though! We chatted with the couple standing on line in front of us, and before we knew it, it was our turn to check in. I was shocked that we got zone 1 since I thought that was usually reserved for Platinum/Diamond/FTTF, but I later realized that they just board those passengers separately before starting to call the zone numbers. The cruise terminal in San Juan has very limited seating, but since we were so early, we easily found seats.

Luckily, we didn’t need to use our chairs for very long… They started boarding at 11:30am, called zone 1 at 11:40am, and we were on the ship at 11:45am!! Let the cruise begin!!!

We went right to our cabin and it was ready so we dropped off our luggage and went up to the Lido buffet for lunch. This was my first time cruising on a ship with Mongolian Wok so I knew I wanted to try it out today! It is set up with empty bowls at the end of the line and you get to take as much as you want of two types of noodles and about 10 different veggies. When you get to the front of the line, there are 3 protein options (chicken, beef or lamb, and a seafood option) and only the chef handles the raw ingredients. Finally, you choose a sauce: black bean is mild, Thai BBQ is a little spicy, and schezwan is very spicy. I always enjoy made-to-order food options because I am picky about ingredients, so this was my ideal meal! The steaming hot bowl of noodles was as delicious as I had hoped!

After lunch, we went back to the cabin to unpack. While the decor is a bit dated (the orange color scheme screams 70’s to me!), and the furniture is a bit banged up and shows its age, the cabin was clean and well laid out. I liked that the bed was on the far end of the cabin and the living space was closer to the bathroom and closets. There was more than enough storage for the 2 of us (we didn’t even need to use the big drawers under the couch), and we had enough floor space to walk around without tripping over each other.

As you can see in the photo, they did upgrade the tv set in our cabin. While I could care less what type of tv set they have since we rarely turned the tv on, I did like that the flat screen tv gave us access to a second electric outlet! We had to unplug the tv to access the outlet, but who cares? The flexibility of a second outlet was way more valuable than whatever sales pitch for shore excursions was airing on the tv haha

I already mentioned that we purchased a few bottles of liquor last night. Just like when I cruised on the Victory in 2012, it was very easy to smuggle our alcohol onboard. We put the Gasolinas and liquor in a separate small bag. When we went through the X-rays, they put an orange zip tie on the handle of the bag. After we walked away from the X-rays and were out of sight, I put the tagged liquor bag into a larger beach tote with the zip tie hidden on the bottom. Once we got through the tunnel and up onto the ship, we just carried the tote bag and the rest of our carry-ons past the guard as if everything was normal. They had a table set up to the left where I assume they were collecting contraband liquor bottles, but we had to walk to the right to get to the doors to enter the lobby, so we probably wouldn’t have seen the table if we didn’t know to look for it. No one questioned us at all and it was a very easy process. I know this is a very controversial topic on Cruise Critic, and I we did also purchase several drinks from the bars on board so it’s not like we didn’t pay for our fair share of drinks. We just wanted to have a few bottles to mix our own drinks in our cabin while we were getting changed for dinner or whatever. Here is our supplies for the week (not pictured: the 3 bottles of club soda and several cans of Rockstar energy drink since I don’t drink coffee but need a caffeine source… they were part of our soda allowance though, so not technically contraband!)…

After unpacking, we spent the afternoon in a hammock on Serenity deck while sipping on our Funship Specials. That drink really does pack a punch! I was a bit disappointed that they no longer have the souvenir cups that say “Best Day Ever,” especially considering they still charge the same price as when the drink did include the souvenir!

We also took some time to walk around the ship and take some silly photos…

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 3, Part 2

March 28, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

By now, it was 2:30pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast so we were starving. We considered walking across the city to Punto de Vista (where we originally planned to eat dinner last night but didn’t get to because of our delayed flights), but we knew it would take at least 20 minutes and then we would have to walk back to the west side of the city to continue touring. On the way, we past a restaurant called El Patio de Sam on Calle San Sebastian advertising their trifongo. The menu looked good so we decided to eat there instead. We were seated on their beautiful enclosed patio:

The menu was a little pricey for lunch, with $15 each for chicken mofongo and trifongo, but we were on vacation and knew we wanted to try the local cuisine, so we ordered it anyway. Both dishes were excellent and totally different! We had never tried it before and didn’t know what to expect. While both are made from mashed plantains, the mofongo is has the consistency of lumpy chunky mashed potatoes, whereas the trifongo is deep fried and crispy. I had read a few reviews where people mentioned that the mofongo is only good with a sauce on top, so we got the creamy garlic sauce for both dishes and it was delicious! I seriously wish I could have that for dinner tonight haha

Trifongo:

Mofongo:

While the food was excellent, the service was verrrrrry slow. We were there for over an hour and a half! I was starting to get the feeling that it wasn’t as much the individual restaurants providing slow service, but rather a cultural difference. We were tourists with things to do and places to see. We didn’t want to spend half the afternoon eating lunch. I think the Caribbean and Puerto Rican culture is more leisurely and slow-paced, so to them, it is normal to leave us alone and let us enjoy our meals. Unfortunately, we were hoping to eat a quick lunch and get on our way to continue exploring the town. I guess we weren’t quite relaxed and in full vacation mode yet!

Anyway, once we left the restaurant, we out through the old city gate:

We walked along the outer side of the fort walls and along Paseo del Morro until we reach the fountain and Paseo de la Princesa.

There was a little street fair with a few vendors and places to buy snacks. J got a small cup of coffee to drink as we walked around.

We continued a little further until we reached the CVS on Calle Marina near the cruise ship ports. Since we only used carry on bags, we both needed to buy big bottles of suntan lotion. The prices were basically the same as a regular CVS in the States. We also bought a bottle of champagne to bring on the ship. We then went back to hotel to shower and get ready for dinner.

Barrachina was located directly around the corner from our hotel. I called the restaurant in January to make a 7:15pm reservation for the flamenco show. We were seated in the 3rd row of tables, and immediately ordered some pina coladas. Barrachina claims that they invented the pina colada. I don’t know if that is really true or not, but either way, the drinks were very good!

We both ordered the chicken caribeno for our dinners and it was light and tasty.

The flamenco show lasted for one hour and it was very entertaining. They had 4 girls and 1 guy who took turns dancing and they were all very talented. It made for a unique way to enjoy our dinner.

After dinner, we went to the SuperMax supermarket in the Plaza de Armas. We bought an 8 pack of cans of Diet Pepsi, 3 bottles of club soda, one bottle of champagne (we intended to make mimosas at breakfast so we needed a lot of champagne haha), and 2 boxes of Gasolinas. I am fairly sure that you can only buy Gasolina in Puerto Rico. It is basically a Capri Sun for adults! They have a few flavors like rum punch and mojito, and are filled with vodka/rum/tequilla based fruity drinks in individual pouches with a straw inside so you can drink it on the go. It was perfect to bring in our tote bags to the beach! And even better, it only cost $1 per pouch! Can’t beat that!!

We then went to the Walgreens right across from the SuperMax and bought a bottle of whiskey and pineapple rum. By the time we got back to the hotel, my pedometer said we walked nearly 18,000 steps today! Being on vacation is hard work! haha

Up next: Embarkation Day!

Cruise

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 3, Part 1

March 26, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Saturday, March 14 ~ Do they have pie in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico for Pi Day?

After a comfortable night’s sleep, we woke up ready toenjoy a full day of exploring Old San Juan, Puerto Rico! We left the hotel and walked 4 blocks east to have breakfast at Cafe Mallorca. When we arrived at around 10am, it was busy, but there was a table available for us to be seated immediately. I loved that they had a guy playing a trumpet at the front of the restaurant… such a quaint atmosphere!

We both ordered mallorcas with eggs and cheese. While the waiter was quick to take our orders and bring us our food, we had very slow service in waiting for our bill, and then we had to wait in a slow-moving line to pay at the register in the front of the restaurant.

We left the restaurant at around 11am and walked a few blocks to San Cristobal fort. With little white puffy clouds dotting the sky, the views from the fort were amazing! We spent a little over an hour walking around and taking lots of photos.

The view looking back towards the cruise pier… tomorrow, the Valor will be docked here and waiting for us to board!!

Looking west towards El Morro fort

I found a fun app that lets you edit your photos with lots of different effects. I really love how these turned out….

After we finished at El Cristobal fort, we spent 20 minutes walking through the city to El Morro fort. The walk was mostly flat with a few moments of uphill climb, and there were narrow sidewalks the whole way. I love the cobblestone streets and how colorful all of the buildings are!

This must be the most beautiful cemetery in the world!

It was very windy as we walked across the huge lawn to the front of El Morro (notice my hair blowing in the wind!) There were lots of people flying kites and enjoying a picnic with their families on the lawn. If I lived in San Juan, I imagine that I would spend a ton of time out here too!

We spent another hour or so walking around El Morro and taking photos. There were brief periods of light rain, and very dark skies in the distance, but it was tolerable and there were plenty of places to seek cover from the rain.

Check out the amazing view from the women’s bathroom! haha

Cruise

Carnival Valor ~ Days 1 and 2

March 26, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

Thursday, March 11 ~ Vacation Time!

The day had finally arrived! After a full day at work, and a quick gel manicure for me, we were officially on vacation!!!

We went out to dinner at a local pizza place, then headedto the San Jose airport for our redeye flight to NY. Neither of us sleep well on planes, so it wasa long night, but the flight was otherwise uneventful. We pulled away from the gate 10 minutes early, and landed in NY 30 minutes early. My TV was broken (as it nearly always is), and the flight attendant gave me a $15 voucher as compensation… which I accidentally left in the seat-back pocket on the plane. Oops! I guess whoever sat in that seat after me will get a surprise if they check the pocket haha I didn’t sleep at all, but at least I got to watch a few episodes of House of Cards and Girls.

Friday, March 13 ~ Friday the 13th is no joke!!

We spent the morning with my parents during our layover. I hadn’t seen them since the fall, so it was nice to have a few hours to catch up (and any chance I get to have a NY bagel makes me happy!!) They drove us back to JFK and we found out our flight was delayed by an hour. Originally we were supposed to get to PR by 1:15pm. Then it got pushed back to a 6:15pm landing. Now we wouldn’t get there until nearly 8pm. Definitely a crummy way to start our trip, especially considering we didn’t sleep at all on the redeye last night. After a few hours, we noticed they kept pushing our departure time later and later, one hour at a time! Long story short, the plane we were originally scheduled on was delayed by 2 hours from leaving Tampa due to mechanical problems. Once it finally took off, it was diverted to Richmond, VA because one of the runways was closed at JFK so there was no where for it to land. Our flight ended up being delayed by over 4 hours, and we didn’t end up landing until 10pm. So much for our plans to get some mofongo and mojitos for dinner at Punto de Vista! I bought an over-priced sub-par salad from the airport for dinner. In total, it took us over 24 hours to get from San Jose, CA to San Juan, PR. We had our fingers crossed that we wouldn’t have any more problems on this vacation. This is the reason you should never fly in the same day as a cruise!!

We landed in Puerto Rico at 10pm, quickly hopped in a taxi to Old San Juan, and arrived at our hotel by 11pm. Taxis in Puerto Rico have regulated prices based on zones… it cost $19 for the taxi, plus a $2 surcharge for gas, plus $1 for each of our suitcases (we held our backpacks on our laps and were not charged for them). We prebooked a room at the Hotel Plaza de Armas a few months before the cruise. It was a good thing our flight didn’t get cancelled since I prepaid for the room and it was nonrefundable if you don’t cancel with at least 24 hours notice! I called the hotel from JFK airport to let them know we would be arriving late, and they reassured me that someone would be available to help us check in whenever we arrived. The hotel was a quaint boutique hotel in a great location in a plaza in the middle of town. It was walking distance to both of the forts and all the restaurants and hotspots in Old San Juan. We could have even walked to the cruise ship port if we didn’t have luggage to drag behind us! The hotel was a bit old, but it was clean and had both an air conditioner and an elevator (two must-haves for our hotel!) The one strange thing was that the hotel had a large open layout between the floors. I have stayed in Embassy Suites hotels with the same open layout and never had a problem, but I guess the walls are thinner in the Hotel Plaza de Armas because we could hear people talking in the halls of every floor, and we could hear people slamming their doors on every floor… all night long! We tried to use the fan from the air conditioner to dull the hallway noise, but it was definitely noticeable. We were so exhausted from not sleeping on the redeye that we both slept through the night, but it is something to be aware of if you are a light sleeper. I am very disappointed in myself… I never took photos of the hotel room!! I usually try to take room pictures when I first walk into the hotel room or cruise cabin, but I was so tired from the long day of travel that it slipped my mind. Sorry!!

Cruise

Carnival Valor cruise ~ The Planning Phase

March 26, 2015 deladane Leave a comment

I think I am setting a new record! Somehow this is my 3rd Carnival cruise in the last 3 years, as well as the 3rd time my ship has changed itineraries shortly after my sailing! I sailed on the Victory in 2012 on the Southern Caribbean route from San Juan, but then it switched home ports with the Valor a few weeks later. Then I sailed on the Sunshine in September 2013 on a 12-night Mediterranean cruise which only had a few more sailings in Europe before she came over to the Caribbean. And now, once again, I am sailing on the Valor on her very last sailing out of Puerto Rico before she switches home ports with the Liberty! I’m starting to think that Carnival looks at my cruise bookings to decide which ships should change home ports haha

Anyway, I always write a detailed photo-filled review after my cruise, but I sometimes wonder if anyone benefits from it since most people only think to search for reviews of their ship, but when the ship changes itineraries and home ports, the old reviews become obsolete. I hope that some of you may find this review helpful, be it because you are sailing on the Valor and want to hear about the ship itself and see some current photos, or because you are sailing on the Liberty and want some ideas for planning what to do in each port on this very port-intensive itinerary. Worst case scenario: no one finds this review of any use, but I get to re-live my amazing vacation as I write it, and will end up with a travel log that I can look back on when I miss having sand between my toes. It’s a win win! As I always do, I will make all of my posts in a larger purple font so it is easier to find the review posts in case you want to skip over the comments.

So let’s start at the very beginning (It’s a very good place to start…) Back in July, my boyfriend (he doesn’t want me to use his name on here, so I’ll just call him J) and I were drinking margaritas on my patio, and talking about how much fun we had on our July 4th weekend trip to Vegas. We agreed that we wanted to travel somewhere together again, maybe in March for my birthday, and I suggested that we should take a cruise. I loved every port on the Southern Caribbean itinerary I took on the Victory a few years ago, so I suggested that we take the Valor cruise. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so we are quite far from Puerto Rico. I was scared to think of what the flights would cost us, but it was worth a shot. If the flights were too pricey, we could always look into taking a different cruise from Florida or California. I checked the JetBlue website and was totally shocked! They had roundtrip flights from San Jose (our closest airport) to Puerto Rico for $464 each!! The flights were not direct (which I knew, because we can only fly directly to NYC or Boston from San Jose), so we would have to connect at JFK airport in NY. So basically that meant that we were paying $116 for each leg of our flight (CA to NY, NY to PR, and back)! Holy cow!! I usually pay close to $500 just to fly from CA to NY! This was such an amazing deal on flights that we knew we had to book them ASAP. Fingers crossed that there won’t be a late-winter blizzard in NY to mess up our plans!

After the flights were booked, we called Carnival to book the cruise. I went back and forth a lot on what type of cabin we should book. On my last two Carnival cruises, I was very happy in my inside cabin mid-ship on deck 7. We were two floors up from the bars and nightlife, and two floors down from the buffet and pools on Lido deck. The problem was that on both of those cruises, I had the ‘two twin beds’ set up (the first cruise was with one of my best friends, and the second was with my mom). We arranged the beds to be perpendicular to each other, and had a ton of open floor space in the middle of the cabin so it never felt cramped. I also really liked the value of booking an inside cabin since I spend very little time in my room and prefer to invest most of my budget into activities in port.

This time around, I would be cruising with my boyfriend so we would have the ‘one king bed’ set up. Based on photos I have seen in other reviews, I knew that the one big bed in the middle of the inside cabin would leave nearly no floor space, and I was afraid we would be tripping over each other all week. That lead me to consider an oceanview cabin. It would be nice to have a couch to sit down on, and the extra square feet would be great for having more space to walk around. I ruled out a balcony cabin because they were twice the price, and there’s plenty of public outside space if we want to be outside so no reason to spend the extra money on that.

Once I decided on the oceanview cabin, I had to choose a deck. I definitely wanted to be mid-ship. The kitchen galley for the Valor takes up most of deck 3 mid-ship, and I have read many comments on these boards about the risks of having a cabin below the galley because they start preparing breakfast very early in the morning, and I did not want my beauty sleep to be interrupted by the banging or cleaning or whatever it is that they do up there! Our cruise was in March to coincide with my birthday, but I know that also is when colleges have spring break. It made me a bit nervous to book a cabin on deck 1 during spring break, fearing that college kids would pick the cheapest deck on the ship and pile 4 people into all the inside cabins, and then be really loud and annoying at night. In the end, I decided to ignore my fears and we went with cabin 1301: a mid-ship oceanview cabin on deck 1 (hoping that spring breakers would stick with cruises leaving from Florida instead of flying to Puerto Rico).

Now that our cruise was officially booked, it was time to start the countdown!!

This dry erase board hung on my fridge and I updated the countdown daily. I also picked up these 2 jars and filled them with one piece of candy for every day until we left for the cruise (I had candy corn in my jar, and J got peanut butter M&Ms- he was very happy with the candy choice I got for him haha). It was so fun to eat one piece of candy together each day as we looked forward to our upcoming vacation.

I spent the next few months researching on Cruise Critic and getting back into cruise-planning-mode (I really missed all the planning I had to do for the Mediterranean cruise in 2013!) I became obsessed with reading reviews and checking the ports of call boards for more information. J spent a lot of time teasing me for all the time I spent on Cruise Critic haha He claims that he likes to plan things and be involved, but I don’t think he knew how much of a planner I am until we started planning this cruise. We booked the cruise 8 months in advance and we had a lot of other things going on through the fall, so J didn’t want to worry about the cruise until after New Years. Well that just wouldn’t work for me! Half the fun of taking a cruise is all the anticipation and time spent planning for it! To me, the planning makes me feel like I am already partly on vacation, so there was no way I would wait until January to start my research. I continued to secretly research on Cruise Critic, and took lots of notes that I could share with J when he was ready to talk about it.

A few months after we booked, there was a big shake up on Cruise Critic: the Valor and the Liberty were going to switch home ports in March! After a brief freak-out session, I checked my booking and was happy to see that I was not affected (although I would have been thrilled if the swap happened in early March and I’d get to sail on the Liberty, I was just very thankful that we booked the 3/15 sailing and not the 3/22 sailing which was now essentially cancelled and turned into a repositioning cruise to Miami). As it turned out, we were taking the last sailing for the Valor on the Southern Caribbean route. I was a bit nervous that this would somehow affect the quality of my cruise. Would the staff be slacking off because it’s their last cruise on this itinerary? Would the ship stop re-stocking and run out of supplies? I was hopeful that the staff would step up and give us a fabulous vacation experience, but it did make me a little worried.

Then, in mid-November, I got a call that JetBlue cancelled the 10am flight we were scheduled to take from JFK to SJU, and they put us on a 6:59am flight instead. The slight problem with that is we were taking a redeye from California the night before, and we weren’t landing until 7:24am! It might be kinda hard to catch that connecting flight if we are still hovering somewhere over Pennsylvania!!

After some time on the phone with customer service, they were able to put us on a 2:15pm flight that afternoon. It was definitely annoying that they just took away our Friday afternoon of touring Puerto Rico, and that we would have to check into the hotel and grab dinner fairly late considering we wouldn’t get much sleep on the redeye the night before. At least on the bright side, my parents live 10 minutes from JFK airport, so we would get to have brunch with them during our layover! This is why you should never book flights on the day of the cruise! Luckily we were flying in on Friday so there was no chance of missing the ship as a result of this change. We crossed our fingers that this was the only hassle we’ll have to deal with for our vacation!!

Cruise

Carnival Sunshine ~ Day 16: Barcelona, Spain

September 24, 2013 deladane Leave a comment

September 22 – Barcelona, Spain

Today was another one of the days I was most looking forward to on this vacation. Our plan was to visit all of the Gaudi buildings, and I saved it for today as an exciting end to our vacation (and because many other things in Barcelona are closed on Sunday, so it worked well to spend the day inside museums haha)

I got up around 8am, got ready, and went downstairs for another great breakfast at the hotel. At 9am, we left the hotel and took the metro to Sagrada Familia! The metro stop is literally right next to the church, and I thought this sign was pretty funny considering it is still under construction and they don’t know when it will be completed…

We walked across the street and around to the other side of the building to find the main entrance. Of course, there was a huge line to enter when we arrived, but that didn’t bother us because we pre-purchased our skip-the-line tickets for 10am. They allowed us to enter at 9:45am, and we waited in line for about 10 minutes to pick up the audio guides. Rick Steves does have a written walking tour for Sagrada Familia, but the audio guides on site only cost a few extra Euros, so we decided that would probably allow us to appreciate it more.

We spent a little over an hour walking around and taking photos. It is such an intricate and beautiful church with incredible details at every turn. I did remember to bring my skirt today, but it turned out that the guards didn’t care if your knees were covered or not. I saw many people inside wearing shorts, so I left my skirt in my purse and walked inside with no trouble.

Here are a bunch of photos from inside and outside the Sagrada Familia:

They were holding Sunday mass in a chapel downstairs, but these windows offered a good view to see inside…

We also walked through the museum in the basement. It was surprisingly interesting- they had photos of the various stages of construction, and they had models on display for how the church will look when it is completed.

This model shows the premise behind how Gaudi designed the church. It is meant to look like the mirror image of draped ropes hanging down.

Once we were finished, we took the metro to the Passeig de Gracia stop and walked along the Block of Discord up to Casa Batllo.

Casa Batllo was one of the houses that Antonio Gaudi built. It was whimsical and ornate, and there are no straight lines in the structure so all the corners and windows and door frames have rounded edges. The balconies on the front facade are designed to look like Venetian masks.

The line to enter was not too long when we arrived, but we had pre-purchased our tickets anyway. The tickets for Casa Batllo are bought for a specific day, but you can enter at any time, and it included the audio guide as well. We walked through all the floors and up to the roof. There were a lot of stairs involved, but they also have an elevator if you need it (just be prepared to wait a loooong time because the elevator only holds 2-3 people and there is only 1 so it takes a while before it stops at your floor and is empty enough for you to get on lol)

This was a video display that was really cool to watch. It repeats on a 3-minute loop, and the lights and music were exciting to watch.

After the video display, I walked up these stairs…

to reach the roof! I certainly had never seen a roof or chimney like this before!

We left Casa Batllo around 1pm and were ready for lunch, but surprisingly, there were very few options. We headed in the direction of the next Gaudi house and kept our eyes open for somewhere to eat.

Burberry store (too bad it was closed because it was a Sunday!)

We ended up finding a nice restaurant on the second floor of this fancy, old building.

I ordered the seafood risotto… it was very tasty, and it reminded me of yet another variety of paella (my third in 3 days haha)

We pre-purchased tickets for 3pm to see Gaudi’s other house, Casa Mila. We arrived at 2:20pm and they allowed us to enter early. Since the audio guides had been so helpful at Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo, we decided to upgrade our tickets for an extra 4 Euros to add the audio guide here. It is interesting to note that people actually live in this building on the lower floors. I couldn’t imagine really living in a public museum like that, but the residents use a separate elevator bank, and visitors are escorted to the museum floors so we weren’t walking through the private apartments.

Our first stop was to go straight up to the roof. This roof was even more impressive than the one at Casa Batllo! There were tons of stairs going up and down the wavy roofline, and the chimneys all resembled warriors. Yet another example of Gaudi’s creative genius!

The roof also offered great views of the Eixample district.

Once we were finished enjoying the roof, we went down one floor to the attic level. The red brick arches that run throughout the attic were beautiful, and the museum featured lots of information about Antonio Gaudi (some of which we had already learned earlier today at the other buildings haha), and it also had examples of his ergonomic furniture designs.

Our last stop was to the next floor down, which was a furnished apartment. Unlike Casa Batllo, Casa Mila is fully furnished and set up like an apartment at the turn of the century. It was interesting to see how someone would have lived in this building over 100 years ago.

We left around 3:30pm and used our unlimited metro cards to ride the bus back to Placa Catalunya. We decided to head back to the hotel to rest and repack our bags. At 6:30pm, we walked down to Las Ramblas in search of some more souvenirs. I bought a tshirt for my dad, and mom bought a few things too.

Around 8:30, we were hungry for dinner and decided to eat at a tapas restaurant near the top of Las Ramblas. I didn’t get to take photos because we were so hungry that we ate the food before I had a chance to take out my camera haha The food was very good, and it made for a nice last meal in Spain. After dinner, we went back to the hotel around 10pm to finish packing.

On Monday, we ate our last breakfast at the hotel, and had the hotel concierge call us a taxi to go to the airport. Our flight home was uneventful… we had beautiful views of the southern coast of Spain, and they served lunch midway through the flight.

Well, that’s it folks! I hope you enjoyed reading my review 🙂 Please let me know if you have any other questions about anything! I took over 2,500 photos on this trip, so if there was something else you wanted to see a photo of, let me know and I’ll check to see if I have one.

Dana's Destination Diary

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 7

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 6

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 5

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 4, Part 2

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 4, Part 1

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 3, Part 2

Carnival Valor Cruise ~ Day 3, Part 1

Carnival Valor ~ Days 1 and 2

Carnival Valor cruise ~ The Planning Phase

Carnival Sunshine ~ Day 16: Barcelona, Spain

Detailed Photo Travel Blog