Woke up about 8:30 on Tuesday, and Talia and I started to get ready to go to the dining room for breakfast. Heather was going to sleep it off, but then Stephen woke up as well, so we went to breakfast. I decided to make it a point to have some sort of seafood at every meal.
H: Breakfast is pretty much the same no matter where you eat it on the ship. I’m really just happiest with what I usually eat at home – some plain yogurt, maybe a baked good of some kind, a couple of eggs, and some coffee.
Well imagine my surprise when I take a look at the container of plain yogurt:
It’s made in Buffalo! Yay!
The coffee, though…. Let’s be blunt. The coffee sucked. BAD. And yes, I’m a coffee snob – I don’t even go camping without my beloved Tanzania peaberry, locally roasted, fresh ground in the morning in our Cuisinart 10 cup grind-and-brew coffeemaker. I don’t go to Starschmuchs unless it’s for a green tea latte, I only get coconut iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts (the coconut flavor covers up the stale/burned notes). I do adore my Tim Horton’s coffee, but it’s a poor substitute for what we drink at home.
C: Came back, and set Talia up with camp carnival. She’s able to sign herself in and out, so she’s pretty much autonomous. Then rounded up the pictures from the formal night, and, ironically, chose four from the same photographer, with the black background. We weren’t sure if those were going to work at first, because of the black background, but they were posed well, so we did buy the four.
H: We must have gone to 4 or 5 other photo stations, including the same fake staircase one that we had posed in front of on the Triumph 5 years ago, and out of all of them, it was the 4 in front of that black background that we ended up with. And I’m just so thrilled with how they turned out. It just goes to show you – you’re not paying for sitting fees, and how long does it really take at each one? You never know which set is going to turn out.
C: There were some nice cloud formations visible out the side of the balcony, so I took some pictures after waiting for the camera to warm up – it’s cool and dry in the room, but warm and damp outside.
I saw that the circular polarizer had spots on it, so I decided I had some time to take care of dust in the camera. I dug up the new Nikon-branded lens-cleaning pen (brush on one side, kinda like a squeegee on the other side), and went to town on the low-pass IR filter with the body set to 30-second exposures. There was a speck of dust on the filter, so I started trying to gently push it off to the side.
Panic ensues when I realize suddenly that I’m smearing who knows what all over the IR filter. What started out as a single speck of dust ballooned to a big smear. Fast forward a half-hour, and I was able to get it cleaned up with the other end of the lens pen, which is a soft ½” diameter pad with a lens cleaning solution in it. Not sure if that pen is usable anymore for anything, but it looks like the IR filter is actually cleaned up, at least.
H: When stuff like that happens, I just stay out of the way and try not to ask what’s wrong.
Go up to the Lido to partake in the consumption of some Indian food at the buffet line at lunchtime.
H: I waited 5 years to have Indian food on the ship again, and it did not disappoint.
C: Hung around at the Lido for a bit while the kids finish up, and Heather went down to the Starry Lounge to go to the “meet and greet” that she coordinated with the Cruise Critics folks, and actually had spoken with the assistant cruise director to set up the meeting. I took a few group shots, which need to be posted to the website after we get back.
H: This was the first time I’d set up a Meet and Greet, and I think it went OK. It was great getting to meet everyone after talking with them for months beforehand, and while our roll call wasn’t super busy, I was glad that I was able to put it together. I hope everyone had a good time. And thanks for taking all of that Carnival stuff, so it’s all out of my house now! ^_^
After the meet and greet, we tracked down Talia and Stephen, and got changed to go swimming. Went to the pool for a while, with Heather and the kids trying out the snorkels, and came back to the room to get ready for the Past Cruisers reception at 4:30.
H: My only complaint about the Past Guest party was that a few months before we cruised, Carnival stopped handing out the ship pins with the invitations. It was a cost-cutting measure, to be sure, which in this economy I can certainly understand. But it still made me a little sad that we sailed in the transition period – they will eventually be available for purchase in the gift shop, and they will be added as a perk for Platinum cruisers, but they are no where to be found on board when we sailed.
It also hadn’t occurred to me that we wouldn’t get to keep our invitations (they put them all in a box for a raffle) so we didn’t take a picture of them.
C: We all had a number of lovely beverages at the Past Cruisers reception, and after we got out, we realized the sushi bar was finally open while we were in the general vicinity. The only problem is that there’s such a high demand for the sushi and only the couple people working the sushi-ya, so it’s pretty much a case where you’re given a few pieces of sushi on a small plate, and that’s it. One of the nice things, though, was they had some cucumber tsukemono and some carrot tsukemono as well. Took Talia to Camp Carnival to go eat dinner with her friends and then go swimming afterward. The rest of us headed to the dining room, and seated ourselves at our table, with the bottle of wine from last night already present.
Stephen ordered four apps as dinner, including proscuttio, which he didn’t end up liking, so Heather and I ate it for him. I ordered an app called something like “an exploration in sushi”, which was weird. A couple 1” cubes of maguro tataki, and a mussel shell with a mix of rice and the meat of the mussel. The maguro tataki was good, but weird. Heather inquired what the particular piece was, and Putro, our waiter from the Phillipines was within earshot when I said it was maguro tataki. He inquired if I could speak Japanese, and we found out that he actually took six years of Japanese, but lost most of it because he didn’t use it. Makes sense, but I want to ask if there are any Japanese cruisers on the Pride, since I haven’t seen any, and I know there were some on the Triumph (we had helped a couple figure out how to access the internet). Lots of Chinese , but no Japanese that I saw.
Heather and I were beat after dinner, so we came back, and actually started getting ready for bed. I finished the write-up to this point, and I’m going to get to bed to go to Cape Canaveral, which I need to get up at 7AM to go to. Also need to call AT&T to turn off “international roaming” on the Palm’s SIM card, and to try to find out if there was any roaming charges from early Monday morning… Ordered a Rueben sandwich for room service, so I need to wrap that up and stick it in the fridge. I’ll find out tomorrow if food can be brought into a US port. I know that leatherman tools can be confiscated going into the NASA tour, so I’ve already hid that from myself so I can’t accidently put it on while I’m still half asleep in the morning. Must drink more water, and go to bed…
