Quick Cruising

For whatever reason I'm not feeling like writing. A lot of things are going on, and I'm feeling pulled in a hundred directions. In reality I just have to slow down, enjoy the time I have left and deal with the rest, including snatches of time in the city I'll never get back. Be careful what you wish and pray for, because getting them can impact your other plans!

But onto the cruise ... Overall a good time, but in hindsight I wished we'd stayed longer in the ports and had fewer "fun days at sea" on the ship.

We weren't as impressed with the food as we thought we might be. Also the "golden dining room" was pretentious ... and unnecessarily so, especially since nearly ever surface was painted gold -- and clearly paint. Yikes. We did eat breakfast in the silver dining room one morning, and although it was a little less tacky, we mostly stuck with the buffet. I will say this that there was always a lot of food, but I wouldn't say it was very good quality -- except the fruit, and I did like the coffee OK.

The shows were pretty good. At first I was unimpressed because the dancers weren't an par with what I've seen on Broadway. But as the cruise progressed I realized -- we're on a moving ship! So it is probably a lot more difficult to hit your marks when they're moving. So I appreciated their work much more after that realization!

The first night's welcome show was overly hokey though. F-U-N was the name of the game, i.e. that's the Carnival tagline and almost everything includes the word (Fun Ship, Fun Times, etc.). Anyway, the medley of songs HAD to be the result of a Google search for "songs with fun" -- everything from "All I wanna do" to "Girls just wanna" ... But otherwise the variety song shows were good. I especially liked the Around the World one -- the Irish and French dance sets were especially fun to watch. All together their sets and costumes were flashy and over the top. But I guess they want people to think they're getting what they pay for!

One night there was a juggling show, which was right up Shawn's alley. The two jugglers, The Village Idiots, were from Oklahoma! They also had a juggling workshop the next afternoon.

I posted photos on Flickr (click thru for a few captions and the photo titles). I plan to write posts about each port and a post about ways things could be improved to suit me (although again I'm not the target demographic, some of these are no brainers). I'll also read through the journal/notes I kept of the trip and share some snippets that make most sense. Until then...