6Well, that attempt to blog every day went smoothly. I should have known that my mother doesn’t approve of extensive typing on family vacations. But it’s okay, I’ll make it up to you now that I’m back on land… with an awesome photo summary of the rest of my adventure on the Carnival Pride.
This is me standing on deck for the Safety talk. As you can see, we are not yet in the Bahamas. Even cruise vacations must obey the laws of latitude.
At night the ship is all lit-up, pretty-like. Even the garish colors of the Lido Deck seem bearable in this context. In the far distance you can see the Chesapeake Bay.
I read that each ship in the Carnival fleet has a theme for its interior decor. The theme of our ship, the Carnival Pride, was “Beauty.” I took this to mean “nakedness in Western art meets the 80s.” (Which is odd because this ship was built in the mid-90s.)
The entire ship was filled with reproductions of Western art, like this David here (at the front of the aptly-named David’s Steakhouse).
There was also a lounge that was covered in dead butterflies.
After the 2nd day I do not remember being hungry. After the 4th day I actually began to miss the feeling of being hungry. But I’m not complaining, when my meals looked like this.
There was some healthy/fancy food too. I think this is smoked duck and grilled oranges. I’m impressed that they can do this level of plating on a mass-production basis.
A note on the food: while sitting around wondering what would happen to the food I couldn’t finish (there just was, simply put, too much of everything), I mused about the implications of just dumping the biodegradable stuff right in the ocean. It sounds horrible but it is essentially composting, and if done right, would have a negligible environmental impact. Well, turns out on a galley tour a few days later, I learned that this is what they actually do. And then the fish follow the ship for a while, which is a funny image.
Finally, 2 days later, the sun shines and we venture out on deck. Look at all that water.
First docking: Port Canaveral, FL. Kennedy Space Center! This is the Rocket Garden. (The “rocket” is the part that propels the “orbiter”; the whole ensemble is called the “shuttle.” This is one of those things I felt like I knew when I was in 2nd grade but have since forgotten.)
Off in the distance, the launch pad. There was no launch that day, sadly, but it was still exciting to imagine a vessel rising out of that thing straight into the sky.
The Saturn V Rocket (for launching Apollos at the moon).
Back on board, the room stewards had left a towel rabbit on my bed. In the days after, there were monkeys, walruses, and a frog. Aww…
Next docking: Nassau, Bahamas. This is our ship at the port facility, which can accommodate 8 huge cruise liners like ours.
The houses there are all painted Necco-wafer colors. What came first, candy-colored buildings or tourism?
The day in Nassau was spent shopping for diamonds. On the way back to the ship, a postcard-quality sunset photo.
While my mother tries to take a picture of me, some guy walks in front of the camera, but instead of stepping aside he gets in the picture.
Last docking: Freeport, Bahamas. We did a shore excursion to the Lucayan National Park. The Lucayans were the original inhabitants of the Bahamas before the Europeans came and… well, you know what happens next.
We kayaked down a beautiful mangrove stream.
And tried not to get stuck in the mangrove roots, which we did anyway.
At the end of kayaking was a wild beach.
I found a pretty shell in the waves; when I was about to pocket it, its inhabitant poked its feelers out at me. I put it back.
At the end of our visit, our guide Chad led us to a small collapsed cavern that revealed an underwatter pond. Aerial roots from trees above hung down, all the way to the water. The water in the Bahamas, whether sea, pond, or river, is really all like this jewel-like blue. It still gets me.
Back on board, we had dinner and watched the waiters dance to Jai Ho. I did not expect this.
The last day has no pictures. By then I was all vacationed out and just wanted more than anything to be behind my desk in Boston. I guess I’m not a lounge-chair-and-piña-coladas sort of Tina.
And that concludes my adventures with Carnival Cruise Lines!
Kaffehausdekadenzmoderne is Tina's blog about all sorts of awesome things. Mostly, this involves food, art, design, and sometimes Actionscript 3. It's a way for her to keep track of and share the many things she finds tough, inspiring, delicious, or worth pondering. Other than that, there's no real rhyme or reason to it. (more)
I think I’m offended by the bad art and am not wondering if it was a good thing that my family didn’t go on one of these during Jan. We’ll always stick to disney world. It’s our best kitsch bet.
I also like your picture with the random stranger. It was my favorite.
This trip seems both very nice and sort of unbearably horrible. The water and stop offs and food seem alright, but that late 80s early 90s funktastic decor is painful. I don’t think I could ever really spend time in that room.
*shudders*
Also:
“The houses there are all painted Necco-wafer colors. What came first, candy-colored buildings or tourism?”
The colors do. I was on this island once where the main hospital, which was still very much a concrete block island building (though a very large nice one), was painted the most marvelous cerulean blue with crisp white accents. It was lovely.
Did you know that the only tax in the Bahamas is sales tax? There is no income tax or anything. This makes it ideal for foreign banking, but horrible for poverty. It’s hard to get by when a gallon of milk costs $8. Most tourists don’t even notice this, because prices in tourist areas are adjusted so they do not seem wildly reasonable and then listed with the tax already included. Blegh.
Also, is that three slices of cake I see in that one meal?
To be fair, I did include the most garish photos I took of the interior. The rest of it was less funktastic, but still very enthusiastically over-festooned with gold, curlicues, and gaudy ornamentation of every kind. According to Yang’s rents, who also went cruising, this is normal.
I did know about the tax-less-ness, but I heard it was importation tax not sales tax. Our tour guide mentioned the Bahamas has some of the highest living expenses in the world for a developing country, but seemed very mellow about it. It seems the average Bahamian is not in a position to complain or protest anything about the government the way we do here. In any case, I will never complain about $3 orange juice again.
@tina, Perhaps it is import tax that is passed on through the sales. It was not really explained to me with any kind of authority when I was there. Though I did see $8 milk with my own eyes.
Are all cruise liner experiences tailored toward middle/older-aged married couples with an excess of cash and a deficit of taste?
It seems that vacationing in the Caribbean/Mexico is in general not limited to this crowd, as evidenced by all the students rushing to Cancun to get wasted over spring break.
But if cruises all turn out to be similar that somewhat dampens my desire to one day check out the Pacific northwest and Alaska on a boat. Having T-Pain along for the ride may be a mitigating factor.
it is scary how eerily your cruise pictures remind me of my cruise pictures…. except there really isn’t much that’s the same…. giant ship, nature, food, pool, towel bunny…. generic stuff. but still somehow looks the same ^^;;
was it cold there? you seem to be dressed for a spring/fall weather rather than ~tropical~ ::waving arms::