Posts Tagged ‘St. Thomas’
Carnival Triumph – Day Two to Four
Originally posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Hey guys! Sorry about not updating earlier. I fell sick somehow. I think it’s because of changing environments too quickly. I left Toronto, a cold place, to arrive at Miami, a hot place. Then I went onto the ship which takes me to hotter places yet at the same time the rooms on the boat are extremely cold. On top of that, my bed (an extra) was close to the floor and the rocking of the boat made it difficult to sleep on the first night. By the second morning, my nose was getting weird (as in stuffed). By the second night my throat started itching and hurting, and it got worse yesterday. The five hour walking in San Juan yesterday afternoon didn’t help either, so as a result I had to sleep early yesterday, and missed half of St Thomas excursion this morning. I think the worst part is over now…
But anyway, let’s see what happened. It seems that the shows on the ship every evening are quite good. The singers and dancers are good and the sound and lighting are good. They also got a comedian in who was quite funny, who did two shows. Meanwhile, I’m starting to become less and less impressed about food and service on the ship. In terms of food, yes, you always get food, but they aren’t always satisfactory. There’s always food on the 9th deck, but the only thing that’s 24 hours is their pizzeria, and their pizza is pretty bad. When the other places on the 9th deck opens, it almost always serve the same thing. Some of the popular food items are much too greasy, and the deli/asian corners have only a few options available.
Dinner at the dining rooms are quite nice, though. However, the whole point behind dinner is having an excellent dinner, and not a satisfactory one. Note the use of vocabulary. Excellent means the dinner is organized, the waiters are perfect, the dishes are well-made down to every detail, etc… However, the wait-time between the bread, appetizers, main course, and dessert is so long that you’ll feel like you’re wasting time, and at the same time, the food themselves may look amazing, but at times they’re neither tasty nor filling…
However, there are two things that are absolutely awesome in terms of the food on this ship: coffee and ice cream. I have no complaints about those at all, they’re awesome, amazing, easily accessible, and very satisfactory.
In terms of service… my complaint is that I tried to call the room steward twice now on different rooms in different times, and I haven’t yet been able to reach him by phone. I have no idea where he is, but considering that what I needed are related directly to my illness, I got pretty annoyed. Aside from this, all the other service is pretty good actually. Everyone is very, very friendly.
In the end, there aren’t that many things to do for me on the ship. There’s a spa on the top deck, but everything their cost money and are expensive. I wouldn’t mind watching some trivia games (they had one in the first day and it looks pretty fun), but since the first day it seems that the Rome Lounge (place where they play game events) has been made exclusively for bingo. It kinda makes you wonder why such a simple and childish game is being such a major event here. I usually don’t like to sunbath, but I wouldn’t mind swimming. However, the two swimming pools on deck are tiny pools meant for little kids, and are usually extremely crowded. Can’t blame them though, as it’s difficult to build a pool on top of a ship. There’s a casino, which seems to be highly popular, but that’s not for me. The various bars are not for me either, as I’m not one for drinking. There are lots of lounges and places where they play music and people socialize, so it’s awesome if you came with a group of people, and less awesome if you came by yourself.
In the end, I spend a lot of my time trying to get good photographs and explore the ship, and go to random events that look interesting. The evening shows were usually awesome. Of course, there are three shore excursions which means touring three different cities. If you want to see pictures of those, check out the links!
Since I’m sick, I’m also behind on my review for the Operating Systems midterm that’s happening the day after the evening I get back… That’s starting to look a bit scary. However, some initial readings made it pretty clear that all I need is time to read the stuff… it’s not that hard to understand. It would be awesome if I can finish the cruise on a high note, be totally ready for Monday’s midterm, and find that I got an AMD job offer by the time I get back… that would be so awesome, lol…
I will see you guys later!
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