The Palm Trees are Really Cool: Onboard the Carnival Valor’s Southern Route (Part Six)featured

by Nicole on July 9, 2014

We don’t really do much on sea days.

It feels like we do, but we really don’t. We swim (if it’s nice out). We eat breakfast. And lunch. And tea. We peruse the shops and walk around aimlessly. Sometimes we play trivia. We nap. We just…be. Does that make sense? We delight in doing nothing (even though we’re almost never actually doing nothing).

So our first sea day was our only sea day. And it felt like we had a ton to cram into it even though we don’t really do all that much. There isn’t all that much to do. We just aren’t used to so little unstructured time. This was the most port intensive sea trip we’ve ever taken – all of our other cruises had at least two sea days or some late arrivals into port that gave us a morning and afternoon at sea before coming into port in the late afternoon or evening. And with the lack of days to do nothing, we suddenly felt like we had to do everything.

It was slightly overcast when we woke up, but we were out and going with a strong purpose. We skipped breakfast in favor of going to brunch later (we had free drink vouchers to redeem, after all!), and headed straight to the pool. The towel animals were on parade at the main pool, and the main pool allowed, well, kids, so we headed aft to the adults only area.

The pool was empty.

That never happens.

It’s a sea day. It’s nice and warm. It’s not overwhelmingly sunny, but the sun is out. And there’s no one in the adults only pool. I didn’t know what I was missing elsewhere on the ship that had everyone else occupied and I didn’t care. No splashing children, or frustratingly oblivious swimmers trying to get laps in.

((And I lied – I do know where everyone else was. They were in the Lido Marketplace shoving in front of each other for dibs at hard boiled eggs bennie and saving tables with an errant flip flop. In all my trips, I’ve never seen such poor crowd control or flow in the Lido eateries. This one in particular seemed constantly busy from sunrise until late afternoon.))

Even more surprising than the pool being empty was the length of time it stayed empty for – we had it to ourselves for almost an hour and a half. And lets be clear – we weren’t up super early. We hit the pool around 9:30 am. That’s prime swimming time on most sea days. But we weren’t complaining.

When we’d had our fill of water time and morning sun, we headed back to the room for some quick showers and to change, and then we grabbed our free drink vouchers and headed to the dining room for brunch.

It was crowded when we got to the restaurant, but not overwhelmingly so. Much less crowded than the Lido Marketplace was for breakfast or lunch, but busy nonetheless. We were seated quickly at a table for three and service from there was noticeably slower. It took a long while to get our drinks and even longer for a bread basket (filled with decently good popovers, but not the delectable looking pastries I’d seen in other reviews) to arrive.

Most (if not all) Carnival ships have veered away from the previous rotating lunch menus in the Main Dining Rooms in favor of a singular brunch menu. And while the brunch menu has some more interesting options listed (filet mignon, for one, along with crusted french toast and huevos rancheros), I found the rotating lunch menus were better executed. All of the dishes we tried tasted incredibly generic and poorly executed in that it tasted like food produced en masse (which…it is). A double chocolate brownie with salted caramel sauce sounds more intriguing than an ice cream sundae, except the brownie was hard as a rock and the salted caramel sauce tasted like it came out of a foil packet, whereas that ice cream sundae was served with a fresh strawberry sauce and macarons.

There were standouts, though. Mom thought the lox platter was fantastic and the mustard potatoes with my steak and eggs were superb (though I was befuddled as to why my dish was also served with curly fries – I didn’t understand the double serving of potatoes, though both were certainly tasty). The cheesecake was also particularly tasty, with a nice, dense texture and a perfectly crumbly crust.

Bagel Breakfast

Fresh Fruit Platter with Cottage Cheese

Eggs Benedict

Funniest French Toast

Steak-n-Eggs

Double Chocolate Brownie

Caramelized Cheesecake

After such a heavy breakfast…lunch…brunch?…we needed to move, so we took a walk around the promenade.

We hit up the shops, too.

We stopped back at the room to change before we headed up to Serenity to lay out for a bit and noticed our Platinum treats had arrived. And while they were a nice array, one of our strawberries was molded.

Serenity (Carnival’s adult’s-only sanctuary) was busy when we got up there, but not so busy that we couldn’t find some sun beds. Stephanie noticed a couple on the bed next to ours chewing bar fruit and spitting all the peels out on the bed and it kind of grossed us out. There was a lot of trash and filth around the deck and I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t getting enough upkeep, or if the staff just couldn’t keep up with the trashy habits of some of our fellow passengers.

After some sun, we were in need of some naps (we had a lot of exploring to do in the next four days!), and on our way back to the room, we passed by a very crowded main pool. Definitely a lot of action out there in the afternoon if that’s what you’re looking for, but Serenity is probably a better area if you’re in search of some peace.

And speaking of peace, mine was found in a good nap. Mom woke me up after a couple of hours for tea time. We weren’t really hungry after such a heavy brunch earlier, but since we only had one tea time this cruise, we made room for some chamomile tea and macarons.

After tea, we headed back to the room to barter over counter space to get ready for formal night. I called last so I spent some quality time on the balcony while Stephanie and Mom got glammed up.

We skipped the Captain’s Celebration (a dollar off drinks isn’t as fun as free drinks) but headed out to the Promenade to people watch. People watching is fun on any day but even more fun on formal night. Formal night people watching is the best. And our fellow cruisers brought out their best – we saw many formal gowns (many of which seemed like quincenera gowns to me, which was unsurprising with the San Juan homeport).

When we had our fill of playing Fashion Police, we headed down to dinner. Formal night dinner is never really a favorite, but always brought some strong dishes. Tonight, there was no aus jus or horseradish offered with the prime rib and that delicious cheese sauce the stuffed mushroom appetizer was served in? It’s now a tomato sauce. A rich tomato sauce. A tasty one. But it’s not the same.

Baked Stuffed White Mushrooms

Spaghetti Carbonara (Starter Portion)

Greek Farmer Salad

Broiled Maine Lobster Tail and Jumbo Black Tiger Shrimp

Tender Roasted Prime Rib of American Beef Au Jus

No photos, please (seriously, though, can we ban photogs from the dining room?)

Cherries Jubilee (no, we didn’t snack before snapping – it literally came with three cherries)

Warm Chocolate Melting Cake

We stopped back at the room after dinner to change our shoes and found some gifts waiting for us – travel coffee mugs with a small bag of Lavazza coffee!

We uncorked one of the bottles of wine that we had brought onboard and brought it down to the Ivanhoe with us for showtime.

Tonight’s show was Nightclub Express. I didn’t have many nice things to say about it the first time we saw it back in 2011, but man, after the barrage of disappointments in the entertainment onboard the Breeze, just the fact that this show had sets and competent singers and a full dance squad…I take back all the bad things I said in 2011. Is this Ticket to Ride or Rock Down Broadway? No (but obligatory BRING BACK ROCK DOWN BROADWAY PLS mention). But the show is solid nonetheless.

We walked around a bit after the show before heading back to the room to change into our comfy clothes. We watched Valentine’s Day in the room and then headed up to Movies Under the Stars for another movie – Gravity.

We grabbed burgers from the late night grill and settled in with the movie.

I love Movies Under the Stars. Night time in the Caribbean seas bring smooth, balmy breezes that glide across your skin and instantly relax you. It’s the best kind of drive in movie experience. Amongst my favorite cruising activities.

That said, Gravity sufficiently disturbed me and I was still keyed up when we got back to the room. We packed our beach bags for our next day excursion in Barbados, set an alarm and headed to bed.

Today’s Lido Lunch Menu