Carnival Paradise Review: Day 1 – Tampafeatured

I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to have the opportunity to write this trip journal. In fact, I should probably alternatively title this The Trip That So Very Nearly Almost Wasn’t.

Future note to self: hurricanes do, in fact, pop up during hurricane season. Plan travel accordingly.

When we came home from the Baltics, I had zero travel plans. No cruises planned, no long weekends, no work trips, nothing. By the end of June, I had found myself with travel plans for almost every weekend from the middle of July through the end of September. I was living in the land of yes, because if not now, when? And so when travel to Cuba became a hot political topic again and my friend Keri texted me that she wanted to go to Cuba before travel there got more complicated, I couldn’t find it within myself to say no, because if I didn’t go to Cuba now, when would I have the opportunity again?

Much like when I visited Russia in May, traveling to Cuba was complicated and planning a trip that would abide by all of the guidelines was intimidating. So choosing to visit Cuba via cruise ship was a fairly easy decision. We could spend two days in Havana (perfect for two gals with full time jobs and full time obligations), but the cruise line would take care of our visas and we’d have the comfort in familiarity of coming back to the cruise ship when we were done touring.

So we booked a four-day cruise onboard the Carnival Paradise, which happens to be the very first ship I ever sailed on (and where my obsession with seeing the world on a cruise ship really started!), setting sail from Tampa on September 21.

And then Irma happened, leaving a path of destruction through some of the islands that hold dear spaces in my heart and a path of uncertainty in some of the islands I have yet to visit, barely a week and a half before our scheduled voyage.

We didn’t know if we’d make it to Havana. We didn’t even know if there would be a cruise terminal left in Tampa for us to sail out of. I watched CNN for hours with baited breath. I stalked the Carnival Facebook for updates. I even kept tabs on the Havana geotag on Instagram so I could scope out the situation for myself.

Somehow, the brunt of the storm missed Havana. And somehow, Havana was up and running again within days. I finally exhaled and started putting the final pieces in place, having held off on booking my airfare and a hotel until we knew the extent of the storm damage in both Cuba and Florida.

Two days before we left, they started forecasting for Maria. And somehow, the storm turned away from the west and veered north, sparing both Cuba and the western coast of Florida.

It wasn’t until the day we left that Carnival confirmed that the port facilities in Havana were unharmed and that Havana was ready to open to cruise tourists again.

With all of the uncertainty behind us, we dove into researching People to People (the conditions of our visas stated we needed to spend 7-8 hours interacting with the Cuban people conversing, learning and experiencing their culture), photo stops in Havana, paladares (family owned restaurants), anything and everything about Cuba we could.

The cruise departed on a Thursday, so I left Chicago on Wednesday morning, setting a new personal record in the process: from my condo in the Chicago Loop through the TSA checkpoint at O’Hare in 44 minutes. I didn’t get a ton of sleep – anticipation (and a newly discovered allergy to the gel manicure I received the day before) had me up at 4:30 in the morning. And in a fitting end to my summer of travel (which started with a cancelled flight home from Paris in May and continued on with cancelled flights to New York and Washington DC, a three-hour tarmac delay on my birthday flight to Austin and getting stranded at LaGuardia trying to get to Vermont), once I boarded my flight, we sat at the gate for over an hour due to an extended delay in filing maintenance paperwork for a scratch that was discovered on our aircraft.

Once we actually departed, though, it was nothing but smooth skies and mimosas. By the time I finished my movie and brunch, we were beginning our descent over St. Petersburg. I lifted my window shade and peered out, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Florida has been my second home since infancy and I needed to see that everything was okay before I could really believe it.

Keri was waiting for me at baggage claim, having flown in from a business trip to Jacksonville an hour earlier, looked at me and shouted CUBAAAAAAAAAA as soon as she saw me. In all of the insanity, terror and destruction, how fortunate were we to have this adventure escape unscathed? I don’t think either of us could really believe it.

My luggage was second out on the belt and we were quickly in an Uber. I haven’t sailed out of Tampa since 2005 and I think it’s been just about that long since I’ve stayed in Tampa. There must have been a conference in town because most hotels were sold out and those that weren’t were pretty inflated, so we lucked out to find an Expedia special rate for The West Wing, a boutique hotel not far from Busch Gardens.

The West Wing isn’t crazy big – just two floors – and it doesn’t have any bells or whistles. But it did have a super friendly staff, a free shuttle within a three mile radius, free breakfast and a nice little zen garden. And a robot! The hotel has a robot! How crazy awesome is that? For one-night pre-cruise stay, it was comfortable enough for our needs.

We were booked in a two queen suite and it was beyond spacious. Like, I think this room may be bigger than my apartment spacious. Featuring a small kitchenette, a separate sitting room, a bedroom with two queen sized beds and a large bathroom, it could have easily slept four or five adults comfortably.

After we settled in to our room, we decided to go out to grab some lunch. There was a large shopping mall across the street, and along Fowler Avenue (the main street running through the area) was just about every fast food and classic American restaurant. Driving in, I noticed a Portillo’s not far from our hotel, and if you’ve never heard of Portillo’s, it’s kind of the quintessential Chicago fast food restaurant. We have them all over Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and if you’re from the Chicagoland area, you grew up on their Chocolate Cake Shakes and Italian beef sandwiches. They started expanding out from Illinois about 11 years ago with a small handful of locations on the west coast and it looks like they’ve also recently expanded with two locations in Central Florida. And while I generally try to avoid eateries I have at home when I travel, Keri doesn’t live in Chicago and has never been to Portillo’s on her visits, so it gave me the opportunity to introduce her to some good old fashioned Chicago grub.

((And the Cubs were in town playing the Tampa Bay Rays, so many Cubs fans were having a pre-game lunch and if I closed my eyes and ignored the palm trees outside, I could have easily been at home))

We stopped at a Walgreens next door for water and snacks before continuing on our walk along Fowler to grab ice cream at a fun little rolled ice cream shop a block over.

I always call my sister when I board my flights and when I boarded my flight this morning, she had joked that she didn’t need to check my Facebook to know what my day would look like: coffee in a hip coffee joint, graffiti walls, walk along the water front and dinner at some hipster pizza or burger place. And while I wish I could tell you all about the Tampa version of my lather/rinse/repeat travel haunts, the reality was far less exciting: after ice cream, we went back to the hotel and didn’t leave for the rest of the day. Maybe if we had rented a car, we would have ventured out and explored a little more, but it was hot, we were exhausted from traveling and we both agreed we just wanted to low key hang and get ready for our cruise.

So there were no coffee shops or murals, and there are no from behind shots of me on a rock somewhere (though maybe those would come over the coming days). We tried to find the Cubs game on TV (…it wasn’t) and then settled in with a can of Pringles and hours of old Full House reruns.

It was out of routine and different, but I had a sneaking suspicion that this cruise would be, too.